FanPost

Calikula's Imperial Weekly Thread: CC Edition

200

Let that sink in for second. Is there a grander number in the kingdom? 300, you suggest, or 400? Pffft. 200 is where its at. Bicentennial, baby. That is two hundred threads, filled with two hundred weeks worth of puns, National Days, epic songs, cancelled -holed brilliance, sage advice, sorrow and salutations. Between new babies and old dogs there have been real life celebrations, and celebrations of real life, and amidst it all there has been something constant and unchanging.

I went through the old threads looking for this immutable thing. Was it the topics? We have our favorites, from blasting commies to halberds and zombies, but so many things have been explored with much variety and change. Was it the people? There have been "regulars," no doubt, racking up recs and comments by the gross, but there have been many faces besides, coming and going, going and coming.

I've been at MHR from pretty much the beginning, and there is a capital-T truth to the idea that in some ways the CIWT is older than its 200 editions, as old as the firmament its small, steady light is a part of, and that truth is the unchanging, constant thing we have always been able to find here, wherever here is. That truth is what this is.

This is water.

The joke goes like so: Two young fish are swimming along. An older fish goes by in the other direction. He says, "Howdy guys. How's the water?"

The young fish don't say anything right away. And then after a while when the old one is out of earshot one fish turns to the other and says, "What the hell is water?" thereby summarizing most of western civilization.

Something bigger than ourselves. Something we all are a part of. It is about simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over:

This is water.

Einstein's Lambda

We are surrounded by a mottled blanket of 3-degree Kelvin background radiation. It is asymmetric, different, like us, but it wasn't always that way. They say that back when the universe was very young - which itself is hard to say because time had yet materialized - when it was young it was hot and the same in all the directions. Everywhere was the same as everywhere and symmetry ruled.

Our universe cooled and expanded as it aged and at some point, it cooled enough for particles to form. Lumps formed. These became the subatomic particles - the fermions and the bosons that applied the forces between them.

When it cooled further the particles joined into atoms, and later the atoms to molecules which became the stuff of the stars and planets.

As the beautiful boring symmetry of our birth chilled and grew it fell apart and we emerged along with all the light and asteroids and rockfish.

And things were now different in all directions.

So they say.

There are equations for all of this, and they are beautiful. They are confusing. Terrifying even.

Einstein, who refined the gravity handed to him by Newton - added a lambda to his tensor calculus that seemed perfect enough without it. Later he called it his biggest mistake. After he died, nobody thought it was a mistake, this lambda, this stuff that reverses gravity and pushes apart everything and has since the beginning. This lambda that suggests everything we are, everything we can see, is only thirty percent of everything that is. Dark matter, dark energy, boring words, but mysterious, nonetheless. Tantalizing, because when you get used to seeing the "water" all around you, you become fascinated by the "water" around everyone else.

Mysterious mysteries. We still have seventy percent of everything to find out.

So, tap your boot

Back in 2014 they shot the finance-starved unmanned Orion successfully around the earth to the ocean for pickup. I watched plenty of shuttle launches, and envied plenty of orange-clad astronauts sent aloft. Teachers and Engineers even, like me.

Some kids want to be rock stars and I went through that phase. More than that, I wanted my foot in a boot compacting the dust in one-sixth gravity because I saw human men do it, rapt and dreamless. When they said to get to the moon I needed all the science and math I could absorb, I did. In the meantime, Ennui ensued. I saw the program erode from dream stuff to the practicality of orbit. The last moonship was used to link to the Russians we floated bombs over. The remaining moon boosters were expended putting a solar-powered garbage can into orbit. Then that plummeted as molten bits to the Australian outback.

Then there was the ISS which most people don't think about.

All wonderful things I wish I could be a part of, but really. I mean, really.

I remember watching the replay and the press briefing after Orion splashed down. I saw a bespectacled bearded engineer get all choked up when he said, "When we saw that picture...you see we put the camera in the window of the spacecraft and so you could feel like you were there looking out. The earth from three-thousand miles. Something we haven't seen since...when we started, the Apollo guys were still here...everything since 1972 has been earth orbit...I mean, you could imagine being there, looking out..." and then he had to stop and wipe his face with a handkerchief.

My red haired foster-daughter sitting next to me said, "He's crying."

I said, "Because finally..." before the lump in my own throat stopped me.

Because like the white bearded engineer -my heart thumped in joy of the knowing, finally filled with desire, finally again a serious undertaking by we who uphold an advanced civilization -

finally again

we're going somewhere true, back to exploration just for the dream of it.

Dreams are attainable. They are.

I don't know how it works. Nobody ever drew the equations for me. I never saw the Q.E.D. on a blackboard.

It seemed to me that people who got what they wanted told those who didn't, "You just have to want hard enough." But that's not it. That's missing the point. You live to "want" in a direction. You possess life to motivate your desire from yourself toward something.

The solution to your desire does not arrive like FedEx while you sit in stasis, all the time bored as dirt, miserable, wishing.

This is what I can tell you. This is what I know.

E=MC^2 F=ma h/2pi > delta p times delta x

We have found the muons and mesons, and black holes, and rotaviruses, and continental drift. We can send probes to Pluto, stand atop Everest, and photograph tubeworms clinging to volcanic cones on the ocean floor. We are capable of ignoring unfathomable mystery in pursuit of the trivial. Something called success measured in dollars or euros or yen. Hits or views or otherwise bankable fame.

Yet what we can attain is so much richer and extends beyond death, and that is what I want for our children.

That someday she may look into an alien sky to gaze upon distant planet earth,

And squint into a telescope toward the interface between white and blue and brown,

And see the glistening top of the earth and say to her fellow explorers,

"There upon that archipelago my own father once trod,

And tapped a thick laced boot upon the latitude,

And claimed it his for just that moment."

Then tap her boot.

Go discover Hawaii

My Grandmother's great great great great great uncle was Captain James Cook. He was a master navigator and explorer, who made the first European contact with Hawaii.

My aunt and grandmother were going over family genealogical records before my grandmothers death. My attention was caught by the long line descending from Cook.

"Grandma. Captain Cook was in our family tree. You never told me."

"Yes, he discovered Hawaii."

"How come you never told me that?"

"I didn't want you to be discouraged. You thought you were the first explorer in the family."

"I'm not discouraged. I guess I'm proud."

"Good. Now. Go discover Hawaii, and then tell me all about it."

I never discovered Hawaii, of course. Eventually my grandparents passed, and eventually my father, my aunts and uncles, everyone who believes in my abilities will leave the planet, one by one, single file. I will learn to live with no circumnavigation or tropical isles, and live within my own area of the water. We all discover that. That one man's daily routine is another man's TIL.

For me it was Alaska. I had wanted to go there since I had first heard of it. I can trace that back to a National Geographic television special I saw on a black-and-white TV when I was in kindergarten. I saw men trying to drive snowmobiles over giant piles of ice in northern Alaska. This was before LANDSAT and GPS - so to figure out the geography of the planet you had to go to places and map them. They discovered there was more to Alaska than anyone ever expected.

The archipelago where I have ended up is a great filter of humanity. It's prohibitively difficult to get here. Therefore, those who do tend to be very interesting, creative, and lucky.

But for all the creative diversity, this conversation happens here regularly. I suspect daily.

Person 1: "Still can't believe we are here."

Person 2: "Yeah, it seems like it has taken forever, but here we are."

Person 1: "It feels like it was always going to be this way though."

Person 2: "Yeah, like we were never not here. Or always meant to be here."

Person 1: "Yeah." (Then both go back to drinking their orange juice/beers/salty iguanas/whatever)

We are all believers. It isn't hard to have faith. What is harder is to have faith in the fundamental creative force of discovery. In positive outcomes. In the ability of our fellow man not to disappoint us, and most importantly, in our ability not to disappoint ourselves. Creative discovery is the secret to having faith that we are likely to experience those things rather than the realization of our fears.

Creative discovery.

And, of course,

telling someone all about it.

So,

How's the water?

_________________________________________________________________

1. Times have changed, and thus so has the thread. Cursing is now allowed, as long as it is (mostly) PG-13. If not, use our wonderful blackout feature. :)

2. Leave bad blood at the door. If you've got beef with someone, don't continue it here.

3. Leave trolling at the door as well. If you must troll, please come up with something more clever-er than "Donkeys" Also applies to us as well, folks. Lets leave the trash talking of other teams for other threads. Gotta set the example!

4. Certain topics that were once taboo - like politics or religion - are ok, but discuss without getting personal. Respect each other (see below), and if things get heated, then just drop it.

5. This thread (depending on the number of comments) is to only last 1-2 weeks. So once the new thread is up, (usually Monday mornings) please unrec last week's and rec the new thread.

6. Respect each other.

Don't follow these rules, and my Assassin Sadaraine will chastise you for weeks on end. And docllv will not allow you to be in the MHR Hall of Fame. Both of these are consequences you want to avoid.

Talking Points

1. Hawaiian Vacation

2. Orange Juice/beer/salty iguanas/whatever

3. Manned missions to Mars

4. Fish jokes fit for a Norwegian

5. What does 200 mean to You? (any 200...)

Imperial Quote of the Week

"Happy, happy. Joy, joy." -Stimpy, Ren and Stimpy 1991

Enjoy!


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