One of the most solemn prayers we say on Yom Kippur is U'netaneh Tokef, written centuries ago.  It is in many ways the highlight of the long service.  

In Star Trek, The Motion Picture, a destructive space entity travels back to earh to find its creator. In doing so it obiliterates every nonplanet thing in it path except (cue the music) the Starship Enterprise. The crew discovers that it's Voyager I which encountered an alien culture who then decided to fulfill its mission of reporting back to its creator.  

When I was initiated into my college fraternity the final test was the "Black Hole" into which the upper class "Bothers" piled the pledges. Many a boy broke in the "Black Hole" under the weight and closeness of the crammed in mass of hormonal humanity, but more broke with their first experience with claustrophobia.   Since that time I have been plagued and haunted by its sudden on set. Be it in a packed unmoving subway car, tunnel or elevator  

A Guest Blog by Flo Feinberg It was a beautiful Sunday, perfect for a healthy walk.  

  Nancy, with her defining moments post yesterday, has set me up nicely for my first ever guest post on Gotham. September 11, 2001 and September 11, 2005 were both defining moments in my life. And defining moments become the stories that we tell and retell in the hope that we can make some sense of them.  

The theory orfrelativity has always eluded me despite my best efforts to try to understand it.  Now, finally I am getting some relief in the form of Walter Isaacson's 2007 biography of Einstein.  He devotes a full chapter (the Miracle Year) to special relativity and does a great job.  I am not hopelessly lost, in part because Einstein based his theory on his own throught experiments, not lab work or complex mathematics.