Educating Australia's Children. With Slogans!

For reasons I won't go into here, I've been staring at the logos and school mottoes of a lot of different schools lately.  They are seen on the uniforms that almost every Australian child must wear, screen-printed onto a tee-shirt in the case of government and low-rent private schools, or embroidered onto snazzy wool blazers in the case of your more exclusive private schools.  Most are the products of design-by-committee, in particular the type of free-thinking, revolutionary committee dedicated to the visionary cause of not offending anybody ever.    Although one catchy design featured a cleverly drawn bat and a redback spider.  A boys' school, obviously.  The mottoes are usually along the lines of "A Commitment to Courtesy" or "Passing The Time Together."

But this particular design caught me off guard, and caused a minor argument (a very, very limited armed regional conflict, actually) about what it was.  You see, the following is a photograph of an actual Kangaroo Tick, an eight-legged blood-sucking parasite:

Kangaroo Tick.

And this is the logo of a certain Australian school located in a suburb near Perth:

Kangaroo Tick?

To my mind it is a representation (although poorly drawn) of something that clearly has eight legs and bears a more than passing resemblance to a blood-sucking parasite.  Just what are they teaching the children, I wonder?

But I was shouted down by those present on this occasion, all of whom claimed that it was really a Banksia cone, and I was looking at it upside down.

My contention was that the motto gives it away: "Friends Growing Together."  Clearly the authors are referring to the fact that a tick is like a little friend that grows and grows while burrowing its head into your flesh.  My opponents contended that a Banksia flower grows also, and has the added advantage of not being a completely disgusting and horrible parasite.

Banksia flower. I personally don't see the resemblance.

This is the type of Rorschach test that demonstrates once again that what we see has much more to do with what's behind our eyes than what's before them.

-    -    -

In any event, the following are some of the school mottoes I have recently come across.  I swear I am totally not making any of these up (except maybe a little).

Preparing Children for Future Disappointment.

Where Self-Expression is Complusary  (a government school)

Learning to Love The Love of Learning Love. (a Montessori school)

Obey The Nuns.  (self-explanatory)

West Sydney Community School:  Teachers Telling Children What To Do All Day.

How About a Little Respect Here for the Teachers' Union (government school in a Labour electorate)

Sitting Quietly at our Desks for Christ's Sake  (a Christian school)

Excellence - Achievement - Status  (an Exclusive private school)

Nepotism - Graft - Corruption  ( a Very Exclusive private school)

This COULD be the logo of almost any primary school.

A Big Bunch of Children  (a school where the staff have pretty much given up)

Learning to Judge One Another  (a Methodist school)

"I Went to Meekatharra Primary School and All I Got Was This T-Shirt"

Innaloo Primary School.  We'd Change The Name if They'd Let Us.  (The suburb of Innaloo really exists - I did not make it up)

Mansion Hills Estates Private College.  If You Have to Ask, You Can't Afford It.

Diversity Through Conformity.  (another PC government school)

Back To Basics:  Reading, Writing, and Understanding Welfare Department Procedures

Wendsleytondaleshire Acadamy.  Your Parents Probably Work for Our Parents.

Children Are Your Future, Retirement is Our Future.

Building a Future Wastewater Plant Together  (an alternative school where children learn by doing)

"Does a Motto Cost Extra"

A School that Contains Creativity and Fun  (could be read two ways - think about it)





If you are ever in charge of coming up with your school's motto, remember that you cannot disguise the truth.  People like me will see straight through it.



.

The Blind Labelmaker

In the study of ideas, there is a never-ending plethora of -ism's.  We have Existentialism, Materialism, Nihilism, Marxism, Skepticism, Atomism, Infinitism, Fundamentalism, Coherentism, Solipism, Empiricism, Rationalism, Realism, Idealism, Nominalism, Conceptualism, Structuralism, Poststructuralism, Modernism, and Postmodernism.  There are many other -ism's, besides.

As necessary as they seem, there are problems with these labels.  We seem to need them because you can't think about something unless you can name the thing.  Or can you?

It is possible to think without words, but it's really really hard.  Trust me.   Even I wasn't able to do it until I had learned at least one second language.  Then one day I found I could manipulate ideas in my head without having to refer to their labels in either language.  Translating from one language to another isn't simply replacing English words with the equivalent words in, say, German.  It doesn't work.  You must get the thought expressed by the English sentence into your head, and then re-express the thought in your own words in the context of the German language.

(By the way, if you want to understand how a nation thinks, what they believe without even knowing they believe it, and what values they unconsciously, implicitly hold, then learn their language.  All those things lie hidden in the words they depend on for thinking and without which most people cannot think at all.  And even then, people only think things that their limited vocabulary allows them to think.  If you can't be bothered to learn a second language, then at least learn as many new words as you can, so as not to be limited in the things you are able to think about!)

In any case, that's why there are so many words to describe ideas.  The problem as I see it is this.  When a philosopher thinks up a new word - creates a new label - and people begin to hear of it, the whole world suddenly gets divided into two parts:  things that are described by the new label, and things that are not.  In effect, each new label is two labels:  the thing and its opposite.  That part of the universe that belongs within the new label, and that part which does not belong.

Further, people silently think (without choosing to do so - it's automatic) that everything covered by the new label is the same in some important way, and everything outside the new label is the same.  Without active opposition, the world becomes very monochromatic (look it up - that's your new word for the day).

These labels are often compared to theories in science, but in fact they differ significantly from them.  Both might be described as a model of reality, useful only to the extent that they reproduce what we can observe.  And so we understand that the world isn't actually divided up into everything that is Existentialism and everything else that is not, yet it is occasionally useful to model the world in that way.  But a scientific theory is much, much more than a model, a black box the interior of which is irrelevant as long as it produces useful results.  No, a theory in its inner workings must closely resemble reality as much as possible, and not just simulate observable phenomena.  Only then can a theory also make accurate predictions of as-yet unknown, unanticipated phenomena.

Another challenge posed by these labels is that new, original ideas are easy to dismiss by lumping them into an old label.  "Oh, that's just old-fashioned Modernism."  (Wait . . . what?)  It's the fastest way to end a conversation while maintaining an illusion of triumph.

Which leads me to wonder why people so often misuse impressive-sounding labels.  Do people throw them around in order to have that feeling of exclusivity or supremacy?  Are they so completely unaware that the real effect is to cover themselves in snootiness?

Until recently, that is precisely why I had very little use for the oft-misused and inherrently imprecise terms of Modernism and Postmodernism.  By implication, there is a third, "none of the above," or Premodernism for short.  (Does this cover all the possibilities, I wonder?)

Then, the day before New Years' Eve I had a long, relaxed chat with a Philosopher and father of two, who in a previous lifetime was a Geophysicist, a Corporate Consultant, and Environmental Activist. He knew how to use these particular labels in a more productive way: as shorthand for discussing without judgement various styles of thinking that roughly correspond to the Graves' Values Levels which were developed as a part of what became known as Spiral Dynamics© in the 1970's.  They also correspond inexactly to Robert Bly's seven layers of the male personality.

Essentially, individuals and groups utilize systems of values or styles of thinking which can be identified and predicted.  There exists the possibility of movement or progress from one style to another.  This leads to the erroneous assumption that such progression is a goal to be achieved, with under-achievers to be pitied and sometimes harangued.  My friend by contrast used these concept labels without judgement or condescension.

One of the many things I learned was that someone who skips over or does not completely integrate the useful foundations of one level can appear to be operating on a higher level while actually being quite dysfunctional.  He or she will have some significant blind spots or character flaws.  A Modernist, for example, might identify himself as an Athiest or a Skeptic (though there's nothing inherently wrong with that - an untestable belief chosen individually).  Modernists also reject much of what might be called Premodern thinking: superstition, unquestioned obedience to authority (basically anyone in a uniform or sufficiently impressive hat), conformity, tribalism (including racism and tribal morality - right and wrong are defined as relative to what's right for the Tribe), and ostracization of anyone who seems different.  A Modernist for example will usually not belong to a church or identify with a particular religion.

But in rejecting Premodernism, some important parts of an individual's operating system are often written over.  Children awakening into Modernism at increasingly early ages might for example fail to develop a system of personal ethics because they were not first exposed to any form of group ethics.  My friend expressed what to me was quite a novel but obvious idea that Premodern (or if you prefer Level Four or Blue Level) organizations like churches and schools have the responsibility to nurture people within the values systems in which they currently operate, while keeping a door open for individuals who are adequately prepared to move through it.  In other words, they might also allow for the possibility of transcendence.

A striking example was shared in which a postmodernist teacher, a self-described Enlightened being, came to Australia to speak to an interested audience.  Towards the end, a participant asked the question, "Does having children assist or retard a person's progress toward enlightenment?"  The answer was, "Enlightenment is impossible if you have children.  They only get in the way of your growth."

This was glaring evidence of a gaping hole in this supposedly enlightened, Level 7 individual.  The archtypical Premodern experience of raising children, of procreating, is actually one of the most powerful catalysts for personal growth and transcendence on many different levels - as an individual, in one's capacity for love, sacrifice, compassion, leadership, - in the ability to act decisively, and in one's ability to experience and rise above pain, loss, empathy, anxiety, need and attachment - as well as growth in the more indefinable spiritual or existential capacities.  Raising children is not the Premodernist error or fools' roadblock that our "enlightened" teacher took it for, but rather an opportunity that comes along for a few lucky individuals to experience unheard-of new plateaus in this lifetime.

Later there were rumors that this same teacher had been taking undue advantage of his female acolytes, further indication that he had unwisely skipped a few important steps in his personal development.  Enlightenment isn't a destination, it's a journey.  If you think you're there and you stop moving, you aren't there.

That brings to mind one last problem with the over-reliance of labels.  Did anyone realize they were Premodernist until someone invented the word Modernist?  If someone is aware of the label Postmodern, doesn't that make him automatically something beyond Postmodern for which a label has not yet been produced?  Having a label to hang onto might actually trick us into thinking that we are something which we are not, or that we know more than we really do.

We might be compared to a Blind Labelmaker who busily affixes stickers to boxes at random in an unlit warehouse.  If we quickly slap a new -ism onto every idea and individual without actually examining the contents, of what value then are the labels?



.

Is The Mechanical Age Finished?

Is it the end of the Mechanical Age?

The what?  Well, you'd better watch the video.  Then decide.

(26 minutes)

.

Stupid Science, Stupid Religion

Lest anyone imagine that all religious beliefs are equal or that everything called Science is awesome, I'd like to get a few things off my chest and open things up a little.

It's sort of like comparing smart girls to particularly dumb boys, or smart boys to really dumb girls, and then trying to conclude that either boys or girls are generally the dumbest.  There is such a thing as stupid religion, and also stupid science.  Neither has a monopoly on being completely lame once in a while.

It is this flawed method of biased comparison that is largely responsible for the falsely perceived incompatibility that people often pretend exists between Science and Religion.

The real incompatibility is between smart and stupid, and my life has been entirely committed to becoming gradually less stupid in both areas and striving to be slightly smarter, bit by little, as a scientist/engineer as well as a spiritual being whenever an opportunity to do so comes along.

Stupid Religion happens when people use Religion when they should be using something else instead.  Like Science,  The Emergency Room, or Birth Control.  Or something called a Brain.  Religion is particularly stupid when it makes testable statements.  These are claims that can actually be checked or verified through a bit of investigation, experimentation, or mathematical analysis.  This is very dangerous for Religion, because once testable claims are made and they happen to prove false, that Religion's credibility takes a major hit.

It gets worse, though.  Because many people can't tell the difference between these testable "beliefs" and real beliefs, they may feel social pressure to continue believing in statements that have already been disproved.  Basically, they are believing in lies and will sooner or later suffer because of it.

This credibility hit and the attending suffering is something to which the Catholic Church can testify.  It is a lesson that all other religions should carefully consider.  Catholics once persecuted Galileo for examining some of their stupid testable beliefs and proving them wrong.  Eventually, though, they had to eat humble pie and admit they were wrong and he was right.  This is actually much to their credit, because some Religions would rather cease to exist than to ever admit being wrong.  It pleases me immensely to observe the Christian teaching of Humility over Pride being put into practice in this way.  Even though it took a few hundred years.

But too often I find religious people adamantly and pridefully clinging to some false testable statement that has already been disproved.  They are certain that there is no possible way they could ever have been mistaken in the way they interpret ancient texts written in some long-dead language by people they know nothing about.  If there's anything more arrogant or prideful than that, I surely don't want to know about it.  The earth is only 6,000 years old?  That has not only been proven completely false, but the bible doesn't even say this.  Readers of the bible made up this statement out of pure ignorance.

Beliefs that can be tested are Stupid.  Nobody ever needs to believe them, because they can be tested and either proved or disproved.  "Do you believe in evolution?"  No!  It's not a matter of belief, it's a proven fact. You don't need to believe in it any more than you need to believe that your cell phone really can make phone calls or that airplanes really can fly.  And really believing as hard as you can that 2 and 2 make 7 will never make it so, and will eventually lead to your spiritual downfall.

Believing in something that is false has only one spiritual or practical benefit.  If this is happening to you, it is probably what should be happening.  The reason you're here is not to have a perfect existence and to be right all the time.  This world is a classroom, and we are here to learn and grow.  Everything is an opportunity to fulfill this Divine purpose, including getting yourself into and then out of some stupid, testable beliefs.

Powerful, spiritual beliefs are those that cannot be tested in any way except within your own character.  If they improve you, end your suffering and make you stronger, keep them.  They are proved for you.  But everyone else on the planet needs to do their own work.

Tell us, John, what religion are you anyway?

Why?  So you can label me?  So you can judge me according to your perception of that religion, as totally clear and perfect as that perception surely is?  Forget it.  I, like every person on the planet, am far more complex than even a whole dictionary of labels could contain.  I might be Catholic, Bhuddist, Hindu, Methodist, Muslim, Jewish, Evangelical, Coptic, Greek Orthodox, Baptist, Adventist, Jehovah's Witness, Mormon, Quaker, Mennonite, Anabaptist, Baha'i, Eckankar, Jainist, Zoroastrian or Pastafarian, and it wouldn't make any difference to the validity of ideas that have an independent existence.

My Religion isn't the church I go to in order to participate in community life.  My Religion is my personal spirituality, untestable beliefs, and the growth that hopefully occurs once in a while as a result.

_____


Stupid Science happens when scientists do the opposite, and make statements that are not testable.  They make proclamations that their data do not support.  Sometimes this happens when they perceive only what their personal bias and preconceptions allow them to see, or they filter every new experience according to  their past experience. In other words, when they are acting perfectly human.

But scientists are supposed to have more discipline than that, especially before opening their mouths in public.

The worst example of Stupid Science is when scientists publicly announce that There Is No God.  Now, how the hell were they able to work that out?  What data do they have to show this conclusively?  What peer-review process did they follow?  None:  they are just being Stupid.  They are messing with untestable hypotheses which are not within the domain of Science at all.  They are overstepping their bounds.

"I'm WATCHING you!"

Other examples of Stupid Science are found everywhere on the internet:  free energy scams; dubious anti-aging cosmetics, drugs and devices; "alternative" medicine; Climate Change Denial; Ass-trology, Numb-erology, bible codes, or anything else that uses scientific-sounding bullshit but with no methodology for eliminating bias from the evidence, or which claim proof of untestable or poorly-formed hypotheses.

Science is really very simple.  You draw conclusions based on real evidence, and only based on the evidence.  



Anything and everything that is objectively testable is the property of Science.  Anything that is subjective to the mind belongs to Religion.  They have nothing whatsoever to do with each other, nor does either one pose any kind of threat to the other.  There is no conflict between them.

Unless, of course, they are being Stupid.


Next:  Science V. Religion, Round 2

See also: Certainty or Self-Deception

and:  So it's Religion you want?









.

A Very Auspicious Day - November 8

You might not be aware that November 8 is one of the most interesting dates on the entire calendar.  

For example, on this day in 1889, Montana became the 41st State of the Union.  Where would we be today if that hadn't happened?  Not in Montana, that's for certain.

X-Rays:  Creepy!

Röntgen: Creepy.

Also on this day, in 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered X-Rays while messing around with electricity, thus creating a whole new way for scientists to be creepy.  And proving once and for all that messing around with electricity is, on the whole, an excellent thing to do.







Speaking of creepy, November 8 is also famous for being the day in 1923 on which a confused young Adolf Hitler attempted to seize control of Germany by occupying a beer hall in Munich at gunpoint.  And it just might have worked, if it hadn't been a completely idiotic idea!!!!  Sure, Germans like beer, but there is so much more to Germany than that.  Young Adolf wouldn't have necessarily understood such nuances of German culture, he himself being Austrian. And part Jewish.  And his real name wasn't Hitler, but Schickelgrüber.  Yes, he was a very confused young man, about a great many things.

But young Adolf learned his lesson, and after being released from prison he gave up trying to put his nefarious plans and half-baked sociological theories into effect by force.  Instead, he did what everyone else does who lusts for power, and got himself elected democratically.

Which is why you must never vote for anyone who says, "Vote for ME."  Because that person will absolutely, definitely be the next Hitler.

LOSER of the 1960 US Presidential Election

Speaking of villains and democracy, November 8 also marks the day in 1960 when Richard Milhous Nixon, the world's second most famous Quaker after the guy on the Oatmeal box, was defeated in his bid to become the 35th POTUS.  The voice of the People was clear and decisive in their rejection of Nixon as their 35th president.  Nixon accepted this decision with good grace and resigned himself to becoming 37th president instead.

Remember that word, Dick.  "Resign." It might come in handy again.

Speaking of resigning, today is the day in 2006 that the Worst Secretary of State Ever, Donald Rumsfeld, resigned.

While November 8 has seen its share of blood, such as the historic first-ever jet-on-jet aircraft dogfight (1950, USA 2, North Korea 0), or in 1520 when Denmark invaded Sweden for some reason, it has also been a day of peace.  1965, for example, when Britain officially abolished the death penalty.  Or the signing of the Pacification of Ghent in 1576.  And thank goodness for THAT.  Just imagine what your life would be like if the Dutch town of Ghent were still full of angry Spaniards.

King Charles the Clueless

November 8th is also the birthday in 1622 of King Charles the 10th of Sweden, who spent most of his time trying to explain to the rest of the world that Sweden and Denmark are actually two completely different countries.  By far the most interesting thing about him is that he was actually King Charles the 4th.  But King Charles the 9th who was really King Charles the 3rd had chosen his number based on a book he read which he thought was a history of Sweden but which turned out to be a work of fiction.  Thank goodness no democratically-elected leader in modern times would ever rely on fictional stories to make important decisions (ahem).  The fact that George W. Bush had never read an entire book might actually have been for the best.



It is the birthday in 1836 of Milton Bradley, a wealthy Capitalist and entrepreneur who built a monopoly based on board games, which ironically did not include Monopoly!  Instead, Monopoly was the creation of a puritanical do-gooder who wanted to teach people about the evils and moral bankruptcy of Capitalism.  The game failed miserably in this goal, and instead became the means of introducing millions of children to the endless joys and wonders of Capitalism.  As a consequence, and much to her dismay, the self-righteous do-gooder became a fabulously wealthy Capitalist.

Also born on this day, in 1848, is Gottlob Frege, the German mathematician and logician who elevated Logic from something akin to the disreputable morass of Grecian rhetoric into a respectable branch of mathematics.  Presumably he did this in an effort to figure out what on earth his parents were thinking.  Next time you use an IF( ) function in Excel or draw a Chance card in Monopoly, thank Gottlob Frege.

Jack Kilby, Inventor of the
Calculator and the
Integrated Circuit.

One individual indebted to Gottlob Frege was the inventor of the integrated circuit, an item that makes prodigious use of Frege's formal mathematical logic.  Jack Kilby built and patented the first integrated circuit while working for Texas Instruments in 1958, and was promptly awarded the Nobel Prize.  Well, relatively promptly.  It apparently took 42 years for the news to reach Sweden.  (All their mail was being delivered to Denmark by accident.)  In any case, Jack's birthday could only be - you guessed it - November 8th!

Jack Kilby was an engineer after my own heart.  He also invented the electronic calculator, which I regard as the greatest invention of all times.  If I could put just one item into a time machine and send it to my personal hero Galileo (who famously never did anything on November 8th if he could help it), it would be a solar-powered scientific calculator.  He really could have used one.  And I have a few extra, including the Texas Instruments TI-30X IIs, which in my studied opinion is the best calculator available today and a direct descendant of Jack Kilby's creation.

Some of the calculators I have owned and used.  Best Invention Ever.

Atlas: Not Verified

This day is also the birthday in 1656 of astronomer Edmund Halley, who correctly guessed the periodicity of the object now known as Halley's Comet.   It is also the day before the birthday of astronomer and author Carl Sagan.  Twelve hundred years or so from now, November 8th will be celebrated by "millions and millions" of people throughout the inhabited Galaxy as Sagan-mas Eve.

Also in Astronomy, it is alleged to be the anniversary of the discovery in 1980 of a 15th moon of Saturn based on images taken by Voyager 1 (there are now at least 62 known moons of Saturn).  Try as I may I have not been able to verify this claim, nor verify that the fried-egg-like Atlas was that lucky moon.  Actually, this factoid is almost certainly wrong.  But if it were true, how awesome would that be?

2005 YU55.  Verified.

Verified, however, is the hair-raising near-miss of a 400-meter-wide asteroid, named 2005 YU55 for some reason, passing between the earth and moon on November 8 of 2011. Hey - that's TODAY!!!

If an object of that size were to collide with the earth, it's pretty much lights out for 90% of higher life forms on this planet, and even some politicians too.  The chances that it will do so are zero, however.  Its trajectory has been very accurately plotted, and it will definitely miss us.  We'll be able to get a much better photo of it, though, so that's a bonus.

Bram Stoker's character
scares the hell out of me.

Shouldn't we really call this a near-hit instead of a near-miss?


It is the birthday of scary Irish author Bram Stoker (1874), and notable user of language Gordon Ramsay (1966).  It is the day English poet John Milton regained paradise in 1674.



November 8 is the day in 1983 that the amazing James Booker left us for the sunny side of the street.  In honor of His Magnificence, please take a moment to listen to one of the great human achievements of all time:





So my friends, enjoy this absolutely amazing, one-of-a-kind day!  What will I be doing on this most auspicious occasion?  I am going to celebrate by laying in a hammock.




.

More Questions Than Answers

If you thought Science was just a big bag of facts, or that if Science doesn't know everything then it knows nothing at all, then I hope to enlighten you somewhat.  Science is the process of finding out which ideas are true and which are crap.

That is very hard to accept for soft-skulled people who think that all ideas are somehow equal.  Nature doesn't apologize for the fact that there exists an absolute truth, an objective reality of which Nature alone is the moderator, referee and adjudicator.   Our very subjective, fallible minds can only glimpse that reality through the rigorous discipline of scientific training in careful logical thought, painstaking observations, and tireless trial and error in which pre-judgement is necessarily suspended.

That is the nature of Science.  We may not always like the results, and often the process results in more questions than answers.  But in the long run, Science always increases our grasp of Nature's one Reality.

More questions than answers.  Such is the case with the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, shared by Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess.

(In Australia, the media will make a big deal out of the fact that Brian Schmidt, though US-born, works at the Australian National University in Canberra.  Australia claims 10 Nobel Prizes, 9 in Science, one in Literature, and a further 7 Nobel Prizes (including this one) either by Australians working abroad or non-Australians  living and working in Australia.  For a country of just 21 million people, this is considered an unbelievable performance in per-capita Nobel Prizes.  It is part of the complexity of the Australian psyche that Australians meticulously keep track of these kinds of things and see them as a matter of first importance.)

The 2011 Physics prize is for observations that prove the existence of something called "Dark Energy," an evocative name for the fact that galaxies in the universe appear to be accelerating uniformly away from one another.  It is as though the universe were perched on top of a hill, and as galaxies spread out in all directions, they leave the crown of the hill and begin to roll down the slopes, picking up speed.  The fact that we haven't yet discovered the reason for Space having this particular shape doesn't prevent galaxies from behaving in this way.

Previously, astrophysicists observed that the universe was much heavier than can be accounted for by all the stars and galaxies that can be seen plus all the gas and dust seen floating around between stars and galaxies, plus everything else they can think of to include in an inventory of all matter.  The rate at which galaxies are currently moving apart indicates that the overall gravitational attraction in the universe is larger than all known matter can account for.  They hypothesized that there must therefore be more matter in an unknown form, and called it "Dark Matter."

It is now understood that matter in all forms that we know, atoms, protons, neutrons, electrons, neutrinos, photons, quarks and so on, forms just 4% of the mass and energy in universe.  The rest is this Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

But before you go rejecting everything we've discovered in the last 300 years, consider this.  What was true yesterday is still true today.  Newton's equations of motion are still perfectly correct for everyday distances, speeds and times.  Einstein's Relativity, an extension  of Newtonian mechanics, is still perfectly correct for everything we've yet been able to observe. Quantum Mechanics is still the most accurate set of equations by far for predicting the behavior of atom-sized or smaller objects.  Thermodynamics is still absolutely inviolable when dealing with collections of 1000 or more atoms.  Energy is absolutely conserved in every interaction and "perpetual motion" is outlawed by the ruthless and absolute monarch of the physical universe, Nature.

Will Dark Matter matter to you?  Will Dark Energy be the lucky escape from our climate/energy dilemma?  Let me put it to you that any machine or device anyone could possibly make that will be larger than a single atom (what would you make it from otherwise?) or smaller than the Milky Way galaxy we live in, will still behave in complete accordance with the discovered principles of Nature we currently understand.

In fact, there is only one machine in existence which has a chance of working in a way that might surprise Science.  It was built in the hopes of surprising.  Although we understand exactly how it operates, the result it will have is not yet completely known.  That machine is the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

How did I end up HERE?

It all started when I was born.  I hope you have plenty of time.  Maybe you should get a sandwich or something.  OK?

The next thing that happened was that my father, an eminent Physicist at a major university, began to take a personal interest in my education. I was 5.

"To begin with, you have to understand that everything around us is made of atoms."

"Really?  There's a kid at my school named Adam."

"No, not  Adams, A-T-O-M-S.  Everything you can see, feel, smell, taste or touch is made of them.  They're like hard little spheres.  And very, very, very small."

"I seriously doubt that," is what I might have said, had I possessed more than a 5-year-old's powers of expression.  While it made sense to me that sand might be made of hard little objects, as it almost certainly was, could everything be like sand?

OK, dirt for one.  It's just very fine, ground-up sand, after all.  And rocks - that's probably sand that's been glued together somehow.  And plants.  They grow out of dirt, and so it's to be expected that there's a fair amount of dirt involved. (Grown-ups actually WANT us to eat more vegetables??? Ewww.  Perhaps they don't realize they are made of dirt - I should point this out next time Mom serves me Brussels Sprouts.  She'll be so pleased.)

Even with my limited experience with the world at that age, it seemed ridiculous that everything in it could basically be made of the same stuff.

As we walked along the suburban street to our home in Arizona, past yards with trees, shrubs and lawns, some of them being watered with sprinklers attached to garden hoses in the late afternoon, I had a sudden inspiration.

"Aha!  I know something not made of atoms.  Water!"  It seemed obvious to me - just try to pick up some water in your hand - it will all run out.  It will leak out of the smallest holes imaginable and can be spread out as thin as you want.  If sand and dirt have atoms, water couldn't possibly.  Sand and dirt are dry, whilst water is wet. Wet is one thing you can't make no matter how cleverly you re-arrange the dirt. I was triumphant!  I felt elated!  I felt smarter than my Dad the Professor!

For only about 11.9 seconds, the time it took Dad to assure me that water, too, consisted entirely and exclusively of atoms arranged in a certain way.  Then I felt cheated.   Cheated and deprived of a satisfactory explanation.

Later that night while engaged in my life-long habit of laying awake thinking, I remembered playing with an ice cube.  It started out hard, like a rock.  Then it melted and became very wet. Water.  Then I recalled the existence of Volcanoes.  Every kid is fascinated by the fact that hot molten rock can occasionally, nay frequently (to judge by how often this is mentioned kids' science books) be vomited out of the earth.  Molten rock, implying that rocks, when hot enough, can also melt, flow like water, and be wet.  Maybe there's something to this "atoms" business of Dad's after all.

The next day at kindergarten, I happened to mention to two of my chums that everything in the world, everything you can see, feel, taste smell or touch, even your very self, is made up of atoms.

"There's a kid in our class named Adam," the older one helpfully offered.

(Sigh)  I wondered at the time if talking to people was always going to be like that.

I've discovered it almost always is.