Quotes of the week
“Two buzzards
are perched on a branch. One buzzard says to the other buzzard “to hell with
waiting, let’s go kill something” Some
of the things my clients say!
(905): Just got super judged by a Wal-Mart cashier for
buying diet pills and candy in the same transaction. Like she has her life
figured out. Texts from Last Night
“Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable”
Plato
Plato
“To-morrow never yet on any human being rose or set.”
William Marsden
William Marsden
Websites of the week
Checking
to see if my son Rob ever reads this (best
rifle)
Dear Photograph of the week
The culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor
This was the date, in
1859, of a massive solar superstorm. It's sometimes called the
"perfect space storm" or the Carrington Event, after British
astronomer Richard Carrington. He reported witnessing a massive white-light
solar flare: a bright spot suddenly appearing on the surface of the Sun. At the
same time, the Sun produced a coronal mass ejection, or CME: a large eruption
of magnetized plasma. CMEs usually take three to four days to reach Earth, but
the magnetic burst from the superstorm of 1859 reached us in just under 18
hours.
While Earthlings of 1859 didn't have any cell
phones, GPS units, or television signals to worry about, they were growing
accustomed to rapid communication over the telegraph, which had been in use for
15 years. Within hours of the CME, telegraph wires began shorting out, starting
fires and disrupting communication in North America and Europe. Compasses were
useless because the Earth's magnetic field had gone haywire. The northern
lights were seen as far south as Cuba and Hawaii, and the southern lights —
aurora australis — were seen in Santiago, Chile. People in the northeastern
United States could read the newspaper by the light of the aurora, and the Sun
itself was twice as bright during the event.
Subsequent solar storms have caused satellites,
broadcast stations, and cell phones to malfunction; they've disrupted GPS
systems on airplanes and have even knocked out entire power grids; in 1989, a
storm much weaker than the superstorm of 1859 brought down the Hydro-Quebec
power grid for more than nine hours. While scientists cannot predict the storms
with any degree of confidence, some speculate that the Sun is expected to reach
a period of peak activity in 2013, and the large flares often follow the peak
periods. They're monitoring the Sun's activity closely, because with a little
advance warning, power grids could be taken offline and satellites put in
"sleep" mode for the duration of the storm, averting a global
catastrophe from which it could take a decade and trillions of dollars to
recover.
Meditation of the week
Focus on
what is most important for you. Let go of the rest.
"The
ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary
may speak."
Hans
Hofmann
"Besides
the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things
undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials."
Lin
Yutang
"The
sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the
marble block as are not needed - it is a process of elimination."
Elbert
Hubbard
Philosophy of the Week
The question “what shall we do about it?” is only asked by
those who do not understand the problem. If a problem can be solved at all, to
understand it and to know what to do about it are the same thing. On the other
hand, doing something about a problem which you do not understand is like
trying to clear away darkness by thrusting it aside with your hands. When light
is brought, the darkness vanishes at once.
Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity, a Message for an
Age of Anxiety ©1951
