Monday, August 24, 2015
Time Out Of Joint
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: Posted by H.V.O.M at 4:45 PM Sunday, October 04, 2009
I was writing about gravitational lensing and how I wondered how scientists could possibly know how large is the actual universe if gravity is bending light as it travels over large distances.
>>>>>JOURNAL ARCHIVE:----- Original Message ----
From: Kerry Burgess
To: Kerry Burgess
Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2006 6:25:22 PM
Subject: Re: Star Trek: TNG: First Contact, Nov. 22, 1996
There was that dream I had the other night, where I was inside a missile. I remembered today the similarity with this movie, in that Cochrane converted an ICBM into his warp ship. But why would someone create a connection between me and Cochrane? I didn't create warp drive in the past only to have someone block my memory of that, did I? It's funny, when I read something the other day about Data arguing with Einstein, it reminded me of something I was writing in my journal back in the early '90s. I was wondering why it was impossible to travel faster than the speed of light. A couple years ago I was writing about it again. The idea presented itself to me about why it was impossible, something about atoms not being able to work because electrons could not transfer energy faster than the speed of light. I wondered if it was possible to create some kind of process to transfer energy to those atoms, not unlike a cell's mitochondria works. Today I have been wondering if anything I remember about the past is real. Do I have a different past? Am I really who I think I am? The stuff I imagine happening to me sometimes, did that stuff really happen? I wonder if these movies and tv shows have actually been sort of inoculations, to keep me from questioning my reality. I do question reality sometimes, but it wasn't until I saw that Matrix movie a while back, did I really start to wonder about reality. But it didn't seem to matter, I wasn't overly concerned that I may be living that kind of false reality. I still don't think I am living such an extreme unreality as in the Matrix, but I wonder if there is a divergence point in my life, a shadow, a distorted period. Or have I been living a life like in the movie Soldier, or maybe like in Blade Runner, where Rachael, and I assume Harrison Ford's character, have false memories of their life. Am I Harrison Ford's character in this reality? A replicant searching for replicants? I haven't been able to follow Battlestar Galactica this past year, but I think that theme is showing up there, with Chief Tyrol.
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[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 04 October 2009 excerpt ends]
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 01/10/07 3:09 PM
So I wonder what I really know when I was writing a while back about how gravity bends light as it travel through the universe. I was writing about how do we really know how far any light has actually traveled since it may not have taken a direct path to observers on Earth. Was that a new thought when I wrote it or was a real memory trying to resurface from past work?
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 01/10/07 3:33 PM
Put it in a letter and mail it to last year when I might have given a damn about what you have to say.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 10 January 2007 excerpt ends]
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427314-400-rethinking-relativity-is-time-out-of-joint/
New Scientist
THIS WEEK 21 October 2009
Rethinking relativity: Is time out of joint?
EVER since Arthur Eddington travelled to the island of PrÃncipe off Africa to measure starlight bending around the sun during a 1919 eclipse, evidence for Einstein’s theory of general relativity has only become stronger. Could it now be that starlight from distant galaxies is illuminating cracks in the theory’s foundation?
Everything from the concept of the black hole to GPS timing owes a debt to the theory of general relativity, which describes how gravity arises from the geometry of space and time. The sun’s gravitational field, for instance, bends starlight passing nearby because its mass is warping the surrounding space-time. This theory has held up to precision tests in the solar system and beyond, and has explained everything from the odd orbit of Mercury to the way pairs of neutron stars perform their pas de ...
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http://articles.latimes.com/1997-02-14/news/mn-28638_1_servicing-missions
Los Angeles Times
Astronauts' Pit Stop at 370 Miles Up
Shuttle: Spacewalk begins to replace some '70s technology on Hubble.
February 14, 1997 ROBERT LEE HOTZ TIMES SCIENCE WRITER
HOUSTON — As sleepless astronomers held their breath, two astronauts began an exacting orbital house call on the $2-billion Hubble Space Telescope late Thursday, culminating two years of painstaking rehearsals for one of the most demanding tasks in NASA's space program.
In a six-hour spacewalk scheduled to end early today, the astronauts planned to replace two outdated instruments in the bus-sized orbital telescope with more sophisticated sensors designed to dramatically improve its color vision and expand its ability to perceive infrared light.
"Hubble was built to be serviced, and this is a bit more exotic than getting a part replaced on your car, but it's similar in some respects because this is all part of routine maintenance," NASA spokesman Steve Nesbitt said.
The spacewalk by payload commander Mark Lee and mission specialist Steven Smith was temporarily delayed when Hubble's right solar panel suddenly moved, apparently when air from the air lock hit it. But there was no apparent damage and the walk began only 15 minutes late.
"Oh my gosh. Beautiful!" Lee said as he gazed at the 43-foot telescope.
Nesbitt said the astronauts should be able to finish all the work they had planned for today.
The crew of the space shuttle Discovery, parked in orbit 370 miles above Earth, will conduct three more midnight spacewalks over the weekend to complete a $350-million refurbishment of NASA's orbital eye, replacing vintage 1970s technology with the best the 1990s has to offer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Out_of_Joint
Time Out of Joint
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Time Out of Joint is a dystopian novel by Philip K. Dick, first published in novel form in the United States in 1959.
Plot summary
As the novel opens, its protagonist Ragle Gumm believes that he lives in the year 1959 in a quiet American suburb. His unusual profession consists of repeatedly winning the cash prize in a local newspaper competition called, "Where Will The Little Green Man Be Next?"
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/150889154
goodreads
Time Out of Joint
by Philip K. Dick
Charles Dee Mitchell's review Mar 02, 11
The first odd moment arrives when Vic looks through a newly arrived brochure from the Book-of-the-Month Club and wonders who Harriet Beecher Stowe might be. It's possible he wouldn't know, but later Raigle sees a layout in Life Magazine and marvels that the featured starlet's breast can maintain the tile they have in the photographs. Since this is a Philip K. Dick novel, all three characters analyze the breasts in some detail
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/150889154
goodreads
Time Out of Joint
by Philip K. Dick
Charles Dee Mitchell's review Mar 02, 11
The next day, while Raigle contemplates adultery with the neighbor's wife, he takes her to the municipal swimming pool, and when he goes to the refreshment stand for cokes, the stand and its manager fade from sight leaving behind only a piece of paper with the printed words SOFT-DRINK STAND. Raigle puts the note into a box he keeps in his pocket where similar messages read DOOR, FACTORY BUILDING, BOWL OF FLOWERS.
We are now in Dickian territory, where few people are who they claim to be, and a trip past the city limits is a trip to another world. Dick earns his standing as the connoisseur of American paranoia with this one. Early on Raigle has the insight that he may be the most important person in the world.
http://starling.rinet.ru/music/temp/timeoutofjoint.html
Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick (1959)
Philip K. Dick cranked out dozens of science fiction novels from the 1950s until his death in 1982, never gaining much notoriety outside of that genre ghetto until after his demise. Now he has one of the genre's largest cult followings and generally ranks comfortably in any serious SF fan's Top Ten of greats; the success of Blade Runner (an adaptation of his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) obviously has a lot to do with it, but more importantly, it's Dick's chillingly prescient outlook on modern society that makes his books worth reading as more than high-tech fantasy adventures. He mastered the paranoid style of a conspiracy behind every bush long before such attitudes became commonplace; his vision rests on the alienation of the common man, caused by the insanity of modern life, which brings him closer to Franz Kafka than Ray Bradbury. This novel, one of his better ones, exemplifies his extreme paranoia and alienation by posing the question: what if the world that surrounds us is a lie, no more solid than movie props, and we're the unwitting center of a vast conspiracy directed at keeping us ignorant of reality itself?
The protagonist, Ragle Gumm, lives an uncluttered, easy life in a stereotypical 1950s small American town. Gumm's profession seems a bit odd, as he makes his living entering a weekly crossword puzzle contest that he consistently wins (which doesn't amount to mere luck, as he works nearly as much at the puzzle as at a regular 40-hour job). Little by little, bit by bit, he notices his world starting to unravel -- he goes to a hot dog stand only to have it disappear before his eyes, replaced with a piece of paper that says "hot dog stand". He retrieves telephone books that contain local numbers that don't exist, and a magazine splashed with a cover of some famous actress he's never heard of, Marilyn Monroe. Slowly he senses that the small town he lives in is a sham, a Hollywood set piece created by unknown forces to deceive him -- but why? Why is he, an ordinary man, so important?
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: July 23, 2006
I have some memories of playing golf, but not much. Maybe those are "Tapestry" memories. In one memory, when I worked for Eagle Business Systems, we had a company get-together one summer day in Columbia. First, we had lunch on a large boat that cruised around on a big lake. Then we went golfing. I reported to some MBA guy, can't remember his name. I hit a ball from the tee-off to right next to the hole and he told me it was a nice shot.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 23 July 2006 excerpt ends]
http://www.philipkdickfans.com/literary-criticism/reviews/summary-by-brian-davies-time-out-of-joint-1959/
Philip K. Dick Fan Site
Summary by Brian Davies: Time Out Of Joint (1959)
VII.
Victor arrives home to find Ragle, Marge and Sonny in the clubhouse listening to the radio. Ragle is cataloguing sounds. Bill and Junie Black stop by to invite them to dinner; Marge and Vic are confrontational, accusing them of tresspassing.
Ragle figures that the signals are coming from a nearby landing field, and then hears them discussing him.
http://www.philipkdickfans.com/literary-criticism/reviews/summary-by-brian-davies-time-out-of-joint-1959/
Philip K. Dick Fan Site
Summary by Brian Davies: Time Out Of Joint (1959)
IX.
William Black gets a telegram saying that Ragle escaped the fake cop. He ponders how many lives will be lost if Ragle escapes.
Ragle finds a radio at the Kesselman’s house, and assumes they are the enemy. He confronts them, and locks them in a closet. He finds a phone book matching the bizarre one from the ruins. He returns to the closet to find that the Kesselmans have drilled a hole through the wall and escaped. He finds a videotape, unknown technology to him, with him on it. And he finds a newspaper from 1997, 40 years into the future, and a Time Magazine from 1996 proclaiming him Man Of The Year.
http://www.philipkdickfans.com/literary-criticism/reviews/summary-by-brian-davies-time-out-of-joint-1959/
Philip K. Dick Fan Site
Summary by Brian Davies: Time Out Of Joint (1959)
XIII.
They learn that the war has been going on for three years, just like the contest, and that the enemy are Lunatics, colonists on the moon.
http://www.philipkdickfans.com/literary-criticism/reviews/summary-by-brian-davies-time-out-of-joint-1959/
Philip K. Dick Fan Site
Summary by Brian Davies: Time Out Of Joint (1959)
XIII.
Ragle decides to call the number on the card from the truck driver. They go to a drugstore, where the clerk is Mrs. Keitelbein. She tells him the number is Armed Services in Denver, then asks him how much he remembers. She is a Lunatic who has been trying to get through to Ragle. Ragle had chosen to go over to the Lunatics, so they made him forget his past and set up the contest as a premise for him to continue using his talents. She gives him a reorientation kit, including the Time Magazine with his biography.
- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 05:36 AM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Monday 24 August 2015
