The Cold Within

Six humans trapped by happenstance
In bleak and bitter cold.
Each one possessed a stick of wood
Or so the story’s told.

Their dying fire in need of logs
The first man held his back
For of the faces round the fire
He noticed one was black.

The next man looking ‘cross the way
Saw one not of his church
And couldn't bring himself to give
The fire his stick of birch.

The third one sat in tattered clothes.
He gave his coat a hitch.
Why should his log be put to use
To warm the idle rich?

The rich man just sat back and thought
Of the wealth he had in store
And how to keep what he had earned
From the lazy shiftless poor.

The black man’s face bespoke revenge
As the fire passed from his sight.
For all he saw in his stick of wood
Was a chance to spite the white.

The last man of this forlorn group
Did nought except for gain.
Giving only to those who gave
Was how he played the game.

Their logs held tight in death’s still hands
Was proof of human sin.
They didn't die from the cold without
They died from the cold within.

--James Patrick Kinney

Merry Christmas!

On Raising Kids

I have a foggy recollection that someone in the comments section of this blog once asked me how to raise kids. It was half a joke -- one of the many memes that was making the rounds of the blogosphere at the time. Be that as it may, I brushed aside the question then because I was not an expert on the topic. I still am not, but here and now, ten years later, I present one or two things I may have learned along the way. Talk about slow reflexes!

Don't raise your kids to be clones of yourself. It almost never works, unless your kid isn't terribly bright. And besides, why would you want a clone? Let's face it, you kinda suck. You want your kids to be different, and better, than you.

Treat your kids like adults, as long as they treat you like an adult.

Accept the fact that you stopped being cool a long time ago. Be proud of how lame you are and remember that it is not your job to be cool; it is your job to be responsible.

Give your kids the best start in life you possibly can, and then -- and this is the hardest part -- stand back and accept the fact that it is their race to win or lose.

Want to hear a good rant? Who doesn't?

I fucking watched Dune.

I do want to disclose that I read the book in my teens, and I liked it. 

Well...

There are things I did as a teenager I would not dream of doing today. I would be ashamed to. Liking Dune was one of them.

It is a shit story. 

To start with, it claims to be science fiction. This is false advertising. It is a soap opera set in space, circa 10,000 CE. Or bad historical fiction. Take your pick. 

Consider the plot. 

The main draw is a dude who traces his lineage back to Agamemnon. And he gets into a scrap with an Emperor whose name is Padishah Shaddam.

That, my friends, is Greeks versus Persians. Historical fiction masquerading as science fiction. This pile of trash as much science fiction as I am Puerto Rican.

The details also suck. As in, the story wants us to believe some really silly things. Like what the future will look like. 

If you follow the arc of human progress as this rubbish would have it, then you must uncritically believe the following.

In the last two thousand years, we went from dying of mosquito bites to having our phones order breakfast bagels for us. And then in the next eight thousand years, we perfected...sword-fighting? 

Yeah, pull the other one, guv'nor.

When you boil it down, the theme of the story is a white Mahdi (why not name him Lawrence?) leading a bunch of space Arabs, who are fighting an evil Persian/Turkic overlord.

Rating: UG -- Unimaginative Garbage

The Great Observatories

I find it sort of startling that if you asked a good portion of people on this planet the names of the four gospels, they will name them correctly, no sweat ("Bill, Bob, Fred, and Mary"), but they will not be able to name the four space telescopes.

The four telescopes I am talking about are what NASA calls the Great Observatories. 

NB: To be honest, there are many more than four space telescopes at the moment, but let's not have the details get in the way of a good story, shall we.

For those who are curious, the four space telescopes are named below.

Compton, which operates in the gamma ray spectrum.

Chandra, which operates in the X-ray spectrum.

Hubble, which is an optical telescope, and therefore operates in the visible light spectrum.

Spitzer, which operates in infrared, and is now deactivated. The James Webb Space Telescope also operates in infrared, so I don't know if NASA is considering a replacement for Spitzer.

Why do we put telescopes in space? 

Ground based telescopes suffer from atmospheric interference. Optical telescopes have to account for weather and well, daylight. X-ray telescopes are useless on the ground because Earth's atmosphere absorbs X-rays (Note: This is a Good Thing^TM).

Putting a telescope in space eliminates an entire set of observation problems. The skies are really clear up there, so to speak.

Okay, but why do we need telescopes that operate outside of visible light? Why can't we get away with just putting optical scopes like Hubble in space and calling it a day?

Visible light is not the only way to see things and understand them.

For example, extreme high-energy events like supernovae emit tremendous quantities of gamma rays, which are high on the spectrum, well past the frequency of visible light. Neutron stars and pulsars also emit gamma rays. Best way to study these--you guessed it--are telescopes that can collect gamma rays.

Young stars are born in nebulae. These stars are often completely obscured by huge clouds of gas and dust. Visible light does not penetrate these clouds, but infrared does. These stars are invisible to optical telescopes. Enter infrared telescopes.

The universe is speaking to us in many languages. The space telescopes are the interpreters.

The Cutest Human

Yeah, yeah, I am biased, but this is my daughter when she was about seven or eight. Cute as a bug. This came up in a memories spotlight in google photos. You forget, but google remembers...dunh dunh dunh