Last evening the sky was littered with tumbling and blowing clouds, thwarting my aspirations for further astrophotography. So I did the next best thing, I stayed in, curled on the couch, reading an e-book about symmetry and group theory. Before bedtime, I got as far as starting to read about quantum mechanics and the beginnings of links to mathematical investigations of group theory. Among other luminaries, I read about Heisenberg and Dirac and for some reason I took particular note of their dates of death.

Heisenberg died in 1974, and Dirac in 1984. I suspect I noted these dates because they overlap with my own mortal span. I found myself wondering if I had heard the news stories of their passing, or had ever taken note of them during that brief time when our consciousnesses coincided. Even though I had just begun college with Dirac passed, I’m fairly certain that I did not consider him. Later passings, such as Phillip Morrison, Hans Bethe, Richard Feynman and John A. Wheeler were noteworthy and sad to me. It made me wonder who I was as a youth, that I should have missed a moment of grief for Heisenberg and Dirac. I certainly knew some physics by the time Dirac died. I was probably, as is typical of youth, busy being self-centered.

And then, last night, I dreamed of Carl Sagan. I do that occasionally. He and the band Rush seem to be the only celebrities who make somewhat regular guest appearances in my dreams.

In this instance, Carl was alive – until the day before. News broke that he had been ill for 15 years and living incognito with his family while constantly battling a necrotizing illness(!!); finally succumbing the day before. In my dream, I was very sad that he had died *again*, and doubly sad that he had not published during the intervening years. I’m sure my dream was instigated by the reading and consequent thinking the evening before, but that did not lessen the dreamtime sadness. Echos of the sadness persist into this morning, along with thoughts that I myself should do more writing.

These are some of the things I have seen today.

From my back patio in a suburb of bustling Chicago.

A mother owl with her chick

The first flowers in my yard

A watchful mother
Owl family in moonlight

I am filled with wonder that such beauty is available

right under my feet,

and up above my head.

And yet, I am only just here. Just home. Just now.

On just another spring day.

Let these stars and things give me pause

to recall there’s nothing trifling or banal…

about just another day.

    M42 – Orion Nebula
(EOS 1D MkIII and 200MM f/1.8×1.5 8sec)

    .The Pleiades

When buying “From Eternity to Here” on Amazon, two books listed at the top of the list look almost identical. The first book, “From Here to Eternity: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time” looks yummy! The next book, “From Here to Eternity: Rediscovering the Ageless Purpose of God” is rather less so. Guess which one I bought by accident. Yuck!

This is a test post from MS-Word 2007. It includes a picture from my Minnesota 2006 vacation.

The recent ruling by the FDA specifying that warning labels are not required on cloned beef has caused angst among some people who don’t understand the process or results of cloning. 

When a plant or animal cell reproduces, a process called “mitosis“, elaborate bio- and micro-chemical processes occur which (far more often than not) lead to the double-helix of the original DNA splitting into two identical halves.  These halves, as they are being ”unzipped” from the helix, are each copied perfectly by enzymes in the cell body.  The result is two flawless copies of the original DNA double helix molecule - each containing half of the original DNA molecule.  Other intracellular “machinery” then facilitates the splitting of remaining cellular components, including the “energy factory” mitochondrea organelles and eventually the “goop” (cytoplasm) in which cellular structures and molecules swim and the cell boundary itself.  When all components have been duplicated and/or split apart, the result is two identical cells. 

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Last night I dragged out the old 7.8″ Konus telescope while it was still daylight. I had just received my laser collumnator (or collimator) from the Santa-like UPS man, who shows up at my door now and then with fun new books and toys.

After figuring out how to turn on the gizmo (the collumnator, not the telescope), I proceeded to nearly burn my eye out with the attendant laser-beam. Seems the mirrors in the telescope do indeed reflect light – even laser light! I lept away from the ramshackle raygun and regrouped…

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