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blushing-starker · 3 years

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Insanity brings me truth and you

can you guess what Peter's doing to not be understood by the guards?

It's not easy, being crazy. There are expectations to run away from, a bar to limbo under, a specific number of people one has to betray and scar. The unknowable becomes knowable, so you have to skirt the edge of that Venn diagram very carefully. Or very recklessly. Either way, it's a complex thing except for when it's not. Jesus, how infuriating to think about. The point is, the paradox that crazies carry on their shoulders? It's a fucking hassle, a tricky one and Peter is tired of it.

He sighs, lets gravity bend him backward, legs slipping dangerously off the blanket he's hung as a hammock inside his cell. Act like a psycho and you're predictable, don't act like an ax wielding murderer and whoops! Predictable. It's the downside of being insane; you leave the weary capitalist consumer mask out in the world, probably set that shit on fire and make yourself sick with the fumes. But you just replace it with the one labelled 'danger to society' and get forced to play along with that. He did what he did to avoid the world and its predetermined fate, its standards.

Peter closes his eyes, thinks of the nauseating smell on his left. Rupert, the guard that dared graze him while he came back from the shower naked, has a broken nose thanks to Ned and his loyalty to him. The idiot barely cleans the open wound and the whole cell reeks of pus because of it. He does the math of how long it's been going on for and shudders in disgust. His bare calves slip a little more.

An inhale near the front of his cage. Slow, but controlled. Not the usual. Thank God for a circus family and heightened senses.

The doctor is paying attention to him.

"Doctor Stark. Gnittor gnihtemos llems ouy nac?" Rupert grumbles from his perch on the second floor, curses a hare brained psycho that's incomprehensible. Peter hums, pleased to know that after ten months, nine days, twelve hours, and...

Breathe in. Breathe out. Focus on sinking deeper into nothing, into a yawning void. The blanket shakes and his thighs are starting to tremble. Blood is rushing to his head, veins most likely beginning to protrude. Irrelevant.

His favorite guard Stan wears a Swiss watch his wife got for him on their fortieth anniversary. It sings to him now, smooth and cool like a river. A skipping stone is thrown, tic, a fish heads towards the sound, toc. Above all the other stimuli in the room, the watch announces itself. Ten fifteen.

Ten months, nine days, twelve hours and twenty minutes into a game, his tiny gnat still hasn't caught on. Not like the charming doctor. He sees him then, behind closed eyelids, as clearly as a sweet nightmare. Tall, taller than Peter, but less strong. Wide shoulders that morph into a slim waist and a delectable ass he aches to sink his teeth into. Shapely calves from running, curiously delicate looking ankles.

Down and back again. A full head of dark hair with a dusting of silver. Dangerously clever mouth, what his aunt would call a noble nose. Agreeable cheekbones. Piercing eyes that tear his walls down, rip apart the bricks and mortar until he's scrambling on the other side, desperately, clumsily attempting to reinforce them for the millionth time. Those eyes saw the trick, the mirror reflection on his second day here, Peter offhandedly talking in reverse with Ned when they passed the new doctor. A dark gaze had pinned him in place, a spider fixed in place with its own silk against the cold dissection table.

Ned had rambled on, Peter had met a worthy playmate and the doctor had seen all he needed in that eternally prolonged glance. That very afternoon, a psychiatrist signed on as his very own voyeur.

Doctor Stark seems to be as interested in cutting him open to peek inside as Peter is in taking a dagger and comparing their hearts. He does this a lot; wonders how fate and the absence of lucky fate led them here. On opposite sides of a prison when perhaps it should be the other way around. Or perhaps there should only be Peter and Doctor Stark.

He feels himself falling, plummeting ever downward into fantasies and hazy dreams. It's not until the good doctor sharply calls out his name that he realizes he's also plummeting towards the floor. Now, MJ had warned him; had specifically said that the hammock being ten feet off the concrete ground was a bad idea. Ned had said he'd be fine and Peter loves the guy, ok? He has to do everything he can so that his best friend wins a bet over his other best friend.

Peter slightly regrets that when he's forced to arch his body backward, flip right side up in order to hit the floor on his feet instead of his face. The impact chokes the air right out of him, shakes his bones, but he doesn't react. Cracks his neck and that's all. Most of the guards were kind, some shade of understanding. They weren't harmless, though. He knows what he looks like, knows how many hours these men are cooped up with the scum of the earth.

"To answer your question," Peter leaps onto the bars of his cell, slithers higher than any sane person would and somersaults off the vertical slits, sinks into his trustworthy hammock with its trustworthy knots (MJ and Ned had tied them, one each), "yes, I do. It's less potent this time."

He stills, frowns. "How? There haven't been any changes. External or internal." No need to act like the Mad Hatter when the conversation could be had normally. Quicker and more reliable with meanings. But the doctor pauses, enunciates his next words slowly.

"Ti koot uoy erom emit yadot." God, he loved hearing Doctor Stark talk that carefully and smoothly. It was as comforting as it was uncomfortable. (He and sex don't particularly get along. It's like a headache that comes and goes; with the right medicine it can dissipate and evolve into something soothing, pleasant. With the majority of medicine, it blossoms into pain and soreness, a dry throat clogged by a thick syrup that won't leave him be no matter how much water MJ and Ned encourage him to drink. Peter isn't yet completely certain which side of his scale the doctor falls on, but he's guessing it's likely the first.)

(The man seemed to live in the grey areas; fitting that with this, too, he'd reside in the in between.)

The reverse effect is in play and he grins, genuine and wide, when he catches it. "Monsters are visiting more frequently, taking up space in the light." His nightmares had intensified recently, and they're starting to accompany him even in moments Peter knows are real; shapes drifting by the corner of his eye. As a coping tactic, he rips parts of his nails off. Not entirely, just the corners. His mind could concoct lots of things, but in his dreams his hands are always pristine.

(He hasn't caught up with it, hasn't noticed that although his nightmares have a clearness to them, a bright intensity, Peter can't shift enough focus to realize his hands aren't his own. They never are. But he usually has more pressing bodies to deal with than the good doctor's.)

Another pause, this one being done by Tony Stark, doctor and healer of men, instead of Doctor Stark, curious keeper of deranged souls. "I'm sorry to hear that. Maybe this will help." Peter peers over the edge of the grey hammock, watches with interest as the doctor approaches his cell with a glass bottle of clear liquid sloshing inside. The other man stops an inch away from the bars, looks up at Peter.

There's a slow tension simmering between them, something as thick and addictive as honey. There's scientific curiosity, a desire to seek out and maybe comprehend the unknown lurking inside their mirror image, as other and as alike as oneself. But there is also a gleam of something he's afraid of acknowledging in Doctor Stark's eyes. A madness once tucked away steadily unraveling itself with each glance they share.

Peter returns the look, unblinking and thinking. " 'If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.' " A lesson Nietzsche offered to those wise enough, sane enough to live blind.

The doctor raises an eyebrow, is otherwise still. Sometimes, if Peter considers their current predicament for too long, his grasp on his masks loosens, and the Spider begins to spin its deadly thread round and round its very own body. He sees a guard exchange money with a partner; the crazy quota has, he guesses, been filled for the week. And they had such a nice streak going on, too. Oh, well. This web is unavoidable anyways.

He pitches himself forward, is the one who controls the descent instead of gravity this time. Letting the air rush up to meet him, he inhales, tastes a distinct sharpness around him. Crouching, Peter takes it all in, every last detail. Looks, really looks, at the doctor and suspects.

As if he were none the wiser, he calmly heads to the front of the cell. Meets the doctor at the divide and wonders what it'll be. Wonders if he'll rise higher than ash and flame, an acrobat testing the fates by flying just seconds ahead of death. Doctor Stark hands him the bottle and he can see now, tiny pieces of lavender. A distraction for the guards. "That should keep the monsters in the dark. Use it before you got to sleep and tuck away your hair."

Like a schoolgirl with a crush, he self consciously brings a hand to his curls. They're getting a bit long, but the warden only allows haircuts once a month or two. "I don't have anything to use." Digging into his lab coat, the other man retrieves a single black stick.

Well, to everyone else it's a hair pin. Peter knows the truth though, can see it and smell it and very nearly touch it. As it is, he gently plucks the items out of elegant hands and refuses to look at them. Looking draws attention. Doctor Stark gazes at his face, eyes flickering in a rehearsed way around his own, but not into them. That's alright, he understands.

"The lack of movement around your face should also help." The question of why is out before he can reel it in and act as a sane, normal person. Christ, he could handle crazy, not rude. He would have to practice being in control so as not to slip up when the doctor is around. Said doctor cocks his head, doesn't have to do anything more for Peter to get the message: go on, ask the devil why he made the deal.

Peter B Parker does not back down when intrigued. "Why are you helping me sleep better?"

Why help me escape?

"It's my duty." Three words. Not the explicit declaration of affection typical, normal, dull people receive from an admirer or partner. Not a grand proclamation of wanting what the heart wants, or a sonnet regarding the connection between star crossed paramours. Simple, short, concise; enough to turn to religion, to sanctity and salvation if it means hearing it again. He'd do anything, including putting on a discarded mask from his past if it gets him what he desires. Peter would suffer through sanity for this man. He would if it means hearing what sounds silent to those around them.

You're my duty. Whatever happens tonight, Doctor Stark believes it's his duty to see it through. To see him through, in a way.

"Why would you accept?" Ah, silly doc thinking any of his principles have changed since the first time they met, since the first time he brought fire to life and gave death in return. Peter smiles, brings forth the prisoner that had not seen the light of day in almost a decade.

(His uncle often said Peter's greatest gift to the world was his smile, his true smile. His aunt said it was the final move needed to capture a king and make him his pawn.)

"Why, doc, you know I hate to be bored." Call him a psycho, a freak, a sick, pitiful creature. Call him anything and everything and maybe those words would ring true. But Peter will never allow himself to be bored, not when there's so much fun to be had. Especially with a doctor as crazy as he is. "This looks...promising."

" 'He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.' " The first part of Nietzsche's warning.

"Nietzsche didn't understand; those who fought monsters were already fated to become what they struggled to defeat. They believed salvation could be found by killing the monsters outside, but all they did was feed the ones inside."

Anthony Stark, the truest version, grins at him, all glinting eyes, sharp teeth and a crooked smile. Peter Parker, armed with a match, gasoline and soon to be glass shards, grins right back. In this instant, being crazy isn't such a hassle. After all, he has someone to share the crazy with now.

#starker #dark!starker #insane!peter #insane!tony #patient!peter #doctor!tony #peter parker x tony stark #i mean sorta dark #arsonist!peter #demisexual!peter #legit a harley/joker version where theres no manipulation #theyre insane and in love yall #sophie writes

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user-2-electric-boogaloo · 3 years

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A Comparison of RTD and Steven Moffat: Saving The Day

So for this analysis I’m going to compare when Moffat and RTD save the day well and when they save it poorly. There are a few bits of criteria I need to explain.

First I will only be including main series, no Torchwood, no spin-offs, and no mini episodes.

Second, I have to define what makes a good and a bad ending (my examples will come from episodes written by neither of them):

Bad endings include when the sonic saves the day (see The Power Of Three) (there are exceptions, see below), when a character spouts some useless technobabble that doesn’t make any scientific sense/when it doesn’t make logical sense in general, when the Doctor invents/presents a machine/equipment that miraculously stops the baddy and is never referred to again (see Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS), and any other ending I deem to be bad (see The Vampires of Venice)

Good endings include when the sonice activates a device that has been well established to save the day, when technobabble is used that actually makes some scientific sense, and just generally when the baddy is destroyed in what I deem to be a creative manner that makes sense with all the things that had been set up in that episode (see The Unquiet Dead).

There will also be cases where there isn’t really a day to be saved, however this happens more often with Moffat.

Let us begin (obviously there will be spoilers but the last episode in the list aired nearly 4 years ago so what you doing with your life).

RTD:

Rose: Bad

What even is anti-plastic?! Like seriously, he’s faced the Autons loads of times and has never thought to use it any other time.

The End Of The World: Bad

The Doctor just goes up to the appearance of the repeated meme (ha meme) and rips its arm off. He then just summons Cassandra back by twisting a knob which apparently everyone can do if “you’re very clever like me”.

Aliens Of London/World War Three: Good

Just nuking them all was a bit dodgy but I’ll give it to him purely because it had been set up earlier in the episode and it is a genuine option that could have been taken.

The Long Game: Good

The heating issue was set up within 2 minutes of the episode starting. It’s always good to see the Doctor using his enemies weakness against them.

Boom Town: Good

Only just. It’s technology that hadn’t been showcased ever before and came out of nowhere, but I’m allowing purely because it was setting up The Parting Of The Ways.

Bad Wolf/The Parting Of The Ways: Good

See above. It was set up the story before so it works.

The Christmas Invasion: Bad

This was so close to being good. If RTD had just let the Sycorax leader be honourable then everything would have been fine. Instead he had to let him be dishonourable and then the Doctor through the Satsuma at a random button that for no apparent reason caused a bit of floor to fall away.

New Earth: Bad

It only makes sense if you think about it for less than 10 seconds as just pouring every cure to every disease ever into a giant tub and then spraying said supercure onto them all, then having them hug each other to pass it on. That is suspending my disbelief just a bit too far.

Tooth And Claw: Good

Everything is set up in the episode so I’ll allow it but I fail to see how Prince Albert had the time to ensure that the diamond was cut perfectly.

Love And Monsters: Bad

It’s Love And Monsters. Need I say more?

Army of Ghosts/Doomsday: Good

It was very clearly set up throughout the episode.

The Runaway Bride: Bad

I don’t like how a few bombs can supposedly drain the entire Thames.

Smith And Jones: Good

All the events were well established

Gridlock: Good

It’s a fairly bland way to save the day, just opening the surface to all the drivers. But how else could he have done it?

Utopia/The Sound Of Drums/Last Of The Time Lords: Bad

As much as I like the idea that he tuned himself into the archangel network, he basically turned into Jesus. It is arguably the least convincing ending in modern Doctor Who history.

Voyage Of The Damned: Bad

Why was he the next highest authority? If he’s the highest authority in the universe why didn’t they default to him in the first place? If not then why not default to Midshipman Frame? And if he’s somehow in between them then why? Also Astrid killed herself for no reason when she easily could have jumped out of the forklift.

Partners In Crime: Good

It works in the context of the episode, but I don’t see why they needed two of the necklace things.

Midnight: Good

It’s human nature, you can’t get more well set up than that.

Turn Left: Good

It works logically

The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End: Bad

Donna just spouts a load of technobabble whilst pressing buttons and then the Daleks are magically incapacitated.

The Next Doctor: Bad

Why do the infostamps sever Hartigan’s connection with the Cyberking? As far as I remember it ain’t explained.

Planet Of The Dead (co-written with noted transphobe Gareth Roberts): Good

A good couple scenes are dedicated on getting the anti-gravs set up.

The Waters Of Mars (co-written with Phil Ford): N/A

The day isn’t really saved cause everyone still dies anyway.

The End Of Time: Good

Using a gun to destroy a machine is much better than using the sonic to destroy it.

Summary for RTD:

Out of 24 stories written by him, I deem 10 to be bad endings with 1 abstaining. That’s 41.7% of his episodes (43.5% if we don’t count any abstaining).

Steven Moffat:

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: Good

You’ll see this a lot with Moffat, he knows how to explain things without stupefying levels of technobabble. “Emailing the upgrade” is a perfect example of this.

The Girl In The Fireplace: Good

Some basic logic, the androids want to repair their ship, but they can’t return to it, they no longer have a function so they shut down.

Blink: Good

Always loved this one, getting the angels to look at each other, however they do look at each other sometimes earlier in the episode.

Silence In The Library/Forest Of The Dead: Bad

This is more of a problem with the setup of the episode, I don’t like that he can negotiate with the Vashta Nerada. I’d rather see them comprehensively beaten, but I guess it’s good for the scare factor that they can’t be escaped from.

The Eleventh Hour: Good

He convinced the best scientists all around the world to set every clock to 0 all in less than an hour. In the Doctor’s own words “Who da man!”

The Beast Below: Good

The crying child motif pretty much ended up saving the day (well for the star whale, life went on as normal for pretty much everyone else).

The Time Of Angels/Flesh And Stone: Good

The artificial gravity had briefly been set up earlier so I’ll allow it.

The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang: Good

Everything had been set up perfectly, the vortex manipulator, the Pandorica’s survival field thingy, the TARDIS exploding at every moment in history.

A Christmas Carol: Good

Literally the entire episode is the Doctor saving the day by convincing Kazran not to be a cock.

The Impossible Astronaut/Day Of The Moon: Good

The silence’s ability to influence people is their whole thing, so using it against them is a good Doctory thing to do.

A Good Man Goes To War: N/A

The day isn’t really saved, Melody is lost, but River shows up at the end so is all fine? I love the episode it’s just the day isn’t really truly saved (yes I know Amy was rescued but she still lost her baby).

Let’s Kill Hitler: N/A

There isn’t really a day to be saved. They all get out alive but no one is really saved other than maybe River but we all knew she was gonna live anyway.

The Wedding Of River Song: Good

Whilst opinion is divided on the episode, the ending still works. the Tesseracta was established in Let’s Kill Hitler, and the “touch River and time will move again” was established well in advance.

The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe: Bad

I don’t like how the lifeboat travels through the time vortex for no reason but to rescue the dad. It don’t make no sense and I don’t think it’s explained

Asylum Of The Daleks: Good

Oswin had access to the Dalek hive mind so of course she should be able to link into the controls and blow everything up.

The Angels Take Manhattan: Good

Paradoxes really do be something powerful, and they even acknowledge how nobody knows if it’d work so I’ll let it slide.

The Snowmen: Bad

Lots of people cry at Christmas, why are the Latimers anything special?

The Bells of Saint John: Good

The whole episode is about hacking so why shouldn’t the Doctor be able to hack the spoonheads

The Name Of The Doctor: Good

It was the story arc for the season pretty much, so of course it was explained well in advance.

The Day Of The Doctor: Good

Both the storing Gallifrey like a painting and the making everyone forget if they’re Human or Zygon works in the context of the episode.

The Time Of The Doctor: Bad

Since when were the Time Lords so easily negotiated with?

Deep Breath: Good

I like the dilemma over whether the half-face man was pushed or jumped.

Into The Dalek: Good

It’s set up well with this new Doctor’s persona of actually not being too nice of a guy (at first).

Listen: N/A

There isn’t a day to be saved. It’s just 45 minutes of the Doctor testing a hypothesis and I low-key love it.

Time Heist (co-written with Steven Thompson): Good

It works logically so I’ll allow it however it isn’t very well set up at all.

The Caretaker (co-written with noted shithead Gareth Roberts): Good

The machine to tell the Blitzer what to do was set up well in advance so I’ll allow it.

Dark Water/Death In Heaven: Good

The fact that Danny still cares even as a cyberman is set up fairly early on after his transformation.

Last Christmas: Good

He does use the sonic to wake up Clara but he convinces the others to wake up through talking so I’ll allow it.

The Magician’s Apprentice/The Witch’s Familiar: Good

It’s set up well with that little scene from actually inside the sewers.

The Girl Who Died (co-written with Jamie Mathieson): Good

IDK why the vikings would randomly keep electric eels but they’re set up well so I’ll ignore it.

The Zygon Inversion (co-written with Peter Harness): N/A

Not including this one as it’s only the second part and I’d argue the ending is most likely Harness’.

Heaven Sent/Hell Bent: N/A

Again there isn’t really a day to be saved, yes Heaven Sent really is amazing but it’s only the first part and, being completely honest, he dies several billion times before finally getting through the wall.

The Husbands Of River Song: N/A

Again there isn’t really a day to be saved here.

The Return Of Doctor Mysterio: Good

He gets Grant to catch the bomb which is good. But he does just sonic the gun out of Dr Sim’s hand and says UNIT is on its way which just sort of wraps it up very quickly.

The Pilot: N/A

No day to be saved here.

Extremis: Good

You could technically call it the sonic saving the day, I consider it to be the Doctor emailing the Doctor to warn him of the future.

The Pyramid At The End Of The World: Good

The fire sanitising everything makes sense and it’s in character for Bill to love the Doctor enough to cure his blindness in return for the world

World Enough And Time/The Doctor Falls: Good

Yes it is the sonic just blowing the cybermen up, but it’s blowing them up with well established pipelines so I’ll allow it (also the story is amazing).

Twice Upon A Time: N/A

No day to be saved here. Just Doctors 1 and 12 getting angsty about regenerating.

Summary for Steven Moffat:

Out of 39 stories written by him, I deemed 4 to be bad with 7 abstaining. That’s 10.3% of his episodes (12.5% if we don’t count any abstaining).

Conclusions:

Moffat was much better at saving the day than RTD

Moffat liked telling stories where the day didn’t actually need to be saved

I’ve spent way too long on this and I need to sleep

If I spent as much time on this as my coursework I’d probably pass

If you’re still reading this, you probably need to get a life

#doctor who #steven moffat #rtd #in case you can't tell I really don't like RTD #Remember the Superwholock days when everyone ripped the shit out of Moffat #what am I doing with my life #tardis #rose tyler #martha jones #donna noble #amy pond #rory pond #rory williams #river song #clara oswald #Bill Potts

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terryballs · 3 years

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My favourite Doctor Who writers

10. Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman is one of the most talented people to ever write for Doctor Who. Of course, talent alone is not enough - Douglas Adams, Alan Moore, and Naomi Alderman all miss out on this list. What makes Gaiman special is his fairytale, fantasy approach to the show. He has big ideas, full of heart, and I am always delighted by them.

Why isn’t Mr Gaiman higher up on the list? Simply because he has only done four stories. One of them, “The Doctor’s Wife”, is an all-time classic, while the others are at least good. With a couple more stories, Mr Gaiman would surely be higher.

9. Paul Magrs

Coming in at #9 is one of the most important writers of non-televised Who. Paul Magrs has written nine Big Finish Main Range stories (most notably “The Peterloo Massacre”), three Companion Chronicles, and two Eighth Doctor Adventures, including the exceptional “The Zygon Who Fell To Earth”, as well as a huge number of spin-off adventures.

It’s in print where Magrs really flourishes, though. It’s quite hard to get across just how influential Paul Magrs has been. Firstly, his three books in the Eighth Doctor Adventures range - The Scarlet Empress, The Blue Angel, and Mad Dogs and Englishmen - are hugely ambitious metatextual delights. These stories introduce Iris Wildthyme and the Smudgelings to the Whoniverse, and have each inspired their own spin-off series, collectively called the “Magrsverse”. Iris’s parody of the Doctor is a rip-roaring delight whenever she appears - and as you know, she’s famous for it - and will prove a lasting legacy for Mr Magrs.

I suppose, at this junction, I should mention Lawrence Miles, who has had a similar influence, but I just don’t find to be quite as good a storyteller as Magrs.

8. Rob Shearman

You probably know Rob Shearman for “Dalek”, the first good New Who story. What if I told you that “Dalek” is Shearman’s worst DW story?

The titles of Shearman’s audio plays are enough to send shivers up the spines of those who have heard them. There’s “Jubilee”, the loose inspiration for “Dalek”, which explores the Daleks as fascist iconography. There’s “The Holy Terror”, where the Doctor and Frobisher the Penguin Shape-Shifter have a similarly horrifying experience with a religious cult. There’s “The Chimes of Midnight”, possibly the definitive Eighth Doctor story, and “Scherzo”, itself perhaps the most experimental story in Doctor Who history, and “Deadline”, in which the villain is Doctor Who itself.

Like many of the writers on this list, Shearman has an eclectic back catalogue full of obscure oddities. But few people have quite his capacity for knocking it out of the park.

7. Chris Chibnall

It’s true that Chris Chibnall’s work before becoming showrunner is inconsistent at best. “42″ is bad and “The Hungry Earth” is uninspired. “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” is a fun romp, while “The Power of Three” is a great story that is let down by the ending which had to be re-written hastily due to unforeseen production issues. And Chibnall’s contributions to Series 11 range from “fine” (”The Woman Who Fell To Earth”) to “bad” (”The Battle of Ranskor Av Kolos”). But in “Pond Life” and “P.S.”, Chibnall shows that he knows how to write affecting character beats.

It’s in Series 12 that Chibnall really takes things up a step. His stories become sprawling and ambitious: globe-trotting thrillers crammed full of ideas. He’s still occasionally guilty of trying to throw too many ideas in, but his love for the story really shines through. There’s barely a weak moment in Series 12, and that’s largely because Chibnall himself steps up to write or co-write hit after hit after hit. It all culminates in the epic three-part finale, “The Haunting of Villa Diodati”/”Ascension of the Cybermen”/”The Timeless Children”, a hugely ambitious story that crosses space and time and pulls together disparate elements from the history of Who. It’s a million miles from “The Battle of Ranskor Av Kolos”: a fan-pleasing story that is truly epic.

6. Vinay Patel

Why is Vinay so high? Good question. Thinking about it, I can’t really justify this placement. Patel reliably produces great stories - “Demons of the Punjab” alone marks Patel out as a great, and to follow it up with “Fugitive of the Judoon” shows that it wasn’t a fluke. But Mr Patel has only got four stories to his name - the aforementioned TV stories plus “Letters from the Front” and “The Tourist” - so for similar reasons to Mr Gaiman, a high position is difficult to justify.

So instead, let’s give this position to Terrance Dicks. Mr Dicks has a bit of a reputation as more of a “jobbing” writer than someone like Chibnall or Shearman, Terrance Dicks was, first and foremost, a script editor. Yes, he co-wrote “The War Games” and was the sole writer for “Horror of Fang Rock”, but he’s best remembered for script editing the Third Doctor era (and part of the Second Doctor era), as well as producing an absolute mass of Target novelisations. But that’s not all - Mr Dicks has written original novels (VNAs, EDAs, and PDAs alike), Quick Reads, audio stories, two stage plays, and even the Destiny of the Doctor video game.

Sure, Mr Dicks didn’t burn as bright as Mr Patel. But his contribution to the Whoniverse is unparalleled.

5. Nev Fountain

Comedy writer Nev Fountain has written several of the very best Doctor Who stories. For some reason, these stories tend to centre around Peri (Fountain is married to Nicola Bryant). “Peri and the Piscon Paradox” is the best Companion Chronicle by far, due to a combination of great acting by Bryant and Colin Baker and Fountain’s sizzling script. “The Kingmaker” is an outrageously funny historical with incredible dialogue and multiple ideas clever enough to carry a whole story.

Frankly, those two alone should be enough to convince anyone of Fountain’s brilliance. But there is so much more - “The Widow’s Assassin”, “The Curious Incident of the Doctor In the Night-time”, “The Blood on Santa’s Claw”, “Omega“... if you like Doctor Who, make yourself familiar with Nev Fountain.

4. Robert Holmes

More than anyone else, Robert Holmes is responsible for the esteem which the Fourth Doctor is held in.

Holmes first wrote for the show all the way back in Series 6, with “The Krotons”. He wrote the very first Third Doctor story, “Spearhead From Space”, in which he also introduced the Autons. They reappeared a year later in “Terror of the Autons”, which introduced Jo Grant and the Master. In “The Time Warrior”, Holmes introduced the Sontarans, a pastiche of imperialism.

It was in the Fourth Doctor era that Mr Holmes really made his mark. He took over from Mr Dicks as script editor. In his own right, he wrote “The Deadly Assassin” and “Talons of Weng-Chiang”, but he also turned “The Ark In Space”, “Pyramids of Mars”, and “The Brain of Morbius” into usable stories, even appearing in “The Brain of Morbius” as the Doctor.

After stepping back from script editing, Holmes returned as a hack to write stories like “The Caves of Androzani” (probably the most popular story in Classic Who) and “The Two Doctors”, before dying shortly after his 60th birthday.

3. Jamie Mathieson

Putting Mr Mathieson above Mr Holmes really shows my bias towards New Who, but honestly, I’d rather re-watch “Mummy on the Orient Express”, “Flatline”, or “Oxygen” than any of Holmes’ stories. Mathieson is very inventive and extremely good at maintaining pace and tension. I’m sure we’ll get more stories from him in the future, but the ones we have so far should be used as inspiration by anyone wanting to writing exciting Who.

2. John Dorney

It is hard to exaggerate Mr Dorney’s contributions to audio Who. He may lack the external fanbase of Mr Gaiman, the influence of Mr Magrs, or the legendary status of Messrs Dicks, Chibnall, and Holmes, but make no mistake, Dorney is exceptional. In almost every range he tries his hand at - Lost Stories, Novel Adaptations, Third Doctor Adventures, Fourth Doctor Adventures, Fifth Doctor Adventures, Dark Eyes, Doom Coalition, Ravenous, Time War, Companion Chronicles, Short Trips, Jago and Litefoot, Missy, UNIT, Diary of River Song... Dorney reliably writes the best story in the set.

In particular, Dorney’s stories are notable for the way they focus on character drama. Look at stories like “A Life In A Day” or “Absent Friends” for particular examples of stories that use sci-fi concepts to draw emotion out of characters, particularly the stoic Liv Chenka. Other highlights of Dorney’s include “The Red Lady” and the “Better Watch Out”/”Fairytale of Salzburg” two-parter.

1. Steven Moffat

What more is there to say? Moffat is truly exceptional, reliably writing the best stories in TV Who for several consecutive years. The classics are too numerous to list, but the stand outs amongst the stand outs are “Blink” and “Heaven Sent”/”Hell Bent”.

Some of Moffat’s best work comes away from TV. The minisodes “The Inforarium” and “Night of the Doctor”, the novelisation of “Day of the Doctor”, the short stories “Continuity Errors” and “the Corner of the Eye”, and lockdown stories like “Terror of the Umpty Ums” are Moffat deep cuts which deserve to be held in the same regard as his great TV stories.

Moffat’s imagination lead to him creating multiple iconic monsters - foremost amongst them, the Weeping Angels and the Silence. Moffat emphasised the use of time travel within the stories themselves; other themes in his work include memory, perception, paradoxes, identity, sexuality, and responsibility. He is, without a doubt, the greatest Doctor Who writer, and I am so lucky to have lived through the period where he was active.

#Doctor Who #top ten #Steven Moffat

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phantomphangphucker · 5 years

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Ectober Week Day 4: Artifact - Realities Little Joke For Infinity

A semi-vanquished ally is here for the end game, but way more confusing and completely unable to be taken seriously.

Strange looks to Wong, “is that everyone?”. Who squints back at him, sounding a bit incredulous, “what, you wanted more?”.

AntMan punches down a ship, the small slowly forming portal behind everyone going largely unnoticed. Before massive missiles start slamming into the ground and a little ugly brown van blows up.

Captain Marvel faces Thanos with a harsh desperate glare. Grabbing his hand and struggling to hold it, to stop him from snapping his fingers. Hearing Strange gasp, slightly started, and both her and Tony turn their heads slightly to look. Blinking, firmly confused, they didn’t have anyone who made green portals did they? As a kid? Teen? Just hops through, smirking slightly and sitting down on the rim of the portal. Followed by a blast knocking Thanos back and one of the stones flying away. The kid swings his legs, carefree, “yes he wanted more”. Then the kids blue-eyes look around at everyone, before he hops to the ground and starts walking forwards, swinging his legs wide and silly as he waves slightly, “what’s up? Was told some crazy shit was going down and, this is a quote by the way, ‘lose the stars to gain the stars. In a clashing of gold fists against one who consumes life’. So, uh, care to explain?”.

Captain Marvel gestures with her hands at the fighting going on. Thanos punching Thor as they clamour over the drooped stone, makes for pretty good added emphasis. The black haired kid tilts his head slightly, hums, and nods, “okay yeah, giant fight and giant purple asshole seems rather self explanatory”.

Hawkeye shots arrows at one of Thanos’s goons as it charges at the damn kid, what the Hell is he even doing here? Blinking a bit in disbelief as the kid just sidesteps a goon and then kicks it in the head, sending it flying. Hearing the kid snicker, “well that was easy”, before siding over to Tony.

Tony glances between the fight and the kid repeatedly, blasting at a goon while trying to figure out what’s going on. He’s all for more help, pretty actively desperate for it actually, but how old is this kid? He doesn’t even look all that bothered by what’s going on. Screwing up his face as the kid just hops around a little, “battle suit, nice. Looks for all the after-world better than Skulker’s. I’m Phantom by the way, from the future. Here to fix your shit, cause apparently you need it”.

Tony squints at him as he blasts away another goon, “how old are you? Better yet, who the Hell sends a random unarmed kid to a battlefield?”. At least Peter had his damn suit. This ‘Phantom’ looks like he just got out of school. But hey, the name implies he’s probably a hero of some kind.

Phantom smiles toothily, “oh that’s easy. Sixteen and some sixty billion year old dead guy did. So what’s going on here? Obviously these army beasts are problem pests, like skeletons, and purple nasty is, well, nasty”.

“Kid, this is the middle of battle. Not really the time for chit-chat and debriefing”, while sending Strange a ‘what the Hell look, will this work out?’.

Phantom laughs and uppercuts a spaceship with a massive mouth, it exploding apart, “naw! Fighting's the best time to open your yap. I mean Zone, talking while getting or giving an ass kicking is basically my shtick!”. Danny kicks another goon, “back in blacks get ready for a heart attack because my dead-ass is here”.

Making Tony shake his head, obviously this kid was extremely strong, “Christ kid. Purple guy’s Thanos. Removed half the life in the universe, trying to stop that. Used the thing on his arm to do it. Infinity Gauntlet, super powerful but needs some stones, just snapped his fingers and we all lost someone we goddamn loved. Now he just wants to destroy everyone, so don’t goddamn waste my time kid. If you’re gonna help then help”.

Phantom chuckles, “tsk tsk tsk, touchy are we?”, tapping his chin dramatically, “though yeah, that’s pretty fucking bad. Gonna take a gander and say this shit can be undone and stopped?”.

Tony groans calling Strange over and pointing at the kid, “is he useful?”. While a few other magicians take over dealing with the massive waterfall.

Phantom just tilts his head as Strange looks him over, before Strange furrows his brows, “I can’t see him in any timeline”.

Tony blinks, “what?”, being distracted enough to get slammed in the side by a rock.

While Phantom waves Strange off, “expected, cape boy”, lifting up the gear shaped necklace he’s wearing, “‘tis a Time Medallion. Basically excludes me from time. Technically this past isn’t my timelines past, so if I take this off I’ll be transported back to my own timeline. But I’m here to make this past my timelines past! So hooray! Complicated time shit to stop the world from ending”, back handing another goon and putting that hand on his hip, “so how’s we gonna stop this crap?”.

Strange sighs, ‘complicated time shit’ was one of the banes of his life. “That makes you an unknown to me but fine. Wearing the gauntlet allows the wearer to have one wish, regardless of what it is, granted. At the expense of losing one of the things they care for most or self-sacrifice. But the person must also be able to bear the power of it, though this power could be shared”.

Tony grunts as he flies by, “which is our plan! Now stop being a distraction!”.

Phantom tilts his head and laughs, “well that explains that! So basically this guy’s a strong SOB and doing some reality bending shit with a hunk of arm metal. But he’s doing it like a dick, probably over some weird philosophy”, Phantom slides to the side, avoiding a goon, “don’t worry your pretty little heads. Imma be an ironic copycat and I always did need to lose the one thing I cared for most”.

“Kid, we need help fighting right now, not for the later hand joining circle! Help stop people from dying and let the grown ups handle Thanos!”.

Phantom swings off his back pack and shoves his hand in it, “oh you misunderstand”. Standing up with a massive shit-eating grin, something looking concerningly similar to the Infinity Gauntlet on his arm.

Strange eyes this kid, obviously that wasn’t actually the same gauntlet, other wise paradoxes. Just so many paradoxes. Not even having to ask as the kid speaks cheerily, “this is the Reality Gauntlet. If you know how to activate all the stones, it grants you control over all of reality. Everything really. No limits. No down falls. Purple grape ‘bout to be my bitch”.

Multiple people around cough or choke. There was something even more dangerous and powerful? And some random kid had it?

Watching as the kid waves erratically, with a goofy smile, at Thanos. Who glares with at first anger then deep confusion. Grumbling out, “though I’m unfamiliar, that is nothing but a cheep imitation. Nothing surpasses my grand design and purpose”.

Phantom snorts and laughs exaggeratedly. Flicking his wrist, which somehow seems to result in a bunch of the goons turning into ducks and piles of worms? Twitching his hand again, the trees and rocks seemingly coming to life and chasing after the ducks.

Everyone stops and stares around for a beat, highly confused. Antman muttering, “well what the fuck”.

Tony blinks at this random kid, “thanks?”.

Thanos glares, punching away Captain America and grabbing the stone off the ground. Before charging at Phantom, not about to be seriously harmed by another small creature he doesn’t even know, who laughs and flips in the air. Most watching as Phantom just starts floating before transforming into a glowing black and white kid. Thanos grumbling, “you are a mortal yet dead. Interesting but no matter. I will crush you all the same”.

Phantom laughs and it echoes. Flicking his wrist again, followed by spaceships turning into hundreds of bouncy balls. Phantom flipping in the air slightly, “halfas the word!”, turning his legs into a freaking tail and simply flying out of the way of the titans punch, blasting a green energy ball out his hand as he goes; stopping Thanos from attempting to snap, “so you’re Thanos. You honestly don’t seem all that good at this. I mean nice army and all. But hey, I guess I’m just used to stronger opponents”. Phantom kicks away a random goon, “but props for all the dramatics!”.

Thanos grumbling, “you are foolish to think you can stand against or face things above me. For nothing exists above me”.

Phantom laughs again, “oh I’m something far above you. For you see, I am Phantom. Future guardian of the land of the dead and Earth. Long after all of these fucks, and you, have perished. Even the king of ghosts has fallen to me. If you really want to speak about the most powerful being in the universe. Well then”, giggling, “it’s a sixteen year-old half dead kid and you’re a just a grape”.

Phantom waves his hand and suddenly Thanos turns into a bunch of grapes and falls onto the ground unceremoniously. Infinity gauntlet clattering down next to it.

Tony blinks, “you...you have got to be kidding me”.

Phantom shrugs and sticks out his tongue at the pile of grapes, picking up the Infinity Gauntlet and putting it on. Looking his arm over with a little smirk, watching the power flow through it with mild amusement, everyone else too stunned to move. Phantom chuckles and holds out his two gauntlet covered arms, “too bad they don’t truly match. But hey, this aesthetic is still fucking sick”.

Tony walks up in front of the kid slightly, “do you even know what you’re doing? How powerful that thing is?”.

Phantom hums and spins in the air, “Of course I don’t. I never know what half the crap I do is. That’s the fun of it”, floating upside down and cross legged, “I realise you all seem to take this hero shtick pretty seriously and with heavy hearts. I may be a battered one whose lost plenty myself, and seen worlds destroy and life fall to perish. But I’ll never be weathered and beaten down. Imma a little shit basically”, looking around, “anyway, any o’ y’all know how to fix all the shit? Or should I just start trying random shit or hitting it. That usually works out for me”.

Strange steps up, “are you intending on using the gauntlet alone?”, sighing, this was suitably strange but if it works then it works, “you simply have to push your will into and snap your fingers”.

Captain America frowns, “are you sure you’re willing to give up something dear to you? This is our fight”.

Phantom smiles and for once it seemed more soft and serious even, “oh of course. I figured out that riddle. See for me to exist I must partly die. Lose half my life and the one thing I held most dear. My desire to become an astronaut and see the stars. Sacrificed in the name of fulfilling the role of a hero in a world were no others exist. Damned to exits forever more and ensure protection of everything and one. Yet unable to ever fulfil my one deepest dream and wish”.

Tony blinks, firmly stunned, that was incredibly depressing. But Phantom seemed to be implying that he had to use the gauntlet himself. And that he knows exactly what he’ll lose, that it’ll half kill him, and the fate it’ll force upon him. That was a lot of sacrifices.

Everyone gets stunned again when Phantom laughs, “it’s a blessed half-life indeed! Gaining the best thing by losing the best thing. What beautiful irony”, sighing happily, “ahhh life just loves playing jokes on me. Nothing like a good joke at my expense”. Watching as the kid simply holds up the glove, waits for a beat and snaps his fingers. The people around gaping over the complete nonchalance and watching the mess clean itself up. The people they care about returning in earnest and others appearing in flashes before going back to where they had been before all this. Orange portals slowly closing in the background.

Tony tears up ever so slightly and hugs Peter, whispering, “kid”. While Peter nods rapidly and squeezes back.

Phantom sighs, “ahhh I can just feel and see myself getting 6 billion electrical volts to my whole being now. Sweet sweet tingly nostalgia”.

Antman squints at him, “you have issues”.

Tony walks up closer with Peter, a smiling Phantom floating to land on the ground; hair swaying around untethered to gravity. Tony clears his throat, “thank you. I mean it”.

While Peter awkwardly waves, “hi, um, I’m Peter”, smiling slightly, “nice to see a teen owning the old folks huh?”.

Phantom gives Peter a silly thumbs up before laughing and waving off Tony, “‘tis what I do tincan. Self sacrifice for the betterment of everyone else, is what I see and know day in and day out”, bowing dramatically, “I’m in the sheets with broken bones, bloodied wounds, and never enough sleep”, standing back up straight, “but you know what you could do for little o’ me? A smoothie. I could really use a smoothie. One of those ones with all the little crushed berries. The good shit. Then I can head back to school”.

Half the people asking, “your in school?”. While Tony nods, he really had just came from school...like this was some sort of everyday thing, “whatever you want kid”.

Phantom waves everyone but Tony off, “course. No one actually knows I do what I do, so I’m treated the same as any other teen. The whole secret identity shtick”, shrugging and speaking thick with humour, “but hey, if the world knew they’d experiment on me so I think I’ll take my parents shooting at me instead. Dissection is honestly not that glamorous. Kind of boring after the third time”.

Tony breathes out, “Christ that’s messed up”.

While Strange disappears and reappears with a smoothie, extra large, and shoves it at Phantom. Feeling both humbled and disturbed. Especially being the most familiar with what exactly would go on in any kind of dissection.

Phantom nabs it looking eager and innocent. Like getting a nice drink was the biggest worry he had. Everyone watches him sip it and smile happily. Sighing with contentment, “ah yeeeeeeessssss that’s nice. Been a few days since I’ve had the time to drink or eat anything”, before looking at the Infinity Gauntlet and it promptly exploding into dust. Smirking, “there, problem solved. TimeDaddy will be tickled green”.

Everyone just gapes as he spins around in a little circle, looking cheery and waving at everyone, “whelp been nice and I’ll be taking the drink with me”.

Tony puts his hand on Phantom‘s arm as he grabs the medallion and starts the motions to remove it, “are you sure there’s nothing more you can use or need? You seem like you need it honestly”.

Phantom shrugs, “naw, I’m good. I’m a plenty suffered thing. Which is good”, smiling bright and wide, “so long as I’m suffering then others suffer less”. And like that the medallion is slipped off and the glowing teen is gone.

Everyone standing around feeling awe, shock, respect, and a sense of grief. Happy to have everyone back properly but unable to get the strange oddly mirth-filled Phantom, one who seems to live an existence that’s basically torture, out of their heads.

End.

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silver-wields-a-pen · 4 years

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A Fantasia Moment

@Tiravi made me the most perfect art for one of the Guardians of Las couples, Lerki and Zercey, and here’s a small extract from one of the books in the series by @illthdar that fits the pose!! For the other couple’s pieces, Scyeth, and Diadra, and Daxen. Redoing this post because it had the wrong book info added and tumblr is an annoying bitch who won’t edit posts properly.

Cloistered away in Nyima’s hut, Zercey was roused by something brushing her hair, her face contorting when subtle hushing paradoxically joined the motion. She sat up. “Wh – ” A gloved hand covered her mouth and she squinted in the dim light at its owner. Lerki. She pulled a blanket around herself before following him outside. The door flap dropped behind them, she addressed him once again. “What’s going on?” Her lips lifted with amusement as she questioned, “What are you up to?”

“They’ll come soon,” he said, taking her hand and leading her to sit before the dying embers of the campfire. “Sit with me this way,” he instructed, pulling her neatly to nestle between his bent knees. “It is best like this,” he excused the position when she shot him a dubious glance. The Gewp'ake was curled up to sleep at their side, its stubby golden antlers glittering with the glow of its own light, even at rest.

Zercey rubbed her eyes, the lashes weighed down heavily with sleep as she questioned, “Who is coming?”

“Fairies – Thimble-Fae,” he replied simply, hushing her once more, his voice little more than a soft murmur as he rested her head against his chest. “They do not like noises.”

Before she could comment further, he raised a gloved hand to point towards a tightly clustered group of trees. At first, she saw nothing. Then, small bouncing orbs of light emerged from the darkness. Swirling and spinning in and around each other, the tiny glowing balls tapped and touched the frozen ground and dormant plant life. Their colours were numerous: reds, yellows, greens and blues were bounding hither and yonder, first melting the snow away, then sprouting the smallest of sprouts which were set aglow with fine coatings of the fairies’ magic dust.

The Italian’s hands lifted to cover her mouth, holding back the gasps of astonishment and wonder that threatened to spill from her lips. The small beings had translucent wings and, with exception of the colours they glowed, were indistinguishable from one another.

Yet, as she sat transfixed, her brows pinched as a glimmer of a memory tugged at her mind, playing with her perceptions. Where have I seen this before? A tune bubbled up, soft and plucky that she swore she recognised – on the television at many a Christmas.

Just when she thought she would have to resign herself to being ignorant, she observed one fairy set drops of dew, shimmering silver across an abandoned spider web and it clicked. Zercey’s lips stretched into a smile. Nothing was without Illthdar’s influence, it seemed.

There had to be Faeries on Earth, subtly weaving their homeland into every form of entertainment that Humans had. It couldn’t have been Half-bloods, she was sure they wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret. She was pulled from her thoughts when Lerki’s hand caught her chin, urging her to face him. With his fingertips he caressed the edge of her jaw and lower lip.

The light of the fairies dancing in his richly toned eyes, she tried to decipher what his thoughts were. She scolded him harshly, rightly so, for not knowing her. However, as she took in this new, but no less breathtaking view, the myriad of lights swirling around them, she realised there was very little she knew about him, either. She had Yew’s version of him in her head; a childhood friend of the Half-blood daughter of Sancata Zercey of Willow. The more he said, the more she learned, and the more certain she was it had been a rose-tinted variation.

While the Fairies hastened the coming of spring, celebrating it in their tender hearts, he asked a question without words or voice. The look in his eyes begged her to kiss him once again.

Zercey breathed in his scent slow and deep, recognising it as eucalyptus – slightly sweet, minty almost and a touch medicinal. It mingled with her own and she breathed a laugh. Only a Faerie could spend a month and a half not bathing and still smell nice. What she smelled like she dared not contemplate. She doubted it was anything attractive, though he didn’t appear to be repulsed by it.

Lerki was selfish, greedy and lonely more times than not. His hand trembled as he held himself back, all the same. For reasons she couldn’t comprehend, he was insecure; both wanting and needing her to reach for him.

He is such a paradox…

For the first book in the Illthdar series: Guardians of Las

#writeblr #writeblr community #Illthdar #Guardians of Las #Dark fantasy #new adult fiction #2020 books

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magnetarmadda · 4 years

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My Decade in Books Tag

@lexi-rose-studyblr tagged me for this--thanks!!

The rules: respond to the prompt “my decade in books” however you want, & then tag some ppl! I chose some of my favorites from that year along with a brief description of what I was doing (which is different than what the person who tagged me did). You can do that or make up your own response

I had to do something I never do to make this post: use Tumblr on my computer. I forgot what it looks like in a browser instead of mobile--it’s weird

Lucky for me, I joined Goodreads in 2009, although I didn’t use it regularly until 2015. So I had some help to remember, but let’s just say I left a lot of blanks for myself

2010: This was the end of my sophomore and start of junior year in high school, and because of the coursework at the time, I still had the ability to read in every spare moment. I read a lot of the Bloody Jack series by L.A. Meyer, a lot of e.e. cummings, and Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne

2011: Junior-senior year of high school, and I was so concerned with first AP tests and then college applications, I know goodreads snuck off my radar a lot. I finally read Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, which was one of my grandpa’s favorite books (he died in 2003), and many other classics as I prepped for my AP Lit test. I actually enjoyed many of the ones I read, but I no longer remember which ones I read from the 2010-2012 period, so I thought I’d mention a couple of them here: The Great Gatsby, Cry the Beloved Country, Go Tell it On the Mountain, Sons and Lovers, and Pride and Prejudice

2012: Senior year of high school and starting my freshman year of college. I really had no idea how much my life was about to change--I regularly stay in touch with only a tiny handful of my friends from high school now, which is weird. I do remember, though, in prep for my AP Lit test, my teacher gave us a list of prompts from previous years, and I made it my mission to find a way to use Harry Potter for all of them. I ended up writing the actual test essay on the Scottish Play--which I dearly love--but it was fun anyway. I again have a mostly empty goodreads, but I really liked The Macho Paradox by Jackson Katz and The Books of Bayern by Shannon Hale

2013: Ending my freshman year and starting my sophomore year of college, I started dating my now-husband, and I used goodreads much less than before. Of the few books I included on goodreads, I enjoyed Deadly Persuasion by Jean Kilbourne and The Cry of the Icemark by Stuart Hill, which was a reread (and still one of my favorite books ever).

2014: This year were some of my hardest physics classes in undergrad, so I almost never used goodreads, which means my memory of what I read is limited. I did enjoy A Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix, but that’s the only rating I left

2015: Junior-senior year of undergrad, when I realized I didn’t want to go to astro grad school, but wanted to be involved in science education somehow. Some of my favorite books were: The Shadow and Bone trilogy by Leigh Bardugo (and so began my love for Queen Leigh), the Alex and Ada comic book trilogy, Nimona by Noelle Stevenson, the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness, Rebel Belle by Rachel Hawkins, Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, When Christ and His Saints Slept by Sharon Kay Penman, Ash by Malinda Lo, Seraphina by Rachel Hartman, 1421 by Gavin Menzies, and House of Ivy and Sorrow by Natalie Whipple

2016: I graduated with my undergrad degrees, and while I waited to be able to apply for the next round of grad school openings, I worked part-time at a library--so, so many good books were found that way. We adopted our sweet fur babies that year. Books I loved included: The Imposter Queen by Sarah Fine, A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, Heartless by Marissa Meyer, When the Moon Was Ours by Anne-Marie McLemore, The Supernatural Enhancements by Edgar Cantero, The Paper Magician trilogy by Charlie N. Holmberg, Everything Leads To You by Nina LaCour, The Princess Saves Herself In This One by Amanda Lovelace, Isabella: The Warrior Queen by Kirstin Downey, and a variety of girl-lead superhero comic books for my women’s and gender studies senior thesis

2017: I started grad school that fall, but spend the first half of the year still working at the library, so I read a whole lot. It was also the year my now-husband proposed. Highlights include: Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, Wild Beauty by Anne-Marie McLemore, Wicked Like a Wildfire by Lana Popovic, A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie, To Be Or Not To Be by Ryan North, Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Radium Girls by Kate Moore, Young and Damned and Fair by Gareth Russell, The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco, Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde, and The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

2018: I finished my first year and started my second year of grad school, getting married smack dab in the middle of my summer term. The time for reading drastically went down, but I managed to read way more than expected. Some favorites include: The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Peril at End House by Agatha Christie, The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton, Sea Witch by Sarah Henning, the Lockwood and Co. series by Jonathan Stroud, Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daughters of the Winter Queen by Nancy Goldstone, and Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

2019: This was a Hell Year for me, with my migraines reaching new heights, and I spent a lot of time listening to audiobooks because it was the only thing I could do. Some books I loved last year were: Beyond the Hundred Kingdoms by Rod Espinosa (The Courageous Princess #1), Sera and the Royal Stars #1-5, Red White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston, Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, Over the Top by Jonathan van Ness, At Bertram’s Hotel by Agatha Christie, Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen, Code Girls by Liza Mundy, In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan, and god, so many more, so I’ll leave it there because I could go on for a long time (2019 was a good year for books for me because I stuck by my policy of putting down books I wasn’t enjoying, even if it was just because I wasn’t feeling them at that moment)

For a more complete list of 2010-2019, feel free to check out my goodreads (and send me a friend request if you want)!

I like to use my notes to tag recent people, so here goes: @takemegnome, @abby-doodle-books, @anassarhenisch, @elenajohansenauthor, @bookphile, @dr-dendritic-trees, and @the-girl-who-lived-to-read. Feel free to do or not do, and anyone who wants to jump on, feel free to take this as your tag!

#my decade in books #wow that was a lot #about me #tagged in #Madison tags people in stuff #long post

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silver-wield · 6 years

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A Fantasia Moment

@Tiravi https://tiravi.tumblr.com/ made me the most perfect art for one of the Guardians of Las couples, Lerki and Zercey, and here’s a small extract from one of the books in the series by @illthdar that fits the pose!! For the other couple’s piece, Scyeth, hit up this link https://silver-wield.tumblr.com/post/178247041576/too-hot-to-handle Enjoy ^=^

Cloistered away in Nyima’s hut, Zercey was roused by something brushing her hair, her face contorting when subtle hushing paradoxically joined the motion. She sat up. “Wh -- ” A gloved hand covered her mouth and she squinted in the dim light at its owner. Lerki. She pulled a blanket around herself before following him outside. The door flap dropped behind them, she addressed him once again. “What’s going on?” Her lips lifted with amusement as she questioned, “What are you up to?”

Zercey rubbed her eyes, the lashes weighed down heavily with sleep as she questioned, “Who is coming?”

“Fairies -- Thimble-Fae,” he replied simply, hushing her once more, his voice little more than a soft murmur as he rested her head against his chest. “They do not like noises.”

While the Fairies hastened the coming of spring, celebrating it in their tender hearts, he asked a question without words or voice. The look in his eyes begged her to kiss him once again.

Zercey breathed in his scent slow and deep, recognising it as eucalyptus -- slightly sweet, minty almost and a touch medicinal. It mingled with her own and she breathed a laugh. Only a Faerie could spend a month and a half not bathing and still smell nice. What she smelled like she dared not contemplate. She doubted it was anything attractive, though he didn’t appear to be repulsed by it.

He is such a paradox…

For the Illthdar series https://www.amazon.com/Illthdar-Guardians-Las-Rachel-Garcia/dp/1983070947/ref=pd_rhf_ee_p_img_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=463VCCS7PH00BH64P0Q5

#Illthdar #Lercey #Lerki #Zercey #Fantasia easter egg #faery tale #pretty art #all the cute #join the fandom #awesome lit #buy the book

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mineofilms · 3 years

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The Diet of an Alien

It was an Alien Invasion / Aliens Trying to Eat You / Time Travel movie sort of weekend.

SPOILERS AHEAD…

Tomorrow War - Aliens invade Earth, eat humans, humans’ time travel to the past to gather troops to fight back.

A Quiet Place Part 2 – Aliens crash land on Earth via Meteors, try to eat humans.

Edge of Tomorrow - Aliens invade Earth, more time travel involved. I didn’t see any humans get eaten in this one.

I watched all these back to back to back... I just zoned out and watched...

So, there are a lot of conspiracy people out there, I refuse to call them “theorist,” as a real theory can be grounded in some sort of hypothetical situation based on some fact.

Simply making claims about dragons, the moon being a hologram and the Earth being a flat disc with no real science of fact to demonstrate does not consist as a “real theory.”

Sketchy YouTube videos using pseudo-science as your best attempts at fact gathering; where the popular definition of pseudo is fake and/or made up. So yeah, we are not going there. There are whole websites dedicated to nonsense thinking like that.

Go there… SPOILERS AHEAD…

“Tomorrow War” has a lot of holes in it. The movie attempts to tell their story in a way to make it appear it is grounded in some sort of modern day Earth reality, but it fails in that respect and badly at that.

If you seek a good action packed, popcorn, alien invasion flick then this works. It was a good watch, but at the same time I laughed a lot out loud at the absurdity of the science being thrown out there and it is supposed to be grounded in a modern Earth civilization. They just brush over creating artificial wormholes and time travel.

However, how they actually explained how the time travel worked, would have been a nice little thing to dig a little deeper in. Without getting crazy technical and sending you all to more YouTube videos, they explain time travel that they created or don’t explain it as there is a whole separate story as to what is actually happening at this point.

The way it works is they flip the switch on their prototype time machine in present day and then the future can travel back to the time period where the machine was switched on. So in that respect they are trying to ground time travel in a plausible reality.

This is currently the more popular form of time travel in popular culture over saying their time travel has something to do with FTL travel or a MacGuffin - an object, device, or event that is convenient and necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters to get to the next level of their story.

At the first moment when the future comes back in time to meet the past is when the machine on present day Earth’s side was switched on. The machine is in the middle of the ocean. Same place on Earth but 30 years apart.

How they just brushed over this with just a few fragments of exposition dialog is what started the laughter for me. Didn’t ruin the movie, but it was a big deal for me. One of the main reasons why this ruined the movie for me was all the other things that happened to Future Earth.

They say there were around 500,000 humans left on the whole planet, yet their technology is roughly the same, no real advancements. As far as weapons go, machine guns were still used and slightly better than our own current technology. That does make sense, but it doesn’t fit “that” nicely.

Future Earth has very limited knowledge about their enemy, where they came from and how they were able to overrun all of Earth, by foot, no technology, in only a few years.

The weapons they give to the Past Earth Freedom Fighters are basically bows and arrows to fight a fighting force that would have our current technology. The only thing that seemed to work effectively were 50 Cal and bigger.

So to sum up. Earth of 2052, travels back to 2022 to recruit bodies to just throw at the enemy with the hopes that would work. Huh; that was the same approach they took when the invasion first happened the first time and that didn’t work. They state in the film that only 30% of all the soldiers sent to the future returned. So, yeah, that didn’t work. At no time did the past dictate policy.

We humans are one stubborn race. If you think we would just stand there and allow someone else just hand us little tiny bits of data about a future alien invasion and just throw bodies at the problem we would not obey.

Humans of the past would immediately take charge. We would demand both data and technology and from that moment Earth would be building up its defenses for the fight in the future. It would not send people to the future to be killed off like Vietnam.

That would destroy any future as it was from the perspective of the future. This opens up so many paradoxes that my head is already spinning. I did like the movie. It was a good popcorn, shoot’em up alien movie. I’d watch it again. Just don’t expect to get any big brain teasers with the plot.

This movie makes people ask far more questions as to why this could be a possible reality than just enjoying the movie. I thought people bitched about Battleship not making much sense. This is far worse in that respect.

“A Quiet Place Part 2” I thought was much more a cohesive film than “Tomorrow War.” Part 2 starts with a flashback of day 1 of the alien invasion. Where the first film we start and the invasion already happened and we do not know much outside of what is happening in the world outside of this family the first film focuses on. In Part 2 we get a lot more information.

I almost feel like the opening to Part 2 was a deleted scene from the first film. It doesn’t feel forced, it fits nicely, but just feels like it could be from the cutting room floor of the 1st film.

Part 2 is not a clone of the first film. There are 2 main plots going on and the end leaves it open for a 3rd. I will just leave it at that. I enjoyed both Quiet Places. They are good creature feature flicks with plenty of tension and gore. I think the deaf element of the girl and the creatures happen to be blind and use their hearing to track its prey is pretty cool and they still do a lot of that in this one, like the first one.

We only get a glimpse of how low humanity has fallen as how other humans treat other survivors. I wish we could have seen a little more of that, but ultimately we got a pretty good movie here. I would love to see a 3rd film.

“Edge of Tomorrow” I decided to watch this one again because I felt like this and “Tomorrow War” had so much in common. The only thing it was missing was Emily Blunt.

That wasn’t why I watched A Quiet Place Part 2. I wanted to see it because I was a big fan of the 1st film. Once I watched both films, “Edge of Tomorrow” was easy to follow up with those 2 previous films. It’s just a coincidence Emily Blunt was in 2 of the 3 films.

The few science fiction films Tom Cruise has been in over the years. I tend to like. I don’t have a lot of problems with this one. I was so fascinated by the “resetting the day” or “Groundhog Day” of having to relive that one day over and over.

From a GOOGLE search; “There is no number given in the movie. In the book, it was all over after 160 days of Cage reliving everything, and Rita spent 211 (300 in the movie) during her turn.” To me, it seems like a lot more. I would think it would take longer to know all those details about each character in depth that way.

I have seen other data on the subject that suggest Cage was stuck in a loop for 34 years. It’s not really important, but I just find it interesting. I like stuff like this. I was really into “Happy Death Day” and its sequel, but I feel they went too far into the fiction and claiming it being science in the second film.

Some things do not always have to be explained. Actually, they did a good job in “Tomorrow War” when they finally explain how the aliens got to Earth in the first place. So one could explain something, but be vague about it in the explanation and that is fine by me.

It doesn’t always have to be a full explanation. However, why brush over creating artificial wormholes and then try to explain the Aliens’ origins? Sometimes studio heads need to leave movies alone and let the story tellers just tell their story. If they do their job, get this. People will pay money to see your movie. I don’t know, right…

So now the meat and potatoes of why I wrote 2200+ words about Aliens eating humans and time travel being involved.

We have to go back to where I make mention of “conspiracy theorists” thinking what they think about Hollywood; besides Hollywood being pedophiles, rapists and phony human beings. Some will tell you that Hollywood style movies like this are to desensitize “us” to these concepts so that when it really happens humans are used to this so we might be more easily controlled.

I don’t know about all that. I can see it as plausible… Does that make me someone that believes in conspiracies? Not so much. I believe in common sense, logic, critical thinking and the scientific method. If something seems plausible I have to see where that data about said subject originated from.

If it came from Joe Schmo on YouTube, who isn’t a scientist and is making outrageous claims; where are the facts? A fact is generated when the scientific community cannot prove said statement to be wrong/incorrect.

1+1=2… You add 1 of something to another 1 of something, you now have 2 of something. You test that. How many different ways can you test the adding 1 of one something to another 1 of something to get 2 of something is/isn’t correct?

So once you have done all that and the answer is 2, every time. You can now say 1+1=2 is a fact and it is. You cannot say 1+1= anything other than 2…

Granted facts for bigger problems/concepts are not this easy. It isn’t supposed to be. I just wanted to show the process. This simple translation has been lost against the backdrop of “Cancel Culture” and whatever other groups that tend to do this with the dummying down of facts and making fun of groups of people who will have great sense to spread only to be laughed at on national TV because the powers that be want to force their narrative as a fact when in-fact isn’t even close. You cannot just “make-up-a-fact…”

Sure this blog is about movies and movie logic; but you can apply this style of critical thinking to a lot of things in our reality. Don’t let “Cancel Culture” win battles they have no business fighting.

If you believe in something, don’t let someone tell you it isn’t true without a fight and by fighting I mean, thoroughly research it. Not just on Google. Look it up in books. Use real research materials.

Anyways… So from Hollywood’s point of view. We are all gonna die by mutated alien creature thingy monster that want to eat us.

Heyyyyyyyy…

So how did they build ships to get here? Did they have FTL travel? If they are literally creature monsters. How did they use tools and make technology? It’s ok to make movies like this. They are fun and sometimes really good. I actually enjoyed watching all 3 of these.

Just when I tell story the details cannot just be MacGuffins and expect me not to get lost when I want to know the hows/whys in a story.

What are some of your favorite Alien invasion films? My actual personal favorite is John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982). To me, a paranoid, shapeshifting alien that cannot just copy a human, but absorb the body, the mind, memory, fantasies of the victim is terrifying.

An alien that eats you by absorption and becomes something only from your imagination. Be it from a nightmare, a movie you saw. Perhaps a combination of things you saw for real and imagined.

Even the Borg, Predator, Jason, Freddy, a Terminator (any model), Neo would have an issue fighting a “Thing.”

All butt probes aside. Hollywood wants people to believe Aliens are coming to Eat us. We better invent Time Travel to save the day. Ha… If I could time travel I’d be outta here. Not sure when. Probably somewhere in the past where I can live and let live with minimal praying to a being that may not exist.

"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads." Doc Brown, Back to the Future 1985…

The Diet of an Alien By David-Angelo Mineo 7/5/2021 2,266 Words

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pixiekptt863-blog · 4 years

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Full Game GTA IV is mega

I was raised in the era as Grand Theft Auto was mostly contraband. In 2003, my close friend also I pitched in to buy a reproduction of Junior Area also assigned it amongst one another, out of the eyesight your parents, whom underwent every been driven in a fearful frenzy in posts with USA Now about the game’s prostitution and chaotic propensities. Grand Theft Auto wasn’t just a game to us yet was there a chief component of your youth, the kind of all-caps MATURE point we encountered as an play of revolution approximately a cool doodad to outdo the time.

GTA IV came at a different moment. I wasn’t still playing games at that point anymore, having forgot the consoles when I attended institution with 2007 in an effort to focus on our studies and become a world-renowned author™. Still, I even got myself drawn to IV, not because it remained the next-gen variety of Grand Theft Auto, but because a lot of this game talk with a thematic evolution i became thinking about. Head-down with books like The Great Gatsby along with The Howl Of Destiny 49, Grand Theft Auto IV’s somber take on finding yourself lost in the bleak tunnels on the American Dream as a bad person while the plush get stupider, crueler, and richer talk to me. I finished countless hours on the friend’s Xbox 360 to complete the game, eagerly playing through the sad account of Niko Bellic.

You’ve probably read a hundred hot holds in GTA IV and The National Dream. You can turn now for my side of this if you want, but I must focus on anything unique for this part. IV excels when it comes to building something happens exceptional for open-world up for: a thematically unified event that control when it comes to telling a story while also respecting the person is an independent inhabitant of that world rather than a passenger. The way to GTA IV resolve which is there to this highlights the heaviness.

Driving is (forgive us) a loaded word. There are obvious examples of heavy, when it comes to physical weight. Something – a carrier of stones, the anvil – is deep. There is and the thematic form in the term, of course; to say great is deep is to about it is weighing you lower emotionally, it’s depressing you. Grand Theft Auto IV has systems in place both at home moment-by-moment gameplay along with the plot that embraces both of the.

Since the narrative's emotional weight is attractive clear for anyone who’s played Grand Theft Auto 4, let’s mention the gameplay concepts, like physics. Grand Theft Auto 4’s physics are paradoxically unique in they display a https://gtadownload.org surprisingly eloquent take on awkwardness. Everything feels like they have a defined pounds in GTA IV that gets this down. Niko walks without elegance, always a victim of her own lack of balance. Sometimes someone can brush past him or a car will gently touch him, then torture fall over awkwardly. Cars become a extension of that. Even the sooner convertible vehicles turn much more slowly than they would in a racer or another Grand Theft Auto game. To call up them tanks would be exaggerating, but they’re not nimble.

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In Grand Theft Auto 4, gunfights feel similarly unique. Plenty of action games make use of destructible cover but there’s something about the seriousness on the globe which makes it feel well in a special way. Taking cover behind a car during a struggle with the police may lead to the vehicle slightly spring when rounds strike that, the goblet above you will break and fall you as bullets hole in. Melee combat is clumsy but visceral, with Niko's brutal pistol beat involving a enemy coming round the turn creating a combination of pressure with wonder. The prolonged delivery of the transfer and also the enemy's stagger backward keeps the opening for you to kill them away from, and it is surprisingly and uncomfortably intimate.

People rightfully realized that the ragdoll animations and even measure of the gunfight action substituted for Grand Theft Auto V, with enemies sticking out all over and their bodies reacting in new of your “lower down” sort of approach than IV’s mixture of prolonged and falling animations. IV’s kills are shifting because of the understanding that V trades away for its scope and variety meetings. Where V is consistently putting you into the kind of action sequences you’d view into Run with Vision Impossible, IV’s gunfights often occur within squalor. The immediacy of nailing a drug dealer’s eyeball round the turn in the ratty slum’s hallway with a blind fire from the pistol and look at their brain drive back touching the side is much more frightening (also appealing) than V’s approach.

The divergence between the two sorts of assault makes sense if you think about the composition they're aping. V is the termination of Rockstar’s love affair with the pictures of Michael Mann (Thief, Heat). The action is breezy and fulfilling, with the screen briefly fly to enable you know if you kill somebody.

Notice the elements here. There’s a lot of remaining on the injuries, blood splattering on the window, the element from the vehicle slowly step before to deviate with the parked one, the topics. There is no zipping present with scores. This sort of storytelling places emphasis not on frantic action but instead about the thought that it violence is produce the emotional with pure effect on the world. Cars move. Glass shatters. People moan in agony.

Grand Theft Auto V take these air, like grass collapse and mortality moans, but they're minimized due to the high production surveys plus the waves of enemies that come after you while Tangerine Dream’s beautiful score show in the family. It shape a fence among a person with the violence. Yes, it is entertainment. Don’t worry, you’re just engaging in a cassette game of which stays mimicking that case blockbuster you understand past summer.

IV has very little in the way of such artificial barriers. There is no soundtrack to camouflage the cries in the guy you just appeared while he ask someone nearby to see their girl he care for her. The violence is shifting and often cruel, helping turn Niko Bellic in a complex character, an individual with fine class that however commits heinous steps that will result in fall and go through upon countless people.

Niko’s emotional damages and suffering from a crazy, adolescent betrayal have left him incapable of understanding the world when everything apart from a mercenary for hire – someone capable of spin off of their experiences to harm people for notes. The technique in GTA IV, particularly when it comes to physics and activities in combat, stress that just as much because history does. Every bill of assault is mired in the throes of creative realism, with personality models fall again, while the world erupts close to people in a slow but tell respect which reason the theatre of Niko's story.

Of course, a lot of these variations probably be beyond the world of creative intent. GTA 4 was Rockstar's first real attempt to grip with the RAGE engine on the massive amount, so the awkward physics and clunkiness of beat is very likely a result of that than any intention. However, at the end with the period, you have the part of art and intent only concern to some point. It doesn't matter if Grand Theft Auto 4's physics are accidentally compelling or a mistake, they're still fascinating and immersive storytelling props.

Storytelling in activity is unfortunately often seen in terms of traditional story. "The design then the makeup become clear." However, I think this worth paying attention to the elements away from that. Just like the actor creates a person on the script alive regarding a flick, the specialist matter that you could not value with opening view (like how physics weigh on a appeal and identify the tether to the earth) is often key in making that lie what it is in the first home. The worst thing that could ever happen to GTA 4, outside of being removed from gap with age, is a remaster that enhance the gunplay then makes up the qualities animations more attractive. To do that would puncture Rockstar's disturbing yet compelling portrayal in the National Dream.

Yes, GTA 5 is a substantial practical and artistic achievement that dwarfs IV in terms of articles with satisfying activities to do. Next Vice Urban and III were both incredible sports to made much to alter the way. However, IV remains an important GTA to me since it’s a high-budget game produced by the most successful developers to goes all-in by developing a great knowledge on wandering, sympathetic souls doing bad things also getting hard alternatives to survive a dingy, despairing world.

IV is not without their catches. The produce is problematic in some places, particularly some homophobic and misogynistic sections that touch juvenile rather than provocative, and Oh My Spirit I Ignored How Severe The Checkpoint Scheme Is. But, IV's ambitions and performances upon those goals, are still unmatched by nearly any other game away there near my own measure. Epic in range and bitter but humanistic, IV lives beyond these topics as a new classic in a way that the other GTAs just don't.

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spinpixy · 4 years

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Mourning The Death Of A Familiar

The following was written quite a while ago, but doing the editing at the time was just too painful. Now I have been able to edit this post and I am posting it now. Although the pain still exists, life moves on. I still miss her, I always will.

As many of you who might read this know, on February 23 I lost my familiar of (one month shy of) 18 years. The outpouring of support after her passing really helped me cope in the days following euthanasia. The whole experience was rather quick and very unexpected! I thought I was taking her into the vet for a UTI or something, and ended up finding out she had bladder cancer. I've been without my familiar for up to three months at a time, so I knew how it felt not to have her around me, but in absolutely no way has it made this time any easier. She was such a special part of my life, such a big part of my existence that being without her is like being without a limb. If you are a witch that has a familiar you know what I'm talking about. Communication between a witch and her familiar is nothing like biblical tales of espionage or what not. It's a rather sacred thing. It's like when a mother holds her newborn for the first time, like meditating with singing bowls were like finding your sense of Om.

Aries and I communicated in a multitude of ways. I could talk to her and she would understand me, she could meow to me or dream to me and I would understand her. It's crazy, but it's true. Losing her was/is/has been a very difficult thing to cope with. I miss our time together, I miss just coming home and knowing she would be there. She would wait by the door for me, and I would sweep her up into my arms and hold her. I would ask her about her day and tell her about mine and she would purr the entire time as if my homecoming brought her peace. She was not my friend, she was not my companion, she was an extension of myself. When she was in pain I could feel it (and this time, it was something I was agonizing over). When she was happy, at peace, or pissed off, I knew it, I felt it. Now, all I feel is her loss and all I feel is sad when I sit in my home.

I know every being on this earth has a time, and if Aries’ time had run out, I would've been okay with that. If she had passed away, I would've been okay with that. She lived a good long and happy happy life so I would've been fine with losing her naturally, but definitely not this way. What bothers me is that I had to make that decision. I had to tell her that her time was up. I had to let a stranger end the life of one of the most precious beings in my life. If she were immobile or losing her senses- anything that showed that it was her time I could understand that, but this was supposed to just be a UTI! This was supposed to be just a vet visit. I feel like rather than losing her, she was ripped away from me, like I had to cut off a limb or something. I felt no peace when she died. No sense of passing, only questions. I felt like she was asking why is this happening to me? Where am I going? Why do I feel this way? Did I do something wrong? I can’t breathe. I felt like the entire time she was slipping away her little brain was just full of questions, trying to figure out what was being done to her and why her body was feeling the way it was feeling and the most disturbing thing of all, is that she kept fighting and her eyes wouldn’t close. These thoughts have been hell for the past two months.

Many of you know I have a dog named Nukaia. In the days that followed, I had to remember that I had my dog with me still and she deserved love no matter what I was going through. Her and Aries were never close and I really don't think but maybe once my dog ever looked for her, so I don't think Aries’ death was really hard on her (but really, what do I know anymore). I remember playing with Nukaia, and looking over at the flowers that had been sent from my family with condolences. I then felt so guilty that I was trying to smile and play with Kaia, as if Aries wasn't on my mind at all. I feel so terrible for what I did, because I immediately stopped playing with Kaia. The next day while walking somewhere I don't remember, I realized that Nukaia deserves love. She might not know exactly what happened, and it might not even register with her, but she deserves love and she deserves to know that I care about her too. I explain that to Aries because I felt I had to, but maybe I was explaining it to me more so.

People like to say that pets are not like children, they are just animals, but you would be mistaken. I really hate this argument because any good pet parent could tell you: We feed, shelter, and in some cases even clothe our little ones for the elements. We take them to the vet/doctor when they are sick, and pay out the nose for medicine, operations, x-rays, etc.. We spent countless nights up with them when they are sick or in distress, we make sure that they are clean, happy, and healthy. For those pet parents who do let their little ones outdoors, they have to face the reality that their little one could be hurt or worse while exploring the world around them. The only difference is, our little ones can never verbally say “I love you” or “thank you” or “ I don’t feel good.” I’ve never understood this argument, and I can go more in depth, but I don’t want to get too far off topic.Making the decision to end her existence on this planet shouldn’t have to have been done in 45 minutes or even an hour. The only reason I couldn't wait is because I did not want her to be in pain any longer. So I killed my child essentially. I signed her life away.

If you follow me on Facebook, please don't take offense to what I’m about to say now. Please just keep being the amazing people you are! I'm not trying to rant at any particular person, I'm just speaking my feelings here. That doesn't mean you have to stop doing, sharing, or being who you are. I'm just dealing with a very difficult thing, and needed to get it out so I could let it go.

Flipping through Facebook is another thing that really has become difficult. All of my friends post pictures of their beautiful cats and I get pissed off because mine isn't here anymore. Every cat I see, wheather in video or in photo breaks my heart. It's like I expect them to never ever show their cats because I'm sad and I'm in mourning. But I realize that I'm probably guilty of doing the same thing to somebody else. It's just my time to deal with this unpleasant situation so now not only do I pay attention to my friends thoughtlessness, but I realize my own in the past. Oh, and does anyone ask me, how have you been since Aries? Nope. I don't get to be one of those popular Facebook people, with my millions of friends who have checked on me since this horrible tragedy thank you… No one asks me, no one cares. It's not them until it is- Well just FYI, it's hell! It's hurting! I’m hurting! The paradox I'm in that I think about every day sucks! I want another cat, but I know I don't want some other cat, I want Aries. I want to get another pet to maybe take my mind off of how I feel, but how fair is that to them or Kaia? Sometimes I think well, now that Aries is gone, I can travel more etc. then I feel bad for that. Nothing in this situation is open for me right now. It's not like I could ever have a replacement for Aries. Aries was Aries and there will never be another one like her. If I ever got another cat that poor thing would be ruined from day one because it would never measure up. It sucks, because even with Nukaia Who I love very much, I still feel such a void. Seeing pictures of cats on my Facebook feed where I go to try and not think, it's just hard. I'll be honest, sometimes I hate that I can't have more attention paid to the stuff I post especially in regard to how I'm feeling. It kind of pisses me off that I see some people who say shit like, oh I'm having a really bad hour and 50 billion people are like oh you're so amazing! You're the best! I've had a hard two months and no one has said a damn thing! But I'm not popular so... Any other day, none of that would mean a thing to me. Any other day, I would not be caught dead being jealous of somebody for getting social media dopamine. Unfortunately on the day that I'm posting this blog, I'm totally guilty of it. I just think today, my mourning process is to be needy and upset that I'm so not me right now, that when I am needy I have trouble voicing it and get pissed off at people who can't read my mind! Again, it's not you guys it's totally me, but this is just how I feel right now. This is just how I am grieving today. That's why I didn't want to post this on Facebook, because honestly I don't want to offend anybody but I do have to express how I feel.

So hopefully now that I've gotten all of this toxicity out of my system I can move on. Oh, I'll still be horribly sad for my loss, but maybe I can do some laundry and not sit here grieving. The sad thing is that the world goes on even though we lose the people we love. It doesn't stop, grief gets trampled over by life needs, work, obligation, world events, other personal events, etc. The world doesn’t stop because the ones we love have fallen off. We just have to keep running with it and remember to breathe and take time to grieve when it hurts. Today it just hurts.

-Spin-

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mathematicianadda · 5 years

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Galileo’s theory of comets is hot air

Galileo thought comets were an atmospheric phenomenon, not physical bodies in outer space. How could he be so wrong when all his colleagues got it right? Perhaps because his theory was a convenient excuse for not doing any mathematical astronomy of comets. We also discuss his unsavoury ways of dealing with data in the case of double stars and the rings of Saturn.

Transcript

“Have you seen the fleeting comet with its terrifying tail?” That was the question on everyone’s lips in 1618. In that year a comet appeared that was “of such brightness that all eyes and minds were immediately turned toward it.” “Suddenly, men had no greater concern than that of observing the sky. Great throngs gathered on mountains and other very high places, with no thought for sleep and no fear of the cold.” “That stellar body with its menacing rays was considered a monstrous thing.” According to some prophets, the comet was a cosmic omen foretelling imminent disaster.

I quoted these vivid descriptions from Orazio Grassi: a contemporary of Galileo. These two had a big fight about comets. Grassi was a fine scientist. He was basically right about comets. Galileo, on the other hand, was way wrong on this. His theory of comets is extremely poor. However, Galileo managed to spin this somehow and still come out on top, in the eyes of many modern readers, despite being absolutely wrong as a matter of scientific fact.

This is quintessential Galileo: wrong on science, but a rhetorical master. Galileo could write a self-help book called “How to appear to win any debate even when you’re wrong from start to finish on every single point of substance.” If Galileo is the father of anything it is this art form. So you’re looking to pick up some tricks from that playbook then Galileo is your guy, and the comets dispute is the place to start.

Galileo skilfully caricatures his opponent as an obstinate enemy of science who relies on books and the words of authorities instead of using facts and reason and observation. People eat this up, this propaganda. Galileo is like a populist politician. He’s giving people a pleasing narrative that flatters and validates their worldview. Truth has little to do with anything.

That’s an overview of the story. Now let’s look at the details.

The science of comets. Like Grassi says, “the single role of the mathematician” is merely to “explain the position, motion, and magnitude of those fires,” that is to say the comets. So none of that superstition nonsense, just calculate the paths and distances and speeds and so on. Indeed, this is what mathematicians had been doing for generations. Tycho Brahe, for instance, worked extensively on comets in the generation before Galileo. He gave thorough mathematical analyses of their motions, as a mathematician should.

Now, of course, it would be difficult for Galileo to enter this game, since he was such a poor mathematician, as I have argued before. If Galileo had been honest he would have said: frankly, all those detailed calculations that Tycho Brahe and the other big-boy mathematicians are doing, that’s all too technical for me to follow.

But of course he doesn’t want to say that. He needs to save face. He needs an excuse for ignoring what all serious mathematical astronomers were saying about comets. Sure enough, he is quick to offer such excuses. First he claims that mathematical accounts of comets are hopelessly inconsistent. Here are his own words:

“Observations made by Tycho and many other reputable astronomers upon the comet’s parallax vary among themselves. If complete faith be placed in them, one must conclude that the comet was simultaneously below the sun and above it,” for example.

So the mathematical astronomy of comets is just a bunch of useless nonsense, you see. In fact Galileo has an even more fundamental argument for this. Namely that comets are not physical bodies travelling through space at all. Rather comets are nothing but a chimerical atmospheric phenomena. “In my opinion,” says Galileo, comets have “no other origin than that a part of the vapour-laden air surrounding the earth is for some reason unusually rarefied, and … is struck by the sun, and made to reflect its splendour.” A comet is like the northern lights. Galileo specifically makes this comparison.

So that’s Galileo’s very convenient excuse for why he doesn’t engage with the best mathematicians working on comets. This way he is able to pretend that: well, you see, it’s not that I can’t do these calculations, it’s just that I don’t want to, because they all just contradict themselves anyway, and it’s all nonsense in the first place because you can’t do mathematical astronomy of some vapour-cloud optical illusion thing. That’s a futile as chasing a rainbow.

That’s textbook Galileo. If you don’t believe my thesis that Galileo was a poor mathematician, the you tell me a better explanation for this. Why did Galileo propose such an idiotic theory of comets, that is dead wrong and obviously way worse than the common-sense standard opinion among all mathematical astronomers at the time? I gave you one explanation. I don’t think you can come up with a better one. Nobody has so far.

Galileo’s claim that the mathematical astronomy of comets was incoherent and self-contradictory did not convince anybody. Kepler was flabbergasted that someone who calls himself a geometer could write such drivel. Here are Kepler’s words:

“Galileo, if anyone, is a skilled contributor of geometrical demonstrations and he knows what a difference there is between the incredible observational diligence of Tycho and the indolence common to many others in this most difficult of all activities. Therefore, it is incredible that he would criticize as false the observations of all mathematicians in such a way that even those of Tycho would be included.”

Indeed. It is “incredible” that a “skilled geometer” could make such ludicrous claims. But of course the paradox disappears if one recognises that Galileo is not a skilled geometer after all.

Galileo also offered another very poorly considered argument against the correct view of comets as orbiting bodies. The orbits of comets are clearly much bigger than that of the planets in our solar system. Galileo tries to argue that this is unrealistic. Here is what he says: “How many times would the world have to be expanded to make enough room for an entire revolution [of a comet] when one four-hundredth part of its orbit takes up half of our universe?” This is a poor argument, because the universe must indeed be very big and then some according to Copernican theory. This is because of the absence of stellar parallax, as we have discussed before. Since the earth’s motion is observationally undetectable, the orbit of the earth must be minuscule in relation to the distance to the stars. That means there is plenty of room for comets. But Galileo conveniently pretends otherwise in his argument against comets. Evidently Galileo “was so intent on refusing Tycho[’s treatment of comets] that he failed to notice that he was pleading for a universe in which there would be no room for the heliocentric theory” either.

Galileo’s vapour theory of comets, meanwhile, is inconsistent with basic observations, as he himself admits. If comets are nothing but “rarefied vapour”---that is to say, some kind of pocket of thin gas---then you’d imagine that their natural motion would be straight up, like a helium balloon. Indeed Galileo does propose that comets have such paths. But then he at once admits that this doesn’t fit the facts: “I shall not pretend to ignore that if the material in which the comets takes form had only a straight motion perpendicular to the surface of the earth …, the comet should have seemed to be directed precisely toward the zenith, whereas, in fact, it did not appear so. … This compels us either to alter what was stated, … or else to retain what has been said, adding some other cause for this apparent deviation. I cannot do the one, nor should I like to do the other.” Bummer, it doesn’t work. But Galileo sees no way out, so he just leaves it at that.

Galileo’s contemporaries were not impressed. “[Grassi’s] criticism of Galileo is on the whole penetrating and to the point. He was quick to spot Galileo’s inconsistencies. Grassi produced an impressive array of arguments to show that vapours could not explain the appearance and the motion of the comets [as Galileo had claimed].” For instance, the speeds of comets do not fit Galileo’s theory. According to Galileo’s theory, the vapours causing the appearance of comets rise uniformly from the surface of the earth straight upwards. Therefore the comet should appear to be moving fast when it is close to the horizon, and then much slower when it is higher in the sky. Just imagine a red helium balloon released by a child at a carnival: it first it shoots off quickly, but soon you can barely tell if it’s rising anymore, even though it keep going up at more or less the same speed, because your distance and angle of sight is so different. But comets do not behave like that. Detailed observations of the comet of 1618 showed a much more constant speed than Galileo’s hypothesis requires.

Now let’s see how Galileo responded to this. Not by improving the scientific quality of his arguments, mind you. But with some clever rhetorical tricks that has many readers fooled to this day. Many find Galileo’s rousing mockery of his opponent so satisfying that they are seduced into celebrating it as proof of Galileo’s philosophical acumen. You can read Galileo’s triumphant put-downs of his opponent and go “yeah, crush him!” It’s the same kind of pleasure as watching the villain get punched in the face in an action movie. But a little reflection shows that this hero-versus-villain dynamic that Galileo tries to cultivate is a dishonest fiction that has very little to do with reality.

One of Galileo’s most celebrated passages concerns eggs. The context is this. Grassi makes the absolutely correct point that comets, if they entered the earth’s atmosphere, would quickly heat up to very great temperatures due to the friction of the air. In support of this point, Grassi quotes a 10th-century Byzantine author, Suidas, who claimed that “The Babylonians whirl[ed] about eggs placed in slings … [and] by that force they also cooked the raw eggs.” Grassi also quotes passages describing similar phenomena in Ovid, Lucan, Lucretius, Virgil, and Seneca. And then he says: “For who believes that men who were the flower of erudition and speak here of things which were in daily use in military affairs would wish egregiously and impudently to lie? I am not one to cast this stone at those learned men.”

Galileo is unable to answer the substantive point. Indeed, he thinks comets entering the atmosphere would cool down because of the wind rather than heat up because of friction. Galileo is wrong and Grassi is right about the actual scientific issue about comets. But that’s nothing Galileo’s trademarked sophistry can’t work around. Galileo finds a way to “win” the debate anyway, without actually offering any correct scientific claim regarding the actual subject of comets. He does this by gloatingly attacking Grassi for relying on books rather than experimental evidence:

“If [Grassi] wants me to believe that the Babylonians cooked their eggs by whirling them in slings, … I reason as follows: If we do not achieve an effect which others formerly achieved, then it must be that in our operations we lack something that produced their success. And if there is just one single thing we lack, then that alone can be the true cause. Now we do not lack eggs, nor slings, nor sturdy fellows to whirl them; yet our eggs do not cook, but merely cool down faster if they happen to be hot. And since nothing is lacking to us except being Babylonians, then being Babylonians is the cause of the hardening of eggs, and not friction of the air. … Is it possible that [Grassi] has never observed the coolness produced on his face by the continual change of air when he is riding post? If he has, then how can he prefer to believe things related by other men as having happened two thousand years ago in Babylon rather than present events which he himself experiences?”

Like I said, not a few modern philosophers blindly and uncritically fall for Galileo’s rhetoric. Here’s a typical quote on this. It’s from the Wiley-Blackwell book “Philosophy of Science: An Historical Anthology.” Here’s what the editors of this popular textbook say about Galileo’s argument: “Galileo shot back with a blistering critique in which he pillories [Grassi] and articulates a tough-minded empiricism as an alternative to the mere citation of venerable authority.”

Galileo would no doubt be very pleased that so many readers still to this day come away with the impression that “tough-minded empiricism” is what sets him apart from his opponents. That is precisely the intended effect of his ploy. It has very little basis in reality, however. Just a few pages earlier in the same treatise, Grassi describes extensively various laboratory experiments he has carried out himself with regard to another point. “I decided that no industry or labor ought to be spared in order to prove this by many and very careful experiments,” says this supposed obstinate enemy of empirical science. So the notion that Galileo is the only one “tough-minded” enough to reject authority in favour of experiment is very far off the mark.

Even in the passage criticised, Grassi is clearly not engaged in “the mere citation of venerable authority.” Rather he honestly and openly cites sources purporting to truthfully report empirical information, just like any scientist today cites previous works without re-checking all the experiments personally. Grassi does not believe that these authors are automatically right because they are “venerable authorities.” Rather he explicitly considers the possibility that they are wrong, but estimates, quite reasonably, that they are probably right.

For that matter, Galileo himself was not above believing falsehoods on the basis of “venerable authorities.” We have seen him make an error of this type in his theory of tides. He had heard somewhere that high and low tide in Lisbon occurred twelve hours apart rather than six, and jumped at the chance to cite this false information as “evidence” for his erroneous theory. To take another example, Galileo also believed the ancient myth of Archimedes setting fire to enemy ships by means of mirrors focussing the rays of the sun. This myth is “credible,” Galileo says. Descartes sensibly took the opposite view.

Altogether, the simplistic contrast between Grassi the credulous believer in authority and Galileo the experimenter has little basis in fact. Galileo is scoring easy points with his taunts about the eggs, by dishonestly pretending that a simplistic point about empiricism was the crux of the matter.

It is worth keeping the context of the passage in mind. Indeed, the pro-Galileo interpretation I quoted above from the Wiley-Blackwell textbook comes with its own origin story:

“In the course of his career [Galileo] engaged in many controversies and made powerful enemies. One of those enemies was the Jesuit Grassi, who published an attack on some of Galileo’s works.”

This framing goes well with the notion of the “tough” Galileo bravely defending himself against “attacks” from the “powerful” establishment. But the reality is quite different. Grassi was not a “powerful enemy”: he was a middling college professor just like Galileo. And the conflict did not start with Grassi “attacking” Galileo, but precisely the other way around. Grassi published a fine lecture on comets in which he argued, correctly, that the absence of parallax shows that comets are beyond the moon. Galileo is not mentioned in this work. Galileo read Grassi’s lecture and filled the margins, as one scholar has observed, with an entire vocabulary’s worth of savage expletives. Buffoon, bumbling idiot, piece of utter stupidity, and so on.

Galileo then published an attack on Grassi which was not much more restrained than these marginal notes. Grassi replied to it. It is this reply that is called “an attack on some of Galileo’s works” in the pro-Galilean quotation above.

So, to sum up, Galileo’s celebrated “pillorying” of Grassi was not a “tough” defence against an “attack” on “some of his works” by “powerful enemies.” The “enemy” was not a “powerful” arm of “authority,” but a conscientious scholar who was right about comets based on good scientific arguments that Galileo rejected. And the enemy was not a cruel aggressor going after “some works” by Galileo unprovoked; rather, the “some works” in question was an aggressive attack initiated by Galileo in the first place. Furthermore, Galileo’s enemy did not favour venerable authority over empiricism, but rather based his analysis of comets on much more thorough empirical work than Galileo did.

Ok, that’s what I had to say about comets.

Let me tell you another story: Double stars. The telescope revealed the existence of “double stars,” meaning stars that had appeared as just a single point of light to the naked eye but then when you looked at them with good magnification in a telescope they turned out to consist of two separate stars.

Double stars had the potential to prove Copernicus right. This was pointed out to Galileo by his friend Castelli. Castelli was excited about double stars, because he hoped they could be used to prove that the earth moves around the sun because of how the double star would change appearance in the course of a year.

The idea is the following. You look at the double star in your telescope. You see that it is not one star but two: one bigger and one smaller. Now you make the assumption that probably all stars are pretty much the same. They are all just so many suns, as it were. So the smaller-looking one is probably about the same size, in reality. It’s just further away.

Now let’s see what happens when the earth moves. Let’s try to picture this. You can use your index fingers. Hold up one finger in front of you. Now put your other index finger further away from you but aligned with the first one in a single line of sight. Now if you move your head slightly to one side, you will see the two fingers “move apart,” so to speak. And if you move your head to the other side, they will move apart in the other direction. So the closer finger, which corresponds to the bigger star, is sometimes to the left and sometimes to the right of the other one. Moving your head means moving the earth. If the earth is truly moving like Copernicus said then we should be able to observe this kind of thing: stars “switching places” in this way. This would certainly not happen if the earth was stationary, so we have striking and undeniable evidence for the motion of the earth.

This is a parallax effect. We spoke about parallax before. Astronomers had failed to detect parallax in the past, even though Copernican theory predicts that parallax must be a thing. The traditional method to look for parallax was based on trying to detect subtle shifts in the relative position of stars using tricky precision measurements of angles. The double star case would prove the matter in a much more striking and immediate way, without the need for technical measurements: anyone would be able to see with their own eyes the undeniable fact the the two stars switched places in the course of a year. And since with this method everything takes place within the field of view of the telescope, there was reason to hope that this new technology could enable success where conventional naked-eye astronomy had failed.

Castelli urged Galileo to make observations of double stars for this purpose, as indeed Galileo did in 1617, when he made detailed observations of the double star Mizar. Galileo used the above principle that however many times smaller a star is, it is that many times further away. With this method Galileo estimated that Mizar A and B were 300 and 450 times further away than the sun, respectively. This means the above effect should easily be noticeable: “Mizar A and Mizar B should have swung around each other dramatically as Galileo observed them over time.” But that didn’t happen. They didn’t change position at all. Everything remained exactly stationary, as if the earth did not move.

Today we know that all the stars in the night sky are much further away than Galileo estimated, and much too far away for any effects of this sort to be detectable with the telescopes of Galileo’s time. Galileo’s distance estimates were way off because of certain optical effects that make it impossible to judge the distances of stars in the manner outlined above. It would be anachronistic to blame Galileo for not knowing these things, which were only understood much later.

But Galileo’s way of discussing the matter in the Dialogue is not above reproach. He describes the above procedure but frames it hypothetically: “if some tiny star were found by the telescope quite close to some of the larger ones,” they would, if the above effect could be observed, “appear in court to give witness to such motion … of the earth.” “This is the very idea that later won Galileo renown and for which he was to be remembered by parallax hunters in the centuries that followed. While it is generally thought that Galileo never tried to detect stellar parallax himself, he is credited with this legacy to future generations.” In reality he deserves no renown, because the idea was not his own. It had already been explained to him in detail not only by Castelli, who discovered the double star Mizar and explained its importance for parallax to Galileo, but also even earlier by Ramponi in 1611. There is no indication that Galileo had though of any of this before his friends explained it to him.

Furthermore, Galileo’s discussion in the Dialogue is deceitful. He didn’t want to state the truth, of course, which is that he tried the experiment and it came out the wrong way; the data said that the earth did not move. But that’s only important if you are an honest scientist concerned with objectively evaluating the evidence. Galileo instead finds it more convenient to pretend that this falsifying data doesn’t exists. Instead he presents the double star idea as a suggestion for further research, and pretends that he hasn’t already carried it out. That way he doesn’t have to explain actual data or engage seriously with actual current astronomy like the system of Tycho for instance which agreed better with this data. It was much easier for Galileo to suppress his data and disingenuously insinuate that the outcome of the observation would be the opposite of what he knew it to be.

Now I will turn to another topic. The rings of Saturn. We all know that iconic cartoon-planet look. But that image only became clear some twenty years after Galileo’s death. Christiaan Huygens published a book on Saturn in 1659 where the rings are depicted with perfect clarity just as we are used to seeing it.

But the telescopes of Galileo’s day were not good enough to show the rings of Saturn with any clarity. Instead Galileo thinks the rings are actually two moons. Saturn is “made of three stars,” says Galileo. The planet has two “ears,” as it were. We can’t blame Galileo for limitations that were inherent to his time. It was no fault of his that he didn’t discern the rings of Saturn. Neither did any of his contemporaries.

However, we can blame Galileo for his lack of balance in evaluating the evidence. He does not say, as an honest scientist might, that his theory about Saturn’s “companion stars” is the best guess on the available evidence and that we can’t know for sure until we have better telescopes. Instead he boldly proclaims it as certainty that Saturn is “accompanied by two stars on its sides,” “as perfect instruments reveal to perfect eyes.” Those are Galileo’s words. And they are of course very hubristic. But that’s Galileo for you, always overstating his case, not least when he is wrong.

In the same vein, Galileo overconfidently declared that the appearance of Saturn’s companions would never change:

“I, who have examined [Saturn] a thousand times at different times, with an excellent instrument, can assure you that no change at all is perceived in him: and the same reason … can render us certain that, likewise, there will be none.”

Bombastic certainty as usual. All the more embarrassing then when in fact the appearances did change radically soon thereafter. Here’s Galileo again, just a few months later:

“I found [Saturn] solitary without the assistance of the supporting stars. … Now what is to be said about such a strange metamorphosis? Perhaps the two smaller stars … have vanished and fled suddenly? Perhaps Saturn has devoured his own children?”

This is a reference to classical mythology. Saturn the god “devoured his newborn children to forestall a prophecy that he would be overthrown by one of his sons.”

In any case, one moment Galileo says that “thousands” of observations prove that Saturn’s companion stars will never change, and then just months later he has to admit that, whoops, it turns out that that exact thing he said would never happen actually took place almost right away. That was some bad publicity, especially at a time when many doubted the reliability of his telescope.

The so-called disappearance of Saturn’s ring was due to the earth passing through the plane of the ring, so that a line of sight from earth was parallel to the plane of the ring. This made the ring invisible, just like a sheet of paper becomes vanishingly thin if you look at it exactly sideways.

But Galileo did not interpret it that way. Instead, he proposed what he considered to be some “probable conjectures” about the future appearance of Saturn’s companion stars. This theory was based on attributing to them a slow revolution, like very slow-moving moons. Later he praised himself for “thinking in my own special way” and marvelled at how “I took the courage” to make such brave conjectures. Those are Galileo’s own words, praising himself.

Indeed, Galileo liked his model so much that he also “took the courage” to lie about having made an observation verifying it. He claims that he “saw Saturn triple-bodied this year [1612], at about the time of the summer solstice.” But modern calculations show that the ring of Saturn would have been vanishingly thin at this time. There was a paper on this in the Journal for History of Astronomy not long ago. Here is the conclusion from the paper: “Clearly [Galileo] could not have observed the ring at the summer solstice of 1612. … Yet the picture of the Saturnian system that was accepted by Galileo implied that the ring should have been visible, so much so that he made a claim to this effect that we know must have been untrue.” Oh well. That’s business as usual in Galileo land.

This concludes our discussion of Galileo’s work with the telescope. Next time I believe we shall have to get to the real hot potato: Galileo and the church.

from Intellectual Mathematics from Blogger https://ift.tt/2RYg0mV

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laluzam · 6 years

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Part 3 - Abstraction of Physics in Mathematics

From the last part, it had been established that starting my bachelor -university student- I was pretty much into believing that nature is physics and law of physics is nature itself. Never I had doubt that physical reality is consequences of physics’s variables and its internal logical consistency that we call the law of nature. The apple falls because gravitational interaction with the Earth. That is a fact. That is a reality. In simple words, the law of physics are absolute and certain. It was not something to be questioned or debated. What has been proved in Physics, pretty much is reality itself. Like whatever you hold dear in this life, nothing is forever “true” because the truth about something is complicated. Truth is shaped by our own understandings, all interactions from and to our self and how far we have idea about everything. That also happened to me. It was at second semester in the university, I found myself sitting in a very peculiar lecture. In my early days as a university student, I would sit-in in any lecture that I am interested in even if the material is advanced enough and I did not have idea about it. In that peculiar lecture, I did not study physics, but mathematics. To call it mathematics at that time also pretty strange, because it was not the usual mathematics that physicists actually study. It was full of mappings, sets, and logic. All the time, the lecturer only explained about theorems and how to prove it. Even the way of proving it strictly prohibited to be consistent mathematically with previous lemmas, theorems and definitions. It is like proving the “1+1=2″ without counting it but with the definition of “+” itself. The abstraction level was so high, I could not follow most of the concepts. I was wondering at that time, why is this course in physics department? To my naive eye and knowledge, that is no way related to physics whatsoever.

Not so long after that lecture, I had my chance to actually study about Quantum Mechanics, one of the “most famous” hard and scary course in my department. Many students avoided it and chose not to take it. For me it was quiet the opposite, the harder people say it is, the more I want to study it. At the same time I was curious to another course called “Abstract algebra for theoretical physics”. I did not know what “abstract algebra” was and at that point I just took that course because it sounded cool to me. To much of my shock, both of those lectures were handled by the same lecturer who gave that peculiar lectures that I sat in before. At first, I was very skeptical because having the experience I probably would not enjoy those courses. The first days of the courses proved what I had in my mind. Those were confusing and hard-to-understand courses. But strangely enough, I felt there was a charm in those mathematics/physics courses. And just because of that I was keep going. After a couple of times following the lectures, I was able to have a little understanding on how the dynamical of the lectures itself, how the structures and what is the point. Slowly over the course of semester, I saw the connection from the mathematical abstractions to the realm of physics, and when I was able to conclude a well known concept in physics from purely (modern) mathematics stand point, there was a feeling rushing into myself. The feeling of enlightenment. The feeling of self discovery, like understanding a piece of art that your own self exclusively can see it. It was like an addiction. It gave me a sense of importance. I have to mention the lecturer whom I owed pretty much all of my interests in mathematical physics (that is how he explained it to us) because without him, I would not be able to open and expand my mind and knowledge about nature and physics itself. He was more than just a lecturer. He was a warrior. Fighting for his own ideals about how physics should be taught. He opened up and influenced the way I think about everything. But I will not go into details about that. Maybe in another writing, I will tell it completely. I stayed for several semesters pretty much until I graduated with him, even having my bachelor thesis under him. In that period of time, I was transformed completely. My interests had shifted up towards a new horizon. A new “reality” as I put it at the time. And because the sense of minority working in that area, gave me a sense of importance -maybe even arrogance or over confidence- about the concept “the truth about physics”. Mathematics was not just a “language” for physicists to solve “physics problems”. Mathematics is a foundation of physics itself. You change mathematics, you change the physics itself. Does it mean you change the reality of nature itself? That can not be true. Because what we call reality/nature is something that never change. It has been, it always is and it will be. Therefore we have to admit one hard truth, physics is just a model to describe the nature. It is physics who can be edited, reshaped, remodeled and etc. Of course this raise more alarming questions about the well established theory that even no people in the world consider it as a theory or model anymore, such as gravity and law of motions. It is a common sense or even “a fact” if everything that has mass is held together by the gravitational force, from the moon in the sky to the electrons spin around the nucleus of an atom. This is where the importance understanding of mathematical concepts come into play. Physics essentially is made up of concepts. All of these concepts are given name and connected to each other via mathematical expressions, logic and mathematical concepts. Without the concept of calculus, we will never have explanation of continuum mechanics. But we have to understand that calculus is a mathematical object/concept. Mathematical objects live in our mind. It only has effects because we have a consensus, we define set of fundamental rules about all of the mathematical objects. The word “15 meters” only has meaning because we agree on the concept of numbers and international unit of meter to measure length. Even length itself is just a representation of imaginative points in our mind that we project into the world around us. The most important point about physics is it has to have internal logical -mathematically of course- consistencies. Two physics concepts can not be inconsistent to each other because it will give raise to a paradox. This requires a creative mind and efforts to expand and introduce new physics concepts therefore expanding mathematics itself. Physics is no more that a mathematical model describing the reality. And we scientists are just a scluptor making statues, imitate the real object. The more refined our tools and techniques, the more it mimics the real object but never is the same with the object itself. This is how I look the relations of physics and nature. Physics is the statue, mathematics is the techniques and tools and the nature itself is the object that we try to imitate. After looking at physics as one of mathematical models describing our universe, our nature, it makes perfectly sense to actually start from the beginning: if one wants to examine, find and expand the physics itself from it is current state, one has to expands and manipulate mathematics. This has been proven by the mathematical concepts of Quantum mechanics and theory of Relativity. Quantum mechanics internal mathematics is not connected to the “real world quantum effects” yet, in order to consistent predict quantum behaviors and effects, one needs to perform abstract mathematical concepts such as Hilbert space, superposition, normalisation, and etc. In general relativity, in order to predict the “effect of gravity on light or massive objects”, one needs to familiarise oneself to the concept of manifolds and curvature and extended dimensions which no way having any connections whatsoever with our “real world” but nevertheless the best way explaining certain physical phenomena. This is “the truth” that I found out. Mathematical physics is the process of mathematization of physics. Physics concepts were operated piece by piece, break and examine in details according to the standard way in mathematics. Physics concepts have to be mathematically consistent, obeying all the postulates, lemmas, and theorems that has been build. By extending the postulates of certain mathematics concepts, it gives rise to new consequences in physics. Things that physicists never think possible. In the eye of a mathematical physicist, the pure explanation of natural phenomena from “physics point of view” is ridiculous because how can one talk about physical explanation without having any understanding the nature of mathematics itself? This road was not easy. A lot of happened just to arrive in a small grain of understanding in mathematical physics and a lot of works has to be done. But it was worth it, because the true fine art only gives so much as the understanding of its beholder. Aachen, 17.07.2018 Lalu Zam

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adamcairnsorg-blog · 7 years

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How To Massively Improve The Quality Of Your Ideas

A Lesson From The Industrial Age

In mid-to-late 19th Century Britain, the new was sweeping powerfully in. It was an age of invention and technology and never before had so much change happened as quickly. Industrial marvels were proliferating at bewildering speed. Earlier inventions had set the pace.

The steam engine (1712)

Spinning jenny (1764)

The cotton gin (1794)

Now came a new and growing welter of devices and technologies that created entirely new industries.

The telegraph (1844)

The sewing machine (1846)

The elevator safety break (1853)

Bessemer steel processing (1855)

Invention of dynamite (1866)

The telephone (1876)

Vaccines such as smallpox (1870)

The light bulb (1879)

Amid all this tumultuous change there were other less welcome effects.

“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people”. – Karl Marx, Human Requirements and Division of Labour Under the Rule of Private Property, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.

Marx was referring of course to the impact that industrialisation was having on the working class. Machines were taking over the jobs that people once did, thereby robbing them of the capacity to feed themselves and their families. The age of industrialisation started in the mid 18th Century and by the time Marx was writing his critique of the industrial society, heavy machinery had dramatically changed the world of work.

Today's Useless People

The phrase “too many useful things” has a modern day connotation too. The digital era of connected everything has delivered another slant on this aphorism. Today we are presented with a proliferation of devices and technologies that if we are not careful can overwhelm us, making us in turn, “useless people.”

It’s not just the external world which creates demands on our time and attention. In a recent post, Brett Kelly said this:

My ideas fall into one of three categories:

1. Stuff that's obviously stupid and/or a waste of time (this bucket is where the vast majority come from). 2. Stuff that's pure genius and holy crap I need to write that down right now before I forget. Naturally, these are few and far between. 3. Stuff that's clearly flawed to some extent, but might be worth investigating down the road.

That third one is the real kicker.

Letting these ideas percolate is key. Sometimes, doing literally nothing with a new stroke of (apparent) wisdom is the best course of action in the moment.

This tension between the immediate instinct to react and the benefits of reflection (what Wordsworth called “wise passivity”) is at the heart of what John Keats termed “negative capability.”

“He demanded that the poet be receptive rather than searching for fact or reason, and to not seek absolute knowledge of every truth, mystery, or doubt”.

John Keats' Life

John Keats was born in London in 1795 when the industrial revolution was already powering huge changes to society. Cities like London were swelling with a tide of people swept up in a shift of industrial emphasis that fundamentally altered the balance of occupations between town and country.

As a schoolboy, Keats distinguished himself academically, but tragedy was a constant and close companion. When he was eight years old, his father died, falling from his horse after visiting John and his brother at their boarding school. Six years later his mother also died from tuberculosis and John was left in the care of his grandmother and two guardians appointed by his late mother.

In the autumn of 1810, Keats left school and began an apprenticeship as a surgeon and apothecary. He then enrolled as a medical student at Guy’s Hospital a year later, demonstrating a clear aptitude for medicine, by winning an early promotion to “dresser”, somewhat akin to the role a junior doctor might perform today. Everyone assumed his path was now set.

However, at the age of 21, Keats published his first poem in the Examiner, a leading liberal magazine which was published in May 1816. He was now dedicating more and more and more of his time to studying literature and he began experimenting with different verse forms, including the sonnet. He decided to quit medicine in December of the same year and concentrate on writing. In April 1817 he moved into a new home in Hampstead with two of his brothers.

Tuberculosis has been referred to as the Keats family illness. His mother died from the disease, and Keats was now nursing his brother Tom who had contracted the illness. It is likely that John was infected during this time.

After his brother’s death in December 1819 he moved to Wentworth Place, which was owned by his friend Charles Brown. Wentworth Place is a beautifully proportioned Georgian house, set close to Hampstead Heath and it was here, in a miraculous period of a few short months in the winter of 1818-1819 that he wrote his greatest poems, including five of his most famous Odes.

Negative Capability – How It Shaped His Work

Keats was a prolific letter writer throughout his life. In a letter to his brother George and Tom dated 21st December 1817 first used the term ‘Negative Capability.” This is the state in which we are:

“…capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason ...[Being] content with half knowledge" where one trusts in the heart's perceptions.

He wrote later:

"I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination – What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth – whether it existed before or not – for I have the same Idea of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty"

His letters provide an example of how "negative capability" shaped his poetry. In September 1819, Keats wrote to Reynolds

"How beautiful the season is now – How fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it ... I never lik'd the stubbled fields as much as now – Aye, better than the chilly green of spring. Somehow the stubble plain looks warm – in the same way as some pictures look warm – this struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it".

The final stanza of his last great ode: "To Autumn" runs:

"Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;"

Keats immediate response to the scenes he observed on his walk, recorded in his letter, later emerged as powerful poetry.

As is well known, Keats' short life ended in Rome, succumbing to tuberculosis while under the care of his friend Joseph Severn. His last moments were described by Severn in a letter:

"Keats raves till I am in a complete tremble for him...about four, the approaches of death came on. [Keats said] 'Severn—I—lift me up—I am dying—I shall die easy; don't be frightened—be firm, and thank God it has come.' I lifted him up in my arms. The phlegm seem'd boiling in his throat, and increased until eleven, when he gradually sank into death, so quiet, that I still thought he slept."

What Might Have Been

In his life, Keats had little reason to believe his poetry would be remembered. After his death, his reputation steadily grew, with the likes of Tennyson describing him as the greatest poet of the 19th Century. His short and tragic life, combined with the compressed timescale of his mature artistic output leave both an indelible mark and a question. What might he have gone on to achieve had he lived a longer life?

The Takeaway

1. Let Ideas Percolate

Anchoring our ideas and allowing them to percolate as Brett Kelly suggests often produces a deeper, more nuanced response. Our minds make connections unconsciously and by creating a space for this alchemy to work we are adopting a wise passivity.

This isn’t the same as spending time thinking about it.

Allowing the idea to sit quietly in the background without worrying away at it is what Brett is getting at. Be patient, and you’ll find that some of your best ideas will emerge more completely formed by following this route.

2. Manage Your Reactions

It is not just the external world though that generates competing claims on our time, energy and attention – it’s also our internal world, with it’s ideas and emotional responses.

Creating a gap between what you experience and how you respond can pay dividends.

There are times when you will be confronted with an issue and with it an implied pressure to respond straight away. Of course there are times when you must do so – an alarm bell sounding doesn’t require passivity. On the other hand, a constant state of trigger happy reactivity will create an atmosphere of nervous tension around. This isn’t conducive to clear thinking in you or the people around you.

3. Build A System To Capture Your Ideas

From time to time it’s worth checking if you’re allowing sufficient time for your ideas and responses to gestate. It’s a good idea to have a system in place to capture your ideas and store them in a way that you always have access to.

You can read my post about note taking taking here.

4. Keep Your Most Important Goals In Sight

There are so many channels of communication and corresponding incoming traffic that rains down on us all. Without a system to manage this it will be hard for us to see what is important with the kind of clarity that creates your best work. You want to avoid becoming a “useless person” so overwhelmed with possibilities that choosing a path becomes difficult.

The best advice is to build a system that allows you to retain an oversight of your most important goals and opportunities.

5. Don't Overthink It

Finally and paradoxically it’s also important to avoid over-analysing. There are times when something is so obviously the right solution to a problem that no further analysis is required. Its’s like the man said:

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

Or if you prefer, don’t over-think it.

Question: How do you manage your immediate reactions?

#Ideas #John Keats #Leadership stories

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free-mormons-blog · 7 years

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The Meaning of the Temple -- Temple and Cosmos Beyond this Ignorant Present -- HUGH NIBLEY 1992

The Meaning of the Temple

Recently in our family night, I was supposed to talk about the meaning of the temple in light of the gospel. One of the many distinguishing features of our time is the availability of really good popular science summaries written by top men in various fields; and none of us should neglect these, no matter what our own fields are. Any field of serious study today is necessarily highly specialized, and at the same time it calls for branching out into related fields. These summaries go far beyond the popularizing of another day. Because of our marvelous processes of photographic reproduction, magnificently illustrated books on every branch of science are now available.

For example, recently I looked at P. T. Matthew’s The Nuclear Apple, and before that, it was the biologist Lyall Watson’s book Supernature, and before that, Nigel Calder’s broad survey of recent studies of the brain called The Mind of Man. That same Nigel Calder, who works for the British Broadcasting Corporation, goes all around the world getting up television programs of very high caliber. Thus, while surveying recent astronomical developments, he consulted with major astronomers in every part of the world and so built up the programs. The last one was called the Violent Universe. It was required reading in our Honors Program (and probably still is), and he recently has put out one on the new geology, plate techtonics, which he calls the Restless Earth. The data of these books is significant. The Violent Universe, Restless Earth, and Supernature—that is not the way I heard it when I went to school.

In my day, everything was pretty well under control. At best we had a tolerant scientific smile for anything suggesting catastrophism or any dramatic or spectacular event in history or in nature; this kind of stuff smacked of the apocalyptic visions of Mormonism, things classed in the lunatic fringe, apocalyptic sensationalism. There was no place in modern thinking for that sort of thing. Yet in all these books, regardless of the fields, authors today seem to be saying much the same thing. They all come to one very interesting conclusion, which a few quotations will make clear.

First, one basic proposition receives particular attention in all of them, the well-known second law of thermodynamics: everything runs down.1 And it is stated with strong and bemused reservations, because there is something wrong with it. Let us quote Watson, the biologist (and I understand he has a great reputation in England):

Left to itself, everything tends to become more and more disorderly, until the final and natural state of things is a completely random distribution of matter. Any kind of order . . . is unnatural, and happens only by chance encounters. . . . These events are statistically unlikely and the further combination of molecules into anything as highly organized as a living organism is wildly improbable. Life is a rare and unreasonable thing. [He belabors the point]: Life occurs by chance, and . . . the probability of its occurring and continuing is infinitesimal.2

There is no chance of us being here at all. Furthermore, “the cosmos itself is patternless, being a jumble of random and disordered events.”3 But it is not just life that is improbable, but the fabric of life itself—matter. The nuclear physicist P.T. Matthews asks,

Why is the proton stable, . . . since this is clearly crucial to the world as we know it? From the atomic point of view, the proton is one of the basic building blocks. Yet from the behavior of the other hadrons, . . . there is no obvious reason why it should not disintegrate into, say, a positive pion and neutrino, which is not forbidden by any conservation law.4

(The only two stable hadrons are the neutron [n0] and the proton [p+]. The neutron has a mean life span of 3 x 103 sec [about 50 minutes]. All other hadrons have mean life spans of from 10-8 to 10-18 seconds). Matthews goes on to explain the factors that determine the stability of the proton: “The rate of decay of any particle depends partly on the strength of the interaction and partly on the ‘amount of room’ it has into which it can decay.”5 To describe what he means by “amount of room,” Matthews draws an analogy of a room full of objects: “For every object in the room, there are, of course, vastly many more positions in which it would be considered out of place. When these possibilities for all the objects in the room are multiplied together, the number of untidy or disordered states exceeds the ordered ones by some enormous factor.”6

Then he moves into the domain of the second law of thermodynamics and a mathematical description of this concept. Matthews continues, “The logarithm of the number of different states in which a system can be found is called the entropy. Thus the entropy of tidy or ordered states is very much less than that of untidy or disordered ones.”7 To give us an idea about the magnitudes of the numbers we are dealing with, he presents the analogy of a deck of cards:

The rate at which numbers build up in the Second Law situation can be illustrated by considering a pack of playing cards. We can define an ordered, or tidy, state to be one in which the cards are arranged by value in successive suits. There are just twenty-four such configurations which arise from the different possible orderings of suits. This is itself a surprisingly large number, but the number of different ways the fifty-two cards can be arranged is about a ten thousand million, million, million, million, million, million, million, million (1052). The chance of finding a shuffled pack in an ordered state is the ratio of these two numbers [24/1052].8

Matthews continues:

The relevance of this to our problem is that one may think of a proton at rest as a very highly ordered condition of a certain amount of energy—the rest energy of the proton—which can exist in just one state (strictly two if we allow for two possible orientations of the proton spin). If the proton can decay by any mechanism into two or more lighter particles, these serve to define an alternative condition of the system which is relatively highly disordered, since it can exist with all conceivable orientations. The number of allowed states depends on the relative momentum of the decay products much as the number of points on the circumference of a circle depends on its radius. The decay interaction is the shuffling agent. . . . If it exists and operates on a time scale comparable with the age of the universe, then by relentless operation of the Second Law, essentially every proton would by now have decayed into lighter particles. . . . Clearly the opposite is the case, and there must be some very exact law which is preventing this from happening.9

Had all the protons decayed, there would be no stable atoms, no elements, no compounds, no earth, no life. When the biologist said that life was wildly improbable, a rare unreasonable event, who would have guessed how improbable it really was? “A human being,” writes Matthews, “is at very best, an assembly of chemicals constructed and maintained in a state of fantastically complicated organization of quite unimaginable improbability.”10 So improbable that you can’t even imagine it. So “wildly improbable” that even to mention it is ridiculous.11 So we have no business being here. That is not the natural order of things. In fact, he says that “the sorting process—the creation of order out of chaos—against the natural flow of physical events is something which is essential to life.”12 So the physical scientists and the naturalist agree that if nature has anything to say about it, we wouldn’t be here. This is the paradox of which Professor Wald of Harvard says, “The spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. . . . In this colloquial, practical sense I concede the spontaneous origin of life to be ‘impossible.’ “13 The chances of our being here are not even to be thought of, yet here we are.

So as I say, in my school days it was fashionable to brush aside Paley’s watch argument with a snort of impatience. If you’re walking on the beach and find a beautifully made Swiss watch, you should not with Archdeacon Paley conclude that some intelligent mind has produced the watch. It proves nothing of the sort. Finding the watch only proves, quite seriously, that mere chance at work, if given enough time, can indeed produce a fine Swiss watch or anything else. Indeed, when you come right down to it, the fact that Swiss watches exist in a world created and governed entirely by chance proves that blind chance can produce watches. There is no escaping this circular argument, and some people use it. Today Professor Matthews states the same problem more simply:

If, after seeing a room in chaos, it is subsequently found in good order, the sensible inference is not that time is running backwards, but that some intelligent person has been in to tidy it up. If you find the letters of the alphabet ordered on a piece of paper to form a beautiful sonnet, you do not deduce that teams of monkeys have been kept for millions of years strumming on typewriters, but rather that Shakespeare has passed this way.14

But to Professor Huxley or Professor Simpson this is sheer heresy or folly. It was the evolutionist who seriously put forth the claim that an ape strumming on a typewriter for a long enough time could produce, by mere blind chance, all the books in the British Museum, but did any religionist ever express such boundless faith? I don’t know any religious person who ever had greater faith than that. Yet serious minds actually believed such an impossibility. They say it is impossible, but then it happens.

Remember, “the decay interaction is the shuffling agent [and] . . . by the relentless operation of the Second Law, essentially every proton would by now have decayed into lighter particles. . . . Clearly the opposite is the case.” Now “there must be some very exact law which is preventing this from happening.”15

Kammerer’s new law of seriality is in direct opposition to the second law: there is “a force that tends toward symmetry and coherence by bringing like and like together.”16 That is a very interesting point. We say that light cleaves unto light, etc. What is that force? Nobody knows. They say it is there because you see it working. Buckminster Fuller calls it syntropy.17 The greatest Soviet astrophysicist today, the Soviets’ foremost man in that field, Nikolai Kozyrev, has been working for years on this question. He claims that the second law of thermodynamics is all right, but it doesn’t work. Something works against it, something stronger. He says,

Some processes unobserved by mechanics and preventing the death of the world are at work everywhere, maintaining the variety of life. These processes must be similar to biological processes maintaining organic life. Therefore, they may be called vital processes and the life of cosmic bodies or other physical systems can be referred to as vital processes in this sense.18

We are beginning to realize with the Egyptians and the Jews that when we speak of everything, we must consider what we are not aware of, along with what we are aware of. We recognize in that principle the overwhelming rate of quantity. What we are not aware of is part of the calculation which must be used; but we’ve never used it before. We’ve just heard that anything you haven’t experienced doesn’t exist. Gertrude doesn’t see the ghost of the King standing there. Hamlet does, yet she says she sees “nothing at all; yet all that is I see.”19 Granted, she doesn’t see anything, but she has no right to add, “but all that is I see”: if I don’t see it, it is not there, because I see everything that is there. How does one know if someone else is seeing something else? The Egyptian word for everything is ntt íwtt: everything I know and everything I don’t know. Everything we are aware of and everything we are not aware of makes up everything. So you can’t say “everything,” just “everything I happen to know.”

Calder says in the Restless Earth, “For all who inhabit this planet, the earth sciences now supply a new enlightenment, tantamount to a rediscovery of the earth.”20And this new knowledge has all come forth since the mid-1960s, as a result of which “suddenly geology makes sense.”21 Then what did geology make all these other years I have been at the BYU? The mid-1960s is not so far away. Calder says it is like the discovery of a new world,22 something completely different. And finally we are told by the brain specialists that “in our own time, the first attempts at . . . using computers for the translation of foreign language texts, have been an expensive failure.”23 Noam Chomsky played an important part in stopping the computer people and their patrons from wasting more effort on this hopeless task. (I used to share an office with a professor who had worked on a Russian translating machine, way back in the 1940s. He took over the project at Georgetown University, where he worked for thirty years and then gave it up. It just wouldn’t go. Yet they were all enthusiastic: “There is no problem we cannot solve. The computer is going to solve everything for us.” This hope has now gone down the drain.) We are now assured that it is only a working assumption that the mind and the brain are inseparable. Ralph Sperry, who has been doing a lot with this, says, “The brain . . . transcend[s] . . . the properties of its cells.”24 There is something up and above and beyond the brain, and this is what is having a very important influence today. And now the chaos factor makes our uncertainty certain!

The nuclear physicists, speaking on the same subject, say, “Between the electrical signals coming through the eye to the brain and our reaction to a tree in blossom on a fresh spring day, there is a vast gap which physics shows no signs of ever being able to bridge. . . . It may even be that whatever it is that is peculiar to life and particular to thought lies outside the scope of physical concepts.”25 I was also surprised to learn that in the field of the relationship of the particles within the nucleus (nuclear physics), no problem is exactly soluble: “With the present mathematical techniques, we have no idea of how to cope with this problem.”26 In mathematics there is no sign that we will ever be able to solve many of these problems. We just do it by approximations—that is as near as we can get to solving them.

Two things stand out in all this. First is the awareness of an organizing, ordering force in the universe that is very active and runs counter to all we know of the laws of science. The second is the awareness of great gaps in our knowledge that may account for our failure to discover the source of that force. This takes us directly to the subject of the temple—though you would never have guessed this from what I have said so far.

We talk a lot about the second law, but what about the first law—the law about the conservation of energy,27 which is the conservation of mass and matter, in all their forms. It is important too. With that law, the Latter-day Saints have never had any quarrel. We have always believed it. By contrast, the Christian world has its doctrine of creation out of nothing—creatio ex nihilo. Recently David Winston and Jonathon Goldstein, writing on Jewish Hellenistic thought, have shown at great length that the idea of creation out of nothing was totally unknown to the Christian or the Jewish doctors before the fourth century A.D.28 It had no place in their doctrines. It was always taught in the early church, as the Jews teach yet, that the world was organized out of matter that was already there. This Mormon teaching was greatly offensive to the standard Christian doctrine that God created the world out of nothing. We Latter-day Saints don’t quarrel with the first law of conservation of energy.

Surprisingly, we also accept the second law. In the course of nature, that law takes its relentless course. Jacob says, “This corruption [could not] put on incorruption” (2 Nephi 9:7; cf. Mosiah 16:10). There is no chance of it. As he put it, corruption is a one-way process that is irreversible: “This corruption could not put on incorruption. Wherefore, the first judgment which came upon man must needs have remained to endless duration” (2 Nephi 9:7). It could not be reversed. Incorruption can put on corruption—something can decay and break down, particles breaking down into smaller and lighter particles—but you can never reverse the process. Nevertheless, something is making it reverse. (This is what the scientists talk about. It is baffling everybody. In fact, Henry Eyring, at the University of Utah, talked about it years ago. The theory is that the universe is exploding, because it was wound up tight. But what wound it up? You have to start out with that.) “This corruption could not put on incorruption,” wherefore this death and decay “which came upon man must needs have remained to an endless duration.” And notice how he rubs it in: “If so, this flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble”—that is, to disintegrate into mother earth—”to rise no more” (2 Nephi 9:7). That is the second law of nature, but according to Jacob, it is the first to which nature is subjected—the inexorable and irreversible trend toward corruption and disintegration; it can’t be reversed. It rises no more, crumbles, rots, and remains that way endlessly, for an endless duration.

This would spell an end to everything, were it not that another force works against it. “Wherefore, it must needs be an infinite atonement” (2 Nephi 9:7), he says—in effect, a principle of unlimited application. An infinite principle is at work here. “It should be infinite”—Jacob insists on that. It can’t be limited, it can’t be provisional, it can’t be a mere expediency; it is an infinite principle, just as much as the other principle is. Without an infinite atonement, “this corruption could not put on incorruption.” We could not save ourselves from entropy. Someone else must be there to do it. Notice what atonement means: reversal of the degradative process, a returning to its former state, being integrated or united again—”at-one.” What results when particles break down? They separate. Decay is always from heavier to lighter particles. But “atonement” brings particles back together again. Bringing anything back to its one original state is at-one-ment. According to the law of nature (those are Jacob’s words—according to the first principle), that could never happen.

We noted that both the physicist and the biologist were aware of an ordering and organizing agent that opposes the second law. Matthews pays tribute to the Pythagoreans: “Why is it then that when we come to examine the inanimate world, we find it controlled by laws which can only be put in mathematical terms?”29 For that matter, what do I know about it? Yet all inanimate nature conducts itself according to mathematical principles conceived of as pure theory by the human mind. Somebody must be working things out. And so we begin with the creation story.

There is matter. That is the first law: matter was always there. There is unorganized matter. Or as Lyall Watson says, “The normal state of matter is chaos.”30 It always is and it always will be. The normal state of matter is to be unorganized. There is unorganized matter; let us go down and organize it into a world. That mysterious somebody is at work, bringing order from chaos. It would be easy to say we were making up a story, if we didn’t have a world to prove it. Somebody went down and organized it. Matter was always there, always in its normal state of chaos; and long ago the protons should have all broken down, yet here is the world. Matter is unorganized. The temple represents that organizing principle in the universe which brings all things together. It is the school where we learn about these things.

Why did the Egyptians build temples? Recently, Philippe Derchain has rediscovered a very important Egyptian temple document, the Salt Papyrus 825.31 Though known for a hundred years, no one realized what it was until he discovered it again. He begins by noting that the Egyptians felt themselves surrounded by an omnipresent and ever-threatening chaos. They were intensely conscious of the second law of breaking down—it haunted them. They were hypnotized, almost paralyzed, by the terror of that breaking down; and of course you will find in no place more dramatic and uncompromising descriptions of the processes of decay and the evil of death than in the Egyptian funerary texts. They hated death, they loathed it, but they looked it in the eye anyway.

Order and security are the exception in this world. It would seem the Egyptians entered the land in a time of great world upheavals. Their own accounts are full of it; they always talked about it. They had seen nature on the rampage, and they knew man hangs by the skin of his teeth.

Scientists now tell us about the great “Permo-Triassic catastrophe.”32 The great German biologist, Otto H. Schindewolf calls the movement neocatastrophism, and it is indeed a different picture.33 How un-Victorian it is to give to books titles like the Violent Universe, or the Restless Earth! The earth is stability itself, as lasting and unshaken as the hills. If you but look at the daily paper, you realize that that is not the case at all.

It was the same in Babylonia. We read in the Abraham traditions that the prototemple of Babylonia, the tower of Babel, was built as a place in which to accumulate data and master the knowledge necessary to counteract—to meet, to check, to soften—any major world catastrophe. The Babylonians were scared to death—they had vivid memories of the flood—and desperately determined to avoid involvement in another debacle; they thought that technical know-how could save them.

The Egyptians believed that by the mind alone, chaos is kept at a distance. This implies that the cessation of thought would ipso facto mark the end of the universe. This was the great fear of the Egyptians: the most constant preoccupation of endlessly repeated rites was to achieve unlimited, everlasting stability. It was not the earthly temple, which one could pretend to be built for eternity; eternity was static time, hierophantic time which could be attained only by constant effort of the mind. You have to work at it all the time. It was by the operation of the spirit alone that things could be effectively preserved from annihilation. I am reminded here of the marvelous book of Fourth Nephi, which describes the model society and how it disintegrated. And you retort, “My land, they lived in a happy time, didn’t they?” And, of course, happy are the people whose annals are blank. Nephi doesn’t tell us anything about it, because there was nothing to report. It wasn’t catastrophic; there were no crimes, no wars. But why did they lose it all? Because it was too strenuous; it required great mental exertion: they spent their time constantly in meetings and prayer and fasting—in concentrating on things (4 Nephi 1:12). The exercise of the mind was simply too exhausting. It was less weary just to give up and let things drift, to go back to the old ways. They had to work hard to preserve that marvelous order of things.

Between the forces that create and the forces that destroy, the Egyptian saw himself as a third force, in between the other two. His business was to conserve, to preserve, to keep things as much as possible as they were. There is a force that creates and a force that destroys; humans are in between. But he could conserve only by la pensée, thought actualized by symbolic words or gestures. Along with this urgency went a feeling of total responsibility, which in return called for action.

The basic rite of the temple was sacrifice. The point that interests us here is just how the Egyptians thought they could contribute to upholding the physical world order by purely symbolic indications of thought. It was thought that really counted after all. Yet the symbols are important. They direct, concentrate, discipline, and inform the thought. To be effective, thought must be so motivated and directed. Watson’s Supernature has a great deal to say on this subject.34 The one thing that all the experimenters in psychokinesis, telepathy, and ESP, and all the borderline probings into the workings of the mind (which in our day are being undertaken with such astonishing results by the most skeptical people on earth—mostly Soviets) agree on is that whenever the task is set, successful performance is directly related to the power of concentration, to the will, to the desire, to total interest and involvement. The person has to be excited; then he can do amazing things. But if the interest and concentration are not kept at a high level, nothing much goes on. When the level is high, the mind actually has a direct effect on things. The mind can do astonishing things just by thought. It is a matter of concentrating and ordering it.

This principle is illustrated in the ancient prayer circle in the temples.35 Concentration of thoughts in a single structure has a definite significance. (Much could be said about this.) For the Egyptians and the Babylonians, as for us, the temple represents the principle of ordering the universe. It is the hierocentric point around which all things are organized. It is the omphalos (“navel”) around which the earth was organized. The temple is a scale model of the universe, boxed to the compass, a very important feature of every town in our contemporary civilization, as in the ancient world.36 (Years ago, Sir James George Frazer noticed a definite pattern among ancient religious cult practices: they all followed the same patterns throughout the whole world.37 He explained that as representing certain stages of evolution in which the mind naturally expressed itself in those forms. But since then the gaps between these various cultures have been filled in, to show that civilization was far more connected.) Civilization is hierocentric, centered around the holy point of the temple. The temple was certainly the center of things in Babylonia, in Egypt, in Greece—wherever you go. This was certainly so in pioneer Utah. This pattern descended, of course, from ancient times to the Latter-day Saint church. The pioneer saints throughout the half-explored wastes of “Deseret” oriented their streets with reference to the temple. The street is designated first, second, third, east, west, north, or south, depending on its orientation to the temple. The temple is boxed to the compass. On the west end of the Salt Lake Temple you see the Big Dipper represented, a very important feature. Like the Egyptian temple at Dendera, you had to have the Big Dipper there, representing the North Star, around which all things pivot.38 The main gate must face east. The sun, the moon, and the stars—the three degrees—are represented there. It is a scale model of the universe, for teaching purposes and for the purpose of taking our bearings on the universe and in the eternities, both in time and in space. And of course as far as time is concerned, we take our center there. We are in the middle world, working for those who have been before and who will come after. We are, so to speak, “transferring” our ancestors (we have their records—all quite recent; and let us remember that the genealogy records were kept in the basement of the Salt Lake Temple, where they belong) in the sense that the work for people who lived long ago makes it possible for them to project their existences into what is to come in the future.

We stand in the middle position. This earth is the Old English middan-(g)eard, the middle-earth. The markas samê u erseti of the Babylonians means the knot that ties heaven to earth, the knot that ties all horizontal distances together, and all up and down, the meeting point of the heavens and the earth. It is the middle point at which the worlds above and the worlds below join. This scale model of the universe is the temple. Of course, the word for temple in Latin, templum, means the same thing as template: a plan marked out on the ground by the augur’s staff, to help him determine the exact direction of the prophetic flight of birds. He sat at the cardo, the hinge or pivot around which all things turn, where the north-south line crossed the east-west line or decumanus. The person who was going to receive divination either by the birds or by the heavens, would sit in the center and take his bearings with regard to his carefully laid-out observatory. This was represented in the ancient stone circles. You find most of them to be of great antiquity—over 200 of them in England and in France, in the form and model of the ancient Egyptian temple. The temple is also an observatory. That is what a templum is—a place where you take your bearings on things. More than that, it is a working model, a laboratory for demonstrating basic principles by use of figures and symbols, which convey to finite minds things beyond their immediate experience. There the man Adam first sought further light and knowledge. His zeal was rewarded by bestowal from above of principles and ordinances that he was to study and transmit to his children.

The temple is the great teaching institution of the human race; universities are much older than we might ever expect. A university began as a Greek Mouseion, a temple of the Muses, who represented all departments of knowledge. The Egyptians called it the “House of Life.” It was an observatory, a great megalithic complex of standing stones (later columns and pylons), with amazingly sophisticated devices for observing and recording the motions of the heavens. A study of Stonehenge shows that it was a computer of great accuracy,39 a university set in the midst of sacred groves—botanical and geological gardens and groves; it was a “paradise,” a Garden of Eden, where all life is sacrosanct. It has often been said the temple is the source of all civilization. A brief statement from a recent article explains, the House of Life in Egypt, where books (which contained some of the earliest poetry) were copied and studied from early times, was a sort of super graduate school. It was here in this part of the temple that all questions relating to learned matters were settled.

The word for poetry, poiema, means “creation of the world.”40 The business of the Muses at the temple was to sing the creation song with the morning stars. Naturally, because they were dramatizing the story of the creation, too, the hymn was sung to music (some scholars derive the first writing from musical notation). The singing was performed in a sacred circle or chorus, so that poetry, music and dance go together.41 (Lucian’s famous essay on the ancient dance, among the earliest accounts, takes it back to the round dance in the temple,42 like the prayer circle that Jesus used to hold with the apostles and their wives—Jesus standing at the altar in the arms of Adam, and the apostles’ wives standing in the circle with them. Some have referred to this as a dance; it is definitely a chorus.)43 So poetry, music, and dance go out to the world from the temple—called by the Greeks the Mouseion, the shrine of the Muses.

The creation hymn was part of the great dramatic presentation that took place yearly at the temple; it dealt with the fall and redemption of man, represented by various forms of combat, making the place a scene of ritual athletic contests that were sacred throughout the world. The victor in the contest was the father of the race—the priest king himself, whose triumphant procession, coronation, and marriage took place on the occasion, making this the seat and source of government. The temple, not the palace, is the source of all government. Since the entire race was expected to be present for the event, a busy exchange of goods from various distant regions took place. (This was what the Greeks called a panegyris—an assembly of the entire human race in a circle.) The booths of pilgrims served as market booths for great fairs, while the need to convert various and bizarre forms of wealth into acceptable offerings for the temple led to an active banking and exchange in the temple court. The earliest money from Juno Moneta, which had the temple on the hill in the capital, portrays the defending Juno on the coins. You had to bring an offering to the temple; no one came empty-handed (Deuteronomy 16:16). Coming from a great distance, you couldn’t bring a pure dove, so you would exchange a token for one when you got to the temple, then make your offering. Jesus drove out of the temple the moneychangers in the courts who were changing the various monies and also dealing in goods (Matthew 21:12), as well as lambs and doves. It was the center of banking and all exchange.

Since the place served as an observatory, all things there tied to the calendar and the stars. Mathematics flourished; astronomy was a Muse. History was another Muse, for the rites were meant for the dead as well as the living. Memorials to former great ones believed to be in attendance encouraged the production of art of portraiture, sculpture, and painting. The Romans had no art, except the marvelous art of portraiture. Their ancestral busts were amazingly lifelike. They were cut off at the upper chest to represent the person as emerging from the earth, being rescued or redeemed from death. (It was an Egyptian custom taken over, but would have flourished anyway.) In architectural adornments, the design, the measurements, the middot of the temple structure were very significant. As a scale model of the universe, a cosmic computer, the measurements were all very important; they had to be correct. The architecture of the hierocentric structures was of prime concern.

Since from that central point all the earth was measured and all the lands distributed, geometry was essential. The writings produced and copied in the House of Life were also discussed there, giving rise to that aspect of philosophy concerned largely with cosmology and natural science. In short, there is no part of our civilization which doesn’t have its rise in the temple. Thanks to the power of the written word, records were kept. And in the all-embracing relationship to the divine book, everything is relevant; nothing is really dead or forgotten. In the time of the gatherings of all things together, we gather everything good that ever was—not just people—that nothing be lost but everything be restored in this last dispensation. In an all-embracing relationship, nothing is ever really dead or forgotten. Every detail belongs in the picture, which would be incomplete without it. Lacking such a synthesizing principle, our present-day knowledge becomes ever more fragmented; our libraries and universities crumble and disintegrate as they expand. Where the temple that gave us birth is missing, civilization itself becomes a hollow shell.

The temple must be there. It is not just a myth, it is the core of all of our civilization. In 1930 this concept began to reemerge at Cambridge. The Cambridge school began calling what they taught there patternism, because they saw the ancient teachings all falling into the same pattern, which I have just described.

In the temple we are taught by symbols and examples; but that is not the fullness of the gospel. One very popular argument today says, “Look, you say the Book of Mormon contains the fullness of the gospel, but it doesn’t contain any of the temple ordinances in it, does it?” Ordinances are not the fullness of the gospel. Going to the temple is like entering into a laboratory to confirm what you have already learned in the classroom and from the text. The fullness of the gospel is the understanding of what the plan is all about—the knowledge necessary to salvation. You know the whys and wherefores; for the fullness of the gospel you go to Nephi, to Alma, to Moroni. Then you will enter into the lab, but not in total ignorance. The ordinances are mere forms. They do not exalt us; they merely prepare us to be ready in case we ever become eligible.

We have been assuming almost unconsciously, note well, that our temple is of the same class as the temples of the Egyptians. Let me explain that. The ordinances of the Egyptian temple were essentially the same as those performed in ours. And that can be explained very simply: they have a common origin. The clue is given in Abraham 1:26: “Pharaoh, being a righteous man, established his kingdom and judged his people wisely and justly all his days, seeking earnestly to imitate that order established by the fathers in the first generations, in the days of the first patriarchal reign, even in the reign of Adam, and also of Noah, his father, who blessed him with the blessings of earth” (Abraham 1:26). He sought diligently, he sought earnestly, to imitate the order that went back to the fathers of the first generation in the first patriarchal reign. The Egyptian ordinance also always had one purpose—to go back to the sp tpy—the First Time, the time of the first man, who was Adam. The Egyptians didn’t have it, and they knew it. So they sought to imitate it. Interestingly, Pharaoh was worried sick about this problem. Pharaoh spent his days in the archives in the House of Life, searching through the genealogical records with the nobles of the court turning over the records, looking for some genealogical proof that he really had authority. He never found it, and it broke his heart. And “Pharaoh, being of the lineage whereby he could not have the right of Priesthood, not withstanding the Pharaohs would fain claim it from Noah” (Abraham 1:27)—made a very good imitation, seeking very earnestly to imitate that order which went back to the beginning.

So the Egyptian result is a very good imitation of our temple ordinances (I have just finished a very large book on that particular subject).44 My book The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment takes you through the Egyptian temple without any mention of the Latter-day Saint temple at all. The latter is not necessary. It’s easy to see what is going on. And all this is an open secret among scholars today, so we are not giving anything away. The ordinances do have a common origin; Abraham’s comment is the clue. He said the Egyptians did imitate them. The rites of the Joseph Smith Papyri 10 and 11, known as the Book of Breathings, follow a familiar pattern. And to show that I am not reading the pattern into it, I included in the appendix of my book a number of early Jewish and Christian writings, each dealing with orthodox Jewish and Christian texts as if they were the very same ordinances, which were since lost. The ancient temple ordinances, called mysteries, are found in various degrees of preservation. If you ask what Joseph Smith knew about real temples, I reply, everything.

In this connection, there is an interesting sidelight to the word telestial, a word long considered as one of Joseph Smith’s more glaring indiscretions. We know now that there are three worlds: the telestial, in which we live; the celestial, to which we aspire; and in between them another world, called the terrestrial. It is of neither the celestial nor the telestial. According to the ancients, this world is represented by the temple, the in-between world where the rites of passage take place. Indeed the root telos is a very rich word in this regard and has been treated a lot recently. It deals with the mysteries. Telos means initiation.45 Teleiomai means to be introduced into the mysteries.46 Professor Werner Jaeger of Harvard, a close friend of mine who wrote Paideia, was much exercised with that word teleiotes when he was editing Gregory of Nyssa. He claimed that Gregory was talking about the mysteries. A teleiotes is a person who has been initiated into some degree or other of the mysteries, and the completion of the degree qualifies him as complete or “perfect.”47

This word root first appears as indicating various steps from beginning to end of the initiation ordinances of the mysteries. In a recent book, just out this year (1973), Morton Smith has shown at great length that the word “mystery,” as used by the early Jews and Christians (taught in secret to the apostles), was nothing else than a series of initiatory ordinances for achieving the highest salvation which today are lost and unknown to the Christian world. He says we don’t know what they are; but that is what Christ meant by the mysteries of the kingdom. He meant ordinances, which were necessary; and these he revealed to the apostles during his very confidential teachings of the forty days after the resurrection.48 The purpose of such ordinances is to bridge the space between the world in which we now live, the telestial world, and that to which we aspire, the celestial world. Therefore, the events of the temple were thought to take place in the terrestrial sphere. Recall that you leave the creation, and you end up at the celestial; but nothing happens in the celestial. Everything happens in the telestial and terrestrial, but not until after you leave the garden. Then the fun begins, until you arrive at your celestial rest. The whole temple represents teleiotes. It is also in the “telestial” world below, a word that nobody used but Joseph Smith. And it means that very thing—the lowest world, the world in which we are placed below the other two. Because the ordinances bridge the two worlds — the telestial and the celestial — the events of the temple were thought to take place in both terrestrial and telestial spheres, the world of the mysteries or ordinances. But the Coptic Text called the in-between world the world of transition. This is a beautiful score for Joseph Smith.

One of the most famous of all temples was that at Jerusalem. In our day there are strange stirrings as Jews and Christians begin speculating (you would be surprised by its seriousness) on the advisability of reintroducing some form of temple activity, though they are embarrassed by such basic questions as “What would we do with a temple, and who should be in charge?” But because of these new texts coming out, apocalyptic texts, all zeroing in on temples, the temple becomes the center. The most famous temple was that at Jerusalem. In Christianity and Judaism, the temple played a strangely ambivalent role; the Judaic ties have been the focus of a number of studies. The Jews like the theme, but they are afraid of it; they don’t know what to do about it. They needed to exalt the temple, or else minimize it as a mere building. When the temple stood, it was the palladium of the nation, and it came to be sort of a fetish—something that we learn from Josephus. This led to the dangerous concept that as long as the people had the temple and its rites, they could consider themselves righteous and infallible; nothing would happen to them. Templum Dei, Templum Dei, Templum Dei: it is the temple of God, nothing can hurt us.

The same natural error hangs over the Latter-day Saints, incidentally, who often regard the temple as a kind of fetish. Sister Eve Nielsen, who works in the library at BYU, specializes in genealogy. She tells that when she was a small girl, she and her brothers and sisters stood at the door of their house in Manti, clinging to their mother’s skirts during a terrible thunderstorm and looking at the temple, which had just been finished. Her father was up working on it. They said to their mother, “God will not let lightning strike the temple, will he?” And just as her mother was assuring them that he would not, bang!—lightning struck the east tower, which began to burn briskly. Sister Nielsen’s father was in the crew that rushed up and soon put out the fire. When he came home, the children asked him what went wrong. What gives here? He explained to them that the installation of lightning rods had been discussed but not carried out. He said that God had given the means to protect the temple against lightning, and the workers neglected to use those means; they thus had no right to expect miraculous interventions. God expects us to go on the same as ever. The temple in itself is not a fetish—it is not a palladium (aegis; cf. fig. 30, p. 125); because the Jews attached their hopes in the end to a building, its destruction had the most crushing effect on them. The Christians exulted, but the Jews thought they would never be restored again because the temple had been destroyed and the Jews themselves felt utterly discouraged with the passing of the temple—it was all over with.

Everything was based on a building. Indeed, the Lord pointed this out more than once. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:14). The Christian doctors never tired of the old rhetorical clichés that discoursed on the vanity of putting one’s faith in a building. Christ, we are told, destroyed the temple of stone, but the church is a spiritual temple, the only kind of temple that really counts. Do you have to have a physical temple? There we see the ambivalence of the argument. The very fathers—Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom—who inveighed against the folly and idolatry of attributing sanctity to a mere place, a mere building, were the first ones to join in the pious pilgrimage to go back to the ruins of the holy building. The church never gave sanction to pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Its leaders did not like them, but always opposed them. In no instance did the church encourage pilgrimages, but rather actually opposed them. Some people actually insisted on going back to the old order of things because they thought they could find the gospel there.

This was the sense of the Crusades: the Crusaders going back to the temple to the Holy of Holies. This was in fact the project of Columbus: he wished to discover the Indies to get enough money to rebuild the temple. The Protestant pilgrims, of course, denounced the folly of going to Jerusalem, yet they have been engaged with unsurpassed vigor and passion in doing just that, especially the less ritually bound Christians, like the Quakers. They are the ones who love to make such pilgrimages. The first great modern war, the Crimean, was fought over the protection of the holy places in Jerusalem. Everybody was concerned. World history actually pivots around the temple. James T. Lowe’s Geopolitics and War,49 a discussion of Halford J. Mackinder’s theory, is geographically centered in that part of the world (that part of the earth where the sea penetrates the world land mass to a great distance, which makes it the geopolitical center of the world—the strategic point for dominating the whole world by sea or by land). But not only that, it was the ideological center. Everybody in the great seventeenth century had great schemes and plans for getting the temple back. It has been an obsession with the Christian world, and some Jews contemplate a forthcoming rebuilding of the temple.

The modern world asks with lofty superiority, Why a building? Why not a spiritual edifice? Does God need gadgets? We are here in the world to familiarize ourselves with a new medium. We may neither deny the reality of solid things nor be taken up too much with them. We shouldn’t become hypnotized by them. The Oriental monks went to both extremes: they utterly denied the flesh, and so as a result became obsessed with it.

We Mormons have gone all out in the past to build temples, making great sacrifices of our means. Yet we have not been attached to the buildings as such. Brigham Young nearly worked himself to death getting the Nauvoo temple built on time. But he did not “again want to see [a temple] built to go into the hands of the wicked.” After learning of the destruction of the Nauvoo Temple by fire, he said, ” ‘Good, Father, if you want it to be burned up.’ I hoped to see it burned before I left, but I did not. I was glad when I heard of its being destroyed by fire, and of the walls having fallen in, and said, ‘Hell you cannot now occupy it.’ “50 It was just a building after all. Why then should he knock himself out? We strive to make our temples beautiful, but if in the eyes of many of us some turn out to be something less than breathtaking, that doesn’t dampen our enthusiasm for what goes on in them. My favorite temple is certainly the Provo Temple, though as a building I give it very low marks indeed. We are not attached to the building as such (it is but an endowment house). Basic to all temples is their exclusiveness and isolation. The temple is something set apart.

Each dispensation is marked by the return of the temple and its ordinances. The temple lies at the center of apocalyptic literature. Without a temple, there is no true Israel. For there alone is the priesthood; with the destruction of the temple, the Jews also lost the priesthood. And the rabbis rejoiced. We are told that as the temple was burning, the rabbis went to Vespasian and asked (Titus was doing the job) for permission to build the first rabbinical school at Jamnia, and they got it. They actually rejoiced in the fall of the temple.

The Christian doctors also rejoiced over the destruction of the temple, gloating over it because it meant the end of the Jews. Without the temple, there could be no Judaism; it could never come back again. This theme very much concerns them now. In 1948 President Truman’s emissary had a long discussion with the Pope, who was very emphatic when he said that whatever happens, the Jews must never again build a temple. It was very important; they must never go back to Jerusalem, because the prophecy is that they can never go back. The prospect alarmed and annoyed the Christians, but it also fascinated them; they couldn’t leave it alone.

The basic institutions of civilization were defined ultimately in the temple or derived from the temple. Many of those institutions became rivals—bitter rivals—of the temple, effectively displacing it. Thus the ancient Sophists took over education. When they did so, the university became an anti-temple, which it has remained ever since, adopting the forms of the temple to discredit its teachings and doctrines.

In our day, as in various other times in history, the sanctity and the authority of the temple have been preempted in the religion of mammon, for example. Our banks are designed after the manner of ancient temples, with imposing fronts, ceremonial gates and courts, the onyx, the marble, the bronze—all are the substances of ancient temples. The sacred hush that prevails, the air of propriety, decorum, and dedication; the pious inscriptions on Zions Bank’s walls are quotations from Brigham Young (the one man who really had it in for business). The massive vault door, through which only the initiated may pass, gleams chastely in immaculate metal. The symbol makes the reality of all that is safe and secure—that is, the Holy of Holies. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. This is the Lord speaking. We declare that our trust is in God, and we give ourselves away by stamping that declaration where it belongs—on our coins and bills.

As it comes and goes through the dispensations, the temple is the bridgehead for Zion—preparing the way, a sort of outpost or outland. It is an alien thing in the world and as such it is resented. It is feared and envied; it lies as an intruder, the dread and envy of the world, an invader in a wicked and adulterous world. Zion is on the defensive. Our early Latter-day Saint temples were all designed as fortresses, with their buttresses, their battlements, their gates, their walls—always the surrounding wall. If the temple represents the principle of order in chaos, it also represents the foothold, you might say, of righteousness in a wicked world. Someone once asked me concerning the Egyptian ordinances contained in the Joseph Smith manuscript, Is this stuff relevant to the modern world? My answer is no. It is relevant to the eternities. The modern world is as unstable as a decaying isotope, but the temple has always been the same. The ordinances are those taught by an angel to Adam.

The bringing of the temple into the world was a reminder in the days of Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Christ, and Joseph Smith that the world as a going concern is coming to a close. That little phase of human existence was about to pass away and give place to another. One of the lessons of the recent scientific research in these many fields is that the course of history and geology—thinking of that “Permo-Triassic catastrophe” now—is not one of slow, infinitely gradual, salutary evolution.51 The Lord told the Prophet Joseph Smith in the first vision that he was fed up with the world: “There is none that doeth good, no not one.”52 And he was about to remove it. We are told that the sudden, catastrophic housecleaning is to take place when the condition of saturation has been reached—when the people are ripe in iniquity.

The name of the Church will not let us forget that these are the last days. The last days of what? Of the rule of Belial, of the reign of Satan on this earth. In the temple, we first learn by what means Satan has ruled the world, and how it came about, and how he has ruled over the world these many years. Then we proceed to lay the foundation for that order of existence which God intends his children to have here. In both lessons, we deal with specifics. We are given a choice between them—to that degree we live up to the principles and laws of the temple. If we don’t live up to them, we are in the power of the other kingdom. It is in the temple that God puts the proposition on the line, and he will not be mocked. The temple is there to call us back to our senses, to tell us where our real existence lies, to save us from ourselves. So let us go there often and face the reality, brethren and sisters.

We testify to the truth of the existence of these things. We ask, What did Joseph Smith know about the temple? He knew everything about it. He gave us the complete thing. So we know that the gospel has been restored, and that the temple is the center of things. So we must repair there often. I have gotten so I am almost an addict. I cannot keep away from the temple. I revel in it, the building I call an endowment house, lacking as it does in so many aspects—but that doesn’t make any difference. We can see the ordinances and the endowments. It was built for practical purposes.

In a speech in the 1880s in St.George, Brother Erastus Snow said that every temple has a slightly different design, because it performs a different purpose. The St.George Temple was built after the pattern of the Kirtland Temple, to emphasize certain things. Our Provo Temple is built in a different way entirely. It functions with a different thing in mind—efficiency in getting a lot of work done in a hurry, but also as a teaching tool. In 1897, scholars discovered a marvelous document called the Apocalypse of Abraham. In it, Abraham is shown an ordinance, as if in a moving picture projected on a screen. And an angel instructs him: “Now see this, . . . now this picture. You walk with me in the Garden. This is a picture of the Garden of Eden.” And Abraham asks, “Who is the man here?” The angel replies, “That is Adam and the woman is Eve, and I will tell you about them.”53 He leads Abraham through and then he takes him to the next picture, as it is projected on a screen.

Any means we can use to convey the information, to convey the knowledge, will fulfill the Lord’s purposes. So no two temples are built alike. Remember what Brigham Young said when they started to build the Salt Lake Temple with six towers instead of one? “Now do not any of you apostatize because . . . it will have six towers, and Joseph only built one.”54

We live in Vanity Fair today, and the temple represents the one sober spot in the world where we can really be serious and consider these things. It is my testimony that the gospel has been restored, and the Lord intends to fulfill his purposes in these days. And whatever we ask him for, he will give us. This I tell my family without any reservation whatever. I have never asked the Lord for anything that he didn’t give to me. Well, you say, in that case, you surely didn’t ask for much. No, I didn’t; I was very careful not to ask for much. We don’t want to be spoiled brats, do we? We ask for what we need, for what we can’t get ourselves, and the Lord will give it to us. Don’t worry. But he also wants us to get in and dig for the rest. So I pray and hope that the Lord may inspire and help us all to become more engaged—more involved—in the work of these latter-days and visit the temple often and become wiser all the time, because he intends to give us more revelations through that instrumentality. I pray for this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. Albert L. Lehninger, Principles of Biochemistry (New York: Worth, 1982), 362. First Law of Thermodynamics: In any physical or chemical change the total amount of energy in the universe remains constant; Second Law of Thermodynamics: All physical or chemical changes tend to proceed in such a direction that useful energy undergoes irreversible degradation into a randomized form called entropy. They come to stop at an equilibrium point, at which the entropy formed is the maximum possible under the existing conditions.

2. Lyall Watson, Supernature (New York: Anchor Press, 1973), 8.

3. Ibid.

4. P. T. Matthews, The Nuclear Apple (London: Chatto and Windus, 1971), 69.

5. Ibid., 68.

6. Ibid., 69-70.

7. Ibid., 70 (see footnote).

8. Matthews, Nuclear Apple, 70; the numerator (24) is calculated from the formula P (n, k) = n!/(n-k)!, where P = permutations, n = number of items involved, and k = the number of ways in which the items (suits) can be taken. Here we assume that the suits are already ordered from the highest to the lowest card, and we wish to calculate the permutations of the four suits (hearts, clubs, diamonds, and spades) taken four ways. Substituting into the equation we get P = 4!/(4-4)! = 4!/0! = 24. The denominator is calculated similarly: P = 52!/(52-52)! = 52!/0! = 8.066×1067. (Note that Matthews underestimates the permutations of all 52 cards taken 52 ways by 15 orders of magnitude [subtracting the exponents, we get 67-52=15]. The ratio of numerator to denominator gives the following: 24/8.066 x 1067 = 2.975 x 10-67. Taking the recpirocal, we get: 1 to 3.361 x 1066, or one chance in 3.36 x 1066 of getting the ordered suit from a randomly ordered deck of 52 cards.)

9. Ibid., 71.

10. Ibid., 142.

11. Watson, Supernature, 5.

12. Matthews, Nuclear Apple, 143.

13. George Wald, “The Origin of Life,” Scientific American (August 1954): 4-5.

14. Matthews, Nuclear Apple, 143-44.

15. Ibid., 71.

16. P. Kammerer, cited in Watson, Supernature, 109-10.

17. Richard Buckminster Fuller, Intuition (New York: Doubleday, 1972), 82, 84, 110-11.

18. Nikolai Kozyrev, “An Unexplored World,” Soviet Life (November 1965): 27.

19. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act III, scene iv, line 133.

20. Nigel Calder, The Restless Earth (New York: Viking, 1972), 19, 21.

21. Ibid., 21.

22. Ibid.

23. Noam Chomsky quoted in Nigel Calder, The Mind of Man (London: British Broadcasting, 1970), 197.

24. Ralph Sperry, quoted in ibid., 260.

25. Matthews, Nuclear Apple, 141-42.

26. Ibid., 64.

27. For definition, see n. 1.

28. David Winston, “The Book of Wisdom’s Theory of Cosmogony,” History of Religions 11 (1971): 191-92; Jonathan Goldstein, “The Origins of the Doctrine of Creation Ex Nihilo,” Journal of Jewish Studies 35 (1984): 127-35; and David Winston, “Creation Ex Nihilo Revisited: a Reply to Jonathan Goldstein,” Journal of Jewish Studies 37 (1986): 88-91. See also, Gerhard May, Schöpfung aus dem (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1978).

29. Matthews, Nuclear Apple, 144.

30. Watson, Supernature, 3.

31. Philippe Derchain, Le Papyrus Salt 825 (Bruxelles: Palais des Académie, 1965).

32. Nigel Calder, The Restless Earth (New York: Viking, 1972), 122.

33. Otto H. Schindewolf, “Neokatastrophismus,” Zeitschrift der deutschen geologischen Gesellschaft 114 (1963): 430

34. Watson, Supernature, 128-41, 273, 276-79.

35. Hugh W. Nibley, “The Early Christian Prayer Circle,” BYUS, 19 (Fall 1978), 41-78; reprinted in CWHN 4:45-99.

36. Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 6-8.; cf. I. E. S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt (New York: Penguin, 1961), 256, 287, 290-96. Cf. Hugh W. Nibley, “Comments,” in Mormonism, a Faith for All Cultures ed. F. LaMond Tullis (Provo: BYU Press, 1978), 22-28; reprinted as “Some Notes on Cultural Diversity in the Universal Church” in this volume, pages 541-49.

37. Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough, 12 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1935).

38. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt, 256-57, 259. See the comments by Truman O. Angell (temple architect), in “The Temple,” MS (1854): 754.

39. Fred Hoyle, From Stonehenge to Modern Cosmology (San Francisco: Freemen, 1972); cf. Gerald S. Hawkins, “Appendix B—Stonehenge: A Neolithic Computer,” in Stonehenge Decoded (New York: Doubleday, 1965), 174-81. [For a review of more recent scholarship on Stonehenge as an astronomical computer, cf. Christopher Chippindale, Stonehenge Complete (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 216-36.]

40. See Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “poem.”

41. See Nibley, “Early Christian Prayer Circle,” 48-50; in CWHN 4:53-54.

42. Lucian, Dance, 15 and 23; for an English translation, see A. M. Harmon, tr., Lucian, 8 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936), 5:229, 235.

43. 2 Jeu 54 [40], in Schmidt, Gnostische Schriften in koptischer Sprache, 99, 193; cf. Carl Schmidt, ed., The Books of Jeu and the Untitled Text in the Bruce Codex (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 127, 147.

44. Hugh W. Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1975).

45. Henry G. Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1940; with supplement, 1968), 1773.

46. Ibid., 1772.

47. Werner Jaeger, Paideia, tr. Gilbert Highet, 3 vols. (New York: Oxford, 1944).

48. Morton Smith, The Secret Gospel (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 16-17, 102-3, 140.

49. James T. Lowe, Geopolitics and War (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1981), 49-50, 65.

50. JD 8:203.

51. Calder, Restless Earth, 122.

52. The 1832 recital of First Vision as dictated by Joseph Smith to Frederick G. Williams. See Dean C. Jessee, The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1984), 3-8; Milton V. Backman, Joseph Smith’s First Vision (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1971), Appendix A; cf. Dean C. Jessee, ed., “The Early Accounts of Joseph Smith’s First Vision,” BYUS 9 (1969): 280.

53. Apocalypse of Abraham 23:9-11, in OTP 1:700.

54. JD 1:133.

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