These are the things that we can all hope we have more and more of as we go along.
Beauty
–noun, plural -ties.
1.
the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as shape, color, sound, etc.), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else (as a personality in which high spiritual qualities are manifest).
2.
a beautiful person, esp. a woman.
3.
a beautiful thing, as a work of art or a building.
4.
Often, beauties. something that is beautiful in nature or in some natural or artificial environment.
5.
an individually pleasing or beautiful quality; grace; charm: a vivid blue area that is the one real beauty of the painting.
6.
Informal. a particular advantage: One of the beauties of this medicine is the freedom from aftereffects.
7.
(usually used ironically) something extraordinary: My sunburn was a real beauty.
8.
something excellent of its kind: My old car was a beauty.
Grace
–noun
1.
elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action.
2.
a pleasing or attractive quality or endowment.
3.
favor or good will.
4.
a manifestation of favor, esp. by a superior: It was only through the dean's grace that I wasn't expelled from school.
5.
mercy; clemency; pardon: an act of grace.
6.
favor shown in granting a delay or temporary immunity.
7.
an allowance of time after a debt or bill has become payable granted to the debtor before suit can be brought against him or her or a penalty applied: The life insurance premium is due today, but we have 31 days' grace before the policy lapses. Compare grace period.
8.
Theology.
a.
the freely given, unmerited favor and love of God.
b.
the influence or spirit of God operating in humans to regenerate or strengthen them.
c.
a virtue or excellence of divine origin: the Christian graces.
d.
Also called state of grace. the condition of being in God's favor or one of the elect.
9.
moral strength: the grace to perform a duty.
10.
a short prayer before or after a meal, in which a blessing is asked and thanks are given.
11.
(usually initial capital letter) a formal title used in addressing or mentioning a duke, duchess, or archbishop, and formerly also a sovereign (usually prec. by your, his, etc.).
12.
Graces, Classical Mythology. the goddesses of beauty, daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, worshiped in Greece as the Charities and in Rome as the Gratiae.
13.
Music. grace note.
Wisdom
–noun
1.
the quality or state of being wise; knowledge of what is true or right coupled with just judgment as to action; sagacity, discernment, or insight.
2.
scholarly knowledge or learning: the wisdom of the schools.
3.
wise sayings or teachings; precepts.
4.
a wise act or saying.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Halloween Costume Hunting
If you wait until the last week before Halloween, you will not have as much to choose from in costumes.
My teen had a big craving to be Snow White
and
Snow White has already gone to the early worms.
Yes. There were a lot of cool, interesting costumes but not THE one.
My teen had a big craving to be Snow White
and
Snow White has already gone to the early worms.
Yes. There were a lot of cool, interesting costumes but not THE one.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Green Botttles on the Counter
Green bottles on the counter
I put them away and
they're back the next day
16 year old with hair products
Lots of hair products
You know what I mean?
Full control air spray, hair conditioner, hair gel
Green bottles on the counter
Making a mess in a green basket
Making a sloppy room
Green bottles on the counter
I put them away
And
they're back the next day
I put them away and
they're back the next day
16 year old with hair products
Lots of hair products
You know what I mean?
Full control air spray, hair conditioner, hair gel
Green bottles on the counter
Making a mess in a green basket
Making a sloppy room
Green bottles on the counter
I put them away
And
they're back the next day
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Wow. That was a ton of fun!
Yesterday was a really incredible day.
My nine year old and I visited a friend who lives in a nice, upscale community.
We sat by her grecian pool eating grapes for an hour, enjoying the waterfalls and fields of wild turkeys behind it all.
Then, we went out for a delicious meal at a cute little restaurant. Had scone like chicken pot pie and hand made pasta and salad. Water with mint,lemons and cucumbers soaking in it.
After lunch, we went to an art gallery and spent about an hour talking with the artist. He was really very good. He was really very likeable (and kind of cute). He sells his originals for a lot of money ($27,000ish for one).
Then, we went to a very cool bookstore and talked with the owner there about his upcoming booksignings/authors. The collection of books was unusual and interesting and the store was really big for a locally owned one.
Then, we went back to hang out and talk with my friend's teenage daughters who were home from high school. We talked about their homecoming week and the dresses they were going to wear.
It was a fabulous time.
My nine year old and I visited a friend who lives in a nice, upscale community.
We sat by her grecian pool eating grapes for an hour, enjoying the waterfalls and fields of wild turkeys behind it all.
Then, we went out for a delicious meal at a cute little restaurant. Had scone like chicken pot pie and hand made pasta and salad. Water with mint,lemons and cucumbers soaking in it.
After lunch, we went to an art gallery and spent about an hour talking with the artist. He was really very good. He was really very likeable (and kind of cute). He sells his originals for a lot of money ($27,000ish for one).
Then, we went to a very cool bookstore and talked with the owner there about his upcoming booksignings/authors. The collection of books was unusual and interesting and the store was really big for a locally owned one.
Then, we went back to hang out and talk with my friend's teenage daughters who were home from high school. We talked about their homecoming week and the dresses they were going to wear.
It was a fabulous time.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
poem
Breathe in, breathe out
Smile
Laugh
Think about puppies and kittens and kids
Smell roses
Sing out loud
Smile
Laugh
Think about puppies and kittens and kids
Smell roses
Sing out loud
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Time is an illusion
Here is just part of a good article by Amanda Gefter for New Scientist magazine. (Jan. 19,2008)
"IT IS the invisible presence that governs your world. Trailing you like an unshakeable shadow, it ticks and tocks incessantly - you can sense it in your heartbeat, in the rising and setting of the sun, and in your daily rush to make meetings, trains and deadlines. It brings order to our lives through the categories of past, present and future.
Time. There is nothing with which we are so familiar, and yet when you try to pin it down you find only a relentless torrent of questions. Why does time appear to flow? What makes it different from space? What exactly is it? It's enough to make your neurons misfire, then sizzle and smoke.
You are not alone. Physicists have long struggled to understand what time really is. In fact, they are not even sure it exists at all. In their quest for deeper theories of the universe, some researchers increasingly suspect that time is not a fundamental feature of nature, but rather an artefact of our perception. One group has recently found a way to do quantum physics without invoking time, which could help pave a path to a time-free "theory of everything". If correct, the approach suggests that time really is an illusion, and that we may need to rethink how the universe at large works.
For decades, physicists have been searching for a quantum theory of gravity to reconcile Einstein's general relativity, which describes gravity at the largest scales, with quantum mechanics, which describes the behaviour of particles at the tiniest scales. One reason it has been so difficult to merge the two is that they are built on incompatible views of time. "I am more and more convinced that the problem of time is key both to quantum gravity and to issues in cosmology," says Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
According to general relativity, time is stitched together with space to form four-dimensional space-time. The passage of time is not absolute - no cosmic clock ticks away the hours of the universe. Instead, time differs from one frame of reference to the next, and what one observer experiences as time, another might experience as a mixture of time and space. For Einstein, time is a useful measure of things, but nothing special.
Not so in quantum mechanics. Here time plays a key role, keeping track of the ever-changing probabilities that define the microworld, which are encoded in the "wave function" of a quantum system. The clock by which the wave function evolves records not just the time in one particular frame of reference, but the absolute time that Einstein worked so hard to topple. So while relativity treats space and time as a whole, quantum mechanics splits the universe into two parts: the quantum system being observed and the classical world outside. In this fractured universe, a clock always remains outside the quantum system (see Diagram).
Something has to give. The fact that the universe has no outside, by definition, suggests that quantum mechanics will be the one to surrender - and to many, this suggests that time is not fundamental. In the 1990s, for instance, physicist Julian Barbour proposed that time must not exist in a quantum theory of the universe. All the same, physicists are loath to throw out quantum theory, as it has proven capable of extraordinarily accurate predictions. What they need is a way to do quantum mechanics in the absence of time."
"IT IS the invisible presence that governs your world. Trailing you like an unshakeable shadow, it ticks and tocks incessantly - you can sense it in your heartbeat, in the rising and setting of the sun, and in your daily rush to make meetings, trains and deadlines. It brings order to our lives through the categories of past, present and future.
Time. There is nothing with which we are so familiar, and yet when you try to pin it down you find only a relentless torrent of questions. Why does time appear to flow? What makes it different from space? What exactly is it? It's enough to make your neurons misfire, then sizzle and smoke.
You are not alone. Physicists have long struggled to understand what time really is. In fact, they are not even sure it exists at all. In their quest for deeper theories of the universe, some researchers increasingly suspect that time is not a fundamental feature of nature, but rather an artefact of our perception. One group has recently found a way to do quantum physics without invoking time, which could help pave a path to a time-free "theory of everything". If correct, the approach suggests that time really is an illusion, and that we may need to rethink how the universe at large works.
For decades, physicists have been searching for a quantum theory of gravity to reconcile Einstein's general relativity, which describes gravity at the largest scales, with quantum mechanics, which describes the behaviour of particles at the tiniest scales. One reason it has been so difficult to merge the two is that they are built on incompatible views of time. "I am more and more convinced that the problem of time is key both to quantum gravity and to issues in cosmology," says Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
According to general relativity, time is stitched together with space to form four-dimensional space-time. The passage of time is not absolute - no cosmic clock ticks away the hours of the universe. Instead, time differs from one frame of reference to the next, and what one observer experiences as time, another might experience as a mixture of time and space. For Einstein, time is a useful measure of things, but nothing special.
Not so in quantum mechanics. Here time plays a key role, keeping track of the ever-changing probabilities that define the microworld, which are encoded in the "wave function" of a quantum system. The clock by which the wave function evolves records not just the time in one particular frame of reference, but the absolute time that Einstein worked so hard to topple. So while relativity treats space and time as a whole, quantum mechanics splits the universe into two parts: the quantum system being observed and the classical world outside. In this fractured universe, a clock always remains outside the quantum system (see Diagram).
Something has to give. The fact that the universe has no outside, by definition, suggests that quantum mechanics will be the one to surrender - and to many, this suggests that time is not fundamental. In the 1990s, for instance, physicist Julian Barbour proposed that time must not exist in a quantum theory of the universe. All the same, physicists are loath to throw out quantum theory, as it has proven capable of extraordinarily accurate predictions. What they need is a way to do quantum mechanics in the absence of time."
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