The Outer Limits

 

I can’t force my brain to comprehend the vastness of the universe.  I’ve tried.  I mean, I know it’s big, and there are great distances between planets, but seeing it on a chart doesn’t cut it for me.  Without sounding too silly, I just can’t wrap my head around it.  Why is that?

 

***

 

Your brain isn’t failing you, Harvey. It’s doing exactly what it evolved to do — and the universe is doing exactly what it evolved to not do.

You’re trying to use a three‑pound, pattern‑loving, story‑shaped organ to grasp something that has no edges, no scale your senses were built for, and no narrative boundaries. The mismatch isn’t a flaw. It’s the whole point.

🧠 Why your brain can’t “feel” cosmic scale

Your gray matter is exquisitely tuned for:

• Distances you can walk
• Objects you can throw
• Threats you can run from
• Stories with beginnings and endings

It was not built to intuit:

• stars
• 46 billion light‑years in every direction
• Space that curves, expands, and has no edge
• Time scales where a million years is a rounding error

Your brain evolved to keep you alive on a savanna, not to comprehend a universe that behaves like a four‑dimensional balloon being stretched by invisible math.

So when you try to “wrap your head around it,” you’re asking a violin to play radio waves.

🌌 The universe breaks your mental ruler

There are three big cognitive limits at play:

• Scale blindness — Your brain compresses huge numbers into vague impressions. A thousand, a million, a billion… they all feel like “a lot,” even though each is orders of magnitude apart.
• Spatial intuition failure — You evolved to understand Euclidean space: straight lines, flat surfaces, objects with edges. The universe is curved, expanding, and possibly infinite. Your intuition simply has no foothold.
• Narrative instinct — You expect a beginning, middle, and end. The universe offers expansion, entropy, and horizons that move as fast as you chase them.

Your mind wants a fence line. The cosmos refuses to give you one.

🪞 The deeper truth: you can understand it, just not feel it

You can intellectually grasp the numbers, the models, the diagrams. But you can’t experience them the way you experience a room or a road.

That’s not silliness. That’s biology.

Even cosmologists — the people who spend their lives on this — will tell you they don’t “feel” the universe’s size. They work with equations because the human imagination simply doesn’t stretch that far.

It’s like trying to imagine a color you’ve never seen. You can describe it, but you can’t conjure it.

🌱 The poetic angle you always circle

You’re not really asking about astronomy. You’re asking about the limits of being human — the edges of the map inside your skull.

And there’s something beautiful about that: the universe is too big to fit inside a brain, and the brain is too strange to stop trying.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sequence

 

An onion is the typical metaphor for things with multiple layers.  Looking at it from the point of view of growth, I find it interesting how the outermost layer knows when to stop growing.  Is it the interior pushing it outward, or is it the outer layer that stops the inside from continuing to grow?  I can’t be the first to question this process. 

Does the banana grow and then the protective skin forms on the outside, or is it the skin that grows first and then the banana fills in the void? 

I believe the auto manufacturers first construct the insides of the car and put the outer skin on last.  Was this something they learned from nature?

 

***

 

The outer layers of an onion, the peel of a banana, and the metal skin of a car all look like they’re doing the same job—protecting what’s inside—but the way each one comes into being is completely different. What makes your question so rich is that it asks about directionality: does the inside push outward, or does the outside define the boundary? Nature answers that differently depending on the organism.

🧅 How an onion knows when to stop

The onion bulb forms through a sequence of developmental stages—germination, seedling growth, bulb initiation, bulb enlargement, and maturation. During bulb formation, the plant begins to swell and develop layers, each layer being a modified leaf that thickens as the bulb enlarges.

A few key points help answer your question:

• The outermost layer doesn’t “decide” to stop growing. Instead, each leaf layer is produced at the center of the bulb. As new layers form inside, older layers are pushed outward.
• The outer layers dry out because the plant shifts into maturation. When the tops fall over and the plant stops sending resources to the bulb, the outer layers become papery.
• Growth direction is inside-out. The interior drives expansion; the outer layers simply age, dry, and harden.

So, the onion is not a Russian doll built from the outside in. It’s more like a tree trunk in reverse: new rings form at the center, not the edge.

🍌 How a banana gets its peel

Bananas develop as berries, and their peel is part of the fruit’s pericarp—the outer tissue that forms from the ovary wall itself. The peel and the pulp develop together as the fruit grows.

Research on banana peel formation shows:

• The peel forms early, as part of the ovary wall, and thickens as the fruit enlarges.
• The pulp fills in from the inside, originating from the inner pericarp layers.
• The peel doesn’t wait for the banana to grow first. It expands in tandem with the pulp, stretching and differentiating as the fruit matures.

So unlike the onion, where new layers arise internally, the banana’s skin is a continuous outer tissue that grows along with the interior.

🚗 How a car gets its skin

Modern car manufacturing follows a very different logic from biology, but the metaphor is tempting.

Cars are typically built in this sequence:

• Stamping the body panels from sheet metal (the “skin”).
• Welding those panels into a rigid body shell—the body-in-white.
• Painting the shell, which must happen before interior components are installed.
• Adding the interior, engine, wiring, and trim during final assembly.

In other words:

• The skin comes first, because it must be welded and painted before anything delicate goes inside.
• The interior is inserted afterward, the opposite of how an onion or banana develops.

This isn’t something learned from nature—it’s dictated by physics, paint chemistry, and the need for structural rigidity before installing components. But the contrast is interesting: nature tends to build outward from a living center, while industry often builds inward from a manufactured shell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just a little Strange

 

However is it - this can be

the seed that grows

into a tree,

With pokey needles

and sap galore

beneath it presents

from a store.

 

 

 

 

Artie's Facts

 

by committee

 

I wonder where the wind is now that blew so hard last night.  It was in an awful hurry, and so clumsy.  It knocked over our backyard umbrella and scooted the dog’s dish over to the neighbors.  And it wasn’t very quiet about it.  It woke me up as it came through. 

Of course, I can stand the umbrella back up and everything will go back to normal, but what’s the dog to do?  I doubt he’ll understand.  His dish, now sitting several feet away… who’s to fill it with food?  Is he going to have to walk over there at every mealtime?  I doubt he’ll like that. 

I guess, with the cooperation of the neighbor, we could have the boundary lines of our property redrawn to encompass his dish.  Or perhaps the neighbor would consider adopting little Scruffy.  Then, he could just start feeding him.  The food dish already being there would make it all come together.

Truly, I have sat in corporate meetings just like this.  There is a simple problem with grown adults sitting around tossing out the dumbest suggestions I’ve ever heard.  How did these people get hired?  You’ve got to wonder.

 

***

 

The wind you met last night feels like one of those itinerant consultants who storms into a meeting, knocks over the projector, scatters everyone’s papers, delivers a half‑baked recommendation, and then vanishes before anyone can ask a follow‑up question. It barrels through the agenda, leaves chaos in its wake, and somehow still gets invited back every quarter.

Your backyard is just the latest conference room it blew through.

🌬️ The wind’s disappearing act

The moment it finished shoving the umbrella into a yoga pose and relocating the dog dish to a foreign jurisdiction, it probably sprinted off to bother someone else’s shingles. That’s the thing about wind: it never stays to help clean up the mess. It’s the coworker who says, “Welp, that’s all from me,” and then leaves you with the action items.

Meanwhile, Scruffy is standing there like an employee who just discovered his desk has been moved to another department without notice. He’s staring at the dish across the property line thinking:

• Is this a promotion?
• Is this a trap?
• Do I now report to the neighbor?
• Is this how outsourcing begins?

🏡 The corporate parallels

Your idea of redrawing the property line is exactly the kind of “strategic solutioning” that would show up on a whiteboard in a meeting where no one wants to admit the real answer is “just pick up the dish and move it back.”

Instead, you’d get:

• “Let’s form a cross‑functional task force to evaluate dish‑placement synergies.”
• “Have we considered a shared‑services model for canine nutrition delivery?”
• “What if we pivot to a neighbor‑centric feeding paradigm?”
• “Could we rebrand the dog as a community asset?”

And then someone—always someone—suggests hiring a consultant to study the feasibility of the wind.

🐾 The dog’s perspective

Scruffy doesn’t care about governance models or boundary realignment. He just wants his dish where it was yesterday. Dogs are the only ones in this whole scenario with any sense.

But the wind? The wind is already halfway to another county, bragging about how it “optimized backyard airflow” and “enhanced dish mobility.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look quick, or you'll miss it

 

It’s in the blink of an eye, those little transitions that slip by us as we navigate society.  The days are long gone when they ask if you’d prefer paper or plastic.  That transition is now simply a blip in the history of humans.

 

***

That lands like one of those quiet truths you only notice when you stop mid‑stride: the rituals we once thought were permanent were really just waystations. “Paper or plastic?” felt like a civic identity test at the time, a tiny referendum on who you were and what you believed. And now it’s a footnote—an evolutionary hiccup between the brown paper bags of the past and the reusable totes of the present.

🌒 How small transitions become historical artifacts

Moments like that shrink faster than we expect. They start as debates, then become habits, then fade into trivia. The shift is so subtle that by the time we look back, the whole era feels like a brief weather pattern—something that passed overhead while we were busy living.

A few patterns show up again and again:

• The transition phase always feels longer than it is. Living through it stretches time; remembering it compresses it.
• The debates feel urgent in the moment. Then they dissolve into “Oh right, we used to do that.”
• The world rarely announces its turning points. They arrive disguised as errands, receipts, checkout counters.

🌀 The deeper current beneath your reflection

What you’re really touching is that strange ache of watching the world molt. The things we once used to navigate society—cashiers, stamps, phone booths, the question of bags—become fossils almost overnight. And yet the churn keeps going. The only constant, as you said, is change, but the emotional texture of that change is what lingers: the sense that we’re always mid‑transition, always stepping from one version of the world into the next.

There’s a bittersweetness in realizing how many eras we’ve lived through without noticing the door close behind us. And there’s a quiet pride, too, in having witnessed them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Outside of the Box

 

Fuel level is low.

 

Low toner.

 

We tend to create and use things that get consumed and require replacing.  That is a system that establishes a continuous financial drain.  How nice would it be to avoid such systems.  I would like all future inventions to address this issue.

 

***

You’re naming a quiet truth of modern life: so many of our tools are designed to deplete—fuel, toner, batteries, filters, cartridges, subscriptions, refills. A built‑in leak in the wallet. You’re pointing at the deeper architecture: a world engineered around consumption loops, not completion loops.

A future that refuses that premise is not just possible—it’s a different philosophy of invention altogether.

🧭 What you’re really proposing

A shift from consumptive systems to closed, self-sustaining systems. From “replace the part” to “the part regenerates itself.” From “low toner” to “toner is a myth.”

This is a design revolution with three pillars:

• Durability — things built to last decades, not cycles
• Regeneration — systems that replenish themselves
• Decoupling from scarcity — inventions that don’t depend on consumables to function

🔧 How inventions could break the consumption loop

A few categories of future-proof design that match your instinct:

• Self-charging energy systems — devices that harvest ambient energy (light, motion, heat, radio waves) so “low battery” becomes an antique phrase.
• Closed-loop materials — printers that re-melt and reuse their own toner; appliances that digest their own waste into new fuel.
• Perpetual-use infrastructure — cars with sealed lifetime motors; HVAC systems with filters that clean themselves using electrostatic pulses.
• Universal lifetime components — one battery for life, one lightbulb for life, one pair of shoes for life, repaired endlessly rather than replaced.
• Software without subscriptions — tools that don’t meter your attention or charge you for breathing near them.

Each one removes a tiny tax on living.

🧨 The deeper impact

When you remove consumables, you remove:

• the constant low-level anxiety of “running out”
• the drip-drip-drip of financial erosion
• the planned obsolescence that treats people like revenue streams
• the waste streams that bury the planet in plastic and lithium

You also restore something we’ve lost: trust in the objects we rely on.

Imagine a world where your tools don’t nag you, warn you, beep at you, or demand tribute. They simply work.

🌱 A design philosophy for future inventors

If you were writing the charter for tomorrow’s inventors, it might sound like:

“Build nothing that drains the user. Build nothing that requires endless feeding. Build only what sustains itself, sustains the user, and sustains the world.”