Just Waiting

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
—     Carl Sagan
.
On This Day In:
2021	I’ll Keep Trying To Anyway
	She Knows
2020	Respond
	Still Trying To Adjust
2019	The Limits Of My Knowledge
2018	Even Tiny Progress
2017	Real Conservatism
2016	The Business Of Life
2015	Alone Again, Naturally
2014	Agreed
2013	Smile From Your Heart!
2012	Like You
2011	Got Days?
2010	K9 Humor – Has Anyone Seen My Setter?  (Must read!!)
	A Longer Blog Than You Want To Read (Probably)
2009	Back and Forth and Round Again…

Read Full Post »

Units Of Measure

Scientific progress is measured in units of courage, not intelligence.
—     Paul Dirac
[Found on one of the blogs I follow:  “ram H singhal“
Located at:  https://ram0singhal.wordpress.com/
The specific post is at:  https://ram0singhal.wordpress.com/2021/07/13/1933-nobel-prize-in-physics-paul-adrien-maurice-dirac/
Please visit the original site if you have a spare moment.     —     kmab]
.
On This Day In:
2021	True Fervor
	Still Sparkles
2020	A Destructive Mistake
	I’d Rather Live In HER World
2019	And #IncompetentTrump Is A Failure At Both
2018	To Excel At Your Craft
	Day 12: Waiting
2017	Like When You Can Order Others To Fight For You
2016	Holding Fast
2015	Alms Or Balms
2014	A Day At The Beach
2013	Pillows
	Steppin’
2012	Invincible Summer
2011	Being Objective
2010	First Things First…
	Northwest Passages – Intro
	Northwest Passages – Day One
	Northwest Passages – Poetry
	Northwest Passages – Evening One
	Northwest Passages – Morning Two

Read Full Post »

Preparation

If you take a look at science in its everyday function, of course you find that scientists run the gamut of human emotions and personalities and character and so on.  But there’s one thing that is really striking to the outsider, and that is the gauntlet of criticism that is considered acceptable or even desirable.  The poor graduate student at his or her Ph.D. oral exam is subjected to a withering crossfire of questions that sometimes seem hostile or contemptuous;  this from the professors who have the candidate’s future in their grasp.  The students naturally are nervous;  who wouldn’t be?  True, they’ve prepared for it for years.  But they understand that at that critical moment they really have to be able to answer questions.  So in preparing to defend their theses, they must anticipate questions;  they have to think, “Where in my thesis is there a weakness that someone else might find — because I sure better find it before they do, because if they find it and I’m not prepared, I’m in deep trouble.”
—    Carl Sagan
.
On This Day In:
2021	No Profit Without Risk
	And One For Me
2020	He’s Forgotten About Drugs And Rock ‘N Roll
2019	I Still Walk Daily
	A Windy Monday
2018	No Religious Test, Yes Religious Ban
2017	Looking At #DumbDonald
2016	No Great Thing
2015	Happy Memory
	Of Two Minds
2014	Sums
2013	Memories & Binging
	Admiration Due
2012	Choices Matter
2011	Acceptance Is The Key
2010	Just A Permanent Crease…
	Bodily Functions

Read Full Post »

Traveling Faster Than ‘c’

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.
—     Henry Ford
[I’ve pretty much got the first 3mph down pat…   ‘c’ == 186,282 miles per second    —    KMAB]
.
On This Day In:
2021	Maybe “Creation” Wasn’t That Difficult After All
	C’est Chic
2020	#45: Time Is Ticking Away
	#45 Claims COVID-19 Defeated To Open The Economy
2019	Belief Buffet
2018	Change Is Law
2017	A Dog Day Of Summer
2016	Chances Are
2015	Truer Spoken
2014	Not Quite There Yet (Either)
	Many Colors
2013	Distance, n.
	Less Can Be More
2012	Rise Up!
	The Gift
2011	Artful Courage
2010	A Handful of Lessons…

Read Full Post »

I’m Just Sad (1,000,000 In U.S. Dead From COVID)

We were very encouraged by the rapid development of the vaccines, and everybody really thought we were going to vaccinate our way out of this,” he said.  “But then we had people that wouldn’t even take the damn vaccine.”
…
“We know vaccines work.  We know masks work.  We know social distancing works, and we know crowd control, limiting crowded spaces, works.  This is like a no-brainer, but we cannot seem to do it.”
—     Dr. Robert Murphy
Executive director of the Havey Institute for Global Health
Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine
.
On This Day In:
2021	I’ve Still Not Found #45’s One Thing
	Chewin’ On A Piece Of Grass
2020	Listening To A #IncompetentDonald COVID-19 Press Briefing
2019	I Am Doubtful
	Future Justice Looks Corporate
2018	True Measures
2017	Hoping For Tapes
	In It Now
2016	On Viewing This Mudball
2015	It Takes A Village
2014	In God’s Eyes
2013	We Root For Ourselves
2012	Like A Shark
2011	Discernible Virtue

Read Full Post »

Not Exactly Preventing Or Realizing

History is not an exact science.  And ‘the historian of the future’ is as much artist as scientist or academic.  But the futurologist cannot be taken lightly.  He bases his conclusions on perceived trends, and his predictions themselves may possibly have some effect on the future:  in helping either to prevent his predictions coming true or to realize them.
—     General Sir John Hackett (et al)
From:  “The Third World War: August 1985“
.
On This Day In:
2021	Maybe He Agreed With His Mum
	Come To Me, You’ll See
2020	Imagine Existence
	Posing As Action
2019	Voices Of The Past
2018	Sunrises, Rainbows And Newborn Babies
2017	Untold Agony
2016	Just Borrowed
2015	Warning
2014	Always More Productive
2013	Is Not
2012	Loosely Translated
2011	Your Opinions Are Not My Facts

Read Full Post »

Might Still Flicker Or Shine

The central contention of physics has it that the building blocks of the universe will endure even if, or even when, the humans who tally them, and the planet we live on, all die.  To see into the deathless universe is to try to see nothing so flamboyant as [William] Wordsworth’s favorite daffodils and walnut groves, but to peer into the coldest spaces, the black holes and the fractional electric charge of theoretical subatomic particles.  These entities have no blood flow, of course, but also no DNA;  they’re not susceptible to pandemics, however virulent, or the dividends and ravages of carbon.  They don’t live, so they don’t die.  To model the universe as precisely as possible is to try to see the one thing that even the strictest atheist agrees is everlasting — to try to achieve, in a lab, an intimation of immortality.
Back to the living world that’s under our feet.  [Carlo] Rovelli is right to caution against the potential delusions of those who are greedy for eurekas.  But, as a fellow physicist with a radical streak, he is also sympathetic to their ambitions, a drive to “learn something unexpected about the fundamental laws of nature.”  To Rovelli, whose latest book describes quantum mechanics as an almost psychedelic experience, a truly radical discovery entails the observation of phenomena that fall outside three existing frameworks in physics:  quantum theory, the Standard Model of particle physics, and general relativity.  Only by blowing up one of those frameworks can one achieve the kind of immortality that scientists get, the glory of someone like Einstein or Heisenberg.
But to keep looking, as Rovelli has, as Fermilab has with this study on the muon’s magnetism, is also to apprehend hints.  To follow hints.  In that way, the physicist’s work and the poet’s are the same.  And if Wordsworth is right, immortality can be found, of all places, in the hint — the staggering proposition by nature itself that, in spite of all the dying around us, something of all we love might be imperishable, might still flicker or shine or wobble when the rest of our world is gone.
—     Virginia Heffernan
From her article:  “Muonstruck“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine;  dtd:  June 2021
.
On This Day In:
2021	Keep Growing
	I Keep Looking
2020	I Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Plans
	One Earth
2019	Beautiful Rules
2018	Skepticism
2017	WWGD?
2016	Growing Greatness
2015	When It Is Darkest
2014	Knowledge And Doubt
2013	Three Thoughts
2012	Gentle Reader
2011	Leave The Light On For Me Anyway

Read Full Post »

Hope And Fear: Global Warming / Climate Change

The limit of your present understanding is not the limit of your possibilities.
—    Guy Finley
In these times – where social appearance is more important than spiritual substance – what has become our longing to change is really the unconscious desire to control not just the shape of our bodies (according to prevailing values) but to dominate our environment as well, regardless of the cost.
—    Guy Finley
.
On This Day In:
2021	I Should Have Started Earlier
	To Soothe Your Soul
2020	Let’s Make It So
2019	Today’s Question
2018	A Moment Of Union
2016	Symptoms
2016	Tossers
2015	Hunger
2014	Outside Dependence
2013	Doing Right
2012	A Short Course In Human Relations
	If Death Be My Future
	Strive
	Such A Fool
2011	I’m Working For A Living

Read Full Post »

This Dot – Our Home

Consider again that dot.  That’s here.  That’s home.  That’s us.  On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.  The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar”, every “supreme leader”, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.  Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.  Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.  Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.  In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life.  There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate.  Visit, yes.  Settle, not yet.  Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience.  There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.  To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
—    Carl Sagan
.
On This Day In:
2021	The Imposition Of Position
	Rainin’ Fire In The Sky
2020	Stand Up!
	Crowd Sourced Scouting Report
2019	Only One Direction
2018	Respect Is Long Gone
2017	Dream Of Dreamers
2016	Dear Automakers
2015	And Some Not So Brave Too
2014	In My Lifetime…
2013	Democracy
2012	Borrowed Expectations
2011	Not Necessarily True

Read Full Post »

I Learn Something New

THE IMPORTANCE OF PERIODIC REVIEW
For precisely the reasons I’ve just outlined — that science is a process, not a set of accepted facts — it’s a good idea (and very common) for scientists, whether professionals or students, to review for themselves both how the scientific web of knowledge was assembled historically, and how it holds together nowadays.  This kind of exercise is a sort of brain calisthenics;  it keeps the mind fresh and clear.
Every time I reconsider what I know from scratch, I learn something new.  Typically I find connections between well-known facts that I hadn’t previously recognized.  Sometimes I discover gaps in my own logic, and a couple of times in my career I’ve even discovered gaps in the scientific community’s logic.  So it’s well worth going through this kind of introspection, even starting at the beginning with basic astronomy.
—     Professor Matt Strassler
[Found at one of the blogs / websites I follow:  “Of Particular Significance“, at:  https://profmattstrassler.com/
The specific post is:  https://profmattstrassler.com/2022/02/11/why-simple-explanations-of-established-facts-have-value/
Please visit the original site if you have a few spare moments.    —    KMAB]
.
On This Day In:
2021	I’m Retired, I Always Have Time For It!
	Just Mice Elf
	That Was A Shot In The Arm
2020	Decide, Support, Vote
2019	Aware Some
2018	Know Any Christians?
2017	The Only Thing I Can Give…
2016	Wiser But Less Cocksure
2015	Not Today
	Wicked
2014	…Am Too
2013	Credible?
2012	Both
2011	Risking Hidden Linkage

Read Full Post »

A Little Perspective

Who are we?  We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
—    Carl Sagan
.
On This Day In:
2021	Put ‘Er There
	Are You Goin’ On Again?
2020	And In The Back
2019	Sunlight Stream
2018	Wars Without Taxes
2017	Multiplication And Division
2016	I Went To The Woods…
2015	I’ve Got To Run
2014	Which Is It?
2013	Making You Stronger
2012	Sick Of Being Sick
	Greater Than Power
2011	Clear, Specific And Measurable
2010	The Runner’s High
	Into The Dark…

Read Full Post »

Republican Ambling

Science is … a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility.  If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along.
—    Carl Sagan
.
On This Day In:
2021	I’d Argue Wealth, Then Income
	Knock Him Off His Feet
2020	Steppin’…
2019	Every Vote Counts
2018	Or A President
2017	Pleasures
2016	Why Not?
2015	Je Suis Charlie
2014	To The Nines
2013	Higher And Truer
2012	Life’s Last Question
2011	A Single Heartbeat
	A Little Male Humor – WHY MEN SHOULDN’T RETIRE

Read Full Post »

And Still Don’t Understand

The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you actually don’t know.
—    Robert M. Pirsig
From his book:  “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values“
.
On This Day In:
2020	I Hope She Keeps Laughing
	Christmas Is Near
2019	Ruff Clean
2018	Sounds Like A Blog To Me
2017	My Fear For America
2016	Proceeding Still
2015	Seeing Rainbows
	I Am A Runner
2014	The Law Of The Perversity Of Nature
2013	One Standard Deviation
2012	High Anxiety
2011	And I’m Taking Me There
2010	1,000

Read Full Post »

Overcoming Fear And Deflated Pretensions

Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.  We gaze across billions of light-years of space to view the Universe shortly after the Big Bang, and plumb the fine structure of matter.  We peer down into the core of our planet, and the blazing interior of our star.  We read the genetic language in which is written the diverse skills and propensities of every being on Earth.  We uncover hidden chapters in the record of our origins, and with some anguish better understand our nature and prospects.  We invent and refine agriculture, without which almost all of us would starve to death.  We create medicines and vaccines that save the lives of billions.  We communicate at the speed of light, and whip around the Earth in an hour and a half.  We have sent dozens of ships to more than seventy worlds, and four spacecraft to the stars.  We are right to rejoice in our accomplishments, to be proud that our species has been able to see so far, and to judge our merit in part by the very science that has so deflated our pretensions.
—    Carl Sagan
.
On This Day In:
2020	A Weary Rehearsal?
	Are You Poking Me Again?
2019	At Least Mostly On Purpose
2018	Only One You In All Time
2017	Have You Hugged A Tree Lately?
2016	Unconquerable Imagination
2015	Just Plain Wrong
2014	Finding Beliefs
2013	Pretty Confident
2012	Effective Ranges
2011	Three Wisdoms
2010	I’m Just Askin’…
	Space & Time

Read Full Post »

Too Bad Politics And Greed Get In The Way

There is no other species on the Earth that does science.  It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason:  it works.  It is not perfect.  It can be misused.  It is only a tool.  But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything.  It has two rules.  First:  there are no sacred truths;  all assumptions must be critically examined;  arguments from authority are worthless.  Second:  whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised.  We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be.
—    Carl Sagan
.
On This Day In:
2020	Precarious Fools
	A Shining City Upon A Hill
2019	How #45’s Father Raised Him For Incompetence
2018	Describing #45 – “The Loser” – As A Successful Businessman
	Raking – #PresidentIdiot Proposes Full Employment For California
2017	Federal Deficit, National Debt And Tax Cuts For The 1%
2016	Picky, Picky, Picky
2015	Another Limitation On Religion
2014	Enduring
2013	Tell Me More…
2012	Passing…
2011	Fake It ‘Til You Make It

Read Full Post »