Letters to the Editor

Dr. Jerry Gilbert

Clinical Psychologist

Denver, Colorado

Dr. Gilbert

Dear Editor:

I was intrigued by the part of your ace reporter’s last column (12-4-25 in Archives) that delved into Gottfried Leibnitz and his theories.

I spend a lot of time studying philosophy, cosmology, and even a little quantum mechanics.

Leibnitz was brilliant, in some ways ahead of his time, but the notion of empty space is still a basis for argument.

I am not sophisticated enough to provide an expert opinion, but I don't lack for opinions.

Adjoining the debate over empty space is the debate over whether our universe emerged from nothingness.

That is supported by famous physicists and philosophers.

In my not so humble opinion, that makes no sense. It doesn't account for when or how such a transition could take place.

I reason from our knowledge that biological growth emerges from seeds, or DNA, or the principles of energy (energy can neither be created not destroyed). Nothingness has no seeds or DNA; that is, it contains no instructions. Without instructions, change can't take place. Many cosmologists suggests that OUR universe began with an infinitesimally small & dense something that "banged".

It seems to me that something is wrong with that picture. Did such a something emerge from nothingness? What regulated the emergence —there had to be instructions. Also, why did the "bang" evolve in the way it did, allowing for the basic forces and how OUR universe evolved?

I think quantum mechanics may help us realize that nothingness (the total absence of all existence) is an idea that seems to provide an explanation when it doesn't. It is similar to saying that our universe was created by a god.

That doesn't really explain anything either.

The existence of "fields" of energy is one hint of a type of existence that seems to question a part of the notion of nothingness.

History is filled with examples of the discovery of "somethings" where we thought there were "nothings.”

I think eventually Leibnitz and others will be vindicated when scientists discover the existence of energy in various forms everywhere.

I wish I were around to witness that.

Just reviewing this writing, and all others, we would say there are spaces between each word. That has meaning for writing and typing. But isn't there a background to the spaces as well as the typing? Isn't there always an "energy field" of some type everywhere? 

Please submit an airtight proof of these heretical ideas to vindicate Leibnitz and others (including myself) who think the way I do.

Regards,

Jerry Gilbert

p.s. If you disagree with my logic, think nothing of it.

(Editor’s response: We’re on the same page. There’s no such thing as empty space.)

--30--

Our

Story

by

Lawrence Abby Gauthier

ace reporter

The Westphalia Periodic News

Making Old Buggies

Run Like New Again

Culley Jane has been having big troubles fumbling around in the wireless quantum world. Her old computer stopped communicating with her old wireless printer. She spent days trying to figure it out and finally bought a new printer at an Office Depot where everything is shiny and new. But that didn’t work either because, as she would discover after another couple days of frustration, her computer was not only old, but too old! So we drove back across town to return the new printer to Office Depot. The cashier frowned. She said the box was not repacked right. Culley Jane gave her a look like don’t you dare.

What next? A new computer? But Culley Jane is used to her “old” computer, which, she reminds me, is not that old. She’s written five novels on her old Mac.

One or the other of us had an idea: Maybe if we bypassed the mysterious wireless space and connected the old computer directly to the old printer with a cable it would work.

We looked all over the house and went through storage boxes in the garage, but couldn’t find a cable that would fit. She thought we could probably get one at Walmart, but I thought it was time to go see my friend Vince.

Vincent Gaffney has revolutionary family roots.

His grandmother, his father’s mother, was an active collaborator with Michael Collins, leader of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish Revolt against British rule in the years following WWI, which had weakened the Empire.

His grandfather had the important civil position of Constable of the City of Cork in County Cork where the revolution began.

In 1922, Michael Collins was killed in action and the revolution of bombs and gunfire was tamped down into an enduring cultural simmer.

The following year, Vince’s grandparents sought a better life and sailed to America, but were turned away because of their revolutionary past.

They sailed back to Ireland where they had a son, Vince’s father, who became a banker and in the late 50s emigrated to America with his German wife. In New York City, he looked for work at banks. There were plenty of job postings, but they all said “Irish Need Not Apply.” So he joined the American Army and made a career of it and that’s why Vincent was born on an Army base in South Carolina in 1963 and lived all over the place — Army bases in California, Texas, Germany, Colorado.

I first met Vince a couple years ago. I just happened to be driving past a small strip mall not far from where we live when I noticed his storefront in between a martial arts “academy” and a nail and hair salon.

My old Dell laptop where I write had been running kind of slow. I tried to get help from the international Dell customer service department and spent hours on hold and spinning around in circles in something called a cloud where nobody talks in a language I understand.

I’m always looking for old time mechanics with their own garage to work on my old cars. When an engine goes bad, I pay them $2,000 to put in a new rebuilt one and I’ve got a better car than anything I could pick up for $15,000 at a used car lot. Maybe this was my lucky day. Maybe I’d found an old-school computer mechanic who thought like me.

I turned my ’96 Subaru Forester around and headed back to the computer shop in the strip mall.

Vince acted like he was glad to see me. He was the only one there. Maybe he didn’t get many customers, but I quickly learned he’d been in the same spot for 23 years.

He spends most of his days alone in his shop area in back of the store, rebuilding, updating, putting new engines in old machines. He knew my old Dell inside out and fixed me right up. And then we got to talking.

And since then, whenever I’m in his neck of the woods I’ll stop in and we’ll talk about whatever.

I remember the last time I’d dropped in just to talk about whatever because it was the day that Charlie Kirk was killed. Vince had been listening to the news over his old AM/FM shop radio when I came in through the front door.

He was troubled by the news. Like something dark was present in his country, like the Empire had been during his grandparents’ days.

He was as American as his grandparents had been Irish. He’d been given a chance in America to make a better life for himself and his family… a chance, but you had to work hard for it.

He studied electronics in high school, even taking college level courses. And then a degree in computer science from Colorado College. He worked for a company that built surge suppressors to protect electronic systems in the event of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) shockwave produced by an atomic explosion.

He worked hard… family, a house in the country, his own business of helping old machines run fast again. He wouldn’t want to live in a country where everything was owned and run by the government and everybody was told what they had to do to fit in in order to survive, like in somebody’s colony.

I asked him if he thought he would have joined the IRA back in his grandparents’ day.

He thought about it some.

“No,” he said, “they were killing people too.”

So Culley Jane and I drove over to his shop and of course he had exactly what we needed to connect two old machines.

We drove back home and Culley Jane went straight upstairs to her office.

Maybe ten minutes later I heard her screech: “It WORKS!”