Insolation

Insolation is the phenomenon by which solar heat is absorbed and retained. And my cat is very good at it. He is a golden cat in the golden sun, and in the evening he is warmth unto my feet when the sun has set.

And what of the sun? Well, I am now insolated in a way — I am the proud owner of a Solar Titanium watch, functional and inexpensive, a daily thing like the sun it is named after. But looking at its name, I was reminded of the solar titans.

Who were they? We know little of them and their mythology, although there are a number of stories. The first solar titan was Hyperion, 'Most High', son of Ouranos and Gaia. His successor was Helios, after whom we named helium — compared to his predecessor he must have seemed a lightweight.

And so I mused. And I remembered the idea of solar titans and the tutelary spirits of the stars. Some day, they will return to our cosmology.

Nekrognomikon

And it came to pass, on the twenty-first day of the seventh month in the eighth year of the Dragon's rule over Atlantis, that the historians and scribes came together. And one among them said, "It is with sadness that we remember the Gnome and all he did." Then the people said, "Amen," although for diverse reasons both good and ill.

But it was at the third hour of the day that the scriptorium echoed with the sound of many voices, and the book that the Wolf had been writing was complete. And the title of that book was Atlantean Responses to the System of the World as Shown in the Case of the Wyvern Citadel. Then the people said, "Selah," although for diverse reasons both good and ill.

Absolutes

Sometimes, there are absolute positions. Sometimes, we have continua or spectra. It's good to see which model works best.

Take, for example, the conceptual leap from 0 to 1. If you were thinking in binary, this is a huge difference. But if you're not, it isn't.

Atheists think of themselves as very different from theists. But the difference is only one small axiom: either you have free will or you don't. By all naturalistic accounts, you cannot have free will, no matter how many intellectual contortions you perform — or what kind. And if you don't have free will, you cannot and should not be held to account for anything. And that includes being an atheist, which then becomes meaningless.

That only leaves supernatural accounts. Now, you need to decide in the realm of positive numbers — any number greater than zero. For some people, any non-zero number will do, including complex numbers.

At this point, some people may receive the epiphany that to hold an inflexibly 'zero' position is the easiest to conceptualise and the hardest to defend. Why should there be a universe at all? Why not nothing, if simplicity and parsimony are universal principles?

These are fun things to think about, to be sure.