Timeless

The June issue of Scientific American came in the mail yesterday. So I brought it with me to read on the bus today.

One of the articles, about evidences of quantum mechanics showing up in macroscopic systems, predicts major changes in our understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe. The article is here. I think you'll be able to read it, but if not, you'll at least be able to get the main points off the "In Brief" sidebar.

But what I'm writing about is the last sentence of the fourth-to-last paragraph, which says "We must explain space and time as somehow emerging from fundamentally spaceless and timeless physics."

When I read that sentence, I didn't think of a complete change in how I see and understand the world. At least, not for more than a few seconds. What I really thought was that if reality is fundamentally timeless, then the idea of Heavenly Father seeing all times as now is a lot easier to comprehend.

Nonfictional Characters

Around the time I started high school I was pretty into historical fiction novels (as opposed to historical nonfiction novels, I suppose). They helped me relate to people living in different periods and helped me to connect with history in a way I never had before. After reading about them in novels, the events we studied in history class were no longer dry lists of dates, but influences in real people's lives. Sure, I knew that before. But I didn't realize it so much until I saw the world through their eyes for a while.

In a lot of historical fiction, real people play a role in the story. Sometimes they have little walk-on roles. Sometimes they are minor characters who appear often enough to become familiar, but are never really center stage. Occasionally they never appear onstage, but influence events indirectly. And once in a while the entire novel focuses around real historical figures.

Recently I started to wonder what these historical figures would think of the way they are portrayed in novels. Would they be offended at the way they are portrayed? Flattered? Do the authors ever get them right?

And do any of them know they are being written about?

Death of a Bad Man

Reading people's responses to the news of bin Laden's death last night left me feeling ill. Not all of them. The ones talking about political and military consequences didn't bother me. What got to me was people in joyful celebration of the death of another human being.

Sometimes when a person dies, their friends and family are glad that they are done with the pain and suffering from disease. I don't know much about bin Laden's condition over the last few years. It wouldn't surprise me if there had been suffering. But somehow I doubt that's what my facebook friends are celebrating. And sometimes people use a funeral as a celebration of the life that has just ended, remembering the fun times and the good things the recently deceased did and achieved. I find this an even less likely reason for my friends' attitudes. What they really remind me of are public executions.

I've read of hangings and beheading and such being festive occasions where people crowd into the town square to see the proceedings. I don't know if they actually went down as such; this image comes entirely from novels and movies. But I could never understand why somebody would want to go see a person killed, and then afterward how they could have any spirit of gaiety or even an appetite. They just watched a person die. A life was taken. Even if the punishment was deserved (and I am not at all in the mood to debate the merits of capital punishment), it should have been a sober occasion.

I tell myself that the celebrations are because they see a military victory and a step towards peace. And I am sure that for some it is. But what it looks like to me is delight in the killing of an enemy. Well, I'm not good at looking at people as enemies. The closest I come is wishing bad luck on sports rivals. I am a complete failure at hatred. And what I see is that one of Heavenly Father's children has been killed. And instead of a celebration of the great life lived, I feel sorrow for the waste of potential and the loss of the good life that could have been.