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Why would you think that, Numan?

What is a loss to you is not necessarily a loss to me.

I enjoy life, love a good laugh, have wonderful friends. I cry when something exquisite, sad, loving or simple touches my heart. I can touch the incredible and infinite existence of my soul. I'm rendered speechless by the beauty of nature, by animals of all kinds, by the innocence and honesty of children, by my granddaughters' smiles, by the compassion and helping hand given by one stranger to another...and by so much more, every day.

I don't feel any sense of loss due to the fact that some man-made things bore me. What lights my fire may not light yours. And that's okay.

I've done so much more in 62 years than I ever thought I would. I'm content. I welcome new experiences, but won't chase after them. Let them come to me; it's better that way.

If you'd like to pity my 'loss' that's fine. But I won't join you in that.


Depends on one's definition of educated. Life is my school and I'm always in attendance.

Sure, I shuffled through what, to me, were dry, dismal, waste-of-time years sitting in classrooms, memorizing what was then, and still is now, generally useless to me...most of which I happily forgot when the final exam was over and I could get back to life.

Academically I got through easily enough. (I'm a member of MENSA but let it lapse years ago. I find those people a bit strange.) But I learned so much more of real importance...to me, at least...once the academics ended.

Life is short. All book-learning, music and art will be meaningless once I'm dead. My choice is to learn by following my heart and soul...and trusting them to take me exactly where I need to be. Not to your destinations, or anyone else's, but to mine.

For me, that pretty well sums it up.

Did you ever hear of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky?




Von Braun would have been praising Tsiolkovsky instead of Goddard, if it had been the Russians who had taken him prisoner, rather than the Americans.

YOUTUBE: Tom Lehrer - Wernher von Braun

If that is true, then you are educated.

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Nice post, Naomi.
I plan to live life until the day I die too.

Everything will be meaningless once we are dead --- except for the everlasting glory of Beauty, Goodness and Truth.

It's nice if there is an echo of us in that magnificent Immensity, but it is not essential.

That pretty well sums up Enlightenment.

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Yes I have. Like Goddard, he was largely unappreciated in his own time and place.

Think so? according to your Wiki article, he got his act together only after hearing of Goddard's 1919 LFR work.

Thus, the fact remains that the German V-2 program, a LFR, was indebted to the work of Goddard, and since the Russians relied largely on the German researchers captured by them, it would appear, too, that the lineage of Soviet rocketry is more traceable to Goddard than to their own native son.

Goddard and Tsiolkovsky should, like Newton and Leibniz did for calculus and Adams and Leverrier did for Neptune, be accorded essentially the same honors.

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Tsiolkovsky for elegant analysis, Goddard for grubby tinkering:

Europe and America!

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Hardly.

Goddard was a physicist, and his "grubby tinkering" - as you choose to dismiss it - was well-founded on the theoretical work that he did.

Your attitude reminds me so much of others I've met over the years who expressed a similar sense of the cultural equivalent of penis envy.

Once again, Numan, you are speaking into your mirror. Can't handle the truth, can you?

Hard to say; I never find anyone who speaks it.

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