What’s out there?

We are such stuff as dreams are made of 

"... the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose; but it is queerer than we can suppose"

... J.B.S. Haldane, geneticist and evolutionary biologist (1892-1964)

Apparently more than we can know. In recent years astrophysicists have become increasingly convinced that there is a vast amount of material in the universe that is not matter as we know it. It does not glow at all. This mysterious so-called "dark matter" is believed to be the most common stuff in the universe

The Brief Age of Coaches

short-lived coach fad

Today’s vast stifling network of road systems catering to the insatiable lust for cars was once presaged by a sudden emergence of coaches. In Europe from around 1810 to the 1830's, coaches ruled the newly sealed roads and reached fantastic speeds of around 12 miles per hour allowing a free and easy flow of  traffic, passengers and goods. It seems odd that this short-lived coach fad should take hundreds of years to incubate only to take off for some few decades to almost die out overnight with the arrival of the train.

they go with the greatest speed manageable

It would be another hundred years before roads regained their popularity. A writer at the time observed "... it is remarked that when they travel on the road they go with the greatest speed manageable ... they could not have gone at less than 14 miles per hour. This is the usual pace at which they go ... several persons at different times have been thrown down and hurt not being able to get out of the way soon enough".

Twelve men have walked on the moon

Twelve men have walked on the moon. Nine are still alive, but this man isn't one of them. He died of a heart attack 15 years ago at the tender age of 61.

Existentialism explained ...

"The only real question of philosophy is whether or not we should commit suicide"

"From the depths of my future, throughout the whole of this absurd life I'd been leading, I'd felt a vague breath drifting towards me across all the years that were still to come, and on its way this breath had evened out everything that was then being proposed to me in the equally unreal years I was living through"

      ... Albert Camus (1913-60)