GR title: the limits of metephor

[Brian D. McCary]

I have always considered the rainbow referance in GR to be
specifically to the general arc shape, and to the fact that 
a rainbow appears to be a real object, with real feet planted
somewhere on the earth, but which is really an optical illusion
with no begining and no end.  Thus, I have always taken Slothrops
search for 00000 to a search for the pot of gold at the end of
the rainbow, and the apearant interweaving conspirisies to be
very convincing optical illusions which are really the result
of amoral interactions between light (knowledge or info?)  and 
scattering particles (people and events?).  Although I doubt 
this interpretation is widespread, it has worked quite well
for me....

The idea of considering the spectral aspects of the rainbow is
interesting.  RokyE seems to be suggesting that GR could refer to the
idea of the dispersion of a poly-frequecy gravity packet into its
spectral components, as a poly-chromatic light source is separated
in a rainbow.  It's a novel thought, but I can't quite follow it
anywhere.

Alternatively, we could think of gravity (perhaps the inertial 
forces of historical and human nature?) as *causing* the 
dispersion, in which case, the analogy is between gravity and,
say, index gradients or refracting water droplets.  In which
case, we end up with the idea that (for instance) history and
human nature will cause initially well mixed items, objects, or
ideas to get separated out and sorted by some criteria, perhaps 
by energy.  Thus, high energy ideas, concepts, or movements might
be diverted more than lower energy ones.  Strikingly, this has
somewhat anit-entropic overtones: the well mixed light is 
sorted out by energy content in a rainbow!  (of course, for
the purists, this process takes more energy than it sorts...

Brian McCary