To discuss what I find to be an error in generally accepted spelling practices.
Today's problem, suffixes. Specifically, when to drop trailing 'e's from a word before adding a suffix. The general rule is that if the 'e' is silent, you drop it.
However, there is an exception. If the suffix begins with a consonant, and the 'e' is necessary to the correct pronunciation of the word, it should not be dropped.
For instance, 'judge' + 'ment' should not be 'judgment', since the 'g' cannot be soft without a trailing 'i' or 'e'. The preferred spelling in most dictionaries drops the 'e'. This is, of course, crazy talk.
Showing posts with label TheMindofDave. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TheMindofDave. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Obama and the Constant Sore
There's a moderate amount of furore going around the pundisphere over Barrack Obama's recent comments from an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, in which there is discussion of the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict. This is quoted by rightish (and presumably Hillaroid) commentators thusly:
JG: Do you think that Israel is a drag on America’s reputation overseas?
BO: No, no, no. But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy.
Alarming stuff, no?
Commenting at TownHall.com, Tom "Tom & Gerrymander" DeLay found this to be a clear demonstration of Obama's unfitness to lead.
On one level, this is traffic-stoppingly stupid. What’s wrong with this guy? We’re told ad nauseum he’s the greatest political communicator of his generation, and his idea of a balanced and nuanced position is to compare a threatened ally in a crucial region to a festering, open sore?
Rightospheric JV attack dog Doug Ross starts off with a comparison to Ahmadinejad, and quickly goes Godwin on himself.
Obama's remarks seem to parallel those of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "In yet another verbal attack against Israel, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the Jewish state a 'filthy bacteria' whose sole purpose was to oppress the other nations of the region"...
Come to think of it, a Mr. A. Hitler had some remarks along these lines. "Against the infection of materialism, against the Jewish pestilence we must hold aloft a flaming ideal."
The GOP House Minority Leader Jim Boehner and Deputy Minority Whip Eric Cantor quickly jumped on the Obama-vs-Israel bandwagon.
"Israel is a critical American ally and a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, not a ‘constant sore’ as Barack Obama claims," Boehner said. "Obama’s latest remark, and his commitment to ‘opening a dialogue’ with sponsors of terrorism, echoes past statements by Jimmy Carter who once called Israel an ‘apartheid state.’"
"It is truly disappointing that Senator Obama called Israel a ‘constant wound,’ ‘constant sore,’ and that it ‘infect[s] all of our foreign policy.’ These sorts of words and characterizations are the words of a politician with a deep misunderstanding of the Middle East and an innate distrust of Israel," Cantor said.
Journalists at The Atlantic and WaPo (along with the bulk of the leftosphere) have of course jumped upon this like White Person on a gramatical error. They point out that the GOP is quoting Barrack out of context, and that he's clearly talking about The Arab-Israeli Conflict, not Israel herself. When you look at the original text, they appear at first glance to be right.
JG: What do you make of Jimmy Carter’s suggestion that Israel resembles an apartheid state?
BO: I strongly reject the characterization. Israel is a vibrant democracy, the only one in the Middle East, and there’s no doubt that Israel and the Palestinians have tough issues to work out to get to the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security, but injecting a term like apartheid into the discussion doesn’t advance that goal. It’s emotionally loaded, historically inaccurate, and it’s not what I believe.
JG: If you become President, will you denounce settlements publicly?
BO: What I will say is what I’ve said previously. Settlements at this juncture are not helpful. Look, my interest is in solving this problem not only for Israel but for the United States.
JG: Do you think that Israel is a drag on America’s reputation overseas?
BO: No, no, no. But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable. I am absolutely convinced of that, and some of the tensions that might arise between me and some of the more hawkish elements in the Jewish community in the United States might stem from the fact that I’m not going to blindly adhere to whatever the most hawkish position is just because that’s the safest ground politically.
I want to solve the problem, and so my job in being a friend to Israel is partly to hold up a mirror and tell the truth and say if Israel is building settlements without any regard to the effects that this has on the peace process, then we’re going to be stuck in the same status quo that we’ve been stuck in for decades now, and that won’t lift that existential dread that David Grossman described in your article.
But, I would like to take this opportunity to call all of the blogosphere wrong. The whole question, of course, is what does he mean when he says 'this problem'? Go back and look at some of Obama's words. "Settlements at this juncture are not helpful. Look, my interest is in solving this problem not only for Israel but for the United States."
I think it's clear that Obama is calling the continuing Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which do provide political cover for those who want to derail the peace process by their continuing acts of inexcusable violence. It might be sloppy rhetoric, but it's clear from my reading.
That Obama is speaking up on this, and not just toeing the Arabs-bad-Israel-good line is heartening. The only hope for peace is for the West Bank to become a Palestinian homeland. This cannot happen if Israel continues to allow new settlements to be built within the occupied territories.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
MIHOP is bigger than URHOP
I'd been cautiously optimistic about a Barack Obama candidacy. But now, I know that he has no interest in the Truthtm. At his Austin rally in February, he was confronted by one of the courageous activists of the Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth. Given the opportunity to speak on the pressing subject of the 9/11 coverup, what did Obama say? "You know, I think we need to investigate a whole range of options, although I have to be honest, some of the issues you guys have raised I'm not entirely confident are the truth."
So many people don't believe that the destruction of the WTC was brought about by our government. But it's so obvious.
The planning by the US government for perpetrating the 9-11 'attacks' started much earlier than anyone believes. Mathias Rust*, you know, the guy who landed a Cessna 172 in Red Square back in '87, was a plant. As part of a conspiracy between hard-liners in the Kremlin and Pentagon, who both realized that American paranoia was key to sustaining a military industrial complex in both countries (Russian paranoia can pretty much be taken for granted).
Now, the Korean and Vietnam wars were, as everyone knows, carried out with the express purpose of undermining American post-WWII confidence and instilling the appropriate fear of Russia and the Red Menace. However, Vietnam was a miscalculation, which became clear during the Carter administration as American self-confidence sagged so low that Americans were actually begining to lose faith in the cold war, and support for unilateral disarmament - disasterous for both US and Russian military industry - was threatening to break out into the mainstream in the US.
Thus Reagan was brought in, with his "Bear in the Woods" ads and resurrection of the B-1, B-2, M-1, Trident, Minuteman, the 15-carrier navy, and the ultimate military-industrial coup, SDI. Unfortunately, he was too effective, and swung the pendulum too far in the other direction. The cold war became untenable, because America was now clearly too strong. Simultaneously, the Russians began their own misguided adventure in Afghanistan. That campaign was aimed at undermining the confidence in the Big Red Machine, to spur support for subsequent expansions in Soviet military spending. As with Vietnam, this was also too effective.
It was already clear that civilian terrorism was the key to both problems. Military un-fucking-vincible? Easy, introduce 'asymmetrical warfare'. The US/Kremlin power brokers had been tinkering with it in South America for years, as a sort of R&D project, but hadn't figured they'd need to parlay it into a replacement for the traditional cold war.
Now, it is our air force that instills the most confidence in Americans. So a really terrifying attack against America would have to penetrate our air defences. The early experiments in American-soil terrorism, the first WTC bombing and the OKC bombing, had induced yawns in most people. Sure any asshole could drive a bomb up to anything he wanted. It didn't bring the terror.
But they'd already planned for this. A really terrifying attack would have to come from the air. But it could be too clear that they were staged if people didn't already kind of believe that civilian flights could penetrate a really tight air defense. This is where Mathias Rust comes in.
How better to plant the seed of mistrust of air power than by having a some euro-loser land an airplane in Red Square?
It couldn't be an American, because if a plucky American teen had done it, people would have assumed that he'd won through with faith in God, a picture of his sweetheart, and a can-do attitude. It would just reaffirm our faith. But if some German nihilist can put down his collection of Kraftwerk and Autobahn LPs long enough to climb into a Cessna and land in Red Square as some sort of ironic post-modern statement, then maybe - just maybe - even OUR air defenses could be penetrated in such a way.
This was the key to making the American public believe that a bunch of godless Muslims could be responsible for destroying a landmark that we didn't really care about anyway.
*image of Rust from Wikipedia.org, used under the GNU free documentation license.
So many people don't believe that the destruction of the WTC was brought about by our government. But it's so obvious.
The planning by the US government for perpetrating the 9-11 'attacks' started much earlier than anyone believes. Mathias Rust*, you know, the guy who landed a Cessna 172 in Red Square back in '87, was a plant. As part of a conspiracy between hard-liners in the Kremlin and Pentagon, who both realized that American paranoia was key to sustaining a military industrial complex in both countries (Russian paranoia can pretty much be taken for granted).Now, the Korean and Vietnam wars were, as everyone knows, carried out with the express purpose of undermining American post-WWII confidence and instilling the appropriate fear of Russia and the Red Menace. However, Vietnam was a miscalculation, which became clear during the Carter administration as American self-confidence sagged so low that Americans were actually begining to lose faith in the cold war, and support for unilateral disarmament - disasterous for both US and Russian military industry - was threatening to break out into the mainstream in the US.
Thus Reagan was brought in, with his "Bear in the Woods" ads and resurrection of the B-1, B-2, M-1, Trident, Minuteman, the 15-carrier navy, and the ultimate military-industrial coup, SDI. Unfortunately, he was too effective, and swung the pendulum too far in the other direction. The cold war became untenable, because America was now clearly too strong. Simultaneously, the Russians began their own misguided adventure in Afghanistan. That campaign was aimed at undermining the confidence in the Big Red Machine, to spur support for subsequent expansions in Soviet military spending. As with Vietnam, this was also too effective.
It was already clear that civilian terrorism was the key to both problems. Military un-fucking-vincible? Easy, introduce 'asymmetrical warfare'. The US/Kremlin power brokers had been tinkering with it in South America for years, as a sort of R&D project, but hadn't figured they'd need to parlay it into a replacement for the traditional cold war.
Now, it is our air force that instills the most confidence in Americans. So a really terrifying attack against America would have to penetrate our air defences. The early experiments in American-soil terrorism, the first WTC bombing and the OKC bombing, had induced yawns in most people. Sure any asshole could drive a bomb up to anything he wanted. It didn't bring the terror.
But they'd already planned for this. A really terrifying attack would have to come from the air. But it could be too clear that they were staged if people didn't already kind of believe that civilian flights could penetrate a really tight air defense. This is where Mathias Rust comes in.
How better to plant the seed of mistrust of air power than by having a some euro-loser land an airplane in Red Square?
It couldn't be an American, because if a plucky American teen had done it, people would have assumed that he'd won through with faith in God, a picture of his sweetheart, and a can-do attitude. It would just reaffirm our faith. But if some German nihilist can put down his collection of Kraftwerk and Autobahn LPs long enough to climb into a Cessna and land in Red Square as some sort of ironic post-modern statement, then maybe - just maybe - even OUR air defenses could be penetrated in such a way.
This was the key to making the American public believe that a bunch of godless Muslims could be responsible for destroying a landmark that we didn't really care about anyway.
*image of Rust from Wikipedia.org, used under the GNU free documentation license.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Merry Repeal Day, Everyone!
Happy Repeal Day, folks.
That's right, it's the 73rd anniversary of the repeal of alcohol prohibition in America.
Dewar's celebrates with a full page ad in the New York Times, and has posted a google video of a chilling alternate-history where prohibition never ended. Of course, would it really be that much more chilling than actual history? Prohibition by any other name still smells like shit.
Hat tip to Hit&Run
That's right, it's the 73rd anniversary of the repeal of alcohol prohibition in America.
Dewar's celebrates with a full page ad in the New York Times, and has posted a google video of a chilling alternate-history where prohibition never ended. Of course, would it really be that much more chilling than actual history? Prohibition by any other name still smells like shit.
Hat tip to Hit&Run
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Non-illogic is non-useless
Recently perusing The Economist, an article caught my eye, entitled, "The Non-Denial of the Non-Self". In it, I found the following quote:
The converse is not necessarily true.
The "topsy-turvy transformation" listed above is to turn that around, and suggest the following syllogism:
Now, Carl Hempel wasn't just noodling about solving trivial non-problems like the one above. He was attempting to improve the logical rules associated with observational science. So his Raven Paradox is not just assuming that we know that all ravens are black, but looking at the case when we are trying to observe whether all ravens are black, and seeing what implications that has for our logical constructions.
Suppose we are trying to figure out whether all ravens are black. One natural consequence would be that all non-black things are not ravens. However, finding 100 ravens and observing that each is black is helpful. Finding 100 things that aren't black, and observing that none are ravens is useless. When finding non-black non-ravens, you are making observations that are consistent with your theory. After all, if your theory is correct, then non-black objects must not be ravens, as proven above. But these observations of non-black non-ravens do little to confirm the main theory regarding black ravens.
It is unsuprising to find things that aren't black that aren't ravens, because it is unsuprising to find things that aren't ravens. Look out your window. In my case, I see trees and cars and leaves and buildings and clouds and the sky. Of the millions of things I see out there, only a very few, some tires, a few bits of roof racks on trucks, and one Jeep Cherokee, are black. None of the things I see are ravens. So I have seen many non-black non-ravens, and a few black non-ravens, but I saw no black ravens, nor non-black ravens. Fully half of the possible states of combined ravenness and blackness are left with no observations from my experiment. I just can't say much about the correlation of ravenness and blackness.
As a scientist, I see that the problem of observing non-black objects to test the black-raven theory is that it fails to exclude competing theories. I may have a competing theory that Blue Man Group has painted all the world's ravens blue as a performance art piece. Observing many blue things and finding that none of them is a raven woulds still do very little to distinguish between the blue-raven theory and the black raven theory.
The point of the Raven Paradox, then, is to show that observations that fit a theory are only useful if they don't fit other theories just as well. Could be of some use to the current debate on String Theory.
Note, my title in no way implies that all illogical things are useless. It does however, imply that logic is useful.
IN THE 1940s a philosopher called Carl Hempel showed that by manipulating the logical statement “all ravens are black”, you could derive the equivalent “all non-black objects are non-ravens”. Such topsy-turvy transformations might seem reason enough to keep philosophers locked up safely on university campuses, where they cannot do too much damage.Now, I'm slightly baffled as to how this is a suprising statement. It certainly seems obvious to me. To illustrate why, let's consider a basic syllogism.
If A then BIn this case, the premise (the if-then statement) is, "All ravens are black," or more formally, "If a bird is a raven, then the bird is black." Therefore any time anyone tells me they're seeing a raven, I can safely assume it is black (neglecting albinos and poor ravens which have been painted blue, or just bumped against Tobias Funke).
A, therefore B
The converse is not necessarily true.
If A then BIf a bird is not a raven, that does not necessarily mean that it is not black. It may be a crow, a vulture, a blackbird, or any of a number of other black birds.
Not A, therefore perhaps B, perhaps not B.
The "topsy-turvy transformation" listed above is to turn that around, and suggest the following syllogism:
If A then B.This just follows logically. Imagine the following exchange.
Not B, therefore not A
"Hey, I see a bird. Is it a raven?"It's just neither topsy nor turvy.
"Dunno is it black?"
"Nope, it's blue"
"Then it ain't a raven (again neglecting the Blue Man Group's pet raven, Gerald)."
Now, Carl Hempel wasn't just noodling about solving trivial non-problems like the one above. He was attempting to improve the logical rules associated with observational science. So his Raven Paradox is not just assuming that we know that all ravens are black, but looking at the case when we are trying to observe whether all ravens are black, and seeing what implications that has for our logical constructions.
Suppose we are trying to figure out whether all ravens are black. One natural consequence would be that all non-black things are not ravens. However, finding 100 ravens and observing that each is black is helpful. Finding 100 things that aren't black, and observing that none are ravens is useless. When finding non-black non-ravens, you are making observations that are consistent with your theory. After all, if your theory is correct, then non-black objects must not be ravens, as proven above. But these observations of non-black non-ravens do little to confirm the main theory regarding black ravens.
It is unsuprising to find things that aren't black that aren't ravens, because it is unsuprising to find things that aren't ravens. Look out your window. In my case, I see trees and cars and leaves and buildings and clouds and the sky. Of the millions of things I see out there, only a very few, some tires, a few bits of roof racks on trucks, and one Jeep Cherokee, are black. None of the things I see are ravens. So I have seen many non-black non-ravens, and a few black non-ravens, but I saw no black ravens, nor non-black ravens. Fully half of the possible states of combined ravenness and blackness are left with no observations from my experiment. I just can't say much about the correlation of ravenness and blackness.
As a scientist, I see that the problem of observing non-black objects to test the black-raven theory is that it fails to exclude competing theories. I may have a competing theory that Blue Man Group has painted all the world's ravens blue as a performance art piece. Observing many blue things and finding that none of them is a raven woulds still do very little to distinguish between the blue-raven theory and the black raven theory.
The point of the Raven Paradox, then, is to show that observations that fit a theory are only useful if they don't fit other theories just as well. Could be of some use to the current debate on String Theory.
Note, my title in no way implies that all illogical things are useless. It does however, imply that logic is useful.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Bad blogger
Yeah, I'm not really good at actually posting to this thing.
There's been too much craziness. Seriously. Those who know me have probably heard that I'm now managing the lab. However, my previous job of 'the guy who can do all the weird projects that no one else knows how to do" is still empty. So I'm pretty much doing that, and trying to manage the lab at the same time. Now, I've never in my life aspired to management. Being the boss holds no interest for me. Dealing with salescritters is not something I understand. And juggling twelve active projects, keeping track of the details is not my strong suit.
So today I'm getting close to having my head above water, so I'm gonna see if I can blog again some.
There's been too much craziness. Seriously. Those who know me have probably heard that I'm now managing the lab. However, my previous job of 'the guy who can do all the weird projects that no one else knows how to do" is still empty. So I'm pretty much doing that, and trying to manage the lab at the same time. Now, I've never in my life aspired to management. Being the boss holds no interest for me. Dealing with salescritters is not something I understand. And juggling twelve active projects, keeping track of the details is not my strong suit.
So today I'm getting close to having my head above water, so I'm gonna see if I can blog again some.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Slight shift left
So I've taken Yet Another Political Spectrum test. This one was less ambiguous than some, and might actually be more accurate. Anyway, I came out a little more socially permissive than previous tests of this kind, now scoring farther out of the Centrist zone and into the libertarian zone. I do seem to have slid a little closer to the moderate/liberal democrat zone. Probably just that my constant nay-saying of stupid government policies are now focused on a stupid semi-rightwing government than a split government between stupid semi-rightwing folk and stupid semi-leftwing folk.
On the famous people chart, I came out on Martin Luther King Junior's right temple, sort of in the triangle between him, Adam Sandler (go figure), and some 18th Century guy who's probably either Jefferson or Adam Smith.
Anyway, I'm still libertarian.
On the famous people chart, I came out on Martin Luther King Junior's right temple, sort of in the triangle between him, Adam Sandler (go figure), and some 18th Century guy who's probably either Jefferson or Adam Smith.
Anyway, I'm still libertarian.
| You are a Social Liberal (80% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (65% permissive) You are best described as a:
Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating |
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Iraq War - Should We Mend It? Or Can We End It?
OK, We've been hearing this refrain ever since that "Mission Accomplished" speech. "I opposed the war, and I think it was a bad idea, but we're there now, and we can't pull out!"
Which begs the question, "Could we pull out?"
Do we have to wait until Iraq is a happy democracy to return our troops home? If we pulled out, would that simplify matters for the Iraqis, and let them actually get about setting up a democracy themselves? Or is our conventional wisdom accurate, that competing strongmen would carve the country into warlord fiefdoms, some controlled by radical Islamists, others just by secular thugs?
Which begs the question, "Could we pull out?"
Do we have to wait until Iraq is a happy democracy to return our troops home? If we pulled out, would that simplify matters for the Iraqis, and let them actually get about setting up a democracy themselves? Or is our conventional wisdom accurate, that competing strongmen would carve the country into warlord fiefdoms, some controlled by radical Islamists, others just by secular thugs?
Thursday, August 11, 2005
NC Trip Part I - Vegas for Flanderses
So perhaps a full explanation of the NC trip is in order. My friend Casey is currently in the process of travelling from Dallas, Texas to Hanover, New Hampshire to start the MBA program at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth University. Along the way, he's stopping to meet/stay with his various extra-Texas friends. One leg of his journey was to take him from Memphis, Tennessee, to La Grange, North Carolina. My family's got a house in Brevard, NC, which is conveniently halfway in between.
I don't get to Brevard nearly as often as I'd like, so I took the excuse to make a trip that way, and show off one of my favorite places. So I took off Wednesday evening, and headed for Little Rock. I took a room at the somewhat overpriced Travellodge near the Little Rock airport. If I get access to a scanner, I will blog further on their toiletries. The following morning I was up pretty early and headed for Memphis. Coordinating via cell-phone, Casey and I met up at the Old Country Store, a kind of Cracker-Barrel-on-steroids in the 'Casey Jones Village' tourist-trap (more of a tourist-bug-zapper) in Jackson, TN. On the way I got a good overflight by an AH-64 Apache, which seemed to be slinging four FFAR pods (gotta let my techno-geek out and play sometimes, right?).
We cruised on through and made Knoxville by dinner time. (I should also interject that a C-130 came in on final passing low over the I-440 loop road in front of us as we passed Nashville. Still a techno-geek.) Pouring over the atlas at a Wendy's, we decided to ditch the interstate and try some more back-roadsie, uhh, roads. So we decided to take 441, which ran over to the base of the Great Smokies, and then pick up 321 up to where I40 heads into the mountains. The drive along the base of the mountains would be nice in the setting sun, was our thinking. Before heading out, Casey pointed to the town where we'd turn north and asked, "Where have I heard of Gatlinberg?" This was a fateful question, and it was only my poor memory that just said, "Well, there's something like a ski resort thingy there called 'Uber-Gatlinberg', maybe that's what you've heard of..." It wasn't.
Gatlinberg, and the adjacent Pigeon Forge, are home to Dollywood, and the Great Valley metastasism of red-state Branson excess. Now most of my gentle readers (all two of you) will know that I am an elitist and a sort-of conflicted countrified red-state liberal snob. But I want you all to know that I felt more strangely horrified-fascinated than when I first floated past the guy who sits next to the Guadeloupe River in a folding chair with a camera and a cooler, leering out at passing females from under a banner reading "Tits - 4 - JelloShots". Even the gramatical anomalies of his sign are as nothing to the spectacle of mile after mile of Alabama-themed theaters, "Kountry Bears Revue" (or sommat like that), mini-golf, bungie jumps, arcades, and family-themed restaurants. Scurrying between them were a strange assortment. The whole family in matching pink mini-skirts were distracting in a 'did I just see that?' sort of way. I'm assuming that it was just an optical illusion that the dad was also wearing one, but I can't say for certain.
Then we got into Gatlinberg proper. This is not a place for the faint-of-heart. A genuine pedestrian district for the red-state crowd. But for a place with one street through town, navigation is a nightmare. Two professional geographers took atleast 20 minutes to find the place where 321 turned north. Needless to say, if anybody from the Highway Department, or in a position of authority in Gatlinberg, a proper highway intersection sign would not go amiss.
Once we finally got out of the Gatlintrap, we made our way on over the hill(s) to Brevard. Driving into town I called Casey to make sure he rolled down his windows to smell the Kentucky Bluegrass. There's no other smell like it.
I don't get to Brevard nearly as often as I'd like, so I took the excuse to make a trip that way, and show off one of my favorite places. So I took off Wednesday evening, and headed for Little Rock. I took a room at the somewhat overpriced Travellodge near the Little Rock airport. If I get access to a scanner, I will blog further on their toiletries. The following morning I was up pretty early and headed for Memphis. Coordinating via cell-phone, Casey and I met up at the Old Country Store, a kind of Cracker-Barrel-on-steroids in the 'Casey Jones Village' tourist-trap (more of a tourist-bug-zapper) in Jackson, TN. On the way I got a good overflight by an AH-64 Apache, which seemed to be slinging four FFAR pods (gotta let my techno-geek out and play sometimes, right?).
We cruised on through and made Knoxville by dinner time. (I should also interject that a C-130 came in on final passing low over the I-440 loop road in front of us as we passed Nashville. Still a techno-geek.) Pouring over the atlas at a Wendy's, we decided to ditch the interstate and try some more back-roadsie, uhh, roads. So we decided to take 441, which ran over to the base of the Great Smokies, and then pick up 321 up to where I40 heads into the mountains. The drive along the base of the mountains would be nice in the setting sun, was our thinking. Before heading out, Casey pointed to the town where we'd turn north and asked, "Where have I heard of Gatlinberg?" This was a fateful question, and it was only my poor memory that just said, "Well, there's something like a ski resort thingy there called 'Uber-Gatlinberg', maybe that's what you've heard of..." It wasn't.
Gatlinberg, and the adjacent Pigeon Forge, are home to Dollywood, and the Great Valley metastasism of red-state Branson excess. Now most of my gentle readers (all two of you) will know that I am an elitist and a sort-of conflicted countrified red-state liberal snob. But I want you all to know that I felt more strangely horrified-fascinated than when I first floated past the guy who sits next to the Guadeloupe River in a folding chair with a camera and a cooler, leering out at passing females from under a banner reading "Tits - 4 - JelloShots". Even the gramatical anomalies of his sign are as nothing to the spectacle of mile after mile of Alabama-themed theaters, "Kountry Bears Revue" (or sommat like that), mini-golf, bungie jumps, arcades, and family-themed restaurants. Scurrying between them were a strange assortment. The whole family in matching pink mini-skirts were distracting in a 'did I just see that?' sort of way. I'm assuming that it was just an optical illusion that the dad was also wearing one, but I can't say for certain.
Then we got into Gatlinberg proper. This is not a place for the faint-of-heart. A genuine pedestrian district for the red-state crowd. But for a place with one street through town, navigation is a nightmare. Two professional geographers took atleast 20 minutes to find the place where 321 turned north. Needless to say, if anybody from the Highway Department, or in a position of authority in Gatlinberg, a proper highway intersection sign would not go amiss.
Once we finally got out of the Gatlintrap, we made our way on over the hill(s) to Brevard. Driving into town I called Casey to make sure he rolled down his windows to smell the Kentucky Bluegrass. There's no other smell like it.
Tha Moon Rulez!
I'm pretty sleepy today. Yesterday I awoke in Brevard, North Carolina, and slept in Dallas, Texas. This required a hefty drive during the intervening time, which meant that I didn't arrive at my bed until well after 2AM. Add to that the lingering effects of too much caffiene consumed in the later stages of the drive, and that sort of weird effect where you get so tired that you're too uncomfortable to sleep, and I didn't get much sleep last night.
The drive across Arkansas took me through the hours between dusk and midnight, and this afforded me an opportunity to observe the moon. As the sunset faded, and the stars began to shine, the waxing moon formed a solid cresent in the western sky. Immediately below its tip was a small star, just bright enough to see through the glow surrounding the moon. Being somewhat bored now, as I was a good ten hours into the drive home, I hit upon an idea for a little astronomical experiment. Stars, of course, are relatively fixed in the sky. They move only with the rotation and revolution of the earth. The moon, however, is in orbit around the earth, so it is moving through the sky in its month-long orbit. Therefore it might be possible to see the motion of the moon relative to the star over the course of the evening.
The moon is approximately 1/2 of one degree in angular width, and the star was approximately 1/4 of the width of the moon away from the tip of the crescent when I first noticed it, along a line through the two horns of the crescent. Over about two hours, the star appeared to lie along a line tangential to the moon's edge, parallel to the line through the two horns of the crescent. (If I could draw a diagram and get it on here easily, I would, but it would be a bit of a pain.) So the moon moved approximately 1/4 of a degree relative to the star. Now, the moon orbits the earth in 28 days, or 672 hours. In doing so it traverses a full 360 degrees. This means that the moon should move approximately 1/2 of a degree per hour. I'm a little disappointed that I couldn't get my observed moon motion to match up with my back-of-a-napkin estimation the lunar orbit. If anyone wants to check my math, feel free. But quantitative results aside, it was really cool to observe the motion of the moon.
In other news, the NC trip was good. I rained pretty much every day I was there, but it was still a welcome change from August in Dallas. And a welcome change from working. I really really hate being left in charge.
The drive across Arkansas took me through the hours between dusk and midnight, and this afforded me an opportunity to observe the moon. As the sunset faded, and the stars began to shine, the waxing moon formed a solid cresent in the western sky. Immediately below its tip was a small star, just bright enough to see through the glow surrounding the moon. Being somewhat bored now, as I was a good ten hours into the drive home, I hit upon an idea for a little astronomical experiment. Stars, of course, are relatively fixed in the sky. They move only with the rotation and revolution of the earth. The moon, however, is in orbit around the earth, so it is moving through the sky in its month-long orbit. Therefore it might be possible to see the motion of the moon relative to the star over the course of the evening.
The moon is approximately 1/2 of one degree in angular width, and the star was approximately 1/4 of the width of the moon away from the tip of the crescent when I first noticed it, along a line through the two horns of the crescent. Over about two hours, the star appeared to lie along a line tangential to the moon's edge, parallel to the line through the two horns of the crescent. (If I could draw a diagram and get it on here easily, I would, but it would be a bit of a pain.) So the moon moved approximately 1/4 of a degree relative to the star. Now, the moon orbits the earth in 28 days, or 672 hours. In doing so it traverses a full 360 degrees. This means that the moon should move approximately 1/2 of a degree per hour. I'm a little disappointed that I couldn't get my observed moon motion to match up with my back-of-a-napkin estimation the lunar orbit. If anyone wants to check my math, feel free. But quantitative results aside, it was really cool to observe the motion of the moon.
In other news, the NC trip was good. I rained pretty much every day I was there, but it was still a welcome change from August in Dallas. And a welcome change from working. I really really hate being left in charge.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
