Monday, September 30, 2013

acrylic, wedding present
Lake Michigan at sunset,
manipulated from a photograph
in the interest of hospitality

"I did not invent those pairs of differential equations.  I found them in the world, where God had hidden them." -19th century mathematician Bernhard Riemann

"When I stumble across metaphors in the course of writing, it feels much more like discovery than creating; the words and images seem to be choosing me, and not the other way around.  And when I manipulate them in the interest of hospitality, in order to make a comprehensible work of art, I have to give up any notion of control." -Kathleen Norris

Sunday, September 22, 2013

The odds

"The odds of our anthropic universe [one in which a life form can be developed and maintained] arising amidst the total phase-space volume of possible universes for a creation event is so exceedingly, exceedingly, exceedingly remote that its notation in regular exponential form is one part in 1010000…"

with this many zeros:

New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy
by Robert J. Spitzer

And given the enormous odds against our existence, consider the likelihood that within this universe such a thing might ever come to be:
Happy fall.  Your life is precious!