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Almost Persuaded (Free verse) by Dovina While weâre sleeping
somethingâs keeping
the world spinning
uniformity winning
While weâre dueling
for knowledge drooling
somethingâs ambling
comfortably ruling
Something sensible?
Responsible?
Reprehensible!
Up the ladder:
Notes toward a possible poem
Down the ladder:
~Methinks~
Votes: (green: user, blue: anonymous)
Arithmetic Mean: 5.0
Posted: July 7, 2005 3:01 PM PDT; Last modified: July 7, 2005 3:01 PM PDTWeighted score: 5.0 Overall Rank: 7622 The following users have marked this poem on their favorites list:
Comments:
If you make a vague poem people will get different meanings from it. I like that I can give this my own meaning. I like the switch from possitivity to negetivity at the end. But "ambling"? Although with alot of thought I see how you might be going for the Gen. Patton type image calmly surveying the battlefield. I think it just tends to come across as a fancy word for walking for most. Try some other words. The second verse just needs a little tweeking. It's pretty good Though.
"ambling"? I almost said, âsomeoneâs ambling.â But that makes it sound too much like belief in God. The idea is to show a person who is almost persuaded to believe in God. And in a way, Gen. Patton calmly surveying the battlefield is a good image for God â calm, in control, confident. Thanks for the comment.
I don't get the connection between "world spinning" (positive) and "uniformity" (negative). Just a nitpick. You probably meant "spinning" like 'dizzy and disoriented'. That's fine, it's just not the first meaning I got.
Q: Does it take more work to keep an already-spinning world spinning or to stop it? Please include any relevant charts and diagrams in your answer. PS-Ace rhyme. Really.
Some of the unpredictably fascinating aspects of your comments are the âconnectionsâ you make and donât make. The world spins today just as it has for a long, long time. Its spinning follows the principle of uniformity, manifested in the laws of physics. How you find the former to be positive and the latter negative is beyond my imagination. But many things about your deductions defy my imagination. Like your recent comment to rbooey: âYou're about to suggest Dovina and I are in some buddy-buddy poemranker-dissing incrowd. . . . For your information, no two people dislike each other more than Dovina and I dislike each other.â I think you exaggerate in statements like that for the pleasure of controversy. Please donât tell me you mean exactly what you said.
Your question: âDoes it take more work to keep an already-spinning world spinning or to stop it?â It takes no work (as defined in physics) to keep the world spinning, but it takes a lot of work to stop it. (Sorry, no diagrams or charts.) The interesting thing in regard to being almost persuaded to believe in God is that the laws of physics are uniform, unchanging, as if planned. Itâs enough to make a person wonder. Thanks for the comment.
Since posting the comment above, it's struck me that the world doesn't spin uniformly. Its axis wobbles a little under the influence of the moon and the earth's own unequal distribution of mass (in fact, the Christmas earthquake and tsunami almost certainly affected the world's "spin".) Further, the earth's rotation is slowing at a rate of something like 2 seconds every 10,000 years.
Besides, there is no "principle of uniformity". I think I could count on any interested reader on the site to call "uniformity" negative. Also, I think your poem makes the world's "spinner" ultimately "reprehensible", so maybe you're just being tetchy. As far as earth's spinning being positive, well, we would all DIE if the planet stopped spinning. And spinning (like the earth's) is usually identified with constructive movement, continuity, and so on. I was exaggerating to rbooey. Regarding your answer to my question, is it really fair to say "something's keeping / the world spinning"? Isn't it more accurate to say, oh, something's not stopping the world from spinning? DISCUSSION TOPIC FOR THE DAY: There's some question as to what a universe would look like if there weren't uniform, unchanging, "as if planned" laws of physics holding it together. My first guess is that it's moot, because we wouldn't be here to wonder about it. But of course that's nonsense; a universe without consistent physics could look like whatever it wanted. The one sure bet is that people living in a universe without physics would probably see their universe's lack of physics as evidence of God. Thanks for the comment.
The world wobbles on its axis due to precession the same as a gyroscope does.
Look up "uniformitarianism" or "principle of uniformity" before you say it doesn't exist. Stuff happens as it has happened - that's the gist of it. Your third paragraph is hogwash! Uniformity is not negative, as you yourself have implied in DISCUSSION TOPIC FOR THE DAY. Para 4: Uniformitarians will agree with you. Theists might wonder if God has a hand in it. DISCUSSION TOPIC FOR THE DAY: Who or what made the laws of physics? I'd answer yours, but it's one of those what-if questions that's, as you say, is moot.
A: SCIENTISTS made the laws of physics in order to explain (or better, predict) what as you might say happens and has always happened. That the laws of physics seem to hold true in most cases is a sign of scientists' throroughness and exactitude, and not necessarily God's. To wit, if today, July 17, water flowed uphill in a tiny suburb of Buenos Aires, scientists wouldn't abandon their laws of gravity or throw up their hands and accept the existence of God; they'd probably just write a law saying something like "Water tends to flow downhill, except in a Buenos Aires suburb on July 17, 2005." Sounds ridiculous? Consider that if we were having this conversation 100 years ago, we would have accepted the following as "uniform laws" of physics:
1) The forces two masses exert upon each other may be calculated by the formula F = 6.67 Ã 10^-11 x m1 x m2 / r^2 2) Matter cannot be created or destroyed. 3) An object at rest will stay at rest until acted upon by a force, at which point it will act predictably according to the force. Ditto for an object in motion. We know now that none of these hold entirely true - especially on the subatomic level, but probably on other levels as well. What happened when we discovered these laws didn't hold? We made up more laws to accomodate the contingincies. It's even possible that science could someday be an infinite set of infinitely contingient laws, specific to the point of uselessness. This, incidentally, is what I imagine a universe "without" laws of physics being like. All of this, too, is kind of moot since our universe being as it is is what allows us to be having this conversation, and in a semi-rational or scientific manner, I might add. It's kind of like saying "I wonder what I'd think about the meaning of life if I'd been born on Pluto instead of on Earth." I do hope a topic's being moot doesn't prevent us from talking about it in the future.
I think we have a basic difference of belief about physics. I believe it follows LAWS, which are true whether anybody knows what they are or not. The current statements, which we call the laws of physics, may change, but I don't think the LAWS change. I believe this because so many things are constant and predictible that many other things must be also. It's called probability. It's not moot really, and some other things about physics seem chaotic, challenging my belief. Again, answer, if you desire, what or who made these consistencies I prefer to call LAWS?
re: "The current statements, which we call the laws of physics, may change, but I don't think the LAWS change"
Yes, yes, of course. How could they? So basically by LAWS you mean a set of characteristics or tendencies that are observable in the universe?
"We know now that none of these hold entirely true - especially on the subatomic level, but probably on other levels as well."
The most important of these other levels are the emotional level, and the secret Wolfenstein level.
Hey, thanks for your contribution. Does this mean you're back from vacationing in the Hebrides?
I was trying to say that if things like dark matter exist (or do the dark matter equivalent of existing) then the whole physical universe is pretty much the secret Wolfenstein level. But scientists would probably figure out ways to explain and predict it anyway. As you know perfectly well.
Good rhymes. Not wild about the poem itself, but I'll give you a 6 for that.
I am curious- what is the knowledge we are drooling for? Apart from this, The poem reminds me a bit of a scene from charlie and the chocolate factory, i believe its the scene on the boat. lucky for you, i like that movie, so ill give it a 5.
We drool because we smell the scent of knowing what the universe is all about. We feel close to tasting its essence, but canât quite understand.
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someone persuading another into having sex.
it's ok.... but a little mechanical.
it needs more emotion.
just my opinion.
I knew as soon as I clicked. that sentence was wrong.
I know youâre deeper then that.
and Iâm not consumed with sex..
I like it. but not consumed.
it feels political.
itâs vague. I like vague shit Iâm the
king of vagueness. the last word reprehensible.
it feel like. what we donât know wont hurt us
but itâs bad. like the means justify the ends.