transemacabre | AIM convo with Rose

starbringer59: Steve Irwin just died. O.O
Mississippienne: who?!
starbringer59: The crocodile hunter guy!
Mississippienne: whoa. what happened?
starbringer59: It just hit the 'nets - it happened like a half an hour ago.
starbringer59: A stingray got him.
Mississippienne:
Mississippienne: i know he had a wife and kids. aw poor guy
starbringer59: That's crazy.
Mississippienne: he was in a dangerous line of work. im sure he knew it could happen
starbringer59: Definitely.
Mississippienne: that doesnt mean it doesnt suck that hes dead
starbringer59: His poor kids.
Mississippienne: i feel sorry for his kids. his wife and him knew what they were doing. the kids are too little to understand and didnt have any choice in it
starbringer59: Yeah, poor little guys.
Mississippienne: its sort of like -- you're joining the marines, and you know that, at some point, you might get called out into a war zone
Mississippienne: that sucks, but youre an adult and you can decide for yourself thats the path for you
starbringer59: Yeah.
Mississippienne: but those are the chances we take
starbringer59: I hope it was worth it!
Mississippienne: i dunno. but thats the thing that seperates real life from fiction -- real life always ends with death
Mississippienne: in fiction, you can have the characters merrily sail off into the sunset
starbringer59: That is, uh, morbid, but true.
Mississippienne: *shrugs* morbid? i dunno. it's just how nature works.
starbringer59: Totally morbid. :D
Mississippienne: *snort*
Mississippienne: i went walking on the beach tonight and saw jellyfish swimming around in the shallow water
starbringer59: Yeah?
Mississippienne: red ones, with the long webs hanging off them. y'know, they're barely animals
Mississippienne: they're just sacks of goo with nerve endings
starbringer59: Their tops don't sting you.
starbringer59: (I learned that from Finding Nemo)
Mississippienne: they're beautiful. and dangerous.
starbringer59: *nods&
Mississippienne: hee! i still wouldnt want to step on one though
Mississippienne: so this jellyfish, right, it doesnt even have a brain. no thought processes whatsoever
starbringer59: Right.
Mississippienne: no ability to comprehend the world around it in any deeper way. it just floats along at the whim of the ocean
starbringer59: I dunno, I'd think if I were a jellyfish. . .
starbringer59: "Floating floating floating floating flo--oo! Something tasty! Floating floating floating. . ."
Mississippienne: lol
Mississippienne: youd be the only jellyfish in the world with two brain cells to rub together
Mississippienne: (not three. dont be greedy, rose)
starbringer59: What? It would be one and a half, and you know it.
Mississippienne: i know. i was trying to be generous
starbringer59: *chuckles*
starbringer59: I think jellyfish have it good.
Mississippienne: so these little jellyfish, they float along, caught up in tides. but we're so highly evolved, and we get caught in tides, too. tides of society and war and love...
Mississippienne: ... as much at the mercy of nature as they are
starbringer59: Made up tides.
starbringer59: *nods*
Mississippienne: but no less powerful for that
starbringer59: That's true.
Mississippienne: a tide of human nature is as strong as one pulled by the moon
Mississippienne: y'know, when we were in florida (and me and travis were with red cross, and you and the others with fema) we would go swimming with the hurricanes rolling in
starbringer59: Would you really?
Mississippienne: they were miles off the coast. but you could feel their power
Mississippienne: theres nothing quite like getting snatched up and tossed end-over-end by a 20-foot wave to remind you how small you are
starbringer59: O.O I bet!
Mississippienne: we stride through our lives like colossuses, barely noticing the little worlds we step over -- but we're so tiny ourselves
starbringer59: Yeah. . .just look up.
Mississippienne: and travis was mad at me, because i wasnt doing so well with red cross, and i told him about the power of those waves, and how easy it would be to swim out there and not come back
starbringer59: Just disappear into them?
Mississippienne: yes. we're drawn to water, humans. we always want to go to oceans and lakes and rivers
Mississippienne: we cant stay away. even if it drowns us.
Mississippienne: dolphins -- their ancestors used to live on land, thousands of years ago, but went back to the sea.
starbringer59: Isn't that funny, it's also the thing we know the least about, the ocean.
starbringer59: We know more about space. About other galaxies.
Mississippienne: yes! theres worlds down there, giant beasts, blue and green worlds
starbringer59: Irony.
starbringer59: You can't escape it and you can't learn about it.
Mississippienne: NASA, back in the early days of the space program, they used to fear that if astronauts went on space walks they'd be so captivated by the blackness that theyd walk off into it
starbringer59: I believe that.
Mississippienne: but they found it was exactly opposite -- the astronauts only wanted to return to the ship, to the blue earth
starbringer59: ^^ Really?
Mississippienne: oh yes. i read a book by buzz aldrin -- the second man to walk on the moon -- and he talks about how when they were leaving earth's orbit, he wanted to take a picture of all the earth
Mississippienne: the complete sphere. and the guys on the ground, they didnt want him to waste the film. but he took a picture, and everyone was entranced by the blue earth suspended in space
starbringer59: You know, it would be scary; once you leave, it doesn't want you back so easily.
Mississippienne: you've probably seen that picture 10,000 times. but think of how amazing it was, back in 1969! to see your whole planet, your whole earth, everything and everyone you know, floating there in the blackness
Mississippienne: yes. the very stuff that keeps us alive -- oxygen -- is also what threatens to burn you up on reentry
starbringer59: I wonder how astronauts go on multiple trips. You want so badly to go up, and then you realize that actually all you want is to be back down, and there's a distinct possibility you won't make it back to where you want to go. . .
starbringer59: What makes you leave again?
Mississippienne: they have jobs to do. and ive heard that weightlessness is a lot of fun
starbringer59: *laughs* That's duplicatable in their training thingies though.
Mississippienne: yes, the vomit comet. that plane that does dives that gives you like 30 seconds of weightlnessness
starbringer59: They're making a hotel in space, supposedly. Vegas is. A hotel.
Mississippienne: have you ever read carl sagan?
starbringer59: For hundreds of thousands of dollars, you can go up for a night.
starbringer59: It would be worth it.
starbringer59: I haven't.
Mississippienne: *laughs* that doesnt surprise me
Mississippienne: it would
Mississippienne: maybe we
Mississippienne: will live that long, rose. long enough to go up, when going into space isnt just for a special few
starbringer59: I'm not sure how you'd fund it though. . .you can't be up there long or your bones deteriorate.
Mississippienne: my grandfather -- he was born in 1905, before the airplane, and he lived to see space flight
starbringer59: They'd have to consistantly switch out their staff.
Mississippienne: they would. or find some way to replicate gravity. theres a design for a spacecraft that spins, creating artificial gravity
starbringer59: Ender's Game.
starbringer59: I always said that science fiction created science.
Mississippienne: but -- carl sagan. have you read him?
starbringer59: Possibly, but I don't believe so.
Mississippienne: you should
starbringer59: I'll look into it.
Mississippienne: he wrote "contact", which they based the movie off of. and "pale blue dot" and "demon-haunted world"
Mississippienne: all very very good. he was a very famous scientist
starbringer59: *nods* I've heard of him.
Mississippienne: gravity fascinates me, because it has such power over us, and yet it may be the most power any of us have over the universe
starbringer59: Yeah.
Mississippienne: gravity is just a warping in space and time, caused by mass
starbringer59: Damn mass.
Mississippienne: everything that has mass reshapes the universe. you, me, everyone
Mississippienne: your existence deforms the universe
starbringer59: That pleases me.
Mississippienne: it should. every petty tyrant, every mass-murderer, every sadist -- every one of them in their wildest fantasies
Mississippienne: never had as much power as you do by simply being
starbringer59: That's kinda weird.
Mississippienne: its beautiful
starbringer59: It is.
Mississippienne: i always thought taoism sort of missed the point -- taoism teaches that you should be like an uncarved block of wood, unchanging
Mississippienne: but this universe is all change. every atom in your body was created at the start of time and has been part of galaxies, comets, stars...
starbringer59: Really? I always got the exact opposite from it. . .
starbringer59: You go with the flow, like water.
Mississippienne: maybe. thats how i was taught
starbringer59: I could be wrong, but I was self-taught.
Mississippienne: taoism has lots of teachings about being harmonious with the universe
Mississippienne: not taking actions to benefit yourself or change the natural state of the world
starbringer59: I guess you could look at it that way. I always read it like. . .
starbringer59: You are harmonious with the universe, because there's no other way for you to be.
Mississippienne: of course
starbringer59: And Taoism is just the mental aspect of it, getting you to accept that whatever happens, whether you change or don't change or make change or stop change, you're part of it, and it affects you, and you affect it.
starbringer59: But again, that's just what I got.
starbringer59: *shrug*
Mississippienne: well, there's religious taoism and philosophical taoism. and lots of other things mixed up in it, such as polytheism
starbringer59: That's true.
starbringer59: I obviously just subscribed to Philosophical Taoism, since I didn't bother to ask anyone else for advice; hard to have religion without that.
Mississippienne: religion is one of those things that always utterly escaped me
starbringer59: Has it? I've always understood its purpose.
starbringer59: As per the human psyche.
Mississippienne: it always seemed to be another way of explaining what already is
starbringer59: Sort of. . .The purpose gets twisted a lot. . .
starbringer59: What I think, and the core of every religion seems to hold for this theory. . .
starbringer59: Is that everyone lies to themselves. Everyone has a lie, that they tell themselves, that they believe and that isn't true or at least isn't the whole truth. And most peope have to - the human brain just isn't developed to be able to deal with every single truth ever.
starbringer59: And religion is just one of the lies. It isn't a replacement - or isn't supposed to be - since at its core it can live happily beside the actual real truth of How Things Are.
Mississippienne: so religion is pretty lies?
starbringer59: Just substituting in for the things your brain can't handle.
starbringer59: People just twist it obscurely to be things that it isn't.
starbringer59: I think so. I mean, if you look at it logically. . .
starbringer59: If god in whatever form is real, then you should be able to find him/her/it/whatever on your own, just by looking at what actually exists and how things really are.
Mississippienne: so god is... everything?
starbringer59: Religion is for the people who don't have time for that, or who can't handle the hurdles that search throws at you.
starbringer59: Yeah.
starbringer59: It's bullshit that god is just Good.
starbringer59: It says in pretty much every religious text that God is Everywhere.
Mississippienne: that was always an odd belief to me, that god is good. looking at it from a christian perspective, there's the story of job
starbringer59: So why would it be only for good? Everywhere is everywhere.
starbringer59: Good, bad. When sparrows get hit by hail and die, god is there. When old ladies get killed by muggers, god is there. When supernovas explode, god is there.
Mississippienne: where god is petty and cruel and sadistic. why would it be so self-evident that god is good if youre own religious text tells you differently?
starbringer59: Like Batman, only cooler.
starbringer59: Yeah.
starbringer59: I definitely don't disagree - the Christian Bible has two different gods in it.
starbringer59: Old Testament Retribution Seeking and, quite frankly, Childish God.
starbringer59: And then you have the New, Revised, Loving and Caring God Version 2.0.
starbringer59: Possibly Windows-orientated.
starbringer59: But again like, people lie to themselves because a lot of people, this is cliched, can't handle the truth.
Mississippienne: but if god is everywhere and everything, then we are all part of god. so why pray? why beg forgiveness? why fear hell? all these things -- fear, hope, pain -- they are all god, just as we are
starbringer59: Oh, I actually know why!
starbringer59: Again, this got twisted.
Mississippienne: you could no more escape from it than you can from the laws of thermodynamics
starbringer59: But okay, go with me for a bit on this one. . .
starbringer59: Say god is real - in whatever form, we're not using a strictly biblical form here.
starbringer59: And you're a loving god or whatever, anyway, your people fuck up, you don't really care because there's actually no such thing as a fuck up - there's no such thing as Good or Evil, it's all just there. It's all the same.
starbringer59: But they can't accept that.
starbringer59: What do you do? You set up a system that they can accept.
Mississippienne: but why can they not accept that? if you are a creator god you could just make them accept it
starbringer59: Catholics have confession, isn't that strange? When the Biblical Christian God specifically says that all you have to do is ask for forgiveness, why is there confession?
Mississippienne: why create them at odds with their world? with truth?
starbringer59: Because people feel like they need to pay back for what they think was wrong.
starbringer59: I dunno. I don't think god really put a lot of thought into this.
starbringer59: Everyone thinks earth is the center of god's world.
starbringer59: Why would it be?
Mississippienne: so god was like a 7-year-old boy and we are his science project?
starbringer59: It seems a lot more plausable than the other answer.
starbringer59: Actually, this I don't buy, but you know what would be interesting?
starbringer59: You've written a lot so you can relate to this.
Mississippienne: but then -- and this is specifically going off the above stated idea of a creator god -- that is no god worth worshipping
Mississippienne: go ahead
starbringer59: When you write, the characters come alive, don't they?
Mississippienne: yes
starbringer59: They do their own things, and they think their own thoughts.
starbringer59: It's like they're real. What if the world is just that? When you write, you make a little tiny world, and the characters are real, and they go about their lives and it's either sad or happy, and you're sad or happy for them.
starbringer59: And god, whatever it is, is just a writer, and when the typewriter stops, the story ends.
Mississippienne: all writing is about conflict. this is because we, as humans, find conflict interesting. this does not mean conflict is inherently interesting, just that for whatever reason (nature, nurture) we find conflict interesting and choose to write about it
starbringer59: *nods*
Mississippienne: all stories are, what, pretty much 3 basic themes? man against nature, man against man, man against himself
Mississippienne: all conflict. so god creates us in conflict with our world.
starbringer59: Are they? I don't really buy that, I've written plenty of stories that don't have that theme.
starbringer59: But yeah.
Mississippienne: have you? stop and think -- love stories? love is all conflict
Mississippienne: you can lay there next to someone and love them so much that you see their face when you close your eyes
starbringer59: *nods*
Mississippienne: and still want to run away from them because being in love, sharing yourself, hurts so much
starbringer59: True.
Mississippienne: stories about the inevitability of death? man against himself. refusal to accept what is true
starbringer59: I don't think you're required to worship or pray to god - that's silly. Even with the Christian God, it's just undermining him - who the fuck do you think you are? He already like, has a plan, right? And knows you better than you do. So shut up and let him do his thing. Stop bossing the guy around. No wonder the world's fucked, too many people praying.
Mississippienne: a cute little story about enjoying the flowers on a spring day? even in the creation, it's you versus nature, you trying to capture something of the natural world in an 'unnatural' medium (the written word)
starbringer59: *chuckles*
starbringer59: Man, if I were god, I'd be pissed. "Who are these people and why do they keep praying about stupid crap? Who do they think I am, a genie in a bottle? If you want better grades, why didn't you study - don't come begging me for them."
Mississippienne: if god is everyone and everything -- which i can accept, although i find it silly to name it god -- then it's silly to pray to it
Mississippienne: silliness all around
starbringer59: Yeah, I can't think of a better word that gets the general idea across though.
starbringer59: I just use it and don't capitalize it.
Mississippienne: i dont capitalize anything
starbringer59: *grins*
Mississippienne: thermodynamics! rose, have you ever studied thermodynamics?
starbringer59: But yeah, it is silly. Prayer is unnecessary. You worship with your heartbeats and your breaths, and you don't have to pray because do sparrows pray? Probably not, and yet they have food every spring.
starbringer59: Some.
Mississippienne: i cant do math in my head, but im in love with the laws of thermodynamics
starbringer59: XD
Mississippienne: its like how mathematicians talk about how beautiful math is, how it creates order out of chaos
Mississippienne: thermodynamics is the same way
starbringer59: Those stupid mathematicians. Chaos is the most orderly and beautiful thing there is.
Mississippienne: pshaw! chaos is an illusion
Mississippienne: there is order even to chaos
starbringer59: No way! Chaos is pure, undiluted existence.
starbringer59: If there's a god, that's his name.
Mississippienne: take the first law -- "The increase in the internal energy of a thermodynamic system is greater than the amount of heat energy added to the system minus the work done by the system on the surroundings." you cannot create nor destroy anything utterly.
Mississippienne: second law -- "The entropy of an isolated system not at equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value".
Mississippienne: essentially, you can't get more out of a closed system than you put into it
starbringer59: *nods*
Mississippienne: if you put 9 volts into a battery, you dont get 10 volts out. painfully simple. but so elegant
starbringer59: It is.
starbringer59: Basic philosophy in a math law.
Mississippienne: third law -- "As a system approaches absolute zero of temperature all processes cease and the entropy of the system approaches a minimum value." you can't go back again. whats started cant return to how it began
Mississippienne: these are the tracks our universe runs on. this is what creates patterns, conflicts. interestng situations.
starbringer59: *nods*
Mississippienne: when you peel back the first layer, everything you see underneath is so elegant, so simple, that your mind almost cannot process it
Mississippienne: (well, my mind cannot. perhaps i was hasty in speaking of the minds of everyone else)
starbringer59: No, that fits into what I was saying too.
starbringer59: Like the center of a black hole. Imagine that! Infinite mass in no space.
starbringer59: Doesn't that baffle your mind? It totally baffles me. It exists in no space. It takes up nothing.
Mississippienne: its so amazing. better than anything i could have dreamed up
starbringer59: And neutron stars! Incredible! Do you know they think their surfaces are actually solid iron despite it being millions and millions of degrees?
starbringer59: And those psychotic little dumbo octopusses that have six legs and then two extra ones they use as "ears" to "fly" above the surface of the ocean.
Mississippienne: is it not beautiful? but its all part of this amazing interconnected web...
Mississippienne: y'know, our senses are only what we perceive because of evolutionary adaptation
starbringer59: I know, there is something to throw your mind through a loop.
starbringer59: You only "see" stuff because your brain made it up. Basically.
Mississippienne: but sharks and fish can sense electrical fields, maping the earth
Mississippienne: your brain only interprets signals from your eyes, which only pick up visible wavelengths of light
Mississippienne: so nothing is as we see it.
starbringer59: Right.
starbringer59: The brain explodes.
starbringer59: It would be fascinating to be a bee.
starbringer59: Supposedly they can see ultraviolet.
Mississippienne: ah little bees! blissfully unaware of their own gift
starbringer59: Damn them!
Mississippienne: or sonar, like bats. seeing with sound!
starbringer59: That would be crazy.
starbringer59: You can summon bats with hearing aids.
starbringer59: We always played with them at camp - the kids with them would use them to call bats.
starbringer59: And then we'd throw rocks and they "fetch" them.
Mississippienne: poor bats! like sharks, very unloved
starbringer59: Oh.
Mississippienne: have you ever read oliver sacks' book, "the man who mistook his wife for a hat"?
starbringer59: Supposedly, and I honestly haven't heard this from a super-reliable source, but from a variety of information, great white sharks are immortal.
starbringer59: Hmm, no I have not.
Mississippienne: not immortal. every biological process breaks down over time
starbringer59: Apparently their DNA doesn't unravel.
starbringer59: At the edges.
Mississippienne: very interesting book. he talks about senses we pocess that we do not even think about
starbringer59: They die because their digestive system sucks.
Mississippienne: thats still dying
starbringer59: They accumulate so much indigestable material that they sink to the bottom of the ocean and starve to death.
starbringer59: But not from old age.
Mississippienne: very few things in nature die of old age. something usually gets you
starbringer59: *chuckles* You know what I mean though.
Mississippienne: in sacks' book, he talks about a woman who lost her sense of proprioception
starbringer59: *nods*
Mississippienne: thats knowing where all your body parts are, even though you arent looking at them
starbringer59: That would be bizarre.
Mississippienne: if she wasnt watching them, her hands would wander off doing other things
Mississippienne: she could only walk by watching her legs
Mississippienne: think about it rose! having to be aware of every movement you ever take for the rest of your life!
starbringer59: OMG! That totally is a developed sense! Babies don't have it.
starbringer59: They're always totally stunned when their own hand wanders accidently into their view. "WHAT IS THAT?!!!"
starbringer59: That would be bizarre.
Mississippienne: have you ever heard of haidinger's brush?
starbringer59: Nu-uh.
Mississippienne: look at a blank white sheet of paper. sometimes you can see this faint yellow glow
Mississippienne: that's polarized light. haidinger's brush.
starbringer59: Huh. ^^
Mississippienne: your eyes can just barely pick it up. horseshoe crabs and bees can see it much better
starbringer59: Little bastards.
starbringer59: They don't know how good they have it.
Mississippienne: dont be a hater
starbringer59: *laughs*
starbringer59: Is that why some people can see "auras" around people?
starbringer59: They have more developed eyes?
Mississippienne: possibly. or maybe they're just crazy
starbringer59: Potentially both.
Mississippienne: there are lots of other things we can't sense -- radio waves, streams of subatomic particles, etc.
starbringer59: I always wonder when people say things like that. Maybe they aren't crazy. . .maybe they really just perceive the world differently, literally. Their senses are different.
starbringer59: Yeah.
Mississippienne: theres whole worlds piled atop worlds that we are blind to!
starbringer59: Though not completely. You're affected by them.
starbringer59: Too many radio waves give you ill side affects.
starbringer59: Etc.
Mississippienne: it seems some people can sense barometric pressures. like how you might feel differently right before a storm
starbringer59: *nods*
starbringer59: It would make sense; there are like 6 billion people, a couple of them have got to be mutants.