Authenticity, From A (zalea, Iggy) to T (-Model Ford)

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you know I consider myself to be engaged in the pursuit of reality. This sounds like it should be an easy task --- think of Samuel Johnson kicking a rock and declaring, "I refute it thus!" --- but that is not the case, to put it mildly. To begin with, Johnson's famous kicking-of-the-rock looks very different at an atomic and quantum level than it did to him; everything in our universe consists mostly of empty space. Or so I believe, anyway. I've never personally undertaken any science experiment that couldn't be performed in a high school laboratory. What I believe to be "real" is two percent my own observation and ninety-eight percent received knowledge, obtained from my uneasy perch on the shoulders of Isaac Newton's giants.