Infinity

 

zero

 zero

Hurrah for Zero which leaves me in peace! from Les Miserables

 I hate Diderot; he is an ideologist, a declaimer, and a revolutionist, a believer in God at bottom, and more bigoted than Voltaire. Voltaire made sport of Needham, and he was wrong, for Needham’s eels prove that God is useless. A drop of vinegar in a spoonful of flour paste supplies the fiat lux. Suppose the drop to be larger and the spoonful bigger; you have the world. Man is the eel. Then what is the good of the Eternal Father? The Jehovah hypothesis tires me, Bishop. It is good for nothing but to produce shallow people, whose reasoning is hollow. Down with that great All, which torments me! Hurrah for Zero which leaves me in peace! Between you and me, and in order to empty my sack, and make confession to my pastor, as it behooves me to do, I will admit to you that I have good sense. I am not enthusiastic over your Jesus, who preaches renunciation and sacrifice to the last extremity. ’Tis the counsel of an avaricious man to beggars. Renunciation; why? Sacrifice; to what end? I do not see one wolf immolating himself for the happiness of another wolf. Let us stick to nature, then. We are at the top; let us have a superior philosophy. What is the advantage of being at the top, if one sees no further than the end of other people’s noses? Let us live merrily. Life is all. That man has another future elsewhere, on high, below, anywhere, I don’t believe; not one single word of it. Ah! sacrifice and renunciation are recommended to me; I must take heed to everything I do; I must cudgel my brains over good and evil, over the just and the unjust, over the fas and the nefas. Why? Because I shall have to render an account of my actions. When? After death. What a fine dream! After my death it will be a very clever person who can catch me. Have a handful of dust seized by a shadow-hand, if you can. Let us tell the truth, we who are initiated, and who have raised the veil of Isis: there is no such thing as either good or evil; there is vegetation. Let us seek the real. Let us get to the bottom of it. Let us go into it thoroughly. What the deuce! let us go to the bottom of it! We must scent out the truth; dig in the earth for it, and seize it. Then it gives you exquisite joys. Then you grow strong, and you laugh. I am square on the bottom, I am. Immortality, Bishop, is a chance, a waiting for dead men’s shoes. Ah! what a charming promise! trust to it, if you like! What a fine lot Adam has! We are souls, and we shall be angels, with blue wings on our shoulder-blades. Do come to my assistance: is it not Tertullian who says that the blessed shall travel from star to star? Very well. We shall be the grasshoppers of the stars. And then, besides, we shall see God. Ta, ta, ta! What twaddle all these paradises are! God is a nonsensical monster. I would not say that in the Moniteur, egad! but I may whisper it among friends. Inter pocula. To sacrifice the world to paradise is to let slip the prey for the shadow. Be the dupe of the infinite! I’m not such a fool. I am a nought. I call myself Monsieur le Comte Nought, senator. Did I exist before my birth? No. Shall I exist after death? No. What am I? A little dust collected in an organism. What am I to do on this earth? The choice rests with me: suffer or enjoy. Whither will suffering lead me? To nothingness; but I shall have suffered. Whither will enjoyment lead me? To nothingness; but I shall have enjoyed myself. My choice is made. One must eat or be eaten. I shall eat. It is better to be the tooth than the grass. Such is my wisdom. After which, go whither I push thee, the grave-digger is there; the Pantheon for some of us: all falls into the great hole. End. Finis. Total liquidation. This is the vanishing-point. Death is death, believe me. I laugh at the idea of there being any one who has anything to tell me on that subject. Fables of nurses; bugaboo for children; Jehovah for men. No; our to-morrow is the night. Beyond the tomb there is nothing but equal nothingness. You have been Sardanapalus, you have been Vincent de Paul—it makes no difference. That is the truth. Then live your life, above all things. Make use of your I while you have it. In truth, Bishop, I tell you that I have a philosophy of my own, and I have my philosophers. I don’t let myself be taken in with that nonsense. Of course, there must be something for those who are down,—for the barefooted beggars, knife-grinders, and miserable wretches. Legends, chimæras, the soul, immortality, paradise, the stars, are provided for them to swallow. They gobble it down. They spread it on their dry bread. He who has nothing else has the good God. That is the least he can have. I oppose no objection to that; but I reserve Monsieur Naigeon for myself. The good God is good for the populace.

BASIC IDEAS OF NIKOLAI FEDOROV

 1. The contemporary humanity is divided into

ty ae leh ee ws 8) the learned and unlearned, the rich and poor. acetone A poy ee GR 4! The common task is to restore the kinship and Hise ah gatunle®, shou ate etme NG Ny ANG unity of the human kind. . Bes CAA wy iat ae '\:\| 2. People are brothers because they have one " y BA, Sart wear Ne ,:| heavenly Father. Religion is the way to tyr | oy © Sey YY unification.

3. True religion is not an abstract faith in God the Father but the worship of all our fathers and forefathers since they gave life to us.

4. The common task of humanity is the resurrection of all previous generations. Brotherhood cannot be limited to the living but must include all generations.

_| 5. The so-called progress is immoral because it | consists in the swallowing up of the old by the ‘| new, in the displacing of the fathers by the =| sons.

6. The progress increases the force of death, the superiority of the living over the dead and of the young people over the old ones.

7. Death as an inevitability of nature is an insult to humanity. The project, called the Common Task, is directed toward overcoming death through technological advancement.

8. All natural laws, death being only one, must be reversed in order that humanity can manifest God's omniscience and omnipotence.

Everything granted must be transformed into { something crafted.

9. Contemporary civilization has procreative obsession, which has given rise to a feminized industry of conspicuous consumption oriented * «| toward seduction

10. History as a succession of generations, whereby the new supplants the old, must give way to a retrospective tendency _ that emphasizes immortality and the resurrection of ancestors.

AOE

11. "Supramorality" demands that sons return their debt of love to their fathers by resurrecting them. All technological resources must be dedicated to this task of preserving and revitalizing the remains of deceased fathers

12. Christianity is primarily the religion of | resurrection, which echoes the Orthodox privileging of Easter over all other holidays, icluding Christmas.

13. Man is called to worship God by literalizing through practice everything in Scripture that is usually interprete only in a spiritual sense, as symbols of another world.

14. The moral task of humanity is not to wait for the Last Judgement, but to follow the example set by Christ and endeavor to make bodily resurrection possible on the | earth, to transform the entirety of human existence into a man-made and continuous Easter.

15. The museum, as a collection of the ancestors' remains, is the central cultural institution of humanity, which works also as a laboratory of resurrection science.

16. With the conquest of death and | attainment of immortality, procreation | becomes obsolete, and the focus of human history shifts to cosmic expansion, which is necessary to accomodate the innumerable resurrected generations of ancestors

*16 BASIC IDEAS OF NIKOLAI FEDOROV, Mikhail | Epstein, 1995. emory.edu/INTELNET/four_thinkers.html

_ > 1 4

; a ) Lf. € y

Go ahead! Make throat sounds!

 HurRay! Your "thoughts" can come out into the world! Your throat can make sounds! Joy for throat sounds! Your throat sounds can form words! Yea! You can say things! That makes everything you say true! That means that what you spew out of your lips must be spewed out of your lips! Throat sounds must be spewed out! Don't care about others' feelings! Throat sounds forever!

Hey Big Thinkers,

 

with Stephen Johnson • Thu 13 June, 2024 PRESENTED BY Get your hands on these heart-healthy nuts at House of Macadamias.

Hey Big Thinkers, Tomorrow everything will go impossibly well. You’ll wake 3 seconds before the alarm, deliciously rested from smooth REM cycles and unconfusing dreams. On your morning drive, the highway herd of rush-hour drivers will make space for you to merge, friendly hands gesturing after you! You’ll flip on the TV news to see ceasefires, a booming economy, and political pundits frozen speechless after realizing they’ve got nothing to yell about today. You’ll then arrive home to find the IRS mailed you a handwritten letter: “Let’s forget about your whole ‘back tax’ thing — our bad.” This is, of course, a delusion. We all have expectations of how the world should be, but reality will never match them, no matter how reasonable our vision seems. When you stare into the gap between expectations and cold reality, you might feel nothing but melancholy. The Germans have a word for this: weltschmerz. What do you do with weltschmerz? That’s what Big Think’s Kevin Dickinson explores this week, tracing the idea’s origins and offering actionable advice on how to turn melancholy into something less doomy and more inspiring. Onward, Stephen

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Tattoo BY TED KOOSER

 

• Tattoo

  BY TED KOOSER

quarks

 

The Mathematician in Love Rankine, William J. Macquorn (1820 - 1872)

The Mathematician in Love

Rankine, William J. Macquorn (1820 - 1872)

Original Text

 

William J. Macquorn Rankine, Songs and Fables (Glasgow: James Maclehose, 1874): 3-6. 11652.e.19 British Library; PR 5209 R3S6 Robarts Library

I

1A mathematician fell madly in love

2    With a lady, young, handsome, and charming:

3By angles and ratios harmonic he strove

4Her curves and proportions all faultless to prove.

5    As he scrawled hieroglyphics alarming.

II

6He measured with care, from the ends of a base,

7    The arcs which her features subtended:

8Then he framed transcendental equations, to trace

9The flowing outlines of her figure and face,

10    And thought the result very splendid.

III

11He studied (since music has charms for the fair)

12    The theory of fiddles and whistles, --

13Then composed, by acoustic equations, an air,

14Which, when 'twas performed, made the lady's long hair

15    Stand on end, like a porcupine's bristles.

IV

16The lady loved dancing: -- he therefore applied,

17    To the polka and waltz, an equation;

18But when to rotate on his axis he tried,

19His centre of gravity swayed to one side,

20    And he fell, by the earth's gravitation.

V

21No doubts of the fate of his suit made him pause,

22    For he proved, to his own satisfaction,

23That the fair one returned his affection; -- "because,

24"As every one knows, by mechanical laws,

25    "Re-action is equal to action."

VI

26"Let x denote beauty, -- y, manners well-bred, --

27    "z, Fortune, -- (this last is essential), --

28"Let L stand for love" -- our philosopher said, --

29"Then L is a function of x, y, and z,

30    "Of the kind which is known as potential."

VII

31"Now integrate L with respect to d t,

32    "(t Standing for time and persuasion);

33"Then, between proper limits, 'tis easy to see,

34"The definite integral Marriage must be: --

35    "(A very concise demonstration)."

VIII

36Said he -- "If the wandering course of the moon

37    "By Algebra can be predicted,

38"The female affections must yield to it soon" --

39-- But the lady ran off with a dashing dragoon,

40    And left him amazed and afflicted.

Notes

3]ratios harmonic: harmonic proportion, the relation of three quantities whose reciprocals (inverse relations) are in arithmetical progression. Back to Line

7]subtended: stretched underneath or opposite to. Back to Line

8]transcendental equations: ones resulting only in an infinite series. Back to Line

30]potential: something can be calculated; more amply defined as "a mathematical function or quantity by the differentiation of which the force at any point in space arising from any system of bodies, etc. can be expressed. In the case in which the system consists of separate masses, electrical charges, etc., this quantity is equal to the sum of these, each divided by its distance from the point" (OED "potential" 5). Back to Line

31]integrate: finding a definite integral (cf. line 34) i.e., the numeric difference between the values of a function's indefinite integral for two values of the independent variable. Back to Line

Publication Start Year

 

1874

 

Stalin

 

I'd rather vote for Jeff Davis

 

  

Tyrannosaurus S3x

Rory Hawkins

Feels like 65 million years roaming 

this grimy restroom and Jez 

still can’t hatch a line. He claws 

his head, digs dandruff scales from under 

nails and tries again, more on 

the snout: 

 

‘Hey, darl. What you use all that neck for?’ 

 

Words roil from primordial 

pickup soup and flop 

legless, Jez lungless. He pops 

another button of his palm frond shirt. 

Music erupts as another stalks

in. A hunter’s hush, this time:

 

‘Let’s make this bar prehistoric and head back to mine.’ 

 

The toilet intruder slashes 

at the far urinal, growling how a meatier 

man wiped his chances out. End of an era; 

chicks’ll love it all until 

the impact. Lizard-looking duck 

prowls out. Jez hisses vape fumes; 

old mate’s too many fossilised sentiments 

left him lurching in Valley sediments. 

You need colder blood, a pr3dator 

smile. Cuz Jez already knows 

life finds a way: 

 

‘Welcome to Jurassic C@ck.’ 

Author: Rory Hawkins is an English/Irish-grown & Meanjin/Brisbane-based Creative Writing student in his third year, aspiring to work in editing and publishing. From a little before preschool to around Year 3, he was a dinosaur kid. Then he discovered Bionicles. Now, he doesn’t have enough drawer space in his room. Find more of his prose and poetry through QUT’s Glass Magazine, previous issues of ScratchThat, read aloud with QUT Lit Salon, and occasionally on his Instagram @rory_writes_sometimes.

Artist: Emma Bruce is a multi-disciplinary visual artist from Yugambeh country working out of Meanjin. Her work discusses the relationship modern society has with the environment through an archival style in hopes to preserve the experience of being in the natural world. Her work hopes to invite her audience to partake in activities that nurture native flora and fauna as well as create a sense of pride to be part of it.

Editors: Bea Warren and Euri Glenn

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ScratchThat Magazine operates on Turrbal and Yuggera country. We pay our respects to the traditional custodians and recognise Elders past, present and emerging. These lands have always been places of teaching, learning and storytelling.

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