Thursday, December 21, 2006

11:17 AM - I should blog-o-thon more often.

Carl Sagan

Today by reading Wil Wheaton's blog I learned about the Carl Sagan blog-o-thon. Today is the 10th anniversary of Carl Sagan's passing and bloggers around the world are paying tribute to him. I never met a bandwagon I didn't like.

I was seven years old and visiting my grandparents in England when I got my first book about astronomy. I was immediately hooked: got a telescope for Christmas, gave a presentation to my third grade class, got laughed at by all the kids when I didn't get a 100 on the test (because Mrs. MacLyman still believed that Mercury was the smallest planet instead of Pluto. Congrats to you, Mrs. MacLyman: Pluto has been demoted, you stubborn cow). We lived in upstate New York, and my Dad somehow arranged for me to have a private tour of the Spacecraft Planetary Imaging Facility at Cornell. I watched a filmstrip, saw a Mars globe, and thumbed through blue binders of actual images from missions like Voyager. At age 7, I decided that I wanted to go to Cornell and I wanted to study astronomy.

When Carl Sagan passed away in 1996, I was a junior at Cornell, one of four astronomy majors in my year. I focused on planetary science and planetary geology, and I spent some quality hours in the SPIF. I never met Professor Sagan, just like I never encountered some of the other famous or Nobel Prize-winning members of my department. I'm not sure what I would have said anyway... "Hi, I've had your book on my bookshelf since I was seven years old, and I'm not very good at physics." Several months after Professor Sagan passed away, my advisor gave me a research project that the two of them had been working on together. While everyone else was trying to decipher the dynamics and physics of Jupiter's methane atmosphere, I tried to figure out what makes the Red Spot that red color. (Eventually a postdoc did figure it out, by the way, using the tools and foundation for the project that I built.) By the time I graduated in 1998, long-since shattered was my illusion of astronomers sequestered away in some tower, peering into the deep sky and thinking important and philosophical thoughts about the nature of man and the universe. In a mundane world, my fantasy life was rife with impracticality. I moved on to explore different things.

Whenever I think about Carl Sagan, the memory that resonates with me the most is reading Pale Blue Dot. Studying astronomy means understanding the sheer magnitude of power of the mechanisms of a star, knowing the vast empty distances to even our closest cosmic neighbors, and feeling viscerally the lonliness of our infant species. The universe is a big, big place; the ubiquitous "billions and billions" does not even begin to approximate it. Pale Blue Dot conveys, to me, the sense of helplessness and fragility of our tiny little world, but at the same time it gives me an eager curiosity about the future. For me, that is Carl Sagan's gift to humanity. He was not shy in his ominous warnings about our dreadfully selfish species in its deadly "technological adolescence," but at the same time he inspired a profound hope that our people could transcend those limitations and act for the good of everyone. We have a unique opportunity to protect and nourish everything that has happened here in the past 5 billion years, and all it requires is a change of perspective. We just need to mature, a process as inevitable as the passing of time.

When I think back, it was these feelings that first inspired me to want to study astronomy, and to hold onto that vision for so long. Whether the influence was specifically from reading Cosmos or it came more abstractly, my world view is inextricably linked to Carl Sagan. I have hope for the future and for our planet, and that is a powerful gift to give.

Thank you for sharing, Professor.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

8:17 AM - eyes open mouth closed

that's what I get for making fun of other people

In fact, not only is that what I get for making fun of other people, it's also what I get for pulling my blog posts out of AP news stories. Stupid website from my blog all over the news. Lame.

Oh, what did I get, you ask? Well, the hot water on my shower wouldn't turn off. So I had to stay home from work while the maintenance people came to fix it. They are currently out at the store purchasing supplies.

The bright side is that it encouraged me to clean my house a bit for the maintenance people (I am still learning not to be terrible at chores, *mumble*) and the incident got me out of my department's Yankee Swap. Yay for Wikipedia, boo for Northernerspeak, double-boo for me thinking that it was called a "pollyanna" but clearly it is not. In any case, anyone who invites me to a Yankee Swap Meet is going to get the ugliest pair of tube socks I can find. Ye have been warned.

Hopefully they will return soon to finish fixing my exploding shower.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

9:37 PM - because otherwise my own misfortune would make me sad

laughing at others' misfortune

Today's site of the day is platewire.com, where you can bring your road rage into the healthy space of the internet. Ostensibly it exists so you can warn your fellow drivers about problem drivers in your area. Realistically, though... who has time to scan their surroundings for license numbers of cars that you memorized from a list on a website of problem drivers?? No, I think the real goal of this website is to bring the Jerry Springer-esque drama of road rage right here to the comfort and safety of your internets.

One of the charming features of Brattleboro is that since everyone knows everyone else, the road rage website doubles as a gossip center. How else could we explain this gem, which includes the accusation, "Crashed her first car intentionally for the insurance."

Sometimes I feel bad when I make snarky comments about the people here. I wish I was nicer. Then again, sometimes it is a survival mechanism; I have to remember that not everywhere in the world is like this, lest I succumb to despair. Happy holidays!

Friday, December 15, 2006

8:28 AM - rock lobster

soft cell

Both of my officemates are out today, so I've enabled my computer speakers and set Pandora going with a new channel using "Soft Cell" as the seed. Apparently Pandora is better with pop music than with my previous searches for circus-performable music. We started with Tainted Love and have progressed to Depeche Mode in what can only be described as Bad Eighties Mania.

It is a good day at the office.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

6:14 AM - look, up in the sky

blast from the past

I was reading today's Savage Love column by Dan Savage (probably nsfw, haha!) when I saw that he mentions not only my old school (Cornell), but also Risley, the amazing community of artists and fun people on campus where I lived for two years. Our castle.

Every time a non-Risley Cornell person hears that I used to live in Risley, they react in a bit of a creeped-out, "That's just the sort of place I would expect to show up in a sex advice column!" sort of way. To be fair, the reputation was mostly undeserved (but fun to spook people with sometimes) and Risley was a fun, dynamic experience. I would much rather enjoy a quirky artistic community than the ridiculous hazing behaviors of the school's gaggle of fraternities.

Bit of trivia: if I remember correctly, during my senior year I lived in the room that Christopher Reeve had when he was in Risley.

Monday, December 11, 2006

2:47 PM - firewood

chuckin'

Today, I noticed a piece of slang that I've heard from several people here in Vermont, but it's finally registered on my radar as "odd." The ever-lovely Urban Dictionary describes "woodchuck" as a derogatory term used by a person from out of state "for a native Vermonter who displays Vermont characteristics."

The trouble is that no one outside of Vermont has heard this term before. I would argue that it is a derogatory term that people in Vermont use against other people in Vermont. Because apparently it's awkward to say, "You're more Vermontian than I am. Nyah."

Speaking of "Vermontian," I had a fun time today coming up with words to replace "Vermonter," the standard term for people who live in Vermont. My favorites were Vermontite, Vermontable, the French Vermontoise, and the terribly unfortunate Vermon.

Friday, December 08, 2006

9:35 AM - I miss the spinning rainbow discs

how much is that Wii in the window?

For every new technology, there are people who embrace it enthusiastically, people who reluctantly accept it, and people who stand back and laugh at the troubles the new technology causes. Today, I get to be in that last group.

For people who don't know, the new Nintendo gaming system (called the Wii???) abandons conventional controllers for a motion-sensing magic wand system. To play tennis, you make a motion like swinging a tennis racket. To bowl, you swing your arm like you are bowling. The result is an extension of the Dance Dance Revolution phenomenon: sweaty unshowered geeks and gaming enthusiasts. Many of the news stories go to such length to describe geek sweat that they should probably have a TMI warning. Another exciting result, as chronicled on this popular site, is that overzealous gamers are breaking the safety straps on their magic wands, sending the controller flying through windows, televisions, each other's skulls, and more. One of my personal favorite pictures is this one, which gives me some idea of the level of enthusiasm this person was feeling about... Wii bowling.

I'm not sure whether to blame the players for their inappropriate "gusto" or the cheapo controller designers for using a tiny strap and assuming that everyone would show geishaesque restraint while... bowling? Is Wii bowling really that much fun?

In any case, I haven't laughed at people with their new technologies since the early 90s, when people played these "awesome" 3D games which, because of the limited processing power of the computer, could only show about 3 polygons at once. It was a throwback to the 2600 era, except that even Q-bert had better polygons. The new Wii problem definitely trumps it, though, because it actively encourages you to swing directly at the television and risk destroying its tender, delicious monocle. And then what would you do for fun? Go outside? Take a walk? Read non-fiction? *shudder*