Six year coma

[Mark Wright AIA]

Howdy
a quibble or two

--- Otto <ottosell at yahoo.de> wrote:

> some things are especially interesting about the rainbow (and Goethe
> who was
> a poet and scientist at the same time):
> 1. the sun has to be in your back to see the rainbow at all ("So
> bliebe denn
> die Sonne mir im Rücken"),

true

> 2. everybody sees his own, a different rainbow than the person next
> to you.
> Apart from the catastrophic references the rainbow is a nice symbol
> for
> "truth" because in reality there's no rainbow at all, it's only on
> your
> retina and in your brain,

false
In reality there is a phenomenon of refracted and reflected sunlight.
Your retina and brain are correctly registering an external phenomenon
just as it can be recorded by a camera. And unless you are making your
own little rainbow, with a garden hose, say, the rainbow is way way
*over there* in the misty air where it is still raining some, and the
person standing next to you is seeing this phenomenon from a slightly
different point of view just as he would see the colored light
reflected from a charging tiger from a slightly different point of
view. By the way, we took the kids to see the new tiger grounds at the
Bronx Zoo last weekend, and heavens but the tigers are magnificent. I
never knew tigers were *fluffy* before. I always imagined them with
stiff fur like a shepherd dog, not with fluffy downy lovely fur like a
kitten, and claws a good two inches long. A month ago we went to Boston
and on the drive up we saw the best rainbow any of us had ever seen:
clear as a bell, arcing perfectly from ground to ground, with clear
bright colors and even a faint inverted rainbow outside of the primary.
We pulled off the road to watch it for a while. Everybody else saw it
too. Many cars pulled off the road to look, each from his own point of
view, and each loading it with private or shared symbolism. It is the
*symbolism* that has no basis in "reality", not our perception of the
phenomenon.

> 3. according to the Noah rainbow-reference & "GR": God promised never
> to
> destroy life on earth again with a flood, but he did not speak of
> nuclear
> fire (and the following nuclear winter):
> 
> 12 And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making
> between me
> and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all
> generations
> to come:
> 13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of
> the
> covenant between me and the earth.
> 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in
> the
> clouds,
> 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living
> creatures
> of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy
> all
> life.
> 16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and
> remember
> the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of
> every kind
> on the earth."
> 17 So God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant I have
> established
> between me and all life on the earth."

It's interesting that the rainbow is not so much meant to remind the
people not to transgress against the covenant, as to remind God to stay
his hand and not visit retribution for the sins of humanity upon the
rest of Creation. He seems to've left himself a loophole big enough to
drive a truck bomb through, promising in effect not to drown the
kittens when He sends agents to wipe us from the face of His Earth.


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