Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for July 11, 2009

A little too much infinite blackness, eh?

morning Marg… yep to dark for out little calvin… im getting used to the dark myself. lol

Hi everyone. Run Calvin run, before the infinite darkness swallows you up.

In fact the thought of being hurled through is much more scary. What if there is a collision ?

Try this for fun: Go outside at night when the stars are out. Lay on the grass and look straight up. Focus only on the stars in that direction. Hold onto the grass tight. Now think to yourself: “I’m looking DOWN!”

deep yet dark!

Kind of reminds me of when me and a friend of mine camped outside one night and saw a meteor shower, we were so scared that we ran into the house and hid under the bed. We thought the world was coming to an end because we didn’t know what a meteor shower was.

Now I wish I didn’t live in the city…….

They’re even more mindboggling close up…..

http://heritage.stsci.edu/gallery/gallery.html

Enjoy!!

Infinite possibilities. Infinite realities. Infinite dimensions.

Infinity makes it impossible to ever see the full picture. It is true randomness - unpredictability. Nothing can be prewritten, if everything is possible. Free will comes from randomness. Fate comes from order - predictability.

With perfect chaos, everything happens at once. With perfect order, everything stops happening. A perfect balance between them is necessary for time to flow and for our reality to exist.

Look into the endless darkness to find the eternal light.

Make the infinite blackness go away!

Hey, D-i-c-e R!

I’d love to fence with you at length about your thesis, but I get into enough trouble when someone expounds on a peripheral interest. :)

One counterexample: process flows can also be perfectly orderly, yet the whole point of a process flow is to make sure things happen while taking freedom of choice into account. Not all order has the fixity of a crystal lattice.

Back to Calvin: He’s not yet prepared to learn the lesson of humility that such perspective’s meant to teach him. If he were, then the character of the whole comic strip would be totally different. :)

@tbree,

I would want something much stronger than grass if I try that.

Poor Calvin, perhaps the end of the universe is near - the stars are going out.

It’s scarier to lie face down in the grass and think to yourself, “I’m looking UP!”

maybe it’s not that Calvin is afraid of the dark, but that he feels so small in the universe that he wants to turn on all the lites to be noticed.

THe Black Hole

The moon, the sun, and all the stars revolve around us because we are the center of the universe and we should burn anyone who say different

nobody knows what gravity is

THEDRIVER–that was my first thought, too: He’s turning on the lights so that someone “out there” will see earth. And then I read everyone else’s comments that seemed to think he was scared of the dark. Good to know at least one other person interpreted the scene the same way I did.

This makes me want to go out some clear night and look at the stars.

Just wait until there is a power outage. Keep a flashlight handy and candles - and a way to light them.

@tbree;

When I was little I used to lie on my back in the grass in the daytime, and look into the sky and get lost in the clouds (it did have to be a beautiful day with a blue sky and white clouds). After a while I did feel like I was above and the clouds were below me, and I better hold on to the grass or I would fall in. It was a sort of meditation or self-hypnosis. I loved to do it, but I didn’t get the chance very often. It felt like something very special, taking me out of myself.

If it comes to that, I think I’d be just as happy doing it now! I’m sure it would work, the same as before!

reminds me of a poem from book of counted sorrows

The sky is deep, the sky is dark, The light of stars is so bleeep stark. When I look up, I fill with fear. If all we have is what lies here, this lonely world, this troubled place, then cold dead stars and empty space… Well, I see no reason to persevere, no reason to laugh or shed a tear, no reason to sleep or ever to wake, no promises to keep, and none to make. And so at night I still raise my eyes to study the clear but mysterious skies– that arch above us, as cold as stone. Are you there, God? Are we alone?

Where will Calvin go to turn the lights? Nothing is there! It will be nice to see many stars up the sky in nighttime. Awesome!

I remember spending the night in my grandfather’s pasture sleeping outside in our sleeping bags. We had our dog with us and cows were nearby. We lay in the dark of a prairie night watching shooting stars and a sky so filled with stars that it was absolutely beautiful. People living in a city miss that beauty.

@ tbree - you just made me dizzy thinking about that! I’m definately trying that next chance I get!

Relax, Calvin. You’re still at the center of the universe you know.

Hurtling, not hurling. This isn’t Wayne’s World.

I’ll bet those stars would be more interesting to look at with a nice pair of binoculars.

Some of the other posters here, would like us to believe that our sun, moon, and stars revolve around us. But in reality we all revolve around something much greater than this puny little speck of dirt we refer to as Earth.

RE: jonathanyoung said: Hurtling, not hurling. This isn’t Wayne’s World.

Mr Young: there is a “GENIUS” tag by your name which causes me to believe that it was placed there by mistake. You may want to check your Merriam-Webster and discover that the two words in question have primarily the same meaning. Check it out!

TBREE; I love the way your mind works!!!

@thedriver & huntermoon: My first thoughts also ran along the lines of yours. I have often felt the same way when gazing out at the magnificence of something in nature. It’s why I take the pictures I do - to remind me of the beauty everywhere. @grazer: the link you provided brings much of the same feelings. thank you.

All I can think about when I lay outside in the grass looking up at the stars is, “I hope the chiggers, ticks or mosquitoes aren’t going to bite me!”

Groversfather, that’s exactly what I was thinking! I was wondering if someone was going to mention that pair of nice new binoculars Calvin just got! This would have been the perfect use for them!!!!!

calvin switch on all the lights so that everyone knows we’rre coming towards them! hurry

grazer, those are very beautiful pictures..thank you!

Now I wish I didn’t live in the city…….

The aurora commercialis does tend to get in the way.

Isn’t gravity what we pour on mashed potatoes?

Thanks for the link, Grazer. Holy wow.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/lib/aptree.html

one place i moved to was so far out that we could almost count the stars, there were just clear unobstructed skies and no big city lights to mess it up. i miss that.

It’s a great big universe, and we’re all really puny. Just tiny little specs, about the size of Mickey Rooney.

Yet, a person’s a person, no matter how small.

Wow, at night I can’t see the stars at all. Stupid pollution. That’s what you get for wanting to live near the beach.

I thought the main point (if a comic strip has to have a point) was comparison of nature and our artificial environment. We’ve become more comfortable with the artificial. I sure like my AC. Btw, I have a “genius” by my name and I have no idea why.

Marvee, Did you buy an upgrade to your account?

Go inside and get dads telescope (he won’t mind as long as you promis not to break it)

These days, I’m just glad to live in a place dark enough to see most of the Milky Way!