Andrew Lange

I read in Sean Carroll's Discover Magazine Blog, about Lange's untimely death.

I did not know Lange, but followed the work of experimental cosmology that he was involved with. It pains me to think, that one less person is trying to find out how did all the Universe happen, really, by measuring it carefully.

In the same blog I found out about Caltech students suicides. I knew and know very smart people that worked and studied there: Arturo Cisneros Stoianowski, Bruce Hoeneisen, Richard P. Feynman, and Alexei V. Filippenko.

It pains me even more that some Caltech students died that way. Actualy I went to high school with Guillermo Cisneros Stoianowski, Arturo's brother, who also died by his own hands.

I am sure each case is different, and all deaths diminish all of us. Right now hundreds of thousands of our fellow human beings are dying in Haiti. There must be very smart people among the dead there, no doubt.

I want this note to be a reminder, to all the readers that may contemplate this course of action, to do as Bertrand Russell, who also thought about this, adviced. Go help poor people, workers, and peasants, so many suffering ones. Finally, I also want to quote Roberto Bolaño, in his Infrarealist Manifesto: O.K.. LEAVE EVERYTHING, AGAIN. TAKE ON THE ROADS.

If life doesn't make any sense, go find it.

I know Prof. Lange, was not the first nor will be the last. I recently wrote about Ehrenfest, and Boltzmann. Each one of us will face that action alone. Maybe a loose wire up there, maybe a chemical conduit is broken, and we are not getting enough happy juice up there; whatever it is, before you unplug the chord that keeps you connected to this world, try to fix whatever it is that is not working.

Albert Camus wrote many years ago, something like this:

The most important philosophical question is whether you should kill yourself or not.

From the link above I took this:

"Many forms of Existentialist thinking essentially begin with the premise that life is objectively meaningless, and proceed to the question of why one should not just kill oneself; they then answer this question by suggesting that the individual has the power to give personal meaning to life."