> Are you sure your picture of the universe is not being waylaid by a peculiarity of English, which confuses the apparent Void (emptiness) with Nothing (ultimate meaninglessness)?
>

I was going for ultimate meaninglessness there.

> Just because something appears 'empty' to our limited eyes and minds does not mean that 'nothing' is there. When speaking of the infinitely large (the physical universe) relating to the infinitely small (quantum field theory), covering everything in between, the semantics involved tends to start sounding like a Zen koan.
>

That's what I was trying to get at with the whole marble-to-sun thing. I was trying to make it a little easier to picture. :)

> [snip, snip]
> At that point, it looks like you started to anthropomorphize the emptiness of space, and the things which we cannot see, and associate them to the sense of futility a person might feel when pondering the ultimate heat-death of the universe.
> [snip]
> Heh. If you don't mind, there is *nothing* that whets the appetite like a Theory of Everything... I'd Rule Six you if TOE is suitably Sixable. :-)

The basic point of the original post was that we (people) are insignifigant, if not meaningless, and nothing matters in the long run (TOE, right there). Later, it got added that things *did* matter in the short run. And, that while it may all be futile, we have to keep on living our lives. What else is there to do?

Oeras