Schroedinger’s Cat and a Ball of String Theory

IF A SCIENTIST places eleven physicists in an enclosed environment, how many of those physicists would remain in our dimension after three days? The answer, of course, is that only ten would remain, because one of the eleven would inevitably, spontaneously transpose to the eleventh dimension in order to observe the others, which, as everyone knows, nullifies any and all resulting data due to human ‘participation’.  Just ask Schroedinger’s cat.  

Michio Kaku, world famous physicist and nimble ice skater, wrote a fascinating book called Parallel Worlds upon which the documentary of the same name is based. Both book and television special explore theoretical notions of creation from a humanist perspective. And therein lies the fault. All calculations lead back to the instant of the so-called ‘big bang’, but nothing can break through the instant before the big bang. 

Sad, isn’t it? String theory, membrane theory, and parallel universes tickle the brains of men and women like Kaku, but in their zeal to unravel mysteries, they miss what lies at the end of the ’string’. The Creator. The One who came before.

In the beginning, God….Once you accept Him, then everything makes sense. God created our universe, so He gets to make the rules.  What I find the most amazing is that He provided His own Son as our Salvation — because WE broke HIS rules.

Wow. 

Beverly Sills passes away at 78

I found this wonderful video on You Tube of Beverly at age seven singing “Il Bacio” (‘The Kiss”) by Luigi Arditi.

When I studied opera back in Nebraska, Beverly Sills was among my top ten favorite female artists. Beyond her remarkably light soprano, she possessed an incomparable drive to succeed. She took opera out of its dusty old box and presented it to the Muppet generation.  

Sills never once smoked, so her death from inoperable lung cancer is all the more tragic.

If you’re a fan, then you’ll also enjoy this finale concert from 1980, when ‘Bubbles’ retired from a 25 year performance career at the Met. Be warned, her fittingly poignant ‘finale’ is a Portuguese folk song of ‘farewell’ that left me weeping.  
   

Pestilence Takes a Ride

DURING my years in Bloomington, Indiana, studying molecular biology, I recall several of my professors mentioning the coming age of ‘emerging diseases’, especially new viral infections. One seasoned genetics professor explained to us that extended exploration to exotic locations coupled with ease of global travel (and enclosed airline air systems) added up to assured exposure of vulnerable populations. In other words, you and I are more likely to catch diseases to which we are not immune. 

This isn’t anything new, of course. We’ve all read the story of European soldiers bringing smallpox to “the New World” native population. In 1520, Hernando Cortez and his men introduced smallpox to the natives Mexico during their assault on the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan. In the years that followed, almost 90% of the population of the New World was killed by smallpox.A well-known example of an ‘emerging disease’ is hantavirus, a negative-sensed, single-stranded RNA viron first discovered in the 1950s in Korea. In 1993, a new species of hantavirus emerged in the four-corners area of New Mexico. Exposure to this nasty, rodent-vectored bug resulting in cardiovascular and pulmonary dysfunction.