Tom routed through Peoria on his way to a job in Warren Ohio so he could visit with Byron the weekend of Saturday 7/23/2016.  On Sunday, Tom and Byron sat in a park on a bluff overlooking the Illinois River (Grand View Drive in Peoria Heights).  It was a hot day in the mid 90s, but comfortable with a mild breeze in the shade of the lush trees.  In the morning prior to joining Byron, Tom penciled the following outline to assist in guiding the discussion.

Discussion Outline

• Body of Work
  • In reviewing a life, we don't look at just the present and recent past, we look at their "Body of Work", accomplishments, and contributions.
    at some point, our body of work is what it is, and we no longer have the resources available to significantly alter it
     
• 1st Day of the rest of our Lives
  • Perspective
    • Strive to be effective.  Our remaining moments will flow and be gone forever, but it is only one day in our life, so keep our expectations realistic.
       
• Objectives
  • are dependent on resources
  • Brainstorm
    • What do you Want to Do / Accomplish
      • List
      • Prioritize the list
      • Estimate Resources / Cost (time, money, focus, etc) for various list items
      • Re-Prioritize List (iterate) the list after evaluating the cost and resources required to achieve objectives
      • Take some time to iterate the list development, maybe a week, but not 6 weeks
• Resources
  • Allocate available resources to prioritized list items
    • If the resources for some of the high value list items aren't readily available, brainstorm creative ways to "fund" projects
  • Mandatory vs. Discretionary resource allocation
    • Resource allocation/consumption will progressively shift from discretionary to mandatory
    • Some mandatory resource allocation can be eliminated or shifted to discretionary
       
• Methodology
  • Look, Evaluate, Select
  • Go / Swim
    • Some activates head down for power
    • some activities head up for various reasons including absorption and safety
  • Check / Glance / Adjust Course
    • then put your head down and swim some more
  • Evaluate Progress
    • Cost vs. Resources
    • Choose to continue or abort
  • Observation Methods
    • Sample/Scan vs. Stare
       
• Guidance / Religion
  • People are physically animals, but we are unique among animals
    •  
  • Desiderata
    • We are each the center of our own universe
       
• Families and Family Structure
  • Variations
    • Mom vs. Dad
    • Did we know our grandparents?
  • Our family has been comparatively fortunate
• Death is a required part of life
  • We only get to go make the transition once
  • There are variations
    • Slow like Mom and Dad
    • Fast and painless like Ron Faoro
    • Something intermediate like ALS and Byron Jr.
  • As my older brother and eldest sibling, you made my choices easy as a child because I simply followed your path
    • You are now leading the way into a phase of our lives we are all moving toward
    • All of us will follow unless we alter our turn in line and jump ahead
• Who Are "We" / Who am "I"
  • Collective Consciousness
  • What is "Life"?
    • Is there other intelligent life in the universe?
    • Our perception of "Life" is carbon based driven by DNA mutations
    • There might be "life" in something larger like the Earth, which compared to Mars is churning internally, but the mutation rate of star systems is slow.
      • Our spiral Milky Way Galaxy has only made about 25 revolutions, perhaps not yielding enough mutation to support a "live" entity that is the size of a galaxy?
  • Infinity
    • We have limitations in our ability to comprehend even basic fundamental concepts like infinity and time
    • Our universe is likely very young and small
  • Do We Matter?
    • Yes and No
    • Yes in the short term and to the people in our lives
    • No in the long term
      • Our earth will likely eventually be slowed by the Sun's "Atmosphere" and spiral into the sun when the sun swells to a "Red Giant (in about 5 billion years).
  • Black Holes and Event Horizons
    • Ordered Information is erased forever transitioning across an event horizon
    • Inside a "Black Hole" is an example of physical laws that we do not currently comprehend (and likely won't ever be able to comprehend).
  • Quantum States vs. Progressive Continuums
  • Despite our collective advanced knowledge and impressive capabilities to comprehend and utilize the physical realm, we have barely scratched the surface in identifying and understanding the physical laws of our universe.
    • We don't know a bunch of fundamental stuff, like
      • What is driving the acceleration of the universe? (Dark Energy?)
      • Where is the "Mass" to reconcile the Gravitational Rotation of our Galaxy with Newton's Laws of Motion? (Dark Matter?)
      • In the medium physical scale, we have Newton's laws of motion and Einstein's general relativity, but those laws don't work in the small sub atomic scale which is governed by quantum mechanics, and perhaps not with large scale structures like galaxies, and apparently not with super dense scales like inside black holes, where we can only theorize about what physical "laws" govern structure, motion, time, mass, and energy.
      • Stephen Hawking has theorized that gravity, which is exponential, will spike in a black hole and pull everything into an infinite "singularity", but we don't really understand infinity and there is evidence that the laws of gravity might not work as we approach "infinity", or there might be other forces that overwhelm gravity when distances become infinitely small?
  • Despite physical limitations that prevent us from sensing to the edge of our universe and beyond, there are likely other universes that might be much older and somewhat younger
  • Although our universe is currently expanding and accelerating, on a smaller scale, galaxy's within "clusters" appear to be drawn toward each other by gravity and might eventually collapse?
  • Stephen Hawking has presented "evidence" that Black Holes likely "Evaporate" and lose mass

The above was simply an outline for discussion and does not attempt to record the actual discussion which also covered other topics, like Byron's chronology after high school.