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http://www.omniture.com --> Sections Home Page Local News AP News Archives Business Classifieds Event Calendar Forums Life Opinion Obituaries Photo Gallery Readers Photo Gallery Sports Tempo Weather Special Coverage 2006 Britt Festivals --> Shop Our Valley AutoFinder HomeFinder JobFinder Search Our Valley Special Sections Homelife Magazine Joy Magazine Readers Choice 2006 Oregon Golf Info Oregon Wine Info Our Valley Other Publications Local Links Ashland News eSouthernOregon Newspapers In Education Personals Moving Here Movie Listings TV Listings Volunteer Customer Service Advertise With Us Media Kit Place Classified Ad Contact Us FAQ's Home Delivery Site Map --> Email Story to a Friend October 1, 2006 Drumming at the edge of cosmic spots By BILL VARBLE Between the Lines I'm not sure how the color-shifting paint in the family room merged with the spots on the early universe, but it had something to do with Mickey Hart and Planet Drum. The Perpetual Remodel wasn't supposed to go forever, like the Folies Bergere in Las Vegas. But it feels that way. I took a few days off work to paint. Color is tricky. Our usual search process for building/decorating stuff goes like this: ideas > books and magazines > catalogs > online research > shopping > samples > consumer reviews > naval-gazing, etc., etc. This time we skipped all that and just copied a friend's paint scheme. Advertisement "You mean just shamelessly copy it?" my wife said. Hey, it's not a contest. This color is a yellow with shades of brown and green and ecru. It changes with the light. It is bright and energetic and calming and elegant. Once my wife saw it, we went ahead with the shamelessness. We know good taste when we see it. I got the wall and (matching) ceiling colors by their numbers and laid them on the primed sheetrock. Something was off. Before I cut in where the walls met the ceiling the colors seemed to clash. I took samples to my friend's house. They looked right. I trusted the process and finished cutting in. With the primer covered, the colors came together. Now they morph through the day as light goes from soft morning to noon brightness to sundown warm. After three days of painting I couldn't tell black from white, so Mickey Hart and Planet Drum at the Craterian Wednesday night were just what the doctor ordered — exhilarating percussion from a place midway between a world of membranes and a digital universe. Then there was nothing for it but to use my last day off to go sailing, where a windless afternoon led me to stretch out on deck (the worst day sailing beats the best day at work) and read "How the Universe Got Its Spots," Janna Levin's heady conjecture on the shape of spacetime. She is a mathematician trying to get a handle on the topology of our universe, which she suspects is finite but edgeless. One clue in her quest is the pattern of cosmic hot spots from the Big Bang. Thirteen billion years or so ago, when all the matter and energy in the universe, even space itself, expanded from an infinitely small point in a super-heated plasma, things, it seems, were not smooth. There were lumps. Which is why when it cooled enough for atomic nuclei to become stable some regions had more hydrogen atoms than others, which is why you could add a pinch of gravity, simmer, and get stars and galaxies and eventually planets and water and self-replicating DNA and life forms capable of wondering: What the heck? Levin at one point veers off to the markings on animal coats that stem from embryonic chemicals in which the size of the embryo (leopard, zebra, etc.) sets a pattern for pigmentation. This is no mere metaphor but the same kind of math as that in which the geometry of space may have led to hot and cold spots in the background microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang. I drop the book and doze on deck and wake up to burning late-summer sun and the lapping of wavelets on the hull. A double-crested cormorant paddles by, its yellow mask held high above a body riding so deep in the water it leaves only a comma of back. And suddenly it's one of those moments when everything comes together. If, as some cosmologists suspect, the waves in the curvature of spacetime mathematically resemble the waves of a drum, and the same math that describes the universe's radiation spots may explain how an embryonic giraffe (or universe) gets its spots, then maybe it all really is part of the same cosmic archaeology. For a moment, what we see as color, which is after all electromagnetic radiation in a range we call visible, fits in there too, and changing colors and the streaming blue vee of a bird's wake. It all fit, and the soundtrack was Planet Drum. It seemed right in the moment. The cormorant, unimpressed, tucked its head in a smooth surface dive, its brain vibrant with visions of fish. Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail [email protected] . Would you like to respond to this story? If so Click Here to visit our forums. Advertisement Copyright © 1997-2006 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions | Website Feedback online casinos news Home Security Systems Windermere Van Vleet Men's Clothing Southern Oregon Loans --> GMAT Prep Fundraisers Send Flowers Texas Electric Choice Entertainment Guide --> Casinos Canada Trunks, Footlocker Online Casino Reviews Online poker at AbsolutePoker.com