Tuesday 11 June 2002

Pic of the day: Cut short?

Out of hand, out of time

Sorry, I ran out of hand (and wrist and arm) while writing a long essay combining theories about the origin of religion and of human intelligence with focus on neoteny. I may or may not post it here when it is finished, depending on what I think about it.

Today I had laser treatment of my arm. To be honest I think it is pure placebo. I'm sure watching the small red light walk slowly back and forth across the skin can have a pretty powerful effect. It looks like the arm is being treated somehow by something, but I don't think it is. Still, worth a try.

I guess it is time to accept that I will never again be able to write more than a couple pages on any given day. If I don't get it right the first time, there won't be a second chance that day. For the rest of my life. It is a weird thought. Also some computer games may be lost to me forever. Boo hoo. Given the problems of approximately 5 billion other people, that's hardly worth mentioning. I don't starve or freeze, I have all my senses and all my limbs (only a bit weakened).

***

And anyway, it may be only until 2005, by which time the Large Hadron Collider of CERN should have the capacity to create microscopic black holes. If Hawking is wrong about them evaporating, there goes the planet.

I bought an issue of New Scientist today, and there was a casual mention to the effect that they expected the production of black holes. The article that I first read about this, in Scientific American, was somewhat optimistic that there may be black holes, but it was not mentioned as a certainty. Evidently the hope is not exactly waning. Except my hope, that they may never succeed with the madness. Yes, it would be a great accomplishment to create the first black hole ever observed. But is it truly worth gambling the whole planet, which right now contains all life in the known universe? We don't actually NEED this. We could wait until we have spread to other planets; this stuff won't help us getting there either. We have the technology to colonize other planets already; it's just that contraceptives are cheaper.

It continues to amaze me that no one except me is bothered. The Hawking radiation has never been observed in real life - it is all in the head of a brilliant scientist. A hero of the mind, for sure. But one who was just as much taken by surprise as anyone else by the recent observation of an ever expanding universe, or cosmological constants that weren't constant. Evidently the guy is not omniscient. Then we should trust the fate of our planet to God instead. The gamble is too high.

But this is for big for me to do anything about. I'll continue to bleat occasionally, like a lamb led to slaughter, but go along. To forget for a brief while that neither I, you or anyone else may be along to read this three years from now. Have a nice day.