My Web Site Page 339 Ovations 06Poki Mogarli chose the topics covered by My Web Site Page 339 without reflecting upon the choices others have made. Launching into a full discussion of all the objectives while riding a bicycle backwards down a steep hillside is another way to look at things in a different light. |
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We halted for the night at the _fazenda_ of Colonel Gregorio, a _seringueiro_ from whom I expected to get an Indian who knew the forest well and who could be of some assistance to me in going across it. The house of Col. Gregorio--a mere big shed--was a regular armoury, a great many rifles of all ages, sizes, and shapes adorning the walls; then there were fishing spears and harpoons, vicious-looking knives and axes. In the principal room was a large altar with a carved figure of the Virgin standing with joined hands before lighted candles and a bottle of green peppermint. The latter was not an offering to the sacred image, but it was placed on the revered spot so that none of Gregorio's men should touch it. Enormous balls of rubber filled the greater portion of the floor, waiting to be taken down the river. |
The third answer is that living creatures of a very simple sort may have emerged on the earth's surface from not-living material, e.g. from some semi-fluid carbon compounds activated by ferments. The tenability of this view is suggested by the achievements of the synthetic chemists, who are able artificially to build up substances such as oxalic acid, indigo, salicylic acid, caffeine, and grape-sugar. We do not know, indeed, what in Nature's laboratory would take the place of the clever synthetic chemist, but there seems to be a tendency to complexity. Corpuscles form atoms, atoms form molecules, small molecules large ones. |
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This way of measuring does not, however, take us very far away in the heavens. There are only a few hundred stars within five hundred trillion miles of the earth, and at that distance the "shift" of a star against the background (parallax, the astronomer calls it) is so minute that figures are very uncertain. At this point the astronomer takes up a new method. He learns the different types of stars, and then he is able to deduce more or less accurately the distance of a star of a known type from its faintness. He, of course, has instruments for gauging their light. As a result of twenty years work in this field, it is now known that the more distant stars of the Milky Way are at least a hundred thousand trillion (100,000,000,000,000,000) miles away from the sun. | ||
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