poemranker ::cat by Dental Panic

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Free verse № 136785

cat

by Dental Panic

Member since 2005 · Posted 11 Jan 2006 · Edited 25 Feb 2006 · 31 comments

it exists only where it happens, I said, pulled my heels over my head and moved like Schrödinger's cat around all that wasn't there the bloodthirst of my small regrets, the files I kept on piling up, the hooks I simply couldn't grab, the plastic-sheeted facts, and every night a spinning fleet of private jokes was airborn from my sheltered roof, and every day the garden bloomed a life full proof

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31 comments

[8] ecargo 11-Jan-06/12:40 PM Reply
Heh--clever. Fun w/ quantum mechanics! The connection between S's cat and what follows is a little tenuous though.

[Cecil Adams' ("The Straight Dope" author) has a nice little versification of the explanation of Schrodinger's cat, for those who, like me, need a refresher: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_122.html ]
[n/a] Dental Panic › ecargo 11-Jan-06/3:08 PM Reply
Well - it originally was intended to be a poem about..anyway, it slipped off track and I ended up with this, don't know what to think of it. I like it and I don't like it.
[6] Dovina 11-Jan-06/1:49 PM Reply
It would make a more news-worthy test if you were in that box instead of a cat. Now that would be dental panic.
[n/a] Dental Panic › Dovina 11-Jan-06/3:10 PM Reply
You should try 'Epiphany' by David Hewson then.
[10] zodiac 11-Jan-06/3:15 PM Reply
Fabulous. This poem should be best on poemranker. It's your best, certainly. Eminently publishable, Dental.
[10] zodiac › zodiac 11-Jan-06/3:16 PM Reply
Oops. I don't mean that to sound like your poems aren't good, just that this one is great.
[n/a] Dental Panic › zodiac 11-Jan-06/3:24 PM Reply
Thanks very much.
[10] ALChemy 12-Jan-06/5:21 AM Reply
Well said. Maybe God does play dice

but I think he cheats a little.
[n/a] Dental Panic › ALChemy 12-Jan-06/6:32 AM Reply
Then he just pretends to play dice? Now that's something.
I watched an interview with Edward Witten once. He was introduced as 'the smartest man on earth'. It was fascinating - I didn't understand a word he said. Hawking was fascinating too - when presented with the question: "Does God Exist?", he grinned, moved his two fingers and out came the mechanical voice: "no".
[10] ALChemy › Dental Panic 12-Jan-06/8:13 AM Reply
I guess if you consider cheating, not playing.

It's funny how Hawking talks about knowing the mind of God in his book. As if he's secretly giving Christians and Jews the finger.
That's probably why God turned him into a cauliflower.

Of course if he was the smartest man in the world he would have known that the smartest way to respond to the question "Does God Exist?" is to say "God who?"
[6] Dovina › ALChemy 12-Jan-06/9:37 AM Reply
Hawling said that if someone could find a "theory of everything" which unites the currently divergent theories that describe various parts of the universe, then we would know the mind of God. I think he's right.
[10] ALChemy › Dovina 12-Jan-06/12:33 PM Reply
Hawking.org devotes an entire lecture to the question "Does God play dice?"
http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/dice.html
[10] ALChemy › ALChemy 12-Jan-06/12:47 PM Reply
This is even more ironic:
Jane Hawking is a Christian. She made the statement in 1986, "Without my faith in God, I wouldn't have been able to live in this situation;" namely, the deteriorating health of her husband. "I would not have been able to marry Stephen in the first place because I wouldn't have had the optimism to carry me through and I wouldn't have been able to carry on with it."
-From Stephen Hawking, The Big Bang, and God by Henry F. Schaefer III.
[6] Dovina › ALChemy 12-Jan-06/5:40 PM Reply
I love Hawking because he is both intelligent and gentle in his presentatioin. "So God does play dice with the universe. All the evidence points to him being an inveterate gambler, who throws the dice on every possible occasion."
[10] zodiac › Dovina 12-Jan-06/5:50 PM Reply
You know -=Dark_Angel=-,P.I. knows Hawking.
[10] zodiac › zodiac 12-Jan-06/5:51 PM Reply
I'm not trying to start an argument, just commenting on how I could stand to learn gentleness.
[6] Dovina › zodiac 12-Jan-06/6:04 PM Reply
I know neither Hawking nor DA, but I do appreciate Gentleness, and know him well.
[n/a] Dental Panic › Dovina 12-Jan-06/6:08 PM Reply
I don't think there will be a 'we'. Just a very small group of scientists will be able to understand such a theory, some godlike elite. Or do you think that when they'll explain it to you, some switch will turn on the 'Godmind' inside your brain?
[6] Dovina › Dental Panic 12-Jan-06/6:35 PM Reply
Yes, in the same way that Quantum Mechanics has turned switches in my brain. Granted, it's a long shot that such an all-inclusive theory will ever work well enough to gain wide acceptance among scientists.
[n/a] Dental Panic › ALChemy 12-Jan-06/5:25 PM Reply
When you cheat, there's no chance.

Joke: suppose they create a supercomputer that knows all the answers. First thing they'll ask: is there a God?
Now there is, it'll reply.
[10] ALChemy › Dental Panic 13-Jan-06/5:57 AM Reply
And a better answer than Hawking's. His religious wife probably hid the penis inflator after that interview.
[10] ALChemy › Dental Panic 12-Jan-06/1:58 PM Reply
Hawking bases his disbelief in the classical idea of God on "The wave function theory" which states the origin of the universe came into being by chance(allowing that chance is an eternal condition) and so no creator needed to be present.

But there's always a chance he's wrong.
[n/a] Dental Panic › ALChemy 12-Jan-06/5:55 PM Reply
In the interview, they asked him, after his 'no': why not? and he said that he couldn't imagine a Cosmic Creator that was concerned with the fate of a some stupid and cruel ape on a very tiny planet, circling an insignificant star, somewhere in the back alley of a small galaxy in this unimaginably large universe, filled with trillions and trillions of stars.
[8] ecargo › Dental Panic 12-Jan-06/7:50 PM Reply
Einstein, too (of whom the fundies like to say "even Einstein believed in God," as if that makes God a fact), said that he could not believe in a "personal god," who gave a rat's ass about the fate of tiny beings on an inconsequential planet in an inconsequential galaxy at the back of beyond (my paraphrase and bias, of course). In his own words: "It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere . . . A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
[10] ALChemy › ecargo 13-Jan-06/5:53 AM Reply
Well thank God you stopped before the popular atheist "If we got rid of religion there'd be no more war" saying came out. What you say has merit. Now if only we had a good example of it working in practice.
[8] ecargo › ALChemy 13-Jan-06/7:16 AM Reply
Who says that? No atheist I know. I can't imagine anyone out of their teens claiming anything so broad and patently ridiculous. Greed underlies most "religious" conflicts--it's just the poor suckers fighting for the ideal, it always seems. If you got rid of man, there'd be no war; otherwise? Not likely.

I didn't say anything here; I just noted what Einstein said. Sure it has merit. And there are plenty of examples of it in practice--do you think altruism is linked exclusively to religion? That's nonsense. So-called "religious" people (many of whom seem to think that declaring that they "believe in" God gives them some sort of automatic moral superiority) are no more likely to be moral, kind, good, giving, just, etc., than nonreligious people.
[10] ALChemy › ecargo 13-Jan-06/8:36 AM Reply
I've read newspaper articles devoted to the "Religion is the major cause of war argument." It's certainly common enough to have crossed my path several times in television and print.
What I meant by examples were entire countries or civilizations of atheists and how they compared with the religious ones.
Aside from those two things I agree with you, especially with the part about greed being the major reason for most wars.
[n/a] Ranger › ecargo 13-Jul-06/2:06 PM Reply
What if this inconsequential planet in an inconsequential galaxy is the only planet capable of sustaining life - or at least, life at the level of humans? And what if humans genuinely do have a purpose? Then this inconsequential planet becomes very consequential indeed.
[7] richa 12-Jan-06/2:26 PM Reply
I agree with biteme. The second and third verses do not follow on from the principle set out in the first verse very precisely. The first verse is good though. The line breaks are a bit random.
[n/a] Dental Panic › richa 12-Jan-06/5:11 PM Reply
I think I'll write my next poem about the second law of thermodynamics. In the meantime, I'll send this to Hawking - he is noted for having said that every time he hears about the infamous cat, he's going for his gun.
[9] Niphredil 26-Feb-06/9:25 AM Reply
isn't it spelled "airborne"?

My fave is the first stanza. Terrific :-)