Backwards
So, today was the first day of classes. There was calculus III (hardcore), Utopia and Anti-Utopia (read on), and electrical engineering 101 (boring).
My professor for the Utopia class is an old man, probably somewhere is his sixties or early seventies. He reminds me of my maternal grandfather: sort of tall, clean shaven yesterday but not today, and thinning half-white hair. He has that glaze in his eyes that comes with old age. Very nice guy, and very well spoken. However, the reason that he is notable is not because of his age, his appearance, or his temperament. His …companion… was the more interesting thing. He brought a dog to class with him! So, all thirty of us have our desks arranged in a circle… I’m only one desk away from sitting next to the professor. The dog — Thompson, named for the bodyguard of Winston Churchill — is licking my feet and dragging papers out of the backpacks of some students near by. What’s even funnier is that the dog wasn’t present for any obvious reason. The professor wears glasses sometimes, but only for distance. Not a Seeing Eye dog; just a companion. The professor wore a wedding band. Interesting. I hope Professor Alkon isn’t too lonely at home.
While he was talking about Thomas More’s Utopia, I had a thought about the world being different. What if, instead of infinitely expanding space out there, our world was backwards? I’m talking literally here. The earth is still spherical, but the outside of the ball yields to rock, magma, and whatever else we think of as being below us. It expands out to infinity, just like the emptiness of space does now. The inside of the sphere is hollow, and contains our atmosphere. Instead of gravity keeping everything tied down, it’s centrifugal motion keeping everything on the ground. The sphere, a.k.a. the solid universe with the atmospheric core is rotating at just the right speed to give its occupants that perfect downwards force. Light is provided by a gaseous ball at the center of the sphere, which is a mystery to most occupants.
OK, I’ll lay off the crack. Hope you enjoyed that. 
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