THE CORRIDOR

 

“The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.”

 

~ Benjamin Franklin ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo taken at Winchester Cathedral, England in June 2007.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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GELIDITY

 

“Absolute zero on the Kelvin scale is

minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 273.15 degrees Celsius).

Outer space is roughly 2.7 Kelvin

(-454.81 degrees Fahrenheit, -270.45 degrees Celsius).

That is the temperature of reality, of the universe you live in.”

 

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo taken in November 2010.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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COMBARELLES

 

“To me, it seems that mankind can never achieve its highest potentialities

till it has thrown off the incubus of historic and prehistoric religion.”

 

~ William Archer ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo taken in Les-Eyzies-de-Tayac, France in June 2006 of 13,000 to 11,000 year old engravings of female figures found in la Grotte de Combarelles.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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ASTRONOMY ONE O ONE

 

“I’ve loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”

 

~ Galileo Galilei~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo of an eclipse of the moon taken in March 2007 and merged with a stock image of the Milky Way.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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MOON

 

“Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.”

 

~ Allen Ginsberg ~

 

 

Macro-photograph of a small fragment of a meteorite, composed of lunar material ejected into space billions of years ago when the moon was struck by an asteroid, taken in October 2016. From the author’s personal collection.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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OTNASNOM UOY KCUF

 

“When bees die through pesticide poisoning,

it should ring alarm bells throughout the agricultural system

that we ignore at our peril.”

 

~ Phil Chandler ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo taken in the Bavarian Alps in September 2016.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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THE GODOT OF GRASS

 

“When you smoke the herb, it reveals you to yourself.”

 

~ Bob Marley ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo taken in August 2004.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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THE CELESTIAL LAUNDRY LINE

 

“That which can be asserted without evidence,

can be dismissed without evidence.”

 

~ Christopher Hitchens ~

 

Photo of a flexed burial dated to ca. 3000 BCE taken in Nierstein, Germany in January 1988.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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RESURRECTION

 

“Wine brings to light the hidden secrets of the soul,

gives being to our hopes,

bids the coward flight, drives dull care away,

and teaches new means for the accomplishment of our wishes.”

 

~ Horace ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photograph taken in Weisenau, Germany in July 1987.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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BEAST WITHOUT A NAME

 

 

“We are fossils in the making.”

~ Wallace Stegner ~

 

This beast has a name. Photo of a fossilized jaw of a Mosasaur taken in March 2016.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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PASSIFLORA

 

…ah, to be young, lost and hopelessly, shamelessly in love again…

 

 

Photo of a fossil crinoid taken in the Muséum national d’Histoure naturelle in Paris in May 2014.

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© 2015 nightpoet all rights reserved

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SNAPSHOT

 

 

…our existence as one of countless forms of life

on this planet is only temporary,

despite the vast expanses of time

that have preceded and will follow us,

the planet and its star are finite;

whether we survive

our short performance here or not

is of absolutely no interest to the universe…

 

 

Photo of two small fossilized fish from the Green River Formation in Wyoming, which dates to the Eocene period, between 53.5 and 48.5 million years ago. The fish are approximately 4 to 5 centimeters long.  Photograph of fossils in the author’s personal collection.

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© 2015 nightpoet all rights reserved

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VAUBAN

 

…the playground of my childhood…

 

In 1961, when I was eleven years old,  I walked almost six kilometers along the coast near Fouras, France to observe this cliff, which I had always seen across the bay from our cottage situated on the beach front. Known as the “Vauban” cliff, these sediment layers were formed during the Lower Cenomanian period. The Cenomanian age spans the time between 100.5 and 93.9 million years ago, at the beginning of the Late Cretaceous era. Needless to say, as a child I was impressed by its size and the numerous layers. And somewhat disappointed because the layers were not as fossil rich as other areas I frequented along that stretch of coastline.

 

Photo of the Vauban Cliff taken near Fouras, France with a Pentax 110 format SLR camera in 1981, on a visit twenty years after I first observed the cliff in 1961.

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© 2015 nightpoet all rights reserved

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WASTED OPPORTUNITY

 

…people choose to live in darkness, praying for a candle, when all they really have to do is open their eyes…

 

 

Photo of a skull from a burial dated to the late Roman period.

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© 2015 nightpoet all rights reserved

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VESUVIO

 

“But he knows most of all that he’s living beneath the volcano,
Won’t be so many more days,
Isn’t much time and it’s gathering darkness, my friend…”

Jack Bruce ~ from “The Consul At Sunset”  

 

Photo of steam rising from a vent, taken inside the crater of Vesuvius in Italy in 1996.

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© 2015 nightpoet all rights reserved

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ATLANTIS

 

 

…there is always the curse that when truth becomes legend, the legend is later mistaken for the truth…

 

 

Photo of lava formations taken on the island of Thera (Santorini). Greece in October 1992.

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More information on the eruption that destroyed Thera may be found here:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060823-thera-volcano.html

http://www.livescience.com/4846-eruption-thera-changed-world.html

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© 2015 nightpoet all rights reserved

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SHROOM

 

“Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table: she opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on which the words “EAT ME” were beautifully marked in currants. “Well, I’ll eat it,” said Alice…”

~ Lewis Carrol – Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland ~

 

Photo of a single Psilocybin mushroom taken in October 2015.

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“People who experiment with psilocybin report it as one of the most profound experiences they’ve had in their lives…” – Paul Expert, physicist at King’s College London.

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More scientific research and evaluation can be found here:

http://www.livescience.com/48502-magic-mushrooms-change-brain-networks.html

http://www.heffter.org/research-hucla.htm

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment

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© 2015 nightpoet all rights reserved

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GENESIS

 

BACK TO THE BEGINNING

 

The age of the solar system, derived from the study of meteorites (thought to be the oldest accessible material available for research) is near 5 billion years; that of the Earth is estimated to be about 4.6 billion years. The oldest rocks on Earth are dated at around 3.8 billion years…

 

Photo of a meteorite fragment, 5,1 cm long (2 in), from my private collection taken in June 2015.

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© 2015 nightpoet all rights reserved

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CHRISTIAN TERRORISM’S FINEST HOUR

 

GIORDANO BRUNO – POET, PHILOSOPHER AND FREE THINKER

 

Recently Republicans, Conservative Christians and other pusillanimous propagandists, snake oil sellers and believers in myths, lies and sundry bullshit vehemently criticized President Obama for citing a few Christian acts of terrorism in a speech. It’s as if these preposterous pundits would like to put a KKK coat of whitewash over historical fact. Of course, rewriting history is one of the fortes of the Republican Party and Conservative Christians, who conveniently ignore the fact that the Communists and Hitler’s fascists employed the same bait and switch methodology. That’s a fine tradition to uphold.

Well, they aren’t going to rewrite this historical fact. On this day in 1500 Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for his audacity to challenge the established Catholic dogma. He was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, poet, mathematician and astrologer and a considerable thorn in the side of the Catholic Church. His cosmological theories, which went even further than the heretical Copernican model, proposed that the stars were distant suns surrounded by their own planets, and that it was possible that these planets could even host life of their own. This proposal of this theory, known as cosmic pluralism, but even more so other radical ideas he had about the very foundation of Catholic religious beliefs led to his having to flee Italy in 1576. He spent time in France, Switzerland, Germany and England before returning to Italy where he was eventually arrested and imprisoned in 1592, and sent to Rome for trial the following year. Bruno’s trial lasted seven years during which time he was kept in various prisons. He was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges which included his denial of several of the core Catholic doctrines, including belief in the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and Transubstantiation. That alone was like waving a red flag in front of the Catholic Church’s obstinate and almighty bull. His cosmological views were just another cord of wood to throw on the fire. Of course, the Inquisition found him guilty on all counts, and in 1600 he was burned alive at the stake in Rome’s Campo de’ Fiori. So much for freedom of speech, free thinking and challenging the established dogma of the religious bigots in power. Sound familiar?

In the more open and supposedly tolerant times of the modern world, Bruno is regarded as a martyr for science, though it should be emphasized that his astronomical views were at most a minor component of the theological and philosophical beliefs that led to his trial. He had written and said enough other unacceptable things as to seal his fate when viewed from the intolerant and ignorant Christian dogma of his world. Bruno’s case though is still considered to be a landmark in the history of free thought and the future of the emerging sciences. More simply put, the morons of the Catholic Church were completely wrong and Bruno was right. It makes you wonder who the real heretics were.

And that idea that Christians have committed acts of terrorism, as President Obama pointed out in his speech, in the light of today’s historical event 515 years ago, is an undeniable fact, and sadly one that seems to go way over the heads of those bobble brained Republican critics. Bruno’s fate is little different than the fate of the Jordanian pilot, or any of the other headless unbelievers perversely executed by the Islamic State. History makes for strange bedfellows when you move beyond trying to rewrite it for an ever ignorant, pandering and gullible Conservative drove of pigs just waiting to slop up the bullshit…

The scene of the execution of Giordano Bruno in Piazza Campo dè Fiori, Rome. He is in front of the soldier and wearing the white robe at the left of the painting.

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© 2015 nightpoet all rights reserved

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INSIGNIFICANCE 101

 

THE ANDROMEDA GALAXY AS YOU’VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE

 

I have been a lifelong devotee of astronomical research and, of course, space exploration. The fantasies of my childhood have become the realities of my adult life. And the wonders never cease. On January 5, NASA released an image of our closest large galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy. The complete image contains a staggering 1.5 billion pixels. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured the full image, which is made up of 411 Hubble images, and contains over a 100 million stars and spans more than 40,000 light years. The entire image is too large to display; it would take over 600 HD television screens to display it. So, I have to settle for reproducing a reduced presentation here. The first photo below is a cropped image of part of the galaxy. The second photo is a zoom close up of just a very small portion of the first image. Each little dot is a star. I have included a link below that allows you to zoom in on the first image with an incredible clarity. I highly recommend it. And we here on Earth have the gumption to think that we are something special in the universe. God’s chosen people my ass…

A cropped section of the NASA Hubble/ESA telescope’s image of the Andromeda Galaxy. Photo courtesy of NASA.

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This screen shot is a zoom close up of just a very small section of the photo above. Each little dot is a star.

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If you really want to zoom in on the image in high quality I recommend clicking the link below:

http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/

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A video on YouTube also is an interesting viewing experience:

http://youtu.be/udAL48P5NJU

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