Essays in Idleness

The universe is not as pliable and ductile as the scientifictionists suppose, including those scientifictionists who write for the New York Times, and Time magazine, as my Chief Texas Correspondent has just informed me. He mentioned their “reporting” on the Dire Wolf “de-extinction,” an entirely imaginary event curated by the Colossus Bioscience corporation, that is touted in their pages. These progressives are the same who advertise that a man can be turned into a woman, and a woman can be turned into a man.

However, “sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken,” as my Houston correspondent apprises.

The idea that something that has become extinct, whose previous existence necessarily depended upon innumerable factors, and that it can be resuscitated by the human will — is part of the naively malevolent modern belief in miracles. We cannot even define a species, let alone recreate one. The notion is almost as stupid (although slightly less malevolent) than the belief that humans can control the weather, or the economy. And yet these people confidently proclaim that they are the smart ones.

I turn from this to an essay on the size and age of the universe. Is it about 13.8 billion earth-years, or twice that, or really only a few thousand years? Have we any way to know with certainty even what came before what, or have any intelligent way to guess what comes after?

“He is not a male, He is not a female, He is not a neuter. … He neither is, nor is not. … When He is sought He will take the form in which He is sought, but again, He will not come in such a form. … It is indeed difficult to describe the Name of the Lord. …”

This quotation, which I’ve used before, and which I have been using since I first read it in an ancient Upanishad, as a schoolboy sixty years ago, will, I hope, help to bring my more scientific readers up to speed.