Golf and Cosmology

Great time with Alex on the golf course last night. He found a golf ball with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers symbol on it. He said: “Dad, this is what pirates use for golf.”

I love taking the kid golfing – other than helping to make him – it may be one of my favorite things I get to do for my son. Uh, sorry about that. However, last night our conversation stretched the limits of my understanding of cosmology.

Alex: “Dad what does outer space look like?”
Me: “There are big floating rocks, stars, and collections of stars called galaxies we live in something called a solar system where planets revolve around their home star. The odds are good that there are more solar systems out there, some even have two stars – and these things called radio-telescopes that see things with sound have found what they believe to be star systems with planets.”
Alex: “What else is out there?”
Me: “There are black holes, comets stuff that very smart scientists call dark matter…”
Alex: “But what does outer space look like?”
Me: “What do you mean?”
Alex: “Does it have corners, is it a line, a circle?”
Me: “Oh, the shape of the universe.”
Alex: “Yes.”

shit

Then I tried to describe this portion of Bill Bryson’s Short History of Nearly Everything where this British astrophysicist says if you begin traveling in one direction and you go and go and go – eventually you do not poke your head out of the curtains at the end of the universe…you end up back where you started. I think the boy understood it.

On the way home we were talking about numbers. Kids love to talk about infinity. Then Alex said: “Numbers can’t go on forever. They have to stop because everything stops.”

We’ve talked about google and some of the implications for the possibility of the highest possible number that can be expressed. But again I always left the door open for my boy that numbers go on forever. Now with my fast and loose part-bullshit (because I don’t understand it, no knock on British or any astrophysicists) answer from me…I’ve opened the door for confusion. I used my dopey spaceship ends up back where it started without talking about the universe as a lake’s surface barring these spots where time and space are distorted…or the non-Euclidian notion of infinite centers and what distance means in this sense. Alex offered this possibility…

“Maybe numbers go all the way up and then they start back at 1.”

It could be brilliant except the beginning of Alex’s meditations on such stuff is a faulty, half-assed answer his dad gave him on the golf course. Shit.

The biggest series in Chicago baseball this year begins tonight. Those who know, know that I have a house divided on this. The boy is a Tigers fan. Should be exciting. Even though we cheer for different teams, we already agreed that we will eat chocolate ice cream together while we watch part of the game tonight. Cool.

Someone I work with said something really touching about the show on Friday night. I am one of those ‘look at me’ kind of bullshit people and maybe this enables my personal bullshit – but I thought the person in question wouldn’t give a shit about the songs I write – especially the wordy ones…and Kish goes on for 15 minutes. But they liked it and went out of their way to tell me so. Pretty cool when things like that happen.

Today is the special election to fill the vacancy left by Rep. R Duke Cnnnghmmnm.

I hear it could go down to the wire.