Fall Back

Can we reform this Daylight Savings Time thing? I understand that the orignal purpose was to give us an extra hour of sunlight in the summer evening. Is that when we really need it? What about, oh I don't know, WINTER, when we have less sunlight!
How are better off if it is dark by 5:30 p.m. when most people are leaving work? I would wager that the number of accidents on the roads increases after setting the fall clock back an hour. I certainly see more road kill this time of year.
I realize that the amount of daylight decreases until December 21st but if we are going to shift daylight, why not then?

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Halloween always sneeks up on me. Sometimes it says "Boo!" Tomorrow is the 31st of October, I received the invite to a Halloween party weeks ago, and yet I have put no thought into a costume. None. No ideas. With so many things going on now as they always do this time of year I don't even have the energy to think about a costume. Since the party is here in almost 24 hours I don't really have time to think up a cool costume and make it from scratch. That means I have to buy something. So I'll go to the fly-by-night Halloween Store and look for fake blood or prostetic horns or something else equally lame.
Since one year I dressed as James Joyce ("Who's that?" people said) maybe I should continue the literary tradition and come as Ezra Pound or Ford Madox Ford. T.S. Eliot would be scary. Maybe I could dress as Edgar Allan Poe and recite 'The Raven'. At least it would give me an excuse to get drunk.

Strings Attached

I watched PBS's Nova program last night with a three part series "The Elegant Universe". It covered string theory or the theory that tries to tie together the forces of the universe. It was breathtaking, both in its content and production, reminiscent of Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" which I loved growing up and sparked any interest I have in science. I can make no claim to understand but a fraction of it but it was so inspiring.
Ideas that came to me after watching it:
String theory requires at least 10 dimensions. We cannot see these dimensions beyond the four (three physical plus time) we normally experience. What if the mind, our thoughts, our "soul", exist in one or more of these other dimensions? We cannot see our thoughts yet we experience them in a real way. What if when we or anything dies it ceases to be in the visible dimensions but goes on in some of the other dimensions. Perhaps ghosts are the remnant dimensions of creatures that have part our experience and briefly cross into our lower existence.
Strings are incredibly small. If an atom were enlarged to the size of the solar system one string would be the size of a tree. But what are strings made? At one time atons were believed to be the smallest elements of the universe. Then came subatomic particles, now strings. So maybe someday we will be able to "see" (or at leat detect) strings which we can't do now. Will we find that strings are made up of even smaller parts?
Now I don't say I believe in ghosts, multiple dimensions or even strings as the basis for everything. I believe in what is observable and provable. We can speculate. We can imagine. We can hypothesize. Without proof these things fall outside the realm of science. We may have to wait hundreds of years for the tools to be avialble to prove current theories but the wait and advancement are all part of the scientific experiment.
What if humans were all born blind. Could we imagine what color is without the ability to perceive it? What if there are properties of the world that exist but are beyond our capacity to experience them? What difference would it make in our lives? We know that there are parts to the spectrum of light that fall outside our visible range yet with instruments we can detect their properties. Did Aristotle live any less fully because he was unaware of x-rays and black holes and quantum particles? If strings do exist and are the basis of everything that there is, how will this knowledge affect our daily lives, belief in God and theories for the origin of the universe, and our future as a species.
What if the universe were completely understandable to humans but in order to do so we would have to spend 25 years studying advanced mathematics and physics? Who would be willing to make such a journey? And what if after thousands of people reached that understanding someone realizes that the theory is flawed and they have to set aside the current understanding and travel further to reach a more accurate description of the world? That's what science is: a description of the universe based on the tools we have to measure and describe it. The world IS, but the human mind wants to take the experience of it and describe it in terms of other experience, human experience. Sometimes those descriptions are simplistic and unvarying. That is religion. Sometimes those descriptions are complex and subject to change when better tools and observations become available. That is science. I would much rather live in the world that allows for us to say we do not know as much as we once thought we did but if we are vigilant we can know more.

Lessons From Travel

I traveled this weekend to Connecticut for work. Things I learned, seen or overheard:

*The front fender of cars should never be lower than the height of a curb. Whoever designed the Dodge Stratus, the car I rented, did not understand this. So when you pull in somewhere to park you often scraped the front fender on cement.

*If anyone from the "North" ever complains to me about Southerners being slow, stupid or strange I will laugh in their face. Going back to New England for the first time in a while I quickly remembered that people there are as slow, stupid and strange as everywhere else. They are also as smart, kind, curious, passionate, funny, and proud as any other person in the South and all points beyond.

*If you have any body parts pierced that you don't want to show airport security you should leave the jewlery at home while traveling.

*Overheard in an Italian restaurant:
Older man: So Silvia Petruchny is now working for the West Chester Board of Education.
Older woman: (gasp) I think it's awful that they would just hand out a job to her without any qualifications! The idea that someone could just walk in off the street and get a job there is beyond me.
Older man: Whaddya mean? She has qualifications. She has a college degree. She worked for many years as a paralegal. She just took a few years off to raise her kids and decided to go back to work.
Older woman: Some of us don't have a choice. And those kids she raised!
Older man: Why do you always have to be so negative about everyone? You can be a very nasty person and I hate it.
Older woman: I'm not negative but when I think of Sylvia getting all these advantages that aren't afforded anyone else. Makes me sick.
(Their dinner arrives.)

*Always check the weather of your destination before travelling and plan that the temperature will be 10 to 15 degrees warmer or cooler than predicted.

How far to go?

Thirty-two miles. Sixty-four round trip. That's how far I had to go for good service. My car needed some work last week that was covered under warranty. I just had to take it to the dealer and they'd fix it no charge. Closest dealer was local about 5 miles from work. Problem is they're awful. I've had problems with them before. Most everyone I've talked to has a bad experience. Greedy S.o.B.s is the general concensus. Wanting to charge extra for unnecessary things or try to make you pay for things that should be covered are the most common stories.
So I drove to Burrlington, NC, getting up early so I could be there when the garage opened at 7:30 a.m. When I drove up at 7:25 they were already opeing and directed me in to check-in. They told me there were two other service bulletins on my car and they would fix those for me, also no charge. One hour and twenty minutes later they had me out the door with my car washed to boot.
Now I didn't pay them anything. They knew they weren't going to charge me a dime and yet they went the extra mile to take care of me. That gets a WOW from me.
It just got me thinking about how much money the local dealership was losing because of their focus on bottom-line, charge-the-customer-everything-you-can attitude. When I purchase my next car which will probably be the same make I will drive the extra 32 miles not just for good service, but to avoid bad and to reward the folks who went out of their way for me.

Plan for the Future

Eighty-seven billion dollars. That's the amount the Bush Administration is requesting to rebuild Iraq and Afganistan. Regardless of how one feels about it this venture has two things: a plan and an amount of money to bring us closer to the fruition of that plan. Part of that money may be a loan, part may never have to be repaid (except by Americans for the next several decades). The plan may not be a good one and may not acheive the expected result for the amount requested but by having a vision and attempting to realize it this shows leadership.
So why can't we apply this same method to other problems? Health care for all Americans. A public education system that rivals any other in the world. A cure for cancer in the next decade. Why can we not determine what our greatest problem is in this country then come up with a definite plan to solve it. What would it cost to provide health coverage for all Americans? No, I'm asking. $87 billion? Less? More? Tell us what it will take to acheive this and let the bright, talented people of this country come up with a way to raise the money and make it happen.
School kids sell things to raise money for trips and new band uniforms. They know how much they need to get what they want. Why not do the same for education? How much do we need for each school kid to go school well fed, to a class of 18 students with all the necessary learning materials and an enthusiastic well-paid teacher? If you can't give us the figure for the nation as a whole, how much for New York City or North Carolina or any school in particular? We can start small on this. Act locally. We can raise the money for our school district, our city, our state to make things happen. We just need the leadership to point the way and get us moving where we all need to go.

Double Quotes

Here are two unrelated quotes for the day from two unrelated folks who share October 14th as their birthday:

"To be nobody-but-yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting." e.e. cummings

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." Dwight David Eisenhower

Raised Eyebrows