Thursday, November 18, 2010

a belated tribute to our scientists

9

Dear Reader,

I have slept almost 14 hours - with a one hour break divided into two short wakes of  less than 1 half hour each.  More to the point - I've woken up to find none of those alarming email notifications '***** has replied' with that dreaded link directly back to another flamed thread.  It's the first time in over 3 months that I've have missed that faint early morning light where I see our wild syringa tree silhouetted against the sky.  It's also the first time in months that I've missed seeing the full promise of day announce itself in great washes and varieties of red.  And I missed those horrible hours before this - from midnight to early dawn - where I struggled to explain one thing after another, within the limits of my poor skills and huge efforts. I am delighting in this removal from public comment that I seem to have achieved.  And the greatest delight is that I have watched the stats on this blog of mine.  They are that manageably small that I feel I'm moving about - incognito - so to speak, recording what needs must.  And all this being done outside the glare of all that highly polarised attention.  Long may this last.  Where I asked, before, that you tell everyone about this new vehicle of mine - this blog. Well. Now I would much prefer it that you keep it secret.  Certainly for the time being.

My last upload was my article on 'more inconvenient truths' and I've just re-read this.  Its rather outspoken but was written in an explosion of anger after reading the absurdities on 'what is electric current flow' and sundry other mutterings and mouthings from some rather pretentious posters.  Also, in fairness, it all needed to be said.  But I'm not sure that it warranted that level of criticism.  What I would like to mention - belatedly and much needed - is that our scientists - those exceptional theorists who, through the ages have taken us from a study of the wheel to the study of quantum physics.  They have all diligently applied their exceptional work led as they were and are, by our even more exceptional Greats.  Our progress in all matters scientific is entirely due to their hard work and their amazing skills at measurement and observation.  To me their greatest miracle is that they have unfolded the properties, not only of the atom, but in an even greater miracle of observation - they then unfolded the actual properties - almost the entire mug shot - of the atoms' constituent particles.  Consider this scale of small.  Whole galaxies of atoms could fit on the tip of a needle.  And then if that doesn't leave one with the mouth agape at the wonder of it all -  consider this also.  They also showed us their particles - the population and its distribution, so to speak of the atom itself.  And the particles within the atom are just fractions of a fraction of the size of that body - that atomic geography.  We are here talking about a scale of small that quite simply beggars belief.  And this unfolding, these amazing insights, could not be have been done without their genius and their applied disciplines - those extraordinary applications of observation and measurement applied both from empirical evidence and from the logic of math.  I  most certainly owe them.  We all do.  We owe them everything that we know about science.  We owe them  a tribute of sincere thanks for the miracles of explanation and breadth of knowledge that they have progressed.  And I, personally, owe them.  Hugely.  I owe them  a debt of gratitude for learning something of their amazing work and for the passionate interest it has afforded me albeit rather late in life. 

Indeed I have no quarrel with scientists and their exceptional abilities.  I only quarrel with some of their theories - based as they are on the problems that I've recounted hereunder.

Kindest regards,
Rosemary