Music of the Christmas Season

One of my favorite parts of the Christmas season is the music.  The cold air and decorations do their part, but the music is what really puts me in the mod.  In fact, the music itself can conjure up thoughts of winter weather and halls decked with boughs of holly even if you're in area where you don't see a lot of winter weather.

My favorite Christmas songs consist mostly of the religious themed ones.  I'm not much into the whole Santa Claus and reindeer thing, although I do like some of the secular songs.

Here are some of my favorites.  They are in no particular order, but I am saving my favorite for last.

Christmas Eve in Sarajevo (Medley of God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman and Carol of the Bells)
Artist: Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Ok, so this is actually a medley of the older Christmas carols God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman and Carol of the Bells (both of which are favorites of mine), but the Trans-Siberian Orchestra named their medley of them and there is a story behind the name.  Here is part of the Wikipedia entry on it:

We heard about this cello player born in Sarajevo many years ago (Vedran Smailović) who left when he was fairly young to go on to become a well-respected musician, playing with various symphonies throughout Europe. Many decades later, he returned to Sarajevo as an elderly man—at the height of the Bosnian War, only to find his city in complete ruins.

I think what most broke this man's heart was that the destruction was not done by some outside invader or natural disaster—it was done by his own people. At that time, Serbs were shelling Sarajevo every night. Rather than head for the bomb shelters like his family and neighbors, this man went to the town square, climbed onto a pile of rubble that had once been the fountain, took out his cello, and played Mozart and Beethoven as the city was bombed.

He came every night and began playing Christmas carols from that same spot. It was just such a powerful image—a white-haired man silhouetted against the cannon fire, playing timeless melodies to both sides of the conflict amid the rubble and devastation of the city he loves. Some time later, a reporter traced him down to ask why he did this insanely stupid thing. The old man said that it was his way of proving that despite all evidence to the contrary, the spirit of humanity was still alive in that place.

The song basically wrapped itself around him. We used some of the oldest Christmas melodies we could find, like "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and "Carol of the Bells" (which is from Ukraine, near that region). The orchestra represents one side, the rock band the other, and single cello represents that single individual, that spark of hope.

Here is the music video:





Christmas Canon
Artist: Trans-Siberian Orchestra

This is actually Pachelbel's Canon with Christmas lyrics.  The orchestra not only does a great job, but the lyrics and children's choir complement it well.

View the video on YouTube (embedding is disabled for this video).




O Come, O Come Emmanuel
Artist: Various

This one has a very old sound to it, and it probably dates back to the middle ages.  It's translated from a Catholic Latin text called "Veni, veni, Emmanuel."  The lyrics are based on text from the from seventh chapter of the book of Isaiah.  It kind of reminds me of an old Gregorian chant type of sound.  Not only do I like the lyrical message, I like the historical sound of the song. Here's Enya's version of it:






O Come All Ye Faithful
Artist: Various

This song is another one that is centuries old, and is attributed to John Francis Wade.  It was originally titled "Adeste Fideles" in Latin and was translated into English by Frederick Oakeley.






Joy to the World
Artist: Various (Written by Isaac Watts)

Technically, this isn't even a song about the birth of Christ.  The song is about the second coming of Christ, but for some reason, people started singing it as a Christmas song.  Nonetheless, it is an awesome song and I think is best sung by a large choir.





Silent Night, Holy Night
Artist: Various (Written by Josef Mohr and Franz Xaver Gruber)

This is another good one that has been sung by many people.




Most people classify Christmas songs as religious or secular.  Well, I complicate things a little more by adding a third category that includes songs that aren't overly religious or overly secular.  I just think of them as songs about people celebrating Christmas, as opposed to songs specifically about the Christmas story or about Santa Claus and shopping.



A Holly Jolly Christmas
Artist: Burl Ives, Quinto Sisters

It would be hard to imagine December coming and going without hearing Burl Ives crooning his famous rendition of "A Holly Jolly Christmas".  I classify this as a song about people celebrating Christmas.   Ironically, this song was written by a Jewish songwriter named Johnny Marks.






All I Want for Christmas is You
Artist: Vince Vance and the Valiants

I classify this song as secular.  Although I'm not a particularly big fan of a lot of the secular Christmas songs, this one is an exception.  I just love the singer's voice and the song's beat.  I remember playing this song at a place I worked a few years back, and a Jehovah's Witness (who don't celebrate Christmas) even admitted to liking it and started dancing to it!  It's very upbeat and helps get you in the mood.

View it on YouTube (embedding is disabled for this video).


As I said earlier, I would save my favorite for last.  So here it is.


O Holy Night
Artist: Various

My favorite Christmas song is O Holy Night.  I've heard many beautiful versions of this song and it's hard to narrow it to a specific artist's version, but if I had to pick one, I think I would go with Jim Nabor's version of the song.  Yes, the same Jim Nabors that played Gomer Pyle.  Don't let the goofy Gomer act fool you, Nabors actually has an awesome operatic singing voice.  In fact, I'd say he has one of the best singing voices that I've heard.

O Holy Night - Jim Nabors

This was certainly not an exhaustive list of my favorites.  I have many other favorites, including It's Beginning to Look a Like a Lot Christmas, Silver Bells, Sleigh Ride, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, The Little Drummer Boy and many more.

I think Christmas music is what gets me more in the mood for the season than anything else!

The Christmas Story

It seems that every year around Christmas, you can find someone pointing out the pagan origins of some of the Christmas rituals and decorations, as well as the pagan connections between the date suggested to be day of Christ's birth.

Well, this post isn't about all of that.  Instead, I thought I'd clarify a few common misconceptions about the Christmas story as told in the Bible.

Before I get into that though, I want to make a few points about the Gospels themselves.

Each of the four Gospels are written from a different perspective with a specific audience in mind.  Matthew wrote to a Jewish audience, and presented Jesus as the messiah the Jews had been waiting for.  This is why Matthew gives the genealogy of Joseph, Jesus' adoptive father.  Joseph was a direct descendant of King David through Solomon's royal line, giving him legal claim to the throne of David (which, of course, during this period of time, the Romans had control of Palestine).  An adopted child had all the rights of a biological child, thus, Jesus had legal claim to throne of David through Joseph.  So Matthew gives us the perspective of Jesus being King of the Jews.

Mark's Gospel may have been written to a Roman audience.  Mark portrays Jesus as a servant.

Luke, a gentile, wrote to a Greek audience, and more specifically, to someone named Theophilus (Luke 1:3).  Luke portrayed Jesus as a man, the perfect man.  Greeks were known as thinking men, so this was an appropriate perspective for a Greek audience.  Luke gives us the genealogy of Mary, the mother of Jesus.  Mary was actually a descendant of King David too, although not through Solomon's royal line.  But as the biological mother of Jesus, this was an important genealogy from the perspective of Jesus being human.

The book of John, which was the last of the Gospels written, was probably written to a Christian audience in general.  John emphasized Jesus' divinity.

It's been suggested that the prophet Ezekiel saw a vision that predicted these four records of Jesus.  In chapter of one of the book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel mentions seeing a vision of four living creatures.  Here is what he had to say about their faces:

Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a man, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle.  -Ezekiel 1:10

These four living creatures are also mentioned in the book of Revelation.  The lion symbolizes Kingship.  The Ox (a.k.a. 'beast of burden') was used for pulling carts and ploughs, making it a symbol of servitude.  The face of a man symbolizes..well...a man, and the eagle symbolizes divinity.  In the book of Revelation, the four living creatures are named in the same order that the four Gospels were chosen for inclusion in the Bible.

Huh...I guess maybe the Council of Nicaea did pick the right books to include in the Bible.

Matthew and Luke are the only two Gospel writers that mention the birth of Jesus.  Neither of them said a whole lot about it though.  Neither of them give us a date of his birth, indicating they only thought it was significant that he was born, and not when he was born.  One of the reasons they probably chose to mention his birth was because of the perspective they were writing from.  Matthew needed to convince the Jews that Jesus was the messiah they were waiting for, and Luke wanted people to know that Jesus was a man in flesh and blood.

Luke tells us that an angel informed shepherds that were out with their flocks at night that the messiah had been born.  The shepherds then went to visit Him (Hmm...imagine that, an angel announcing the birth of the messiah to lowly shepherds.  Interesting that the angel didn't bother mentioning it to the 'authorities' and the big government.  I'm still wondering if it is just a coincidence that most alien sightings today are reported by country folk.  And come to think of it, I don't think I've ever heard someone report an alien saying, "Take me to your leader.").

So as for the date of Jesus' birth, it was probably in the spring time.  It wasn't winter, because the shepherds wouldn't have been out with their flocks at night during the winter.  It's possible that it was summertime or fall, but the springtime is probably more likely just because it seems more appropriate.  Spring was (and still is) considered to be a time of new birth, and at one point was considered to be the beginning of the new year (am I the only one that finds it odd we use a calendar that starts the new year in the dead of winter and begins new days in the middle of the night??).  So it seems fitting that the messiah would have been born during a time of new birth.  At this point, I don't see much need in changing the date it's celebrated though.  The Gospel writers didn't bother to include a date, so I guess December 25th is as good as any date.

In a lot of Nativity scenes, you'll see figures of Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus along with figures of animals and three wise men.  The problem is, the wise men didn't visit Jesus in a stable as a newborn.  Nor is there any indication there was only three wise men.  The wise men and the shepherds didn't arrive on the same night.  The wise men traveled from the East, and it may have been several days, weeks, or months after the birth when they visited.  By that time, Jesus and his parents were living in a house.  In fact, Matthew 2:10 even states the wise men visited Jesus in a house.  Matthew doesn't say anything about a stable.  We know that the wise men didn't arrive on the night of his birth, because Matthew 2:7 states that Herod asked the wise men when the star they had been following first appeared.  Matthew doesn't explicitly tell us what the wise men told him, but in Matthew 2:16, Herod decreed that all children two years old and younger were to be killed, and he based his decision on the timeframe the wise men had told him.  So going by that, the wise men may have arrived as late as two years after Jesus' birth (Although it probably wasn't quite that long, Herod probably just stated two years and younger in attempt to make sure all his bases were covered.).  It may also be important to note that Matthew says the wise men visited the "child," not the "baby."

The tale of the three wise men, known as Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, came several centuries later.  It crept into Christian tradition, and there's even a famous Christmas carol about them.  The Christmas carol further confuses the tale by describing them as being "three kings." But they were not kings.  I'm not aware of any translation of the Bible that describes them as "kings."

I'm not sure why people got the idea that there were only three wise men.  Maybe it's because only three gifts were mentioned.  But naming only three gifts doesn't indicate that only three people came and each gave an individual gift.  I could say that I received money, clothes, and gift cards at Christmas.  But I received those gifts from more than three people.  Additionally, I also received a combination of those gifts from some individuals!  So going by how many different gifts were named is not an indication of how many wise men there were.

More than likely, there were many wise men that came.  They might not have all been traveling together either.  If there were only a few of them, they might not have been granted an audience with King Herod.  The king probably had more to do than meet with a few eccentric astrologers from the East.  But if an entire entourage came, he might have to clear his schedule for that.  Also consider that if there had only been three of them, the king might not have been concerned with them coming into town looking for who they claimed was a newborn king.  Matthew also indicates that the people of Jerusalem were also disturbed by the arrival of the wise men; again, three visiting astrologers probably wouldn't have gotten the whole city into a frenzy.  I don't know how many there were, but I think there were probably more than three.

The story of the manger comes solely from Luke's record.  It's thought that Luke, who was not one of the Twelve, probably consulted the mother Mary as a source for his writings.  Some of the stories he writes about seem as though they may have been told from Mary's perspective, particularly the story of Jesus' birth and the events that led up to it (Luke begins his record by telling the story of the birth of John the Baptist first).  Luke actually skips over the part where Mary and Joseph take Jesus to Egypt to escape King Herod's wrath.  Matthew included it in his record because the prophet Hosea said that God would call his son out of Egypt (Hosea 11:1, Matthew 2:15).  Since Matthew was writing to a Jewish audience, it was necessary to point out the fulfillment of Jewish prophecies.  Luke wasn't writing to a Jewish audience, so he didn't even bother to mention that part of the story.

Neither Matthew or Luke say a whole lot about the birth of Jesus.  They don't dwell on the topic.  Luke mentions an incident at the Temple when Jesus was twelve years old, but both records mainly focus on Jesus as an adult.

What's interesting to me is that some of the Christmas traditions have become so ingrained in the public consciousness, many people don't even notice that some of the traditions aren't a part of the Biblical record.  Even some people that have read the records all the way through don't seem to notice that the Bible never mentions wise men named Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar visiting Jesus on the night of his birth.

So yes, I suppose it is true that many of the common Christmas traditions are pagan in origin.  A lot of them seem to be adapted from Norse/Scandinavian traditions.  I can't say that I'm surprised though.  The Romans were known for adapting some of the customs of the people they conquered.  It's not mere coincidence that Roman and Greek pantheons were so similar.  The Romans had their own pantheon, but they also adapted aspects of the Greek pantheon into their own.  When Christianity came to Rome, the Romans adapted aspects of it too.  Over the years, Roman Catholics did as their pagan Roman ancestors did.  It took hundreds of years to convert the Scandinavians from their pagan beliefs to Catholic beliefs.  Various methods of forcing them to convert or demonizing their gods were tried.  But they also tried more subtle methods.  Sometimes the Catholics would also blend aspects of the Scandinavian traditions with Catholic beliefs, or in some cases, essentially just tell the Scandinavians the reign of their gods was a thing of the past.  In other words, the Catholics didn't always try to convince the Scandinavians their traditions weren't true, they just tried to convince them they were from era of the past.  With that in mind, I'm not surprised that ancient Scandinavian traditions have continued into the present day.  Even those cold, snowy Scandinavian winters seem to be the traditional image of what the Christmas season is 'supposed' to look like.

Nevertheless, I love the Christmas season.  I love the cool air, the decorations, the music, and the joy.  So Merry Christmas!

2012: A Potential Conspiracy?

It seems to me that there are three main camps when it comes to opinions on what might or might not happen during the year 2012.  One camp is expecting the end of the world as we know it.  Another camp is expecting a great awakening.  A third camp is not expecting anything significant to happen.

The reasons why people think something significant will happen vary.  The reasons why others think nothing significant will happen are usually relegated to reasons including the claim that the Mayans didn't really predict the end of the world at the end of the long count calendar, the often cited prophecies that never played out as predicted, and/or the idea that something like that can't be predicted.

But when you think about it, predicting such an event could lead to it occurring.  Even if the alignment of the stars and the sun's solar maximum resulted in a relatively mundane non-event, someone - or a group of people - could potentially take the prophecy into their own hands.  There are plenty of nuclear weapons in the world, if one psycho leader with his finger on the button decides to start launching some nukes, we could witness an end of the world scenario as a result of that.

Consider 9/11/01.  Think about how the events that occurred on that day changed things.  Sometimes you hear people mention how something was different before 9/11.  Some of the most notable changes were restrictions on flights, the Patriot Act, and wire tapping.  I can recall a change I was faced with at the time.  When 9/11 occurred, I was a merchandiser for Pepsi-cola, and two of the stores I was responsible for on my route were the commissaries at Fort Bragg.  On 9/10, I was able to just drive right on base and go to the stores.  Much of Fort Bragg had been open like that for a long time.  After 9/11, I found myself waiting in LONG lines at gates trying to get on the base.  Suddenly, my work day got a lot longer because of it.  To make matters worse, civilians could only get on the base at certain gates.  So I had to take a different route than what I was used to get on the base.  I imagine many other people have stories as to how the events of 9/11 affected their lives at the time and may still affect them today.

In addition to 9/11, there were also the 7/7/05 attacks in London and the Madrid bombings in 2004.  The Madrid bombings occurred three days before the general elections there, and the attacks may have altered how people voted in those elections.  As you can see, events such as these can bring about change.  It should also be noted that all of these events were brought about by men with agendas.

So what if an event like these occurred in 2012?  What if multiple events such as these occurred at the same time in 2012?  If something like this did occur during 2012, the timing might not  be a coincidence.  The conspirators may have planned it specifically to occur during that time because of the hype about all the predictions.

I hope there are no more attacks like the 9/11 attacks (actually, I hope we can all just learn to get along and there be no more attacks or fighting at all, but that might be wishful thinking), but I wondered, if a 9/11 type of event did occur in 2012, which camp of people would get to say "I told you so?"  If a 9/11 type of event is all that occurred, I imagine many people in the end of the world crowd and the great awakening crowd would point to it as the event predicted to occur. Depending on the event's aftermath, they may start saying "I told you so."  However, if that is all that occurs, the skeptical crowd will just point out the fact it was an event that could have occurred anytime.  I doubt they would attach any significance to it occurring during the year 2012.  It might not be clear who was right.

So I guess the question I've been leading up to here is, what would have to happen (or not happen) for one of the camp's to be able to say, "I told you so" and clearly have been right?  What scale would the event have to occur on?  What type of event would have to occur?  Would it matter if it was man-made, or would it have to be a natural disaster?  Would it have be some sort of unprecedented spiritual awakening?  Or would it have to be a message from extraterrestrials?  Will any of the camps be able to clearly say "I told you so" and be right?

I'm not really a part of any of the three main camps.  I just sort of have a "wait and see" attitude.  Regardless of what does or doesn't happen, I guess I  have no choice but to wait and see before I will know the answers to the questions I asked above.

2012: The Movie

I saw the movie 2012 over the weekend and was mildly disappointed by it.  The effects were good and it had some intense moments, but overall, I wasn't impressed.  I think I may have set my expectations too high.  It's already a topic of interest to me, and Roland Emmerich also made one of my favorite movies ever, Stargate.  In addition to that, I had low expectations for Emmerich's movie 10,000 BC, but I was actually quite impressed with it after seeing it.

I think I was expecting a more profound message from 2012.  I thought the ending was rather disappointing.  Essentially, you have (spoiler warning!) a bunch of elitists snobs building arks to save themselves.  They could care less about saving anyone besides themselves.  They even kept the whole project a secret.  Even towards the end when they let the other people waiting get on, the people waiting were still people that had originally paid to get on!  The only non-elitists to make it was John Cusack's group of people who snuck on board.  I thought it was a crappy ending to have the most selfish people in the world be the survivors of the disaster.  And to think, they would be the people to start civilization all over again.  What a disaster that would be.  They'd all probably be at each others throats trying to decide who got what.  And would actually do the labor involved in building a new civilization?  The whole idea of an end of the world scenario is coupled with the idea of a new beginning.  There's not much point in having an end of the world scenario if things are just going to go back to being how they were before.

Another thing I didn't think seemed right was how quickly the earth recovered from the disasters.  If what I've heard scientists say is true about the so-called 'super volcano' known as Yellowstone National Park, then an eruption would not only cause massive destruction to North America, but the ash cloud could be in the air for years.  This would result in something like a nuclear winter which would cause plant life to die and, as a result, animal and human life would begin to die off too.  It's possible people could still survive it, but there wouldn't be many.  So the idea that everything was fine after 27 days seemed to be a bit of a stretch to me.

One other thing I thought about was that the disasters may also cause the world's nuclear arsenal to detonate, magnifying the disasters that much more.  That would cause a nuclear winter even if the eruption of Yellowstone didn't.  It would create a situation quite unpleasant for any surviving humans.

I guess Emmerich was trying to go for a somewhat happy ending, but I think he fell short on this one.

Atoms and Gravity

Even today, it's not totally clear 'how' gravity works.  We've observed it working and observed the laws it seems to follow, yet the processes occurring to make it work aren't entirely clear.

Maurice Cotterell has written an essay called How Gravity Works that attempts to explain it as well as explain the structure of atoms, the nature of dark matter, why spiral galaxies are spiraled, and why the earth's core is hot.

If you're not familiar with Cotterell, he is what I suppose many people would call a 'fringe' scientist.  He's a credentialed electrical engineer, but he's famous for writing books with some rather far-fetched (even for me!) theories.  To sum up the material included in his books, he essentially combines research on solar science, archaeological finds, and a lot of imagination to declare a hypothesis that King Tut, Lord Pacal (of Mayan fame), Jesus Christ, and King Arthur are reincarnations of the same 'sun god' (or 'sun king') who leaves behind 'clues' to the path of enlightenment.  As ridiculous as that may or may not sound to you, some of his research is rather interesting, even if his hypothesis sounds like something someone tripping on LSD would declare.

His books and wild theories aside, his scientific essay on how gravity works leaves out some of his more imaginative, fantasy-like conclusions.  I thought his essay was rather intriguing and actually made sense.  If you're curious about how gravity works and how it relates to the structure of atoms and how hot the core of the earth is, I recommend you go to his website and read it.  There is a 2 page summary of it, however, I recommend you actually read the whole essay if you really want to get the gist of it.  The full essay is only 15 pages and many of those pages are diagrams, so it shouldn't take you too long to read through the whole thing.

Read the essay here.

A Case for an Open Mind

I think some people are closed minded out of fear.  They fear being 'led astray' by conflicting viewpoints.  With others, it's an arrogance.  They think they are right, and that is that.  A lot of closed minded people are probably a combination of both.

However, I don't think people should fear being 'led astray'.  Having an open mind and listening to different perspectives isn't necessarily going to lead you astray.  You can still choose to believe what you always believed.  But the value in hearing different perspectives is it gives you a bigger knowledge base to go off of, even if you don't agree with all of it.  It makes you more informed, and better able to explain why you believe what you believe, and why you don't believe what you don't believe.

And consider this, by learning new information, you may ultimately come across information that supports what you believe anyways.  You may find out that you were right all along...but now you'll know why you were right!  Alternatively, you might find out why what you thought was wrong is wrong.  Learning new things won't necessarily lead you astray at all.

But perhaps the best reason for an open mind is it gives you the opportunity to connect dots that you may not have even known were there.  I can think of several things I've learned over the years, where taken as individual statements, they may be difficult to believe.  However, if you connect the dots, you begin to see a bigger picture you didn't even know was there.  I could probably mention a few things out of context here, and people reading this would probably think they were far-fetched.  However, if you connect them together, suddenly they seem less far-fetched.  It starts to make sense.  This is why an open mind can be a good thing, even if you dismiss something you hear initially.  At first, you might hear something that sounds far-fetched and not give it much more thought.  Later down the road, you might hear something else that sounds kind of crazy, but it stays in the back of your mind.  After a while, you hear something else that makes you think, "Hmm...that sounds similar to something I heard a while back.  Perhaps the two things are connected.  If so, that may mean that [insert topic here] I heard someone mention before may be connected too."  Sometimes, seemingly unrelated topics may be connected without you even knowing it.  But if you've had an open mind and learned a lot of perspectives about different topics, you may find yourself making connections between things you didn't even know were connected.

Ultimately, having an open mind won't necessarily lead you astray.  If it did, it's possible you wouldn't even realize you were led astray because you may feel more enlightened because of it.  A willingness to consider other perspectives makes you less arrogant (or at least seem less arrogant).  Ultimately, I think you find yourself feeling more informed and more enlightened.  Having an open mind doesn't prevent you from thinking on your own and drawing your own conclusions.  It's possible that you could be led astray by having an open mind, because there are a lot of deceivers and false information out there.  But if truth seeking is your goal and you analyze things first with an open mind and without jumping to conclusions, you have a good chance of finding the truth eventually.  Of course, it's good to continue to have an open mind once you've found the 'truth', you know...just in case that 'truth' turns out to not be true afterall. J

Hey, at the very least, you'll being able to converse with a lot of different kinds of people at dinner parties.

The Infinite Small?

Consider this; the universe is infinite.  It goes on forever.  It just goes on and on and on in all directions. You could say it was "large," but that is a gross understatement if you consider that it goes on forever.  Technically, I don't even think "large" is the correct term to use to describe it.  Essentially, the universe is sizeless.  But for lack of a better term, we'll refer to the universe as the "infinite large."

Now consider time.  Consider how we measure time.  Years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds.  If you think about it, you can never pinpoint a moment in time but so specifically.  You can pinpoint a moment down to a second, but you can split a second into an infinite amount of fractions of itself.  You can go to a tenth of second, hundredth of a second, thousandths, millionths, billionths, and so on.

With that in mind, let's now consider the atom.  The atom is a basic unit of matter that can be broken down into protons, neutrons, and electrons.  Protons and neutrons can be further broken down into quarks.  Better observation equipment and microscopes have enabled scientists to find these tiny particles.  But consider this; what is the smallest of the small?  Scientists didn't always know about quarks.  Could there be something smaller than quarks?  And could there be something smaller than whatever that may be?  If so, how small is the smallest of the small?  Or could it be that there is an "infinite small?"  Could the particles that make up an atom be broken down into infinitely smaller particles?  I mean, could you ever really get to the point of saying there's 'nothing else here'?  There's seemingly 'something' everywhere.  Whether it's air, atoms, 'dark matter', photons, or neutrinos; it seems that you can find 'something' everywhere.  How could you ever really break a particle down small enough to get to the point where you could say there is 'nothing else here'?  If you could break something down to the point of saying there is 'nothing else here', then the next question you could ask is, "How is it that there is anything anywhere at all (Because if something isn't made of something, then theoretically, it must be nothing!)?"

To measure something, you need a starting point and an ending point.  You can't measure the universe because it is infinite.  You can only measure things within the universe.  But if you consider that the universe is the "infinite large," could there not also be an "infinite small?"  It's difficult to even comprehend the vastness of infinity.  But it may be even more difficult to comprehend the minuteness of it.