Disgusted by Literature and Intolerance

It takes a lot to offend me. Honestly it does. Even things that bother me a little will escape without a flinch. I don't gasp at the horror of using politically incorrect words, or because someone called someone else a bad name. Gratuitous use of words I find questionable, but yes, sometimes say myself, does not bother me. I may clench my teeth and curiously wonder if you think swearing like a sailor makes you sound mature, because in all honesty it doesn't. I will read, watch and listen to the most profane things without too much concern, and over use of violence, sex and language does not, for the most part, bother me.
Then there is stupid funny, where potty humour, and foul language is used to stimulate the interest of what I believe to be humanity's immaturity. There is a lot that I won't watch, because I simply don't care for the way the characters talk, interact and behave. To me it is ridiculous and shamelessly inappropriate. I know intelligent and sophisticated people who enjoy these, and I hold nothing against the people who find this kind of crude humour entertaining, but I personally do not.
Having said that, I will read or watch anything for a class, and not utter a sound against it because someone deems it fit to show in a class room, but that doesn't always make it right. I find the overuse of racism to prove a point about how intolerant the people being portrayed were, to be down right vulgar, and I don't want to read that kind of trash.
Yes, I will reduce myself to calling what some might deem a work of literature to be trash because it stereotypes and over uses the downfalls of certain people. In this case, it is The Englishman's Boy by Guy Vanderhaeghe. I have to write an essay on it for English, but after Damon Ira Chance's last monologue about how Indians are basically the filth of the Earth, and enemy to be treated as something other than human, and how the Jews will never be true Americans, the only Essay I want to write is this rant, and while there is a slim chance that it might become long enough to qualify, I doubt I'd get a reasonable grade for it.
If I have to write an essay, any essay, especially one about a book, don’t make it about crap. Don’t make it about horrid people who spew profanity and racism. Don’t force me to sit and read the ramblings of an idiotic rich man talking about the pain and the fear of the American Cowboy, while blatantly telling lies to bolster the imagination and exemplify a stereotype he knows to be false. This book is supposed to be some sort of masterpiece, but I find it disrespectful and it takes all my willpower to read every page.
If it is not the blatant use of racial labelling, or the overt profanity for no other reason but to swear, it is the characters craving evil schemes and the destruction of Indians. Chance wants to paint them all as savages and it disgusts me the detail with which he describes this fantasy so that he can paint not a physical truth, but a "psychological truth; a poetic truth! (252)". He basically says that he wants to write and sell lies with the intent of painting them as real and honest truth so that all these post WWI Americans, no matter where in Europe the come from, can believe themselves true "rawhide frontiersman (255)", so that he can "convert all those that can be converted -damn the rest (253)". From a man living in a mansion in Hollywood, the imagery of "the lonely hunter on the plain, naked in solitude (253)" or even more intense, "the fired roof, the women taken captive, the lurking painted nightmare, (253)" is simply one of a vivid imagination with the money to paint his own version of history and truth. This is a man so bent on getting Indian Blood on to the big screen that he is willing to twist a beautiful story told with all earnest from the heart of a Real American Cowboy into his own story of Good Americans vs. Evil Indians. He wants to make a heroic story, convert it to lies and falsehoods and pass it off is genuine history.
It is literally enough to make you ill, and if there were anyway to get out of this essay and still pass the course I would. But alas, 30% of my grade depends on a paper I claimed to have started already, so I won't be worming out of this. But my opinion will be vivid in it's destruction of how Hollywood, but especially the egomaniacal Damon Ira Chance, created a monster out of those fighting to defend their homes, and heroes out of vicious men with the desire for blood and to be known as the one to kill the most Indians.
Excuse me while I cry.

The Speed of Dark

As the first post of a new blog I want to take a moment to introduce myself and explain the origin of the name "The Speed of Dark".
First the name.
The other night I was talking about physics with a new friend of mine. specifically we were talking about wave-particle duality, the theory of light and electron waves. This alone is interesting since he has no education in physics, and therefore a very limited understanding of those topics, but he was interested in what I was studying in school. I was talking about light, when he asked me; "what is darkness then?"
Science says that darkness is just the absence of light. Philosophers, of course, have other ideas. Everyone has different ideas. As we talked about what darkness was scientifically, he asked me, "since there is a speed of light, is there was a speed of dark?"
I told him I didn't think there was, at least not in the sense of there being a physical constant of it. (If there was I think it would be -2.99x10^8 m/s, or the negative of the speed of light.)
But the thought just stuck with me. What is darkness? Is it just the absence of light? It's amazing the way simple questions stay with you, especially when you don't know the answer.

I'm a scientist. I majored in physics with a minor in psychology. It's the physics part that usually shocks people though. Sometimes they get a stunned look on their face. Some have choked on food that they're eating. Most just ask "why?"
The reason is I love physics. It's stupidly hard, but you can actually see it working. The fact that your computer is not floating in the air is physics. The fact that we don't spontaneously combust is physics (and a little chemistry, but that's just applied physics). Every step we take, everything we do, and every sport we play is directly impacted by physics. The simple idea that the Earth doesn't spiral off into the sun is physics.
You get the point.
Physics is a beautiful thing. I know most people don't see it that way, but I do. Even at it's hardest there are amazing things to learn about the universe. From the reason that black holes are bright when you look at pictures of galaxies, to the existence of the smallest particles, there is an intricate beauty in the way our world is formed. From the force of friction, to the speed of light we discover the meaning of time, and space.
To some the thought of tracing everything back to the equations that make up the universe demeans the value or the beauty of the world. To me the world becomes an even more amazing place because of the complexity that we haven't even began to understand.
To quote the great and well loved scientist, Bill Nye the Science Guy:
"Science rules!"