Thursday, July 29, 2021

day no. 15,620 continued... odd thought

On my afternoon walk today while listening to C.S. Lewis' Letters to Malcolm, he made the following comment about walls which led me to begin thinking about a home construction and level foundations. 

"Here are the four walls of the room. And here am I. But both terms are merely the façade of impenetrable mysteries. The walls, they say, are matter. That is, as the physicists will try to tell me, something totally unimaginable, only mathematically describable, existing in a curved space, charged with appalling energies. If I could penetrate far enough into that mystery I should perhaps finally reach what is sheerly real."

When something is level, it is straight. If the earth below varies in height and depth, the bottom can accommodate, but the top must be uniform in order to provide the appearance of straight and level. But we live on a round surface and what if a home was the size of the United States. If the horizontal boards are parallel to each other over that great of a distance, they would at some point cease to be level to the ground, right? Right? Or am I wrong?*

I keep imaging a golf ball and a pencil. The straight pencil can only be flat against it for a very limited amount of distance where it is in contact with it. In order to be equidistant to the circumference of the ball, the pencil would need to be round. So in order to appear "straight" from the surface of the golf ball, it would need to be round from the appearance of the universe and a straight pencil outside the point of contact would appear "bent" from the point of view from the surface of the ball.

*Did I mention it was like 99 degrees with 120% humidity outside while I was walking today with my 20 lb. vest on for increased adversity? It was like trudging in a dog's mouth. So perhaps that had something to do with it.

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