Friday 20 March 2015

Total Eclipse of the Sun

From thee Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, to the Total Eclipse of the Sun.

Today if you were lucky, you would have seen the the sun blotted out by the Moon  around 0930-0940. Crossing the UK from Penzance up the west coast to the Isle of Lewis and heading on over to the Faroe Islands. Most of the UK got around 80-90% the island's and Svalbard got 100%. 

Unfortunately it was a bit cloudy. Oh Dam Clouds.
As it happens we also have the SuperMoon tonight and the spring Equinox.

The Supermoon is the nearest it'll be to the Earth for 18 years, and as we continue on BBC's Stargazing Live keep telling us to watch out for Comets coming and the four nearest moons of Jupiter.

I leave you with a thought...numerous people I have overheard, in shops, sat in barber chairs and me generally telling people to look up and watch it unfold, have shrugged their shoulders and said so what/who cares.

Does anyone think about the bigger meaning of life, that we are stood on a rock hurtling around the sun? We are just a small part of this galaxy, does anyone think about the power of the sun and moon over us. That something greater out there can define who we are.

We shouldn't dismiss our chances, although the way we think about what cause total eclipses across different faiths and over time has an incredible amount of resonance and myths. What if they are right and the superstitions and faith leaders turn out to be true? That three celestial occurrences could spell the end of us? 

On the other hand I thought this was cracking:

Dara O' Brien's descriptions of how each faith had the Sun eaten by Devils, Monsters and chased by Chariot's! (Fastforward to 26mins BBC Iplayer).



Solar Eclipse 2015, The Guardian

Wednesday 18 March 2015

Time stagnates in one place. Why don't we watch more carefully?

What does it mean when we've come by this place?
To have been in this time, to have witnessed what we have seen.

What does it mean when we look back and find ourselves wondering what came before us,
to have found that it was all the same.

The sun rises and sets again and again, we watch the seasons pass us by, yet time is moving us forward, always showing us the next thing.

What does it mean when we wander through deep blue skies at night, watching stars move and shimmer, oh so bright? Did we once see what came before them?

The light they give us is from a distant past, what is hiding ahead of us to view, and yet already exists. If time stood still and let us see all at once, would we be so enamoured, beholden with ourselves, to have witnessed the greatness the universe can give. Our short time spans will be forgotten, only those Kings and Queens and rulers of the world will be recalled. Yet they are the victorious over us.

What does it mean to find the place at which we rest, to step across the spot which marks our grave, runs shivers down our backs. Do we not notice that we are already hollow on the inside, that from day one, we are mortal and time strikes against us. Who are we to question faith, whether it exists or not, it doesn't change the fact we won't be here in time to come.

The sun continues on for longer still, yet it's lifespan is chalked up already, it has an estimated end life just like anything else, and the ghosts which walk among us sees the changing landscape, the sun sees everything else around us.




Tuesday 17 March 2015

Ideas for the Future of Time

This week has seen a number of ideas cross my path, for the first time I can think clearly logically about what it is, or so I think.

Firstly, I guide you towards the author of the infamous book Picnic at Hanging Rock - Joan Lindsay, from Australia. Who apparently had an a deep fascination with time. The book in its own right tells a time tale, but lately more recently I have noticed more time truths.

Moving swiftly into Weird Tales e.g. Lovecraft and Chambers, The King in Yellow pulls me through trying to ascertain whether time as told by the writers of the True Detective TV series really is like a flat circle. Where Death in all his power, looking over us can not see the 3D-ness which we can, and see's earth growing in all its wonders, yet nothing to kill, and so Death created time, so that he could kill the things which grew in the world.

This planet from the outside photographed by space satellites and astronomers, find a circle not a sphere. We all know it is a sphere, but if time is moving forwards it is held within that flat circle.

I have come across three other things: when looking into a mirror, do you see yourself, or Death staring back at you, or do you see your own morbidity? I recently saw a couple of TV programs envisioning some seeing there skeleton or at least a skeleton that was playing Death with a big Scythe coming for them-- JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy adapted for TV seemed to be a certain choice their.

Alas, time is also said to already be at an end, some say that what we remember fro our past was only a dream. Bringing to light the issue of what we are doing now...because in five years time or five minutes ago we will remember it as if it were a dream, something in our previous landscape. Nothing to tell us it was for real, but in memory only. So does that mean we are dreaming now? Are we locked in our own tomb already, and what does that mean for our future, will we be finding ourselves nearer to the end, or are we already at the end? Has Death caught up with us and eating away at us bit by bit? Our memories turned to ashes, dust to dust we must go devoured in time slowly.

The conspiracy only gets deeper, what if the monitoring of people really is deeply entwined in the bigger meaning? Forsake the argument we are in the Matrix... Knight Rider used to have a talking car that could drive itself and perform all sorts of other functions, not least talk to Michael through a watch.

Today Smart Watches and Google Glasses are coming to be, does that mean that the technology already exists for other more carefully designed plots set to in George Orwell's 1984? For instance, we all worry about how much data, privacy we all have, but we are all using a our smart phones to email,  text, Internet, check maps buy stuff etc. It only take the next step for someone to be within a certain distance and be able to read all those communications, maybe the Big Data the telephone companies hold on all of us, contains this material. Last I checked only records of communications, not what's in them could be held by the companies, but say a spool sat on your train carriage had  a mobile App/program they could run to pull all your communications, at the press of the button they could read every body's phone, take your pictures, messages, emails...all of your activities and search through to find out whether your are a good citizen or not.

It's only a matter of time before the system catches up, and if it doesn't Death soon will, if he hasn't already.