The Line “I” Describe … A Speculation on the Path of a Single Point of Awareness Through Whole Space

“I” describe, or draw, or create, a line as I move through the Universe. In fact, I describe, draw and/or create probably an infinite number of lines, depending on what point within my person you might choose as “the” point you’ll track.

You could pick one atom in a lower bicuspid as a point, and that point describes a line as it moves through the Universe.

I will choose my “Heart” … just because it is a familiar notion and seems more or less at the center of the “me” about which I’m talking, and will further specify, in this initial description, that I’m referencing whatever point is the perceived “Center of My Heart” at any given moment.

So … my “Heart,” referencing whatever point is the perceived “Center of My Heart” at any given moment, describes a line as I move through the Universe. This is pretty easy to imagine as I walk down the hall toward the front door. Not too hard to consider that my Heart is describing a line as I move from one place to another or that the line will have a certain “texture” to it as my gait moves my “Heart” in idiosyncratic fashion, rising and falling with my steps and perhaps swerving slightly from side to side because of the same influence.

But my movement down the hall is not the only thing that determines the line my Heart describes as I move through the Universe. You see, I am also walking along the surface of the Earth, which surface is moving about a thousand miles an hour as Earth rotates around its axis. So, in addition to the idiosyncratically “textured” but more or less simple-to-imagine line my Heart describes as I walk down the hall toward the front door, the line my Heart describes as I move through the Universe is also determined by the fact that I am borne along upon the surface of the Earth at a thousand miles per hour. In fact, though I may appear to be describing one particular line as I’m walking West, the line I’m actually describing is an arc to the East, as I ride our Earth in its rotation, the speed is just slower by however fast I’m walking toward the West.

 

So my heart describes a line as I move through the Universe and part of what determines the line is my movement across the surface of the Earth and another part of what determines that line through the Universe is the fact that I’m on a surface that’s rotating around an axis.

 

But that rotating surface, as it spins, is also revolving around the Sun at just over 67,000 miles per hour.  So my Heart describes a line as it travels through the Universe that is determined by my movements across a surface that rotates around an axis that is revolving around a star.  Though the surface upon which I walk spins around, the line cannot be a circle, because the forward movement of the revolution continually removes it to ever different locations along the orbit, which seems cyclic itself except … well, there’s another factor at work further determining the line my Heart describes as it travels through the Universe.

 

The Sun is in orbit around the center of our Galaxy, and it is traveling along that orbit at nearly 500,000 miles per hour.  So my heart describes a line, as it moves through the Universe, which is given by my movements across the surface of the Earth as the rotation of the Earth around its axis is revolving around the Sun which is revolving around the center of the Galaxy … Those are some of the vectors and forces and velocities that determine the line my Heart describes as it moves across the Universe.

 

There is at least one more:  The Galaxy itself is traveling at 1.3 million miles an hour.  It is in orbit? I don’t know.  It may simply be following whatever trajectory was imparted to it by the forces at work during its creation.

 

So … my Heart describes a line as it travels through the Universe that is determined by my movements across a surface that is rotating at a thousand miles an hour around an axis  which is revolving at 67,000 miles per hour around the Sun which is revolving at nearly half a million miles per hour around the center of the Galaxy which may or may not be in orbit, but is moving through space at 1.3 million miles per hour.

 

It could not be clearer that there can be no circles in this line or that any but partial spirals are impossible.  There are arcs, but they are very complex as they are always created by the combination of multiple velocities and directions acting in constant interaction with each other.

 

I describe a line, travel a trajectory, as I travel through the Universe.

 

A Speculation on the Path of a Single Point of Awareness Through Whole Space

Trayvon

This week in Florida something that had festered for three weeks erupted, first locally, then across the state, and ultimately nationwide.

On a rainy night in February a young man was visiting his father and his father’s fiance’ in a gated community near Sanford. Apparently during halftime of a basketball game he went to a local convenience store and bought candy and iced tea. On the way back to his father’s house he was confronted by a man, tried to leave, was engaged in a physical struggle with that man, and was shot and killed.

Trayvon Martin was seventeen, a young black man walking on the street in a gated community.

George Zimmerman is a twenty eight year old man with an extensive history of calling 911 and reporting “suspicious black males” in his neighborhood. He has repeatedly been called the “captain of a neighborhood watch.” There is a great deal of different reporting on the matter with some saying he is not even a member of a watch and others reporting that he is, indeed a leader of his neighborhood watch.  On this night he seemed to be, in old fashioned parlance …

a vigilante.

He prowled the streets of his neighborhood, armed. Neighborhood watch members do NOT carry weapons.

He called police emergency to report a suspicious person walking in his neighborhood.

That was Trayvon, walking to his father’s house from the store with his candy and iced tea, bareheaded, in the rain.

Zimmerman considered that he was on drugs, or “looking about,” and followed Trayvon, who was on the phone to a 16 year old girl described as his girlfriend. He told her he was being followed by a man in a vehicle.

She told him to run.

From many places there have been reports that the police instructed Zimmerman not to follow the subject. Here’s what’s on the tape: The police dispatcher asked Zimmerman if he was following the man and when Zimmerman said he was, the dispatcher said, “Okay, we don’t need you to do that.”

Zimmerman acknowledged that … and followed Trayvon.

…who pulled up his hoodie and started walking away … faster. He’s still on the phone and the girl can hear what’s happening.

Zimmerman claims he stepped out of his vehicle to read what street he was on, and Trayvon attacked him from behind.

Do YOU need to step out of your vehicle in YOUR neighborhood to see what street you’re on?

Trayvon’s girlfriend heard someone ask him, “What are you doing around here?” and Trayvon asks, “Why are you following me?”

Does that sound like an ambush attack from behind?

At that point the young lady reports that she hears what sounds like someone pushing Trayvon and she loses contact with him.

Within moments 911 calls begin to light up the board and people begin to report someone scuffling and cries for help. In some of the audio you can hear the voice. I have listened to it several times. It sounds like a young man in a panic.

Zimmerman claims it was him calling for help after being ambushed from behind by Trayvon.

In the middle of one of the calls there is an audible gunshot … and the cries for help stop.

 

By the time police arrive, Trayvon is dead.

 

The police, with an unidentified dead child and a man with gun, interview Zimmerman and when he claims to have fired in self-defense and they release him … with the gun.

 

… and despite the fact that they have Trayvon’s cell phone, he is tagged “John Doe” and is held in the morgue for three days.

 

Right now, this very minute, George Zimmerman is free among the citizens of this society, with a loaded gun.

 

 

As Friday Comes Around

What a week, huh?

Hope your International Women’s Day was rich and powerful. The women at WMNF ran the station today, as they do each year. Each year is a treat and this year was no exception.

The public affairs programs in the morning brought a diversity of young women to the mic for a long and deep conversation about the experience of being a woman and an activist in today’s world where one of our major political parties seems to be homing in on the 19th Century. “It’s the Music” showcased women making music LIVE in the WMNF studios. You can’t find that anywhere across your dial.

Thank you, ladies … it was wonderful and, as always, I look forward to next year.

The Republican “Circular Firing Squad Tour” rolled through “Super Tuesday,” so named for its fabled power to deliver the “clincher” for the party’s nominee, and produced not a hint that resolution is anywhere on the horizon. Even the “pundits” on the right are puzzled and confused as to where the road may lead. The “brokered convention” is a feature of comment with increasing frequency, with there apparently being a very real possibility that the party may caucus in Tampa in August, cast a vote and find they have no one to offer to run against the president. There will follow a process to find a candidate, someone, and that candidate may be one who rises from the ranks at the convention and, after all the months, debate after debate … after debate, the campaigns, the primaries, the money, the Republicans may nominate someone, perhaps Jeb Bush … who never participated at all!

What message would that send to the party’s “base,” those Red Rootin’ Tea Party Fundamentalist Republicans who have been the power and the center of this entire primary process?

“Thanks, but no thanks.”?

It sounds to me like the quickest and easiest way I can imagine to alienate an entire electorate … your own.

 

Rush … Rush rolls on. Dozens of his sponsors across the nation, from Sears to Sleep Number, have quietly dropped their ads. Rush doesn’t care. He considers himself to be above the reach of such pathetically inconsequential actions from the little people.  He claims 18,000 sponsors and considers those who have abandoned him to be like a few “fries” dropped from a Giant Economy Sized order.  He believes his draw is so powerful that no matter how many may leave, more and more want to enroll.

He may be right.

It takes a lot of focus and extended action to affect a system so large and commercially successful.  it remains to be seen if Americans are angry enough and committed enough to carry out the needed campaign.

It’s had an effect, though.  MSNBC reports that in the largest market in the country, of over 85 ad spots on Rush’s show today more than 75 were donated unpaid public service announcements, and the American Heart Association has asked to have its PSA’s removed from the show.  There is political action afoot to yank Rush off the armed forces networks.

“It ain’t over, ’til it’s over.” right, Yogi?

Rush and the Truth

By now nearly everyone has heard about Rush Limbaugh’s remarks when he called a young lady a “slut” on the air.

Many people have also heard of his subsequent remarks where he offered to trade pills for sex videos.

What may not be widely known is how that all came about, what happened that put that young lady’s person in the position to be Rush’s pinata.

She testified before Congress. It was about insurance companies covering birth control pills. She was describing the plight of her friend who suffered from ovarian cysts. To control the growth of the cysts her physician had prescribed the birth control pills. The insurance company refused to cover them because. well, because they were birth control pills. She couldn’t afford them, didn’t get them, went untreated and that resulted in a cyst that required the surgical removal of the ovary, which one source has reported resulted in the onset of menopausal symptoms.

Rush made this about Ms Fluke, which it wasn’t, and specifically about her sexual activity, which it wasn’t. She was accused of wanting to be paid (getting insurance coverage for birth control pills) for having sex.

She was called a “slut.”

The story Rush used his nationally syndicated media platform to promulgate is, in a word … a lie.

Rush is frequently considered a source of information.

He’s not.

He’s a political shock jock with no fealty to the truth and this latest episode is simply the latest and most egregious.

It’s time to go, Rush.

If you think such wanton, deliberate disregard of the truth and the damage it causes, as evidenced by this incident, has no place in our political discourse, and if you wonder if the people who sponsor his show know what they’re presenting, perhaps you should tell them about it.

Google “Rush’s sponsors” and pick a page. Some of them have embedded links that will put you directly in contact with those sponsors. Tell them what you think and indicate to them whether you are willing to do business with those who sponsor such lies.