life the universe and everything

Douglas Adam's throw away line has entered the lexicon as a kind of glib summary of all of the important unanswered questions ever asked. When I was a kid I remember my head spinning when i tried to conceptualise infinity. In year 11 or 12 we studied the metaphysical poets who struggled with the nature of who we are, why we're here and what is our purpose. These questions remain universal. And no amount of wordplay or poetic contrivances since have provided any clearer answer.

I saw a show on SBS on sunday night. It re-awakened my confusions. About 20 years ago, on a whim, I started reading everything I could find on quantum physics and chaos theory. I hated science at school and my latent revulsions returned every time I would come across a theory expressed as a mathematical equation. But I found that if I just let my eyes glaze over every time I encountered one, the equations would recede into oblivion and I was able to proceed.
As a result, for a layman, I reckon I know a fair bit when it comes to complexity and uncertainty principles and quarks and even string theory. But a little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing because more recently the cutting edge science has begun to look a bit like Tony Abbott's climate change solution: If the facts don't fit your world view, produce a solution from out of your bum.
 Apparently for the big bang to hold together, we need something like 90% more matter than is in the universe. Same with energy. So if the facts don't fit, default to your arse.Voila! Enter dark matter and dark energy. We can't see it. We have no evidence that it exists other than if it doesn't exist, our theory and our mathematical equations won't work. Now dark matter and dark energy have been around for a while but the SBS program highlighted cosmology's latest problem: dark flow. 

Today i came across this.  Which brings me back to my initial quandary about infinity and the concept of the universe.

Apparently we know (via mathematics) what the universe looked like a minute fraction of a second after ignition (note the NASA term which i adopted seemlessly). The questions of what was there prior to the BB, and what caused it, are too hard (even for people who write complicated mathematical equations).  But if the BB occurred WHAT did it explode into? Not only do we need to take on trust the (apparent) spontaneous combustion that is the BB but it combusts into a.... something (universe?) that didn't exist prior to the BB. Head spinning yet?

And you want to know the best thing about all this? I accept it. If something is unknowable then you may as well pull an explanation out of your arse if it can be made to work mathematically. (Tony Abbott please note, climate change does not qualify as unknowable)

But when science enters into the world of metaphysics, then you can understand why Masterchef and The Block are so popular. Although maybe some of the more inedible elements of Masterchef may involve some dark flow

to blog or not to

This is my 3rd or 4th attempt to start a blog. I guess the difference with this one (i hope) is that, more recently, i have become dissatisfied with the limitations of platforms like facebook. if you want to put some considered thought to paper (figuratively) then facebook and social media is too limiting. so. here is my first considered posting.
The Prague Spring
On 21st August 1968 the tanks rolled into Prague bringing to an end a social and political experiment which, had it been allowed to continue, might have changed the course of history. Sci Fi is awash with what if scenarios and speculating on what might have been is reduced, at the end of the day, to wishes and fishes. But 1968 was such a pivotal year around the world. Not since 1848 had the world erupted (seemingly spontaneously) into mass demonstrations and calls for an end to the ancien regimes. From Newark to Paris, Rio to Belfast, the youth of the world were on the march.
The Warsaw Pact wasn't immune. Alexander Dubcek came to power in January and set about trying to free up the social and political culture of Czechoslovakia. This Prague spring offered hope that state controlled socialism could find the means within itself to reform itself. Here was the opportunity to "pilot" political reform. Alas the soviet politburo had neither the intelligence nor the flexibility to see Dubcek's reforms as an opportunity, only as a threat.
Twenty two years later the edifice of communism collapsed under the weight of its own inflexibility and its internal contradictions. Unfortunately it was the spivs and the carpetbaggers who stole the family jewels and the end result of 70 years of socialism was a reversion to Czarism with the peasants losing out again.
And in the west? The promise of "68 and its focus on individual liberties degenerated into a kind of "me too" selfishness of rampant consumerism based on a market economy that cannibalises itself on a daily basis until it will eventually disappear up its own materialist avarice.