I started about 45 minutes ago when I clicked on this headline story on the BBC about a new gravity lab in Germany. It will hopefully be able to detect gravitational waves. It’s not the first; in fact I’m pretty sure that two such labs are under construction in the US.

That got me curious about gravitational waves. So I googled it and ended up reading a wikipedia article and a website from UIUC (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign). Those article got into how the idea of the existance of gravitational waves comes from Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. Apparently it hasn’t been without controversy - some scientists have apparently not agreed that it exists. One of the things that these gravitational wave detectors would do is prove that gravitational waves do in fact exist.

So then I was on some website reading about Einstein and it mentioned a comment that he’d made about religion. So I googled that and ended up on this website about Einstein’s religious views. As I was perusing that website I ran accross this article by Einstein where the last paragraph sortof resembles the teleological argument for the existance of God. (This is particularly interesting because this argument is very similar to the “Intelligent Design” idea which many supposed “science-minded” people vehemently reject. Apparently Einstein wasn’t quite so opposed to it…) That popped into my head because of a short email conversation I’ve been having with a friend about the existance of God and during that conversation I had stumbled accross this wikipedia article about arguments for and against the existance of God. (I had learned this stuff in philosophy classes at college too but of course it’s been awhile and the refresher was very good.)

After that I stumbled accross this page on the Einsten site where he has a quote about quakers. That got me curious about quakers. So after googling that I ended up at this wikipedia article about them and that led to another email to my friend:

hrm

was wandering around the ‘net again just now and ran accross another interesting website. the end of this article by Einstein appears very similar to the Teleological argument for the existance of God:
http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/irrec2.html

that whole site is interesting~

found a comment einstein made about quakers which got me curious and now i’m reading the wikipedia article about quakers and it’s really cool too. btw, i don’t mean the oatmeal. :P
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Society_of_Friends

“Quakerism includes a strong sense of spiritual egalitarianism, including a belief in the spiritual equality of the sexes—remarkable for the mid-1600s.”

hrm… why do i keep emailing you this stuff? ok this will be the last one. promise.

have a great day!

later,

Jeremy

Yeah so anyway now I’ve wasted another 30 minutes writing this blog and IM-ing about swing dancing later tonight. And I’m supposed to be:

• posting endurance ride pics for emmaus
• putting down a few ideas I have for new emmaus cards
• writing another update about emmaus for the blog
• catching up on six hours of lecture from class
• writing a newsletter
• writing a summary of last Thursday for Doug
• writing a letter to my sponsored kid in the Philippines
• reading the next chapter of Tales of the Oak Table
• finishing Through Gates of Splendor
• starting The Sexual Outlaw
• making a stop at State Farm
• getting the emissions checked on my truck
• shopping (groceries/misc)
• laundry
• dishes

I think it’s time to actually do some work now.