The way the universe really is, or maybe it isn't, what's the difference?

I think Garrison Keillor has it exactly right. When it is on the vine the tomato is in the plant world obeying its plant function of providing seeds and foods for the seeds. Once it is plucked it is in the hand of man destined for the dinner plate to complement that cheeseburger as a vegetable.

Animals I can understand. We have the phyla, the kingdoms, whatever you call them. A cat is not a dog, but both of them are mammals, and therefore neither of them is a reptile. If we want to find the common ancestor of a snake and a dog we just trace them both back up the tree to an amphibian I believe.

Plants I don’t know, they don’t seem to have phyla and kingdoms like that. My morning glory belongs to some group with a latin name, but I don’t know where that family stands in relation to other families. Are trees related to each other, or are they all related to a different family of plants? Ken wants to know. Well not badly enough to do a real study on it, but badly enough to complain about it every now and then.

I don’t quite understand how this hybridization occurs with animals. Every now and then can a cow mate with a horse? Do those white coated devils fiddle with cow sperm and then plant it in the horse and get some kind of offspring? Ken wants to know, even more than about plants because it sounds a little racier.

I was wondering that too when I made that distinction between real and theoretical space-time. Isn’t all space-time theoretical? I mean it’s not really there the way a clod of dirt is. Maybe I mean the real world, the way a line does not exist in the real world, but a piece of string does, and that piece of string has a lot in common with a line, but there are differences too.

Seems to me Prof Fovell was just engaging in some clever wordplay. I hate that. Except when I am doing it.

I am not speaking of ways of transmitting data. I am speaking of a more philosophical definition of digital and analog. In an analog world I can look at that piece of string and keep cutting it in half, and then that piece in half and so on and never run out of string. In a digital world, I reach a point where the string can no longer be cut in two, it is as small as a piece of string can be.

Consider a very small piece of time, a nano-nano-nano, second. Actually there is such a piece of time. It’s one of those numbers like 3*(10 to the negative 34th power), might be called the Planck constant. I’m not sure, but let’s call it that. Let’s start with right now, and then a PC (Planck Constant) later, and then a PC after that. So now we have Now + 1PC, and Now + 2PC. But there is no Now + 1.5 PC. It just plain does not exist. That is time being digital. Likewise for space.

I think there are some scientists that think that this is the case, of course as I am sure you will point out, there are scientists who think all kinds of things, and there certainly are. But I’m not saying whether it’s true or not. I just want to describe what it is. Just because.

Did Doc tell us that it was Newtonian physics? I remember reading about special relativity then in my Isaac Asimov books. I was wondering why he didn’t teach a little Einstein, maybe just as a lark. But now I realize that if he tried he would just have gotten into arguments all class long, especially from Beagles I imagine.

I guess he thought he would just pass the buck to those high paid college profs, who, when they learned that you weren’t going to college, partied hardy and got up the next morning hungover and went on to discover all the stuff they have discovered since then, and think of all those outlandish theories, and not spend the next fifty years arguing with Beagles who would sit there with his arms folded and white beard growing and give them the old Bohunk fish eye.