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Self-Intimidation

8/8/2020

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​"And you know what blogs are, right? Blogs are a conversation no one wanted to have with you." --Michelle Wolf, "Joke Show (2019)"

As if I wasn't self conscious enough, I wilted a bit inside when I heard that line. She's not wrong. But after too long accepting that there's no point in blogging, it occurred to me that a stand-up routine is a bunch of jokes nobody asked you to tell. You could make a similar claim to any artistic endeavor, couldn't you? Yet people keep creating them and, lo and behold, they connect with someone. From there, word may spread, or not, but for most creators the connection is probably sufficient. 

All of which is an internal monologue no one asked for justifying my intent to keep trying to write.
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A Tale of Two Labyrinths

2/10/2019

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I frequently walk a trail through the bluffs near my home. It rises into the Austin Bluffs behind the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) which is built on the site of a former tuberculosis hospital. Some remnants of the original facility remain, notably the base of a water tank. The tank was removed ages ago, apparently by cutting torch, leaving a low ragged steel edge in a large circular footprint. 

Much more recently, a new feature appeared there: a rock labyrinth path. And a couch.
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Water tank labyrinth. With couch...
I'll leave the discussion of the effort this took for another time. (It is a college campus, after all.)

I do take advantage of it on some walks. The focus and time necessary to cover the path helps take me out of whatever hectic mindset I might have. And this one leads to a comfortable seat with a lovely view. 
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Ellie clearly doesn't get it
But this labyrinth made me think of another I saw recently. 
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Grace Hopper nanosecond pin
This pin commemorates Rear Admiral Grace  Hopper, pioneering computer scientist and educator. She dedicated her life to educating people about computers and how they work. Her lectures were noted for the "nanosecond wires" she carried and displayed. These 11.8" long wires represented the farthest distance an electron can travel in a nanosecond (1 x 10^-9 sec). The white line on this enamel pin is 11.8 inches long. 

Such timing considerations are crucial to high speed computation, yet most of us have very little awareness of the amazing science behind our everyday digital devices. We can thank Admiral Hopper in part for them. 

And I love that it is represented as a labyrinth. Not just a convenient way to package a length in a compact volume but also a way to make us slow down to appreciate things.
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Can Current Capitalism Survive?

2/4/2019

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While I'm not an MBA or an economics scholar, I'm bright enough to recognize that the business environment in the US has seemed extreme for some time now. I've found a book that supports my layman's impression.

Much of what's happened seems to have come from corrections to the harsh business climate of the 1970's. But after the pendulum swung toward the side of a less restrictive business climate it has continued to swing farther on in that direction. I agree with the author that there is room to correct American capitalism without throwing it out entirely and embracing socialism. Or perhaps I hope he is correct in that belief.
See more at Goodreads
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Welcome to My Brain

1/19/2019

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Ever walk up to a motion activated faucet that does not acknowledge your existence?

Everyone else: "I guess it's not working." Moves to next sink.

Me: "Do I exist? Am I really here? How do I know? What is the nature of existence?" Moves to next sink.
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Lifecycle of a Cloud

12/1/2013

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I watched a cloud this morning. I saw the entirety of its existance. From a tenuous wisp in a clear sky to a roiling ball of cotton to a fragmented hollow shell that evaporated, leaving the sky clear again. 

I have an engineering background and a pilot's license. I know a bit about meteorology. So I know that it's nothing more than some air, nearly saturated with water vapor, meeting and mixing with other air. Maybe it's cooler so the vapor condenses. Or it's dryer so the water evaporates. But the intricate interplay between the small air masses provided the most beautiful dance of light and cloud and sky. 

In minutes, the emerging whisp grew to a dense ball of white, getting tugged and stretched until, for a brief moment, I glimpsed a turtle. Her head stretched out from her shell racing with the wind past my backyard deck vantage point. But soon she was stretched beyond turtle form. What had appeared as turtle shell rolled over in the breeze to reveal a widening gap. The turtle shell quickly expanded and became a hollow egg shell. The expansion continued like the growing sphere of gas and plasma expelled from a nova. Soon the shell was nothing more than wisps of cloud evaporating back to vapor. And then it was gone. 

In a few minutes and about a half mile of drift, it appeared, grew, changed, and disappeared. And I may be the only one who knows it ever existed. 
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Sunday Morning Musings

8/18/2013

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I love that our pastor takes a few moments to stroll out to the west parking lot before services begin on Sundays. He's mentioned it in sermons. He says that he likes to check to make sure Pikes Peak is still there. If it is, them we'll be having church.

I deliver our daughter to church early, as our youth choir is the primary choir for the earliest service. I like to take the half hour before the service begins to stroll around the block. I always confirm that Pikes Peak is still there, too. And some days I notice small things. Today it was a very faint reflection off something on the summit of the peak. 

It doesn't happen all that often, but I have realized that it happens most often around the autumnal equinox, the period between late summer and early fall when the geometry of the sunrise and my typical location on these mornings allows for the morning light to stream all the way from the Sun to something shiny on the top of the peak and back to me.* It always gets my attention. I strikes me as wondrous that so many odd little factors have to come together in just the proper way to view the simple brief spectacle of a bright reflection off the peak summit.

Some of the factors are pretty simple things. The fact that it's not cloudy. The fact that the windows are clean enough to be shiny. But the fact that it happens near the start of autumn points to the scale of the geometry involved. And that scale is enormous. Solar system-sized, in fact. 

As the Earth moves about its orbit, the tilt of its axis relative to the Sun produces the seasons. It also causes the location of the sunrise to change. Half the time it rises north of east. The other half, south of east. Only around the equinoxes does it actually rise very close to the true direction of east. Somewhere in that process it rises in just the right place that its light will strike a shiny surface on the top of Pikes Peak and be reflected down to the central part of town. It wouldn't take but minute changes in the placement of any of the participating components to prevent it from happening. So every time I see that reflection I'm caught up thinking of the scale of our world and the worlds beyond it, of the complexity of it all. Mostly I'm grateful for being a part of it all, and for being fortunate enough to be able to contemplate that.

* Okay fellow astro-nerds, I get that it must also occur near the vernal equinox, too. But for whatever reason, I don't notice it as much then.
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