Refer to Last Title But This Is The Second Half of Blog Post #7/8

     I've personally done a lot of thinking of creator vs. science based on what I read in this book, as well as others. What i find so profound is how he begins the book with an imediate slam on religion
 "At the end of the lecture, a little old lady in the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.' The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, 'And what is the tortoise standing on?' 'You're a very clever young man, very clever,' said the old lady 'but the tortoise is all the way down!"(Hawking 1)

      I feel that he is deliberatly trying to make an example of the the shortcomings of religion  in places where modern science clearly prevails. This makes it seem as if religion is for the "crazies" of the world, and has no place in modern society. Stephen Hawking does not believe in god himself, and has made his views public on many occasions.


      Stephen Hawking has made his views about god public on several occasions. This is just one, which aired on the Discovery Channel as a Curiosity. On a seperate occasion, Stephen Hawking produced a report on god that aired on Channel 4 News which aired on September 2nd 2011 where he tryed to disprove the existence of a god by useing the theoretical framework of M-theory
Now, Stephen Hawking may feel that is there was a god, he would not have been born with MS. This is where I feel he draws his scientific inspiration from, and has become his overall goal; to disprove the existance of a god. in almost every book that I have read where he is either a main author or co. author, the book becomes more about how science and god conflict with each other. In his book The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking says that: "Creation myths all attempt to answer the questions we adress in this book: Why is there a universe, and why is the universe the way it is?"(Hawking 124) He feels that there is no need for a god, and that if there was, he or she would not have let the human race become so out of controle. One final quote that I feel sums the situation up is one from his book The Universe in a Nutshell next to this picture:

"By the year 2600 the worlds population will be standing shoulder to shoulder and the electricity consumption will cause the Earth to glow red-hot." (Hawking 159)

Hawking, S. W., and Leonard Mlodinow. A Brief History of Time. 10th ed. New York: Bantam, 2005. Print.

Hawking, S. W., and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. New York: Bantam, 2010. Print.

Hawking, S. W. The Universe in a Nutshell. New York: Bantam, 2001. Print.

Simoni, Michelangelo Di Lodovico Buonarroti. God Created Man. 1511. Fresco. Sistine Chapel Frescos.

Blog Post #7 Even Though It Is Actually #8 (Part one so it won't be too long) Which Is Really Confuzing

     It seams very unfortunate for me to always read nonfiction books, because they do not have a clear journey in them. What I often find, and have learned to do, is speak chronologically, where you can treat every little discovery as a journey in its self. It makes picking the individual stories out a tad bit harder, but overall, an adventure begins to appear.
 
     Many of the books I have read begin with a history of science in it's entirety, which its self is a huge journey with a climax around the discovery of the Theory of Quantum Mechanics. As the old story goes, Einstein did not wish to accept Quantum Mechanics and simply ruled it out as a fluke. He did not accept the call to adventure and never made it out of the second stage of the journey... from this persepctive. Even though he didn't accept Quantum Mechanics, he single handedly, discovered a new set of laws regarding to the realitivistic effects on a body in motion that completely challenged Newton's views of the universe, where an event in one place can be measured to have happened simultainieously everywhere in the universe. From this persepctive he had already found his elixer and was starting on the road back when Quantum Mechanics stepped in and blocked his path.

     Now that that has been said, The book I am currently reading (as I gave up on The Stand, one, for it's length, and two, for it's extreemly boring but important beginning) is A Breif History of Time by Stephen Hawking.

      Most of the book is pretty strait forward (relativly speaking), and leaves me with little locate or cycle questions, Im sorry to do this, but I can't really think of any real integrate questions either. So, here goes my final question: Does Stephen Hawking have a hiden agenda of trying to disprove the existence of a god?

Blog Post #6 Archetypal Characters

          The Character that I feel most compelled to write about is Nadine Brown from The Stand. At first, not a lot of information is given about her, making her feel unknown. You almost feel like you can’t get to know her very well with the information that is given.  From what you do know, she seems to be heading to the sanctuary created by mother Abigail, and follows other characters along that path. What really begins to strike you as odd is that she fights the other characters. She is reluctant to go with anyone, and has a seemingly unneeded distrust for everyone she meets. None of the other characters in the book exhibit such behaviour, so I have begun to think of her as an archetypal shapeshifter. Later in the book, Nadine begins having dreams about Flag, the leader of the “evil” camp. That is what I felt was missing at first, everyone else was having dreams of mother Abigail, where as she had none at all.        

Blog Post #5: Classics

          When I think of something as a classic, I think of it as something that will be remembered positively by many people, and even though their views of said subject change over time, it is still a universal favourite.

          The book that I am reading, called The Stand, is a genuine classic. Not only was it a bestselling book, 3 part movie was made based on it. It incorporates the journey to the special world as a disease begins to wipe out humanity. When only a few people who had been born with immunity are left in the world, they are divided into two camps, one lead by mother Abigail, who speaks to the survivors in their dreams and leads them too her house in Colorado. The others are lead by the devil’s personification: flag. This man represents the evil that we have in our world today, as he is always trying to restore a “pecking order” much like the one we have today. All in all, Stephen King was able to create a story that spoke to people. It showed how, under extreme circumstances (though they really needn’t be) we can come together as a race and dispel the evil that grips the world already. It’s an idea that everyone holds close, that one day, they will be able to be accepted as their selves,  and not as someone that they made up to “fit in” and for this reason, The Stand is a classic. It pertains to ideas that are held as the highest possible standard of human existence, and this view has never changes, though it may be distorted, the image can always be made clear.      

William didn’t look up again until he had fed. “We’re vampires.” He finally whispered to the murdered couple. -James Patterson, Violets Are Blue pg. 39

            The vampire-like killers in this novel remind me of the young vampires from the twilight series. In this book, two boys and their pet tiger have been living and feeding off people in San Francisco for some time. Like the vampires from twilight; they were taught by those who were original vampires, and essentially created by them, though they were not infected by a bite. They are more like serial killers than vampires though, as they wish to kill not to spread the vampire “curse.” They are also better at covering up their tracks than the twilight vampires, and never leave any DNA or finger prints at a crime scene, where as the twilight vampires kill their victims and leave them where they drop.

     "We don’t have a theory of everything, we very well may never have one. I for one will never stop trying; even if we reach a point that can not be expanded." -Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe Page 260.
     I think what this says about the protagonist in my book (Brain Greene) is that he is a very persistent person. Though he has strong beliefs on wether we are going to find this ultimate theory that explains everything about the universe, he continues to try though he thinks he knows the final outcome.
     I do not think that Brain Greene will discover the theory of everything. Though he has the right idea, and is very intelligent; I thin that the final theory is beyond a humans capability to understand, and even if it was to be found, we wouldn’t be able to understand it. This most likely stop Brain Greene, he will probably continue to search until the day he dies.
This video briefly explains some of Brian Greenes accomplishments.

The name of this nonfiction book is The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. The main focus of the book after the explaining of concepts is through, is more intended toward what a theory with 10+ would imply for our universe. It starts off relatively slow, with an introduction into measuring the size of the universe. Then it gets a little more complicated when it is shown that since we are relatively light particles (photons) to measure the distances, we are only getting half the story. If we were to use particles that weighed a planck mass or more, we would find the true size of the universe to be 10^-61m across instead of the 10⁶¹m that we see. It then goes into explaining how it could be possible to move through these dimensions as when you hit the edge of one, you should get sent back to the opposite side of the dimension. This would make for some really interesting days, as every minute movement would shoot you back to the beginning. The amazing part of the book is when Brian Greene and his colleagues, Strominger, Aspinwall and Morrison; attempt to settle the unruly possibility of spacial tears. Their solution to a catastrophic spacial rip that could potentially end the universe at any time, was to allow objects called P-branes (spatially extended filaments of matter in P- dimensions) to cover the higher dimensional spacial rips by folding over them, like a cloth over an apple. This would cause the spacial fabric to again contract and form a space-tearing flop transition, which looks like a bow-tie in 3-dimensions (and can be represented in higher dimensions).
So far, this book has been very informative, but also feels very light. It gives the information in an easy to understand, humorous way. I would recommend this book to someone who wants to see the real side of physics. It’s not all chalkboards and paper, Brain Greene lets the reader know how string theory excitingly came to be!

I think that my quote describes something that I believe because real thoughts that apply to you shouldn't be fromulated by someone else. Information could be picked up from anywhere, if someone was to tell me that the sky was blue, of course I could just take their word for it, but I have to be able to verify it by going outside. When reading non-fictional books, I often recieve a lot of knowlage, but to really understand it, I need to think about what the fact would imply.