Another blog about the stimulus…

What else could we buy with the Stimulus Bill President Obama just signed?

 

• We could give every man, woman and child in the US (303,824,640 people) $2,590 each
• We could give each of our 138 million taxpayer  $5,702 each
• We could pay for 5.3 Apollo moonshots
• We could buy 403.5 billion gallons of gas (AKA  a 12 minute drive in a Hummer)
• We could buy 143.3 billion 6 packs of Bud Light
• We could build 56 Two-unit Nuclear Power plants
• We could construct 314.8 million wind generators
• We could pay the GDP of Micronesia 3,392 times
• We could pay the annual salary (approx. $1,700) of 462.9 million Indonesian sulfur miners
• We could put 7.8 million children through all 4 years at a private university
• We could put 29.8 million children through all 4 years at a public university

 

 

Just sayin….

Chapter 1

I once tried to write a book. I had what, in my head, was a great idea. I knew it would be a bestseller if I could just get it on paper. So I sat down, opened the computer, loaded Word, typed “Chapter 1″, hit enter a couple times, and clicked “tab” to indent for the paragraph. Up to this point things were going great. The book was coming along exactly as planned.

“OK,” I thought to myself, “what’s the opening scene? How do I hook my audience from sentence number one?” This, of course, turned out to be the first major roadblock on my way to the publishing house, but I muscled through and finally typed out the first sentence of my Hugo Award winning novel. Feeling quite accomplished I sat back and read what I written. This brought me to the book’s first major editing spree. In fact, I had to rewrite the entire chapter at this point. Again, I muscled through, nose to the grindstone (among other cliche’s that we accomplished author’s tend to avoid) and after a few more drastic edits, I had the scene set. I was on a roll, the words practically typing themselves:

“It was another hot day of work in the desert, with temperatures soaring near 120 degrees. A stiff breeze out of the west did nothing to alleviate the heat; instead it filled the air with fine grains of sand which stuck to the sweat covered bodies of the archaeologists and their crew. Declan stood up, removing the bandanna from his wind-burned face and using it to wipe his brow.”

“Well, now!” I said, that’s one fine piece of writing! I was dazzled by thoughts of being the world’s newest Arthur C. Clark. I was already going over the movie rights with my agent. For the next few weeks I worked. I was a mad typist (and delete-ist), page after page (of the same page) flew from my mind onto the screen (and back off).  Finally, exhausted and satiated, I viewed my masterpiece in its entirety. I had written 358 words, including the words “chapter” and “1″. Well that’s not entirely true. I had written 16,789 words. But only 358 stuck.

To end what I’m sure is a burning curiosity here are the other 287 words I haven’t already revealed:

Man is it ever a scorcher today,” he exclaimed to his still-kneeling colleague, “What do you suppose it is, 118? 119?”

“All you do is complain about the heat, Declan. It makes me wonder why you chose a profession whose sole purpose is to dig holes in the middle of a desert!’ Branson replied, laughing. “Besides it’s not that bad. We have water, we have shade. And the new fans your company sent for use in the tents work pretty well, all things considered.”

“Yea, well it’s still hot,” he said, smiling. Standing atop a small outcrop of rock, Declan shielded his eyes from the glaring sun and peered out over the dust covered landscape trying to imagine what it must have looked like in ancient times when the whole area was lush, green, and covered with vegetation. A cry from one of the crew brought his attention back to the present.

“We better go see what that’s all about,” he told Branson, jogging off towards the source of the excitement.

The crew’s forman met him halfway there.

“What is it, what did you guys find?”

“I’m not really sure, boss. I haven’t seen anything like it before.”

“Well that’s promising,” Declan said hopefully. “What’s it looke like?”

“It’s only a small shard, but the surface is, well it’s hard to describe. It’s silvery, but extrememly smooth, not like any kind of jewelry we’ve seen. It’s almost mirror-like. It’s got a curved edge and looks like it’s just a piece, broken off of a larger, I dunno, like a disc or something.”

“Is it a colored lens?  We’ve found plenty of sunglasses before.”

“No, sir. It’s perfectly flat.”

“Hmm. that does sound strange. Let’s take a look.”

 

It was around the time that I placed that last quotation mark that I began to realize that I had no interest in where the story was going, how I was going to get there, or what would become of the characters. Intrigued with this newest development I clicked “save” and put the file in a safe place while I contemplated my future as a rich novelist. “Bah!” I said, “Writing isn’t for me. It’s too structured and rule-ridden. I need something that will let me express myself freely, without being bound by society’s chains, chains I say!”

Chapter 2

I once tried to write a song…

In Teenagers We Trust?

Last night my girlfriend and I decided to stop at Coldstone Creamery and get a little ice cream. We, naturally, got the “new girl” as a server. Now I have no problem with getting the trainee, we’ve all been there and done that, but when we tried to pay I had no choice but to be amazed some people manage to remember their way home every night. Our total bill came to $2.62 so, having a pocketful of gold dollar coins, I handed the girl three. She looked down at them, looked at me, and then looked over to her trainer who was helping another customer. After a second or two of inactivity, she looked back at me and said it would be a minute because she had to ask what she was supposed to do with those coins. I just stood there incredulously while my girlfriend politely pointed out that they were simply dollar coins. In the mean time the trainer had made her way to the cash register and confirmed our story saying “Yea, they’re dollars, just hit 3 enter.”  It made me wonder, did she think I had given her some tokens, or pirates gold? What exactly did she think those coins, engraved with George Washington, the Statue of Liberty, and a big $1, were?

I accept that many people might not have gotten their hands on some of these coins yet (they are the only coin stocked in our change machine at work, put in $5 and get 5 shiny new gold dollars) but somebody should certainly be able to ascertain whether a coin is legal tender or not. If it’s the first time you’ve been handed one I could understand marveling at them for a minute, as I did the first time I got a stack of 20 from the change machine. But having their presence bring you to a complete stop until you could get direction on how to proceed? That’s bordering on the ridiculous. And I won’t even go into the details of her attempt to make change other than to say the $.38 she tried to give me did not involve quarters. I feel bad for the trainer; hopefully they have plenty of patience.

Interesting Astronomy Facts

The 200-inch mirror for the telescope on Palomar Mountain weights over 14 tons and is 27-inches thick. The telescope gathers 640,000 times as much light as the human eye.

If there were a bathtub big enough, Saturn would float in the water.

If a marshmallow were dropped from a foot above the surface of a neutron star it would have the energy of a modern atomic bomb

The star Betelgeuse is so large that if it were placed where our sun is, the surface would be just over half way to Jupiter .

The reason Venus is so bright is because the clouds are so dense that light bounces off them, making Venus appear bright to us on Earth

Suburu is Japanese for “Pleiades” (the official name of the constellation nicknamed The Seven Sisters).  Next time you see a Suburu, take a little closer look at the emblem, you’ll see it has 7 stars.

There are over a billion asteroids in our solar system of a diameter of 100 meters or more.

The largest known crater, the Chixulub crater in Mexico is 112 miles (180 km) across and is believed to have been caused by the asteroid that caused the dinosaur extinction 65 millions years ago.

The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was over 6 miles long, taller than Mount Everest. For scale, 6 miles is 31,686 feet. Airplanes typically fly at 30,000 feet.

Humans can only see roughly 4,000 stars with the unaided eye

Every star you can see in the sky with your unaided eye is part of the Milky Way Galaxy.

The North Star, Polaris, is NOT the brightest star in the sky, that title belongs to Sirius.

Polaris will not always be the North Star. The Earth wobbles on its axis, just like a spinning top, every 23,000 years. This wobble is called precession and at the end of our current precession the Earth’s northern axis will be pointed at the star Vega.

My Life With Scopophobia

Have you ever had the feeling that somebody is looking at you? You look around and see nobody, but you just knowyou’re being watched? That’s how scopophobia feels every minute of every day.

For most of my life I’ve felt like I was always being watched. It isn’t a malicious feeling, I don’t feel like “whoever” is watching me is trying to harm me, or spy on me, or that they even care about me. I don’t think they are judging my actions, or my body, or my house, or my hair, or the fact that I’m not wearing shoes. It’s just that they are looking at me. Right now, from somewhere.

For a long time I didn’t recognize this disorder as anything but “normal”, but a couple years ago, when I moved into a new house that had a lot of windows (and very few window coverings), I began to realize that there was no room in my house in which I felt like I could relax. Even though I lived alone, I didn’t feel comfortable even changing my clothes unless I was in the bathroom or bedroom, with the blinds drawn. When I cooked dinner I felt like there was somebody right outside the window, or in the house next door looking out his window into my kitchen, watching me cook. Again, I never felt scared, they were just watching.

Most days, the feeling is mild and barely noticeable. When I’m at my desk at work, it’s the people outside my window, or in the apartments across the street, that are watching me, even though my building has mirrored glass that you can’t see into from outside. It might also be the hidden security cameras, even though there aren’t any. When I’m in my car, it’s everybody. People may be watching the road when I glance at them, but as soon as I turn away they are looking at me. Even the person in the car in front of me is watching me in his rear-view mirror. On most days this “attention” is normal and I barely notice it.

Sometimes, though, the feeling is worse. Not the intent of the “watchers”, they are still harmless and peaceful, but the number of watchers and the amount of attention they are giving me sometimes gets intense. On these days I have a strong desire to retreat into a nice, windowless room, undetectable by anybody. I think of the movies I’ve seen where some filthy rich person has a hidden panic room. From the outside you can’t even tell there is a room, but inside, the owner sits and watches the world go by on video screens while in perfect seclusion. Even then, I couldn’t be sure the contractors that built the panic room didn’t install a hidden camera that was currently watching me hide. So burying myself under, oh, a pile of rags or towels while inside the panic room, that might do it.

As you might imagine, this feeling can get frustrating. I get tired of being on display at all times, in all scenarios, without even being able to imagine a time when I would be 100% sure nobody was watching me. However, for me, it’s not debilitating. Even though it’s annoying, it doesn’t reallyprevent me from doing anything I want to do. OK maybe I can’t skinny dip in my hot tub when it’s anything but pitch dark night, but I would probably refrain even without my disorder. My neighbors to the rear have a two story house after all. For the most part, though, I’m fully functional. Hopefully I always will be.