Monday, April 30, 2012

Deepest Space

Being the Space Junkie I've mentioned previously, this kind of image and description just boggles the mind. The Hubble Telescope, still on the job "up there", snapped this image in 1995. Supposedly it is the deepest (into space) visible light image ever made. There's LOTS up there, folks.

So, what do you think? Are we Earthlings the only form of intelligent life around? We certainly have room for a lot more!

Whatever your opinion, it's certainly beautiful, isn't it?
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Deep Field View 
In 1995, the telescope peered into a tiny spot in the sky for ten days, which surprisingly revealed the existence of at least 10,000 galaxies, some billions of light years away. This is the deepest visible light image ever made.
Read more about Hubble and this image.

       STSCI / NASA / CORBIS

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Thanks, Mom

My Mom, it should go without saying, will forever have that very special place in my heart. Cancer took her long ago; she left us in 1983 when I was just 35 years old, while she was only 64...much too early for either of us.

So, when I see something like the video below, dedicated to Moms everywhere, it strikes a special heart string.  The string that only Mom can affect.

Now, I must say to you Dads, don't get all discombobulated over this. Remember, this program is sponsored by Proctor and Gamble. You know, the Bounce, Pampers, Tide and Bounty people, to name but a few. Make sense?

Athletes, like the ones that will make the Summer Games in London this year, are a very special, dedicated, hard-working and gifted group. Most often though, there exists a special someone who has pushed, prodded, encouraged, driven and accompanied them along that long journey.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Our Beautiful Home

I'll admit it: I'm a Space Junkie. Whether near or far, just above our home here on Earth or beyond our solar system, it fascinates me. I also love music; from the classics, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is my all-time favorite, to Classic Rock sung by Bob Seger and others, to present-day Country 'n' Western tunes.

Put those two loves together and you just may find yourself enthralled with something like the fantastic production from NASA shown below. We live in a beautiful place. As you watch, note the location identification that will pop up in the lower left corner from time to time—nice to know what you're seeing.

Sit back, make sure the speakers are turned on, and enjoy the beauty and wonder of our planet for the next four minutes...

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This video features a series of time lapse sequences photographed by the Expedition 30 crew aboard the International Space Station. Set to the song "Walking in the Air," by Howard Blake, the video takes viewers around the world, through auroras, and over dazzling lightning displays.

Published on Apr 20, 2012 by ReelNASA


Saturday, April 21, 2012

R.I.P. Facts


I ran across this tongue-in-cheek article and decided to post it for your perusal. I think you, as I, will find it both humorous in ways and somewhat sad in others. Yes, it contains a political bent, but what doesn't these days?

Think about it. What is truth? What is an absolute fact any longer?

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Facts, 360 B.C.-A.D. 2012
In memoriam: After years of health problems, Facts has finally died.

April 19, 2012 | By Rex W. Huppke, Chicago Tribune reporter

A quick review of the long and illustrious career of Facts reveals some of the world's most cherished absolutes: Gravity makes things fall down; 2 + 2 = 4; the sky is blue.

But for many, Facts' most memorable moments came in simple day-to-day realities, from a child's certainty of its mother's love to the comforting knowledge that a favorite television show would start promptly at 8 p.m.

Over the centuries, Facts became such a prevalent part of most people's lives that Irish philosopher Edmund Burke once said: "Facts are to the mind what food is to the body."

To the shock of most sentient beings, Facts died Wednesday, April 18, after a long battle for relevancy with the 24-hour news cycle, blogs and the Internet. Though few expected Facts to pull out of its years-long downward spiral, the official cause of death was from injuries suffered last week when Florida Republican Rep. Allen West steadfastly declared that as many as 81 of his fellow members of the U.S. House of Representatives are communists.

Facts held on for several days after that assault — brought on without a scrap of evidence or reason — before expiring peacefully at its home in a high school physics book. Facts was 2,372.

"It's very depressing," said Mary Poovey, a professor of English at New York University and author of "A History of the Modern Fact." "I think the thing Americans ought to miss most about facts is the lack of agreement that there are facts. This means we will never reach consensus about anything. Tax policies, presidential candidates. We'll never agree on anything."

Facts was born in ancient Greece, the brainchild of famed philosopher Aristotle. Poovey said that in its youth, Facts was viewed as "universal principles that everybody agrees on" or "shared assumptions."

But in the late 16th century, English philosopher and scientist Sir Francis Bacon took Facts under his wing and began to develop a new way of thinking.

"There was a shift of the word 'fact' to refer to empirical observations," Poovey said.
Facts became concrete observations based on evidence. It was growing up.
Through the 19th and 20th centuries, Facts reached adulthood as the world underwent a shift toward proving things true through the principles of physics and mathematical modeling. There was respect for scientists as arbiters of the truth, and Facts itself reached the peak of its power.

But those halcyon days would not last.

People unable to understand how science works began to question Facts. And at the same time there was a rise in political partisanship and a growth in the number of media outlets that would disseminate information, rarely relying on feedback from Facts.

"There was an erosion of any kind of collective sense of what's true or how you would go about verifying any truth claims," Poovey said. "Opinion has become the new truth. And many people who already have opinions see in the 'news' an affirmation of the opinion they already had, and that confirms their opinion as fact."

Though weakened, Facts managed to persevere through the last two decades, despite historic setbacks that included President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, the justification for PresidentGeorge W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq and the debate over President Barack Obama's American citizenship.

Facts was wounded repeatedly throughout the recent GOP primary campaign, near fatally when Michele Bachmann claimed a vaccine for a sexually transmitted disease causes mental retardation. In December, Facts was briefly hospitalized after MSNBC's erroneous report that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign was using an expression once used by the Ku Klux Klan.

But friends and relatives of Facts said Rep. West's claim that dozens of Democratic politicians are communists was simply too much for the aging concept to overcome.

As the world mourned Wednesday, some were unwilling to believe Facts was actually gone.
Gary Alan Fine, the John Evans Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University, said: "Facts aren't dead. If anything, there are too many of them out there. There has been a population explosion."

Fine pointed to one of Facts' greatest battles, the debate over global warming.

"There are all kinds of studies out there," he said. "There is more than enough information to make any case you want to make. There may be a preponderance of evidence and there are communities that decide something is a fact, but there are enough facts that people who are opposed to that claim have their own facts to rely on."

To some, Fine's insistence on Facts' survival may seem reminiscent of the belief that rock stars like Jim Morrison are still alive.
"How do I know if Jim Morrison is dead?" Fine asked. "How do I know he's dead except that somebody told me that?"

Poovey, however, who knew Facts as well as anyone, said Facts' demise is undoubtedly factual.
"American society has lost confidence that there's a single alternative," she said. "Anybody can express an opinion on a blog or any other outlet and there's no system of verification or double-checking, you just say whatever you want to and it gets magnified. It's just kind of a bizarre world in which one person's opinion counts as much as anybody else's."

Facts is survived by two brothers, Rumor and Innuendo, and a sister, Emphatic Assertion.

Services are alleged to be private. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that mourners make a donation to their favorite super PAC.

rhuppke@tribune.com

Thursday, April 19, 2012

I'll Give It an 83, Dick...

"...because it has a really good beat and it's easy to dance to." Hundreds, probably thousands, of new pop songs were rated this way over the years, thanks to his show.

An American pop music icon left us yesterday. Dick Clark made an indelible mark upon music culture in America with the American Bandstand TV show watched by teens across the land, including yours truly. He always had one musical guest performing (usually lip-syncing) their latest hit. This clip of Jerry Lee Lewis on the show will give you the idea.


Oh, they don't write 'em like that any more! (I'll bet your toe was tapping, though, wasn't it?)

I spent many afternoons tuned in to hear the latest in Rock-n-Roll, watch the kids dancing, and to see a hot group or individual perform their latest hit.

Good times; thanks, Dick.



Saturday, April 14, 2012

Fashionable Ideology

I tripped across this piece, published by one of the information sources I follow, PJ Media. I think Mr. Rubin has hit the sadly bent nail on the head.
...the fashionable hatred is not those who look down on other races or nations or homosexuals as inferiors who should be despised. Such thought crime is rare in the West today. It has been replaced by hatred of the truly religious, the non-big city, the non-leftist people who don't think the right things. Roughly 50 percent of Americans so view the other 50 percent today. Much of the media, entertainment industry, publishing, schools, and politicians do so. 
Taking another swipe at that nail, Rubin says...
One of the great successes of leftism (pretending to be liberalism) in North America and Europe today is that it has made itself so fashionable, so identified with sophistication, intellectual quality, and what used to be called the upper class. Not the old upper class of country clubs and yachts...but the upper class of merit, the truly good, who hate racism and are saving the earth.
Funny how many of these people are quite wealthy themselves. The message is:  My money and success is justified by my holding proper attitudes. Al Gore may have a big house and a big carbon footprint, but that's okay because he talks about how these things are evil. 

Give it a full read when you have a bit of time.


I think you'll find yourself nodding your head and thinking, "yeah, sad but true!"

I know I did.


Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Easter Vigil

For the past 5 or 6 years, my wife and I have participated in the Easter Vigil at our church. From Good Friday night, after the chancel area is cleared of all paraments...all of them—it's a very striking setting—until early Easter Sunday morning, people sign up for times ranging from a half-hour to a couple hours when they sit, alone, in the sanctuary to meditate, read, pray, or whatever they like in that very quiet, stark place. Just one person is always present during those 36 or so hours.

This year, during my own hour early Saturday morning, I found myself thinking about Christ's time on the cross, especially that moment when He cried out, "Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani" ("My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"). To me, this illustrates the true depth of Jesus' suffering. I find it hard to fathom the total isolation and depth of solitude He must have been experiencing at that moment. As God, He completed the necessary task to give me, and you, the means of salvation, but had to do it totally, completely alone. Amazing.


Thursday, April 5, 2012

To Believe

I received this link via email and could not, unfortunately, find a way to embed the video. I guarantee you won't be disappointed by taking the time to follow this link and ponder the message during the next 5 minutes of your day:


Oh, from the mouths of babes, as the saying goes...

I know, I know, its an Imagine, Kumbaya, We are the World kind of thing, but we can dream once in a while, can't we?

Speaking of dreams, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck once said,
There are many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of hearts broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream—whatever that dream might be.

How true. Dream on...

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Easy Street, Finally

My dear cousin and bird-of-a-feather, Charlie Smith, contacted me yesterday with astounding news:  he was one of just three people holding the winning numbers in the Mega Jackpot Lotto Drawing!!! He wanted to let me know that, as so much more than a cousin to him, he would be sending $5 million my way as soon as all the legal wrangling was worked out. This is his way of showing appreciation for our friendship over the years.

How cool is THAT???

Needless to say, chances are I'll be making even fewer posts to this ol' blog than done previously. I mean how much time will I have between those private jet trips to "the islands" or relaxing by the pool at our hideaway in the south of France? Not likely that this will blog be my first priority, that's for sure.

So thank you loyal readers; it's been real, but it's time to move on and enjoy the good things.