Thomas Hockey's Weblog

November 5, 2009

Marriage Versus Marriage

I may be being charitable. However, I would like to think that at least some of the objection to same-sex marriage (as we saw expressed in various votes that took place this week) simply has to do with a misunderstanding about vocabulary.

In the English language, words may have both common and technical meanings. In our legal system, for example, a marriage is a particular kind of legal contract--like incorporation. The word "marriage" also has special meaning in many of the world's religions.

There are other words that have different meanings within secular society and in religion. Ones that come to mind are: minister, host, elder, and confession. Context normally indicates which meaning is to be used. However, in a civil court, the religious meaning is seldom meant.

No law should ever dictate the use of the word "marriage" by any religious group. As far as I am aware, no (American) law has ever been proposed that would do so. Changes in contract law have been proposed. This is an important distinction.

Would it be easier to discuss this issue if there were two different words available: one used in legal jargon, the other in religious jargon? Perhaps. But it would be folly to try to change the language now. (Remember the outcry when astronomers attempted to alter the meaning of the word "planet"--a far more trivial matter? It didn't stick.) Unlike some languages, English is not dictated by some judicial panel of scholars. It is a fluid language, which changes naturally if at all. So we are left discussing the difference between marriage and marriage.

Any law restricting the contractual definition of marriage would be an infringement of civil rights. The United States has avoided doing this since the days of Jim Crow. On the other hand, any law restricting the religious meaning of marriage would be void, ignored, and meaningless. Anxiety about the latter scenario is misplaced.

Posted by hockey at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)

November 2, 2009

Twileech

Just saw the movie Twilight. The book's better, right?

Instead of mace, I think that the heroine should have carried garlic spray. I feel she should have gone with non-blood sucking Native American kid, too. But that's just me.

I'm disappointed to learn that you can see vampires in a mirror. I've been carry a compact (as protection!) for years.

Here's my idea for a motion-picture script: A teenage girl falls in love with a handsome heroin addict. (A-ha, better yet--he comes from a whole family of heroin addicts.) As a token of his affection, he promises her that he'll try to resist mugging her for drug money. She asks him to make her a heroin addict, but he resists. For now. Great angst.

I've got the formula down, right? Oh. I'm told that heroin addicts are not mythological. Too bad.

Posted by hockey at 11:32 PM | Comments (0)

October 26, 2009

New Scary Halloween Costumes for 2009

Bernie Madoff - He doesn't need it, but he'll rob your money anyway.

Richard Heene - Balloon Boy's father

Afghan President Hamid Karzai - He'll steal an election under the eyes of the whole world.

Kanye West - habitual interrupter

Glenn Beck -can dish it out, but can't' take it

(former) AIG CEO Maurice Greenberg - He'll cost you billions.

Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio - tengo miedo

Kim Jong-il - "Dear Leader"

Dick Cheney - a leftover from past Halloweens

sleeping airline pilot

Posted by hockey at 10:24 AM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2009

Chair's Column Published in HAD News 75

I mourn the death of cultural astronomer and historian John David North (1934-2008). He was a hero of mine.

North was interested in everything from archaeoastronomy to medieval astronomy to modern astrophysics. He was a generalist, something to which I have aspired to be.
This probably is not the way to build a career in the history of astronomy. Like most other disciplines, the best move is to specialize in a narrow period, place, or topic. However, I have never been able to do that.

Apparently, neither could North. Yet he became chair of the Department of History of Philosophy and Exact Sciences at the University of Groningen and later a Dean. Outside that prestigious institution he perhaps is known best for his Cosmos: An Illustrated History of Astronomy and Cosmology (2008), which I consider to be superior to the Cambridge Illustrated History of Astronomy.

Not that I agreed with everything North did. I think that his book on Stonehenge is bizarre. Yet its emphasis on three-dimensional interpretation of archaeological sites got me to think, if only in rebuttal. And, to me, that is the hallmark of a darn good book.

I never met John North, last of the generalists. He did not travel much, and I do not get to Europe often. I do expect to one day meet his legacy—his students.

Posted by hockey at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)

October 12, 2009

Thinking About All the Scenerios

Student's at my wife's Preschool are being taught emergency preparedness. They learn that, in case of a tornado, they are to seek refuge inside their school building. In case of fire, they are to evacuate the building. One four-year-old raised his hand and asked, "What if there is a fire during a tornado?"

Now that's the guy I want in charge of Homeland Security.

Posted by hockey at 11:42 AM | Comments (0)

October 2, 2009

The 50 Best Paul McCartney Songs (In My Opinion)

All My Loving
Another Day
Back in the U.S.S.R.
Band on the Run
Blackbird
C Moon
Can't Buy Me Love
Carry That Weight
Coming Up
Eleanor Rigby
Fixing a Hole
Get Back
Golden Slumbers
Good Day Sunshine
Got to Get You into My Life
Helen Wheels
Hello, Goodbye
Helter Skelter
Her Majesty
Here, There and Everywhere
Hey Jude
I Saw Her Standing There
Jet
Junior's Farm
Let 'Em In
Let It Be
Let Me Roll It
Listen to What the Man Said
Live and Let Die
Love Me Do
Magneto and Titanium Man
Maybe I'm Amazed
Mrs Vandebilt
Mull of Kintyre
My Brave Face
My Love
Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five
No More Lonely Nights
Pipes of Peace
P. S. I Love You
Rocky Raccoon
Say Say Say
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Silly Love Songs
Spies Like Us
Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey
Venus and Mars/Rock Show
We Can Work It Out
With a Little Luck
Wonderful Christmastime
Yesterday

Posted by hockey at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)

September 29, 2009

Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) for Academic Departments

[Recently, we were asked by the administration to prepare a plan for how we would maintain our classes in the face of an "emergency that might result in the inability to use the physical facilities of the university." No specifics were provided. - TH]

Students will assemble at the crater. (Dr. Potter, bring the Geiger.) We will then proceed to a stream bed where we can pull up pieces of slate. From there we will travel to a limestone quarry to collect chalk.

Graphite from an old coal mine will be smeared on sharp sticks. Wood debris—there will be a lot of this—will be shaved and made damp with non-potable water. The resulting slurry will be spread over lattice works of twigs and left to dry. Natural berry dye will be added to the resulting Blue Books.

After killing a light-furred animal, we will stretch the hide over a wall. (Note: find intact wall.) A nearby smoldering ruin will provide light so that the instructor may make shadow puppets appear. We will call this a PowerlessPoint Presentation.

Once class begins, faculty not responsible for the lesson will hum quietly behind the students--thereby simulating the ear buds that the students are used to wearing during lecture. Teaching faculty may omit the obligatory, “Class, please turn your cell phones off, it’s time to begin.” A “No Food or Drink” sign probably will not be necessary. If a student asks about parking stickers, slap him across the face.

Posted by hockey at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)

September 24, 2009

Receiving Chairmanship of AAS Historical Astronomy Division

Notice that the gavel is really a mallet. German speakers will note the pun within the text on the plaque I'm being handed. (Photo by Joe Tenn)

Posted by hockey at 2:23 PM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2009

Purple Panthers

The University of Northern Iowa’s mascot is the Panther. When we were Iowa State Teachers’ College, we were known as the Teachers. However, I imagine that the “fighting teachers” didn’t sound right.

“The Panthers,” on the other hand, sounds as if it was pulled at random, out of a book called Inoffensive Team Names for Dummies. It is a very commonplace name. A Google search of panther+sports yields twenty million hits. Moreover, the panther has little to do with Iowa—and vice versa.

How about replacing it with something more novel? More local? Like the UNI Soybean Aphids? Now, those critters are fierce! Or the UNI Crop Dusters? Those daredevil pilots who defend us against—well—the aphids, I suppose. Or the one thing that Iowa is known for nationally? No, not gay marriage; I haven’t figure out a way to fit that into a sports franchise. I mean the Northern Iowa Caucusers.

I don’t expect any of my suggestions to get much traction. After all, they just spent money erecting a statue of a panther in front of the Student Union. The statue is meant to evoke action, but to me it looks like a cat peeing.

Posted by hockey at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)

September 21, 2009

Iowa: We're the Food Folk

I drove my mother-in-law to O’Hare Airport yesterday. It’s harvest season. The coincidence caused me to realize: Where else on Earth, within just an hour’s drive from home, can one see soybeans, corn, hogs, cattle (dairy and beef), and goats—all these important food commodities in one place? Yes, soy beans. Look through the labels in the grocery store, and try to find a processed food without them. (As for the goats, they are a niche market in the USA, but significant globally.)

There are a few chickens here and there, as well. You even can spot horses. We don’t eat them, but they still are used here and there in the production of the list above.

Occasionally you can spy, running between the fields, turkey, pheasant, and deer. Invisible from the car, the trees along the rivers nonetheless shade mushrooms. Berries and rhubarb grow wild, too.

Is that an apple orchard in the distance? Or is it a pumpkin patch?

And what was I eating as I pondered this plenitude around me? A banana. You see, Iowa also grows Wal-Marts.

Posted by hockey at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)

September 17, 2009

My Favorite Ad of the Week

Advertisements succeed or fail on the effectiveness of their "tag line." Is it memorable? Does it cause the reader to read further? I loved this quirky tag line for a dating site that caters to the scientific crowd:

"Feel like an unpaired electron?"

[Physics Today September 2009]

Cute yet nerdy. Talk about targeting your audience!

Posted by hockey at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)

September 10, 2009

Latham Hall Purple

Posted by hockey at 1:21 PM | Comments (0)

September 9, 2009

Arthur A. Hockey

[We recently put my father's WWII uniform in one of the Design
Department's empty display cases. - TH]

Arthur A Hockey’s (1906-1976) father, Alfred, immigrated
to a farm near Barnes City, Iowa, from England. Arthur
Hockey graduated from Iowa State Teachers’ College
(now UNI) in 1928. His degree was in Industrial Arts
Teaching, a program later housed in Latham Hall.
Hockey went on to obtain a Master’s Degree from the
University of Iowa. He taught, and served as principal,
at several Iowa secondary schools.

Upon the outbreak of war, Hockey enlisted in the United
States Navy and earned the rank of Lieutenant. His
assignment was to teach meteorology to naval aviators.
Thus, he likely is to have been one of the first meteorology
instructors from Iowa.

Hockey’s uniform is displayed here. The label reads
“Bremer’s, Iowa City.” The table of logarithms in the
pocket was compiled by a professor at Iowa State College
(now ISU).

The textbooks are those from which Hockey taught. The
slide rule provides all the functions now incorporated into
an (electronic) scientific calculator. The “playing cards”
are in fact teaching tools and identify friendly and enemy
aircraft by their silhouettes. The small ship models are to
help pilots recognize vessels from above.

After World War II, Hockey was a professor of mathematics,
and chair of the Mathematics Department,
at Tri-State College in Indiana. He retired in 1971. His
widow lives in Cedar Falls.

Posted by hockey at 3:49 PM | Comments (0)

August 31, 2009

Golf on the Tube: Even Duller Than Golf Itself

I'm one of millions of Americans for whom digital TV equals fewer, not more, stations. My satellite dish is upstairs, but my exercise bike is in the basement.

I got on my bike late yesterday. It was a Sunday afternoon in August. So that meant--to my horror--golf on television.

To me, watching golf on TV is one of the warning signs of major depression. However, I convinced myself that I was not watching golf--golf was the background noise to my exercise bicycle. I rationalized and "clicked."

And what did I see? Well, golf. It was the commentary that disturbed me. A professional golfer would hit the ball to within a few feet of the hole, and the announcer would say something like, "That will give Tiger a birdie."

How does the soft-voiced analyst know? The golfer could miss his next (easy) shot. Or he suddenly could need to expel a kidney stone. Or something else. Golf commentators are not really prescient. With the present so boring, they are forced to predict the future.

Golf on television. It is a futile existential exercise. Next time, I'm going with the infomercial.

Posted by hockey at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)

August 26, 2009

Last Spring's Students at Work in the Field

Posted by hockey at 2:31 PM | Comments (0)

August 24, 2009

Word of the Day

The smell of school starting is in the air! To get those noodles ticking, here's a puzzle:

Name an English word that uses all the vowels (A-O plus Y) but contains no more syllables than the number of (different) vowels.

I have an answer in mind. (Click "Continue reading.") Can you top me by thinking of a shorter word?

HINT: My word has special anniversary significance in 2009.

Continue reading "Word of the Day"

Posted by hockey at 10:06 AM | Comments (1)

August 21, 2009

A Message in Granite

Above the entrance to one of our campus buildings is inscribed the words, "Do not do what is already done." I know: It sounds odd, but it's really a quote from Roman playwright Torence. Probably sounds better in Latin.

As this building now houses our Computer Science Department, I decided to update the quote for a modern visitor. Here it is--

10 N=0
20 N=N+1
30 if N = 1 goto 20
40 end

So if you get it, you are in the right place!

Posted by hockey at 5:31 PM | Comments (0)

August 13, 2009

I Amend the U. S. Constitution

The vote for President cast by an Alaskan counts three times the vote of, say, a Californian. Some have come to doubt the electoral judgment of Alaskans lately. (Just kidding!) Regardless, now is as good a time as any to bring the Constitution into the twenty-first century.

Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 1, of the US Constitution reads:

"The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice-President chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:"

It should be changed to:

"The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years. The President and Vice-President shall each be elected by vote of the citizens of the United States."

And then delete the next three paragraphs--along with the now superfluous Twelfth and Twenty-third Amendments.

These changes get rid of all that Electoral College nonsense and enfranchise over four million Americans. Plus, making them saves ink.

Posted by hockey at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)

August 10, 2009

In Case You Need To Spell My Name in Chinese

作者

Hockey, Thomas A

Posted by hockey at 3:17 PM | Comments (0)

August 1, 2009

Happy Birthday, Mom

We just celebrated my mother's eight-ninth birthday. We were grateful that her sister, who lives just ninety miles away, was able to be with us for the party.

After many years in which my mom and I (only child) lived far apart, in different states--starting when I went off to college--she moved to my home town six years ago. I know: She's the only retiree in American to move from Arizona to Iowa! However, now we're in the pleasant (and increasingly unusual) situation of three generations all residing within blocks of each other.

My mom is the only woman her age that I know who still is living in her own home. (It's a condo.) We're very thankful. She also drives her own car, but admits that's she's not likely to buy a new one!

Posted by hockey at 1:02 PM | Comments (0)

July 24, 2009

"Imagine the Impact"

I would like to nominate my university's tag line (above) for the silliest capitol-campaign-slogan award:

Imagine the impact? . . . . splat.

Posted by hockey at 9:16 AM | Comments (0)

July 22, 2009

The Provenance of Power on Earth is Often Considered to be the Sky

So much hoopla about the fortieth anniversary of the first Moon landing! How remarkable it is that governments, such as those of the United States and Soviet Union, undertook an expensive and dangerous “space race.” Parades are a far cheaper way to show off military hardware.

Yet historically, it all makes perfect sense. For longer than humans can remember, power derived from the sky, or the demonstrated power to predict the behavior of the sky, has legitimized political power on Earth. This can be extrapolated to include venturing into the sky. A government that has mastered the sky has the “right” to govern on Earth.

And so it continues. Throngs of people in India and China live in desperate poverty. The leaders of these countries are not stupid; they know this. Still, they are tempted to divert resources toward sending Indians and Chinese to the Moon. Why?

The tomb of Qin, the emperor who united China two thousand years ago, is purported to include a large, detailed model of Qin’s palace. This might be expected. However, hanging above this re-creation is said to be a remarkable map of the heavens. Whether they have fully thought it out or not, the oligarchs of today’s People’s Republic of China are trying to fulfill Qin’s destiny.

Posted by hockey at 9:52 AM | Comments (0)

July 16, 2009

Astronomers Lost in the Fog

One of my students in the Cultural Astronomy Summer School kindly sent me this photograph of our field trip to the Mount Wilson Observatory. I love the irony that this is a solar observatory.

Posted by hockey at 11:53 AM | Comments (0)

July 14, 2009

And the Sound of the Chainsaw Was Heard in Our Land

This week, Black Hawk County, Iowa, was hit with a downburst, an unusual wind storm that felled large trees and knocked out power to eight-thousand residents. Buildings were broken, cars were destroyed.

In the last eighteen months, we have experienced: flood, tornado, lightning-strike fire, near blizzard conditions, hail damage, ice storm, heat alert, and record cold. Can frogs and snakes be far behind?

Posted by hockey at 1:34 PM | Comments (0)

July 13, 2009

Script #9

[A version of this script was broadcast Saturday, on Public Radio's StarDate, and now appears as an audio file at WWW.StarDate.org. - TH]

During the first part of the twentieth century, looking at our own Solar System no longer was thought to be “cool” among professional astronomers. With new, large telescopes, they were busy studying much-more-distant and faint stars and galaxies. Greek astronomer J. H. Focas was certainly not “cool.” With his small telescope at the Athens Observatory, he was limited to observing the bright, nearby planets. What is more, he did so visually and wrote down what he saw. By then, most astronomers already had given up looking through their instruments at all! Photography and electrical devices were considered more sensitive and more accurate than the human eye.

However, by the middle of the century, the new technology of rocketry promised the possibility of not merely peering at the planets, but actually visiting them! To prepare the way, these worlds needed to be examined from the Earth anew. The Solar System once again was fashionable. But who was an expert in this (until recently) antiquated field of astronomy? Still toiling in obscurity, J. H. Focas knew planets. In the 1960s, when NASA needed help getting ready to send space probes to Mars, it was he to whom they turned. In appreciation, craters on both the Moon and Mars are named for him.

In the words of a French colleague, “Focas without a telescope would have been like Chopin without a piano.” This July we celebrate the one-hundredth birthday of the last of the great visual observers.

Posted by hockey at 9:50 AM | Comments (0)

June 26, 2009

The Day the 1970s Died

The 1970s are dead. They had been on life support for some time. The end came in June 2009, with the death of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Less publicized was the demise, on 6 June, of Bernard Leon Barker, one of the Watergate burglars. If you did not have a picture of at least one of these people on your wall, you were not part of the 1970s.

Posted by hockey at 10:07 AM | Comments (1)

June 15, 2009

Mayan Mischief

There is a rumor going around that the Mayan calendar will end in December 2012 and with it so will the world! While it is unclear to me why the ancient Mayan calendar should govern the fate of the whole world, it is true that that calendar consists of nested cycles. The last combination in one of these arrives in 2012.

But let’s think about this for a moment: Our calendar consists of nested cycles. We count through the days of the month, only to repeat the count again the next month, and the next, until we have gone through twelve months. And then . . . the world ends? No! We start the pattern over again.

There is no good evidence that the Mayans intended anything to happen at the end of their Cycle 13 other than starting over again with, say, Cycle 14. I can imagine a nineth-century Mayan patiently explaining this to one of our twenty-first-century doom criers who “doesn’t quite get it.”

The End of the World sells books. We saw this at the turn of the Millennium. So it is perhaps no surprise that they are at it again so soon.

The world likely will not end on 21 December 2012. Or any other particular day. I can say this with the same confidence with which I know that the ball likely will not fall at number seven on a roulette wheel.

How comfortable it must be to “know” the future! Alas, apocalyptic forecasters will have to soldier on with the rest of us: taking each new day as it comes.

Posted by hockey at 1:01 PM | Comments (0)

June 5, 2009

Our Ancestors and the Sky

It is not unreasonable to think of things that move as having intent, that is, intelligence. We move, and we have will. When we stop moving, we’re dead! Animals, wind, rain, fire, the stars—all were mobile and were assumed to be self conscious in animistic belief systems.

Indeed, the stars have more claim than most: Their motion is steadfast, unwavering. They possess a certainty of action we can only wish for down here on the Earth, where life is contingent on a thousand things. Stars populate the heavens, a place to which humans could not ascend (without supernatural means). And the stars constantly give off precious light (at night), while all earthly fires eventually are extinguished. What power!

Especially worthy of deification were the planets. These “stars” were bright, and they were rare: Only five are visible to the naked eye, compared to thousands of (regular) stars. The planets were “stars” that possessed an even greater quality of motion because they did not stay fixed in constellation patterns, but rather wandered through the other stars.

I have not even addressed the unique Sun and Moon, which have tangible effect on us below. (The Sun provides life-giving warmth; the Moon regulates the tides.) Not only do these luminaries chase away the dark, but anybody easily can see that all of life on the Earth responds to the Sun’s rays. The Sun might be the most powerful god. The logic of it all is inescapable.

Posted by hockey at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)

June 4, 2009

A Question for the Department of Homeland Security

One of the questions asked of newcomers to the United States is, “Have you ever been a prostitute?” Why is this odd query still on the form? Once it might have been thought of as a matter of public health; yet there is nothing along the lines of “Have you ever been an intravenous drug user?”

I am not moralizing. I just want to understand the logic. Neither does the form ask, say, “Have you ever raised opium poppies?” This is an act acceptable in many places, but most illegal in the USA. For that matter, prostitution is lawful in some places within the borders of our great country. So the prostitution question does not seem to be legally based. (Unless we only want domestic prostitutes.) Hey, what if no money is exchanged?

Does the question address character? The “ever been” is problematic. A former call girl, now an eighty-year-old nun living in a convent, may wish to visit the United States. An honest answer to the question does not tell us much about that person at all.

I wonder whether anyone has responded thusly: “No. However, I hope to become one after I immigrate.” The form only asks for further explanation if the answer is “yes” . . .

Posted by hockey at 10:44 AM | Comments (1)

June 2, 2009

Polynesian Astronomy

[A journalist recently asked me to respond to a series of questions. - TH]

1. Before the ancients started traveling far distances across the ocean, what was the world-view of Polynesians? Did they think the Earth ended at a certain location? Were the islands and the stars above the whole universe?

A: The Polynesians imagined a layered Universe, concentric domes of sky over the Earth. With a beckoning ocean all around them, the Polynesians likely thought of the Universe as boundless. Unencumbered by the Pre-Socratic Greek models we were, they may not have shared our “worry” about falling off the edge of the world.

2. How did ancient people travel from island to island before using the stars? (only along the coast)

A: They may always have used the stars! But certainly, within sight of land, landmarks are helpful. For instance, you can see the clouds that often form over a mountainous island, still far out at sea—even when you cannot yet see the island itself. Ancient navigators also may have used changing wave patterns as an indicator that they were approaching shallower ocean and, hence, land.

Birds are fascinating: Our navigators probably knew that certain species travel certain distances from shore. Therefore, the first appearance of a bird, of a given species, indicates distance from land.

3. What were the dangers of traveling on the ocean before people studied the stars and used them to navigate? What would happen if a traveler were to get so far out in the ocean that no landmarks were visible? Any legends/stories of how many of the first explorers were lost at sea?

A: Dangers were many. Storms. Capsizing. Yet also starvation. Those who were lost--alas, how would we know what happened to them? No legends that I know of speak about this . . . I think that we humans try not to dwell on such things.

4. When did people in the Polynesian area first start navigating by using the stars? (500 years ago or more?)

A: Long distance voyages had ceased by the time Captain Cook et al. encountered the Polynesians. The exact methods used are lost to time. We have partial knowledge: stories passed down generation to generation and cultural analogy with other Pacific peoples who still sail between islands (though not as far).

With the possible exception of prevailing winds, the sky is the only reference in the middle of the ocean. And it is more trustworthy. I believe that celestial navigation is very, very old.

5. What are the basic steps of wayfinding? What do you need to know?

A: You need to know your destination, and you need to know the direction in which you are traveling. The Polynesians may have used different techniques to accomplish these two tasks.

6. Did the ancients use constellations or patterns? What stories were associated with the patterns/constellations?

A: Yes. The stories often were rather risqué by our standards! An important one, though, is straightforward: The demigod Maui pulled up the Hawaiian Islands from the sea using a fish hook that now resides in our modern constellation of Scorpius. (It’s the tail of the scorpion, and does look a lot like a fishhook.)

7. What is a star chart? Are their artifacts of original star charts or did people memorize the stars and was the information passed down through storytelling?

A: Some island peoples use star charts, but we don’t have artifacts of such for the Polynesians. Even these star charts were not necessarily dots on paper. We still see “stone canoes,” on land, sitting in which a student of navigation could watch rising and setting stars behind foresight markers.

There are intriguing reports of Polynesians creating a navigational instrument out of a gourd. (A gourd is roughly spherical, like a celestial sphere.) The gourd had sighting holes bored through it. Level was maintained by partly filling the gourd with water and watching the water’s surface. However, nobody has been able to come up with a practical application of this “instrument.”

8. How are the cardinal directions and wind connected to the star chart and/or wayfinding?

A: The Sun is always useful for finding direction. However, what about at night?

In temperate latitudes, the paths of rising and setting stars appear to intersect the horizon at a diagonal. Thus, the azimuth of the stars is time dependent. In the Tropics, though, the paths of rising and setting stars are more-or-less perpendicular to the horizon. If such a star sets in, say, the southwest, it will unambiguously mark the direction of southwest for a savvy navigator. Enough such stars scattered around the horizon will form a compass.

But a given star may not be rising or setting when you need it! It may be high in the sky, below the horizon, or (at certain times of year) obscured by the Sun. So if you want to make, for example, eight compass points, you need many more stars than that—a number such that you are guaranteed that a compass star will be near your nighttime horizon when you require it. I’m thinking at least thirty!

Now the other part of wayfinding: knowing your destination. Here the Polynesians got lucky. During the Polynesian diaspora, it happened that some bright stars passed through the zenith over the islands which the sailors travel to and from. This means that these stars could be used to establish when a vessel had reached the latitude for its port of call. Once this was accomplished, the sailors need only have ridden the prevailing winds—outrigger canoes were well suited to sailing into the wind—due East or West toward their destination.

9. What happens if it’s cloudy and you can’t see the sun or stars? Did the ancients know single stars from color variation or location during the time of year?

A: Yes, being able to see just a single star (through a hole in the clouds?) is tricky. However, the navigator might have tried it. It no doubt would have made the Polynesians more comfortable to be able to see at least two navigational stars, one in their direction of travel and another confirmatory one in the direction whence they came.

10. Before weather prediction, what are the dangers of setting sail when it’s clear and then clouds roll in?

A: Great. Some climatologists say that the weather in the Pacific was better during the age of Polynesian expansion. Of course, being becalmed in clear weather can be just as dangerous.

11. How did traveling the oceans change the Polynesian’s worldview? What were their religious/spiritual beliefs before and after? What did Polynesians believe the stars were? (gods, places?)

A: The Polynesian religion was animistic, and the objects in the sky played a role. Humans originally came from the sky, not an unfamiliar idea to our western ears. Stars were intelligent beings. Particularly important to the Polynesians was the cluster of stars we know as the Pleiades.

As for change before and after colonization, I suppose we’ll never know. Even if you compare the cultures of the Polynesians and the Asian people with whom they share a common ancestor, doing so is problematic. The motives of the first western visitors to Polynesia and elsewhere were far from those of today’s anthropologists. Contemporary Polynesians (and other indigenous peoples) have been so affected by invading cultures, that using modern informants has failed to answer many questions about pre-contact Polynesian culture. Except for some enigmatic script on Easter Island, the Polynesians appear to have been pre-literate.

12. Did ancient Polynesians use the stars for anything other than wayfinding? (Planting crops, spiritual astrology?)

A: Oh yes. The sky was used as an agricultural and ceremonial calendar. As in most tropical climates, the year was not all that important. (There were just two seasons: wet and dry.) The month was, though. No only did the Polynesians have names for the individual months, but they had names for the days of the month, distinguished by the phase (shape) of the illuminated Moon and its rising and setting times. Apparently, certain days of the month were auspicious for planting.

13. What do you think about GPS and people’s dependence on computers? How are GPS still connected to the stars?

A: GPS is nothing more than the creation of artificial stars. We “see” these stars via radio waves, not light, but the idea is much the same.

14. Why is it still important to know how to navigate without instruments today?

A: Instruments malfunction. Radio communication can break down due to solar interference. GPS might be shut off! I hope that every ship’s navigator knows that, if worst comes to worst, he or she can hold an outstretched hand up to the North Star and come up with a crude latitude . . .

Posted by hockey at 1:51 PM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2009

Git Along L'l Reptile

Iowa is well known for its cattle. Most people associate hogs and Iowa. However, did you know that Iowa is second in the nation for its number of turtle farms?

No, milking turtles doesn't work out very well. The eggs don't fry sunny-side-up nicely, either. These snapping turtles are raised for their meat. The major market is Asia. Can't you just picture Iowa hatchling-boys driving a bale of turtles across the prairie . . . er, pond? And, yes, a bunch of turtles is called a "bale"--I looked it up.

Unfortunately, further research has failed to answer several key questions: Do you brand turtles? Or do you just spray paint them? Are there ranch hands on a turtle farm? If so, why? Do turtles ever stampede? How would you know? Is barbed wire of any particular use on a turtle farm? Has anybody ever been charged by a raging turtle? Who won? My attempt to find a turtle farm that offers tours did not succeed.

Turtle farming? Don't knock it. Nobody ever came down with the Turtle Flu.

Posted by hockey at 9:20 AM | Comments (0)

May 18, 2009

Obama's War, et al.

It is well known that I am a Barack Obama supporter. Yet it seems only fair that I keep the Obama administration under the same scrutiny I applied to its predecessor.

And this has been a bad month in Obama foreign policy: As I see it, there have been four major screw ups, and the month’s only half-way completed.

First, Obama decided to try the Somali pirate captured by the US Navy in the USA. This will result in a circus. The ship on which the attack was made was headed to Kenya, a reasonably stable country capable of trying the man—even fairly. This should have started and ended in Africa.

Second, Obama waffled on release of the remaining Abu Ghraib photographs. Nobody ever said they all had to be made public. Or that they could not be edited (to make individuals unrecognizable) or captioned. (Context demands that it be made clear where and when these photographs were taken, and what happened to the—albeit few—abuse perpetrators who were punished.) However, the ACLU won access to the pictures in court. Handing them over will be a painful expose, but one necessary for the healing process. If we renege now, after so much publicity about the images, it will send to the world this message about us: Business as Usual—Deny and Cover Up.

Third, Obama will not prohibit the Bush-esque tools of extraordinary rendition, military tribunals, and indefinite detention. If these procedures were illegal then, they are illegal now.

Fourth, the latest American troops for Afghanistan have shipped out. This officially becomes Obama’s War. Bush never gave a damn about Afghanistan. That administration’s gaze always was on Iraq. When every other NATO country declined to pursue greater military operations in Afghanistan, it should have been Obama’s cue. It wasn’t.

As I write this, the President is meeting with the new Israeli Prime Minister. Matters of State in May can only look up. Where’s Hilary, anyway?

Posted by hockey at 4:54 PM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2009

Computer Dinner Etiquette

I have coined a new term:

"laptop table dancing"

Laptop table dancing occurs during casual dinnertime conversation, when somebody whips out a laptop to extract obscure information. Laptop table dancing is considered rude in some parts.

Remember, you heard it here first.

Posted by hockey at 9:35 AM | Comments (0)

May 11, 2009

Memos Never Sent

Dear Program Assessment Task Force,

. . . . The implication is that your recommendations for us might be stronger had you had at your disposal data organized by program. We regret this error. Our confusion was due to the fact that there is, to our knowledge, no standardized definition of the word “program” in use at UNI. Sometimes it means creative activity and scholarly research (e. g., the Office of Sponsored Programs). Sometimes it means a template describing which class a student is to take in a given semester (e. g., Program of Study). Sometimes it refers to a non-departmental entity (e. g., Cultural and Intensive English Program). Sometimes it signifies the level of academic work as opposed to discipline (e. g., the phrase “graduate programs and majors.”) Sometimes it refers to a service provided (e. g., diploma replacement program). And sometimes it is a document handed out at the Performing Arts Center.

With many definitions to choose from, we believed that context and limited text space required the broadest possible use of the term: a self-assessment of the program of activities within the Earth Science Department. It is clear now that we should have taken the word “program” as a synonym for “major.”

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May 5, 2009

The Big Sleep

Headline at my university today:

"On April 30 the Board of Regents approved UNI's Early Retirement Incentive Program (ERIP)."

Yep. That's really what they're calling it--E RIP. How can I compete with comedy like this?

Posted by hockey at 8:47 AM | Comments (0)

May 4, 2009

Squarepants in Mid-America

Folk we know invited us over last night to watch their volcano.

Imagine that Spongebob and Patrick had emerged onto dry land and become successful businessmen in Cedar Falls, Iowa. That’s my wife’s friend’s husband and his neighbor. Squidworth, a college professor like me, lives next door to them.

Spongbob and Patrick had a problem. There was a large tree stump so close to the private road they share that somebody could easily drive into it. This was no minor stump: We’re talking about a 100-plus-year-old tree, a couple of meters wide and hollow. It still was taller than me.

When my wife and I arrived, it was dusk. Spongebob and Patrick were weaving around in a small, yellow, electric cart, the kind used to dash about faculty floors. They were using this vehicle, dubbed the “Chevy Volt,” to shuttle beer and diesel fuel to the stump site. (Heretofore, I had thought that these two liquids should be kept separate.) They proceeded to dump a bucket of diesel onto the already burning stump. The resulting fireball and column of black smoke likely was visible from Wisconsin. Nevertheless, indeed, what was now left of the tree erupted with flames and ash not unlike a pyroclastic event. Says Patrick to Spongebob: “But now how do we carry more diesel fuel?”

I understand that the raccoon previously living in the tree stump is suing, charging that certain municipal, state, and ATF regulations were violated last night. However, it was a beautiful sight to behold.

And I realized: These two middle-aged men had succeeded where others had failed. They have turned their neighborhood into their own amusement park. I was jealous.

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April 24, 2009

Famous Astronomers

Since I write about famous astronomers from the past, people ask me: Do you know any famous astronomers? Fame is fleeting, but these, I think, will stand the test of time. They are all gone now.

I met Dorrit Hoffleit a long time ago. She was old then! She even sent me a copy of her autobiography, written shortly before her death at age 100. Hoffleit was responsible for the important Yale Bright Star Catalog.

I got a telephone call once from Fred Whipple. I sat in my office chair at attention as we chatted. More than anybody else, he is responsible for our current model of how comets work. He also was originally from Iowa.

James Van Allen was synonymous with astronomy in Iowa. I served on a committee with this University of Iowa professor who is immortalized in the name of the Van Allen Radiation Belts, which he and his team discovered surrounding the Earth.

Visiting the South African Astronomical Observatory, an elderly astronomer offered to show me around. He did. Only later did it sink in that he was Alan Cousins, the esteemed photometrist.

And, of course, there was my friend and teacher, Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of (what will be forever in my mind) the planet Pluto.

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April 14, 2009

They did it for the Money

There is great hoopla in the media about the Navy’s rescue of kidnapping victim Richard Phillips at sea. Yet could there not be one, brief moment of reflection in the press on the three teenagers who were killed in the process?

Four stupid and callous kids bungled an act of piracy on Phillips’s ship. Phillips, the hero of the story, offered himself up as a hostage in exchange for his crew. The object of the attack was the ship. The kidnapping was made up as they went along. Nowhere was idiology involved; they did it for the money.

Why weren’t these young fishermen out fishing? That is the easy one to answer: Their fishing grounds were destroyed by industrialized pollution in the shipping lanes. Who turned these boys into pirates instead? Still easy: Needless to say, it was someone safely on land today. Pirates of the Caribbean are fun, because they’re long since dead. Real pirates are cynical organized crime figures, ones who could not care less if their minions come back dead or alive. What did they promise their employees? Harder. Probably not all that much. The bar is set low in lawless and impoverished Somalia. (The West chased out their last government, admittedly a radical Islamic one.) Was it a better life for their families? Is there any other way? That last one is the most difficult question to answer.

The Navy SEALs were tremendous marksmen—three true shots to the head. A necessary act perhaps. But not one of which to be all that proud. I suspect that the SEALs would agree. They are professional soldiers trained to fight professional soldiers, not the flotsam and jetsam of gang bangers.

Young men think that they will live forever. Piracy will continue off the coast of Somalia until it is no longer lucrative. I am happy for Captain Phillips safe return. I am sad for three grieving mothers. I am mad at the adults who made this all happen.

Posted by hockey at 1:06 PM | Comments (0)

April 13, 2009

Photo and Various Scriblings By Me

http://www.aas.org/had/hadnews/.

Posted by hockey at 2:49 PM | Comments (0)

April 6, 2009

Spring Quiz Answers

1. "Mamma Mia" by ABBA and "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen

2. Trick Question: If you interpret "winds" as something somebody does to a clock, then there are plenty of answers. However, if you interpret it as something that blows across the plains, I have yet to find an answer!

3. Nancy Price, author of Sleeping with the Enemy (1987)

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April 2, 2009

This Spring's Quiz

1. Name two popular songs form the 1970s, the lyrics of which both feature the phrase "Momma Mia!" Hint: The words appear more than once during the song. Both were recorded by European bands, but neither band was Italian!

2. Which English word rhymes with "winds"?

3. What famous novelist used to live in the house next door to me?

Answers to follow--but not right away!

Posted by hockey at 2:12 PM | Comments (0)

March 23, 2009

AIG Cheap!

I was shopping at Goodwill the other day. It was busy! Goodwill is one store I am bound to discover that one thing you cannot buy any place else. This time it was a brand new AIG bag, complete with inscribed slogans about how trustworthy the company is. Cool! Owning a bag advertising what is, right now, the most hated corporation in America. (And there is a lot of competition for that title.)

I passed, though. I realized that the AIG bonus furor is just a fad. Now that the Economic Stimulus is upon us, I predict that there will be I story in the news, of waist and mismanagement ala AIG, every other week. That is just the price of "doing business" when such large sums are handed over to the private sector.

I am not weighing in pro or con on the great experiment that is the Stimulus. I am just saying that the AIG bonuses are a minor side issue: The question remains the Big One: Should we be bailing out corporations deamed "too big to fail"--at all?

Or, if we answer in the affirmative, should we at the same time be asking for seats on the Board, renegotiating contracts, and taking on all the other tasks neccessary to manage where the money goes? Surely the average taxpayer can do as good a job as the highly paid yoy-yos who already have these responsibilities. For what ever fraction of of my tax contribution that goes to AIG, I simply want stock with my name on it. Then we will see who gets a bonus!

As for the immediate uproar, the existing board agreed to guaranteed bonuses. It was in the contract. Get over it. The finger pointing should not be at those AIG employees who got bonuses, it should be at those who commited fraud.

Posted by hockey at 9:28 AM | Comments (0)

March 20, 2009

Egg on their Faces

Can you balance an egg on the equinox? I do not even know where to start with this one. Sometimes I can come up with a piece of history or culture that explains the origin of such strange bromides. Here, though, I am at a loss! It is usually a broadcast weather reporter, with air time to kill, who propagates the myth of balancing eggs upright on the equinox. Nonsense. Of course, it is true: With a steady hand, you can balance an egg on its end—on this date or any other date. (Eggs are not perfectly smooth; I find that secretly crushing the shell a bit at the base “helps.”) There is no physics—no force--that applies at, or differently on, equinox dates that does not also apply on every other day of the year

Posted by hockey at 1:59 PM | Comments (0)

March 16, 2009

Kate Hepburn Would be Proud

Here is a list of popular actresses today.

Kate Bosworth
Kate Beckinsdale
Katie Holmes
Kate Hudson
Cate Blanchette
Kate Winslet

See any pattern?

Posted by hockey at 11:45 AM | Comments (0)

March 12, 2009

I Know: The First 100 Days Aren't Over Yet . . . But Still

After sixty years of the House of Bush (and precious little to show for it), the Republican Party is left without a bench. With three years to go before the primaries, it is hard to see who they might stand against Barrack Obama. When faced with the impossible task of campaigning against Ronald Reagan, the Democrats at least came up with a former Vice President in the person of Walter Mondale. Who is the GOP going to put forward? Dan Quayle? Dick Cheney? I do not think so.

I believe that this scenerio is largely independent of how well Obama does in his first term. The 2008 Republican candidates self-destructed. I think Sarah Palin, like the glaciers before her, will retreat into Alaska and melt. The supposed up-and-comng conservative answer to Obama, Gov. Bobby Jindal, imploded on national TV last week. So we are left with either a semi-familiar-looking figurehead in 2012, or, more interestingly, somebody who, in 2009, we have never heard of.

Does all this seem remarkably premature? I live in Iowa. You can be sure that folk will be here, testing the Presidential waters, as soon as next year!

Posted by hockey at 1:06 PM | Comments (0)

March 10, 2009

Homonyms are Important

Consider the difference between:

"Your toast."

and

"You're toast!"

Poetry would be poorer without homonyms.

"Son, light a fire."

is prosaic:

"sunlight afire."

is literary.

And then there is word order:

"Who hears lies?"

versus

"Who lies here?"

Or, for that matter,

"Here lies Hu."

If the reader cannot tell already, I am sick at home and stuck at this keyboard with little else to do!

Posted by hockey at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)

March 4, 2009

Favorite Student Quote of the Week

Overheard in the Student Lounge:

"How do you abbreviate 'P. O. Box'?"

Posted by hockey at 4:46 PM | Comments (0)

February 25, 2009

Should Have Cleared Speech with Gov. Palin First

REPUBLICAN RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT OBAMA'S ADDRESS TO CONGRESS
24 February 2009

Gov. Bobby Jindal:

"[The Democrat's] legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes . . . $140 million for something called 'volcano monitoring.' Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, DC."

BUT . . .

“Mt. Redoubt volcano, like a ticking bomb, keeps Alaskans on high alert”

- Los Angeles Times headline 2 February 2009

Louisiana Governor Jindal went on to say that hurricane monitoring would be just fine. :)

Posted by hockey at 9:10 AM | Comments (0)

February 24, 2009

The Slivery Moon

Especially because of its significance to the Moslem calendar, it is useful to be able to predict on which evening the first sighting of a waxing crescent Moon will occur. For instance, the ninth Islamic month, Ramadan, is a month of fasting. Without a means of predicting ahead of time, the faithful do not know when to commence or break the fast until the waxing crescent Moon is spotted (by two “trustworthy” individuals, tradition states) only the night before. Different people at different places easily can end up observing the holiday on a different set of days.

However, prediction is harder than it sounds. Lunar visibility is a function of how much light the Moon reflects our way, but whether we can make out that light also is governed by things that control contrast, such as twilight and extinction.

Simply waiting a number of hours past New Moon--twenty-four is a traditional value—does not work. A ten-hour-old Moon on the ecliptic will have nearly the same brightness as a (nearly) zero-hour-old Moon five-degrees away from the ecliptic. The angle between the Sun and Moon is the important variable, but even at a fixed Sun-Moon angle, the width of the lunar crescent varies, depending upon how close the Moon is to the Earth. The interval between sunset and moonset is equally undependable. In fact, there does not appear to be one single parameter that allows prediction of crescent-moon visibility: Some combination of age, lag time between sunset and moonset (or sunrise and moonrise), lunar altitude, Sun-Moon angle, difference in altitude between the Sun and the Moon, difference in azimuth between the Moon and the Sun, and crescent width is required!

Continue reading "The Slivery Moon"

Posted by hockey at 7:37 PM | Comments (0)

February 16, 2009

Cheese Making

[Here is the caption for the photo Yuliana entered in the University Museum's photography contest. She won second place. - TH]

Mongolia, August, 2008

People show great diversity in their approaches to satisfying the universal needs of food and shelter. For nomads on the Mongolian steppe, these become intertwined.

While younger children mind the livestock nearby, a father and daughter dry cheese, called aaruul, on the roof of the family home: a ger (or “yurt”). The cheese, really a curd, is made from (usually) yak milk and set in the Sun for several days. The result is a chalky, acidic product that is a staple of their diet during the hot season.

The ger itself is a lattice of wood, which anchors roof-support poles tied to a central post. This frame is covered by felt and then by an outer layer of canvass. Ropes hold the whole thing together. Weights made of local stones keep the assembly from blowing away in the relentless Mongolian wind. An aperture in the roof allows smoke from the single heating and cooking stove to escape. It also vents warm air in the summer. Cooler air can be admitted by raising the skirt around the base. A ger may be packed up in as little as an hour, and transported to fresh pasture by truck, yak, or camel.

Posted by hockey at 4:00 PM | Comments (0)

February 9, 2009

Who Is the Man in the Moon?

The Man in the Moon is a product of the Christian era. To the Greeks and Romans, the Moon was a female deity. He shows up in one of the most popular (and reprinted) astronomy textbooks of all time, De Sphaera (a fifteenth century edition), by John of Holywood (thirteenth century; also known as Sacrobosco). He is likely still older than that. European folk tales tell us that the Man in the Moon was once an Earthling. However, after committing some petty theft, he was caught and exiled to the Moon. No wonder he is often pictured as looking rather unhappy with his state.

Selenologist Ewen Whitaker has catalogued other figures people have seen in the Moon over the ages: an elderly man carry a bundle of sticks, an elderly lady at a spinning wheel, two children carrying a bucket, and, of course, the rabbit. The Chinese rabbit sat pounding rice—an incongruous image to many of us! More recently, German schoolman Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus; circa 1200 – 1280) saw a complicated scene: a dragon, under a tree, with a man leaning against the tree.

From Scandinavia we have the story of Jack and Jill who, according to the rhyme, “. . . went up the hill / To fetch a pail of water”. If Jack (from the Swedish word for “increase”?) is seen in the First Quarter Moon, Jill (from the Swedish word for “decrease”?) is seen in the Third Quarter Moon, and Full Moon is Jack and Jill together, then the order of waxing and waning phases makes it true that “Jack fell down and broke his crown, / And Jill came tumbling after.”

For over two millennia, one supposedly more naturalistic hypothesis concerning the features seen on the Moon was that they were reflections of Earthly features. In other words, the Moon was a big mirror in the sky! The idea goes back to at least Clearchos of Soli, a Greek philosopher of around 320 BC. It popped up again in the Middle Ages and appeared in a popular textbook, Robert Anglicus’s 1271 commentary on De Spaera. The argument against it, then as now, was that the Moon rising in the East should reflect different terrestrial land masses than a Moon setting in the West, a difference that is not seen. Yet as late as 1570, an Arab cartographer drew a map of the Earth, part of which looks a lot like a mirror-reversed image of the Moon

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February 3, 2009

What is Wrong with February?

Except for February, the calendar month is always longer than the synodic month (the time from New Moon to New Moon, or Full Moon to Full Moon). This difference, called the epact, is half a day in thirty-day calendar months and one and a half days in thirty-one-day calendar months. But February is shorter than a synodic month.

You might wonder what calendar makers have against February! That is the month that “gets the short end of the stick” so as to make the number of months fit (to the nearest day, at any rate) into a 365-day year. It need not be February. However, even though the Earth’s trip along its orbit is continuous, we have to start our calendar year somewhere. In the western calendar many of us use, the year originally began with March. March is the month during which the Sun travels from south to north across the Celestial Equator across the First point of Aries, so this is a sensible time at which to begin the year (at least in the Northern Hemisphere). February was “short changed” without prejudice—it was just the month that happened to occur when the number of days in the year ran out! No offense, February. Personally, I think a truncated February makes us northerners believe that the winter is somehow shorter than it really is, an added psychological benefit.

Posted by hockey at 1:52 PM | Comments (0)

February 2, 2009

My January

At the American Astronomical Society meeting earlier this month, I dropped my business card into a drawing at one of the exhibit booths. I do this from time to time, but have never won anything. This time, though, I was one of only four people (at a meeting attended by thousands) who got the free T-shirt.

Back home, I went bowling with friends. Some of these folk have bowled regularly since childhood. I haven’t—in fact, I hadn’t tried the sport in almost ten years. I tossed three strikes in a game and won!

Then at the twenty-year recognition luncheon at my university, the President sat down at my table. I also won the door prize. (I couldn’t stay to claim it; I hope the Prez understood that I had a class to teach.)

I was offered free tickets to the 31 January Bobby McFerrin concert. The seats turned out to be second row, center.

I’m on a role this month. Sadly, January is now over!

Posted by hockey at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)

January 26, 2009

History Loves a Good Eclipse

[This piece is in honor of the annular eclipse that will be visible today from some locations on the Earth. - TH]

Modern historians appreciate records of eclipses. These help to pin down dates. For example, Haco IV, king of Norway, is supposed to have attempted an invasion of Scotland in 1263. In the annals of that military expedition, we read that “a great darkness drew over the Sun, so that only a little ring was bright around his orb.” This is about as clear a description of an annular eclipse as we get! Now the astronomers weigh in: They compute that an annular eclipse did take place, visible from that part of the world, but in the year 1262. The history books are corrected.

Incidentally, Haco was defeated. That is why the Scots do not today speak Norwegian.

Posted by hockey at 3:29 PM | Comments (0)

January 22, 2009

Did the Moon Blink?

With no geologic currently processes at work there, the face of the Moon now is essentially changeless. Or so we think.

June 1178: A group of monks in Canterbury, England, witnessed something extraordinary. In the words of Gervase (circa 1141 – circa 1210), their chronicler, the "upper horn of a new moon split and from the division point fire, hot coals, and sparks spewed out."

Geologist Jack Hartung interpreted this story as evidence for a huge, explosive impact on the Moon. He used the timing of the event plus data on the Moon's orbit to estimate its geographical location on the lunar globe, and to link it with the presence today of a fresh twenty-kilome¬ter-diameter crater at that spot.

Others have pointed out that, statistically, the formation of a large impact crater, “caught in the act” anywhere on the Moon within the last millennium or so, would be a fantastic coincidence. (What may be common over spans of geologist time can be extremely rare over historical times.) We might best look at other explanations for the Canterbury report, some metaphorical, in order to interpret what happened there.

Posted by hockey at 9:53 AM | Comments (0)

January 16, 2009

Radio Script #8

[A version of this script was broadcast on Public Radio's StarDate and appears on WWW.StarDate.org. - TH]

Nineteen-thirty-three was a bountiful year for astronomy in America. Immigrants to our shores that year included several world-renown astrophysicists.

Most people are aware that Albert Einstein, on whose work our modern theory of space itself is based, left Germany in 1933 for Princeton, New Jersey. Another Nobel Laureate, Hans Bethe, fled Germany in 1933 as well, though did not settle in Ithaca, New York, until 1935. To Bethe we owe understanding of the nuclear reactions that power most stars.

Hungarian Edward Teller departed Germany in 1933, too. Eventually he came to the United States. Teller is best known in astronomy for his work with Ukrainian George Gamow on the physics of the early “Big Bang” Universe. Gamow himself left the city that was then Leningrad, for the USA, that same year.

While a lesser known figure, fellow Ukrainian Sergei Gaposchkin’s 1933 journey was more convoluted: After being fired from his position at an observatory near Berlin, Gaposchkin feared that he was about to be sent to a concentration camp. Politics prevented a return to the Soviet Union. So he bicycled 260 kilometers to an astronomy meeting in Göttingen, where he was able to find sponsorship for his emigration to the United States. Gaposchkin ended up at the Harvard College Observatory studying variable stars, and married his sponsor, the famous astronomer Cecilia Payne.

None of these prominent scientists who survived the excesses of Fascism and Stalinism ever moved back to Europe. Seventy-five years ago, European astronomy’s loss was American astronomy’s gain.

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January 15, 2009

Our Gregorian Calendar

To five decimal places, the year is 365.24 days long. That difference of one hundredth of a day added up enough by the Renaissance so that the seasons were no longer matching their appropriate dates. The Gregorian calendar reset the count so that the vernal equinox occurs on 21 March, and fiddled with the leap year rule slightly so that the slippage would not occur again.

For example, the year 2000 was not noteworthy only for being the end of a millennium. It was a leap year! That is not by itself surprising. We learned in school that leap years (29 Februarys) are to be inserted every year divisible by four. Yes, but according to the Gregorian calendar of 1582, based on the correct 365.24-day year we must skip a leap year every hundred years—except in years divisible by 400. 2000 was special: It was a leap year. So was 1600. Even Pope Gregory’s calendar eventually will get “off.” We will likely have to drop a leap year in 4000. (That is, if this Gregorian thing really “catches on”: England, not wishing to rush into anything, did not even adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1752.)

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January 14, 2009

Springer Booth at 213th AAS Meeting

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December 31, 2008

And Finally, for 2008

The year is at an end. Does it seem as if the days have flown by? It might be different if we lived on the Moon. The “day” on our satellite is one month long: two weeks of daylight and two weeks of darkness, on average.

In the iconic motion picture, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), a lunar excavation exposes an artificial-looking monolith. This dig takes place just after lunar nightfall, thereby allowing a full two weeks for an Earth scientist to be selected to investigate, his voyage to the Moon, and his excursion to the remote excavation site, all before lunar night is over. At sunrise, its first in ages, the now uncovered monolith emits a piercing radio signal in the direction of the planet Jupiter—the beginning of a strange adventure there. However, I think much of all of this was lost on the movie-going audience. I read the book.

Posted by hockey at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)

December 30, 2008

Why Dusk and Dawn Seem So Long These Days

If a winter Sun achieves a lower altitude at culmination than a summer Sun, then it is following a daily path across our sky more parallel to the horizon than its counterpart six months hence. This also is true before sunrise and after sunset. Yet the length of twilight is governed by the altitude of the Sun below the horizon, not its azimuth. In the summer, more of the Sun’s diurnal motion is in the component perpendicular to the horizon. So it will leave (or arrive at) the vicinity of the horizon more quickly than in winter. The result is a longer dusk or dawn in winter than in summer.

This rule applies at mid-lattitudes, such as those of the continental United States. Long twilights are absent near the Earth’s Equator, but standard fare close to the Poles.

Posted by hockey at 3:36 PM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2008

Lost Shot at Fame

It was the 1990s. While on sabbatical in Arizona, I took a film class, for fun. There, I learned that a big studio movie was coming to town to shoot location scenes. They were casting for extras. On a lark, I went to the "call" with classmates. One of the roles turned out to be for sidelines photographers at a football game. As an astronomer, I'm used to handling long-focal-length optics, right? So I put myself down as "experienced."

You know the expression, "Don't call us. We'll call you"? It's true. I did get a call back! My one chance at Holywood fame. But I was out when the call arrived. (Cell phones were not ubiquitous back then.) And there was no return number. In fact, it was impossible to phone the casting agent directly. No doubt, when they could not get me on the first try, they simple called the next name on the list.

So that is how I mised co-staring with Tom Cruse in Jerry Maguirre.

Posted by hockey at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)

December 24, 2008

AAS/Historical Astronomy Meeting 2008

[The 2009 HAD meeting is almost upon us. My article about last year's meeting was edited for length in the HAD News. Here it is in full. - TH]

4:00 PM, last day of the Austin AAS Meeting: Those of us still gathered at the inaugural HAD Booth toasted its success with sips of Jarita Holbrook’s wine. (Yes, we “carded.”) We were located conspicuously between the Springer booth and food. The HAD Booth definitely helped to publicize our division. I knew this for certain when I saw people carrying HAD News onto the airplane as I left the city.

Moreover, the booth also had the unintended consequence of serving as a networking hub for HAD members, normally spread diffusely through the conference center (and, for that matter, across the country). Often the booth saw standing room only! I now know of at least one other AAS subgroup thinking of following our example.

Thank you to all HAD members who joined me in staffing the booth—some returning again for extra shifts! They were: Jim Lattis, Don Yeomans, Ken Rumstay, Jay Pasachoff, Brad Schaefer, Kevin Krisciunas, Joe Tenn, Arnold Heiser, Jay Holberg, Patrick Seitzer, Patrick Motl, Rosanne Di Stefano, Jarita Holbrook, Jennifer Bartlett, Mark Kay Hemenway, Kate Bracher, Peter Abrahams, Marcel Agueros, and André Heck. It was fun seeing those of you who previously I only had met via e-mail.

Passersby often commented positively on our booth banner, designed and assembled in situ by Sara Schechner. It cleverly folded into a case so compact that the airlines thought I was trying to carry a rifle on board. (Well, this was Texas, after all.)

P. S.: An extra “thank you” to Tom Williams, who, with zero lead time, covered for me as paper-session chair, on the afternoon I missed due to weather groundings.

Thomas Hockey
Vice Chair

Posted by hockey at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2008

The Year in Government: A Review

Let's review the last year or so in the American criminal justice system:

2 state governors indicted
1 state lieutenant governor indicted
4 United States congressmen indicted (including four percent of the US Senate)
1 big-city mayor indicted (Detroit)
The Vice President of the United States indicted (This idictment was later withdrawn.)
Impeachment charges read against the President of the United States (No action was taken.)

But, hey, at least Martha Stewart stayed clean in 2008 . . .

Posted by hockey at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

December 5, 2008

My Celestial Christmas List

My very first “grown up” astronomy book was A Field Guide to the Stars and Planets, then edited by astronomer Donald H. Menzel. (I still have that worn copy.) It was and is part of Houghton Mifflin’s time-honored Peterson Field Guide series. Amazingly, this book remains in print, and still is incredibly useful. It is now edited by my colleague Jay Pasachoff (1999).

My single favorite almanac (information for a given year), pertaining to the night sky, is the Observer’s Handbook, published annually by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (Toronto). It is presently edited by Patrick Kelly. Of particular interest to us is the section, “The Sky Month By Month.”

No product endorsement is intended, but I also enjoy hanging Celestial Product’s MoonLight on my wall each January. This chart is really a graph depicting the phase of the Moon for each day of the current calendar year.

It is an ironic fact of meteorology that, especially in the winter, the clear nights are the coldest. What works in the way of apparel for running from heated home to heated car to heated building will not do for standing still outside, looking up. A professional observer named Scott Murrell, a veteran of decades in an unheated telescope dome, once told me that his most important piece of “equipment” was his Duo Fold-brand thermal underwear! A warm hat and boots (at the least) are important astronomical accessories, too.

Posted by hockey at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)

November 28, 2008

Star Clusters You Can See

The Pleiades (in the “hindquarters” of the constellation Taurus) is an example of a star cluster. An experienced eye under optimum conditions can see many more stars than the six or seven traditionally ascribed to the Pleiades. The telescope reveals many more, less luminous ones.

A cluster of stars is distinguished from a constellation because the stars in a cluster really are physically close to each other in space. They are not a coincidental arrangement of stars, at different distances, near the same line of sight.

Other star clusters you can spot with the naked eye include the stars that make up the “fuzzy part” in the constellation Coma Berenices. The “V” in Taurus (the bull’s head) is part of a cluster named the Hyades. The Praesepe, also called the Beehive cluster, can be made out in the constellation Cancer.

Pleiades trivia: The Japanese name for the Pleiades is Subaru. We see this star cluster frequently on the street. It is stylized in the hood ornament used by the automobile manufacturer of the same name.

Posted by hockey at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)

November 24, 2008

Headline in the University's Newspaper

"President Interested in Pruning Programs"

I agree. In these uncertain economic times, we definitely should offer a major in shrubbery . . .

Posted by hockey at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)

November 17, 2008

Beginnings of Conversations I'd Like to Have Heard

My office and classrooms are in the same buidling, so the halls often are filled with students. As they walk by, I hear snippets of their conversations. Today's favorite was, ". . . but I know the judge, and I just hope that he doesn't remember that he knows me . . ."

Posted by hockey at 1:55 PM | Comments (0)

November 10, 2008

Stars in the Church

The concept of the celestial meridian may seem arcane today. If so, it may surprise you that it was honored in many great Catholic buildings of the Renaissance and later. Specifically, the meridian as it would be projected onto the ground was physically recreated for, aligned upon, and set into, the church floor. Historian John Heilbron has visited these meridian churches all over Europe. A few famous examples are: the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna, Basilica of Santa Maria del Fiore, and Duomo di Milano (each a cathedral). The meridian appeared in the Belvedere a Torre dei Venti (Tower of the Winds) within the Vatican. Some meridians even had named stars symbolically laid along the meridian line, at their relative positions of culmination, North-South.

Remember that the cathedral was once not merely a seat of ecclesiastical authority, but the center of community life. Just as the church served many purposes, so did the cathedral meridian lines: They were used calendrically to establish feast dates. They were used civilly to fix the hour. And they were used as scientific instruments by astronomers studying the orientation of the Earth and sky.

Posted by hockey at 7:31 PM | Comments (0)

November 6, 2008

The Presidential Campaign is Now Over

The Presidential campaign is now over. During that campaign, we heard discussion of more important issues than usually enlighten such discourse: We talked of ending the war in Iraq and restoring the USA’s reputation in the world, adjusting our taxation system, reregulating the financial markets, energy independence, health insurance, and rebuilding infrastructure. Sometimes the subject of education even rose above the noise. All good topics. However, there were significant issues almost totally missing from the conversation.

1. Nuclear proliferation. This actually was addressed more in 2004 than in 2008. It is a complex issue because it involves, not only limiting the number of nuclear states (and other entities), but reexamining the capabilities of existing nuclear states.

2. Homeland security. This is a perennial issue—so far, all talk and little action. It is not a trivial problem. How do we keep ourselves safe while at the same time not endangering civil liberties, the new global economy, and the influx of immigrants who, historically, have made this nation great?

3. Research. The current administration was no fan of science. We need to refund scientific and (in particular) medical research. As a country, we are getting older!

4. The “war” against drugs. We lost a long time ago. Now drugs must be addressed properly, as a medical and education issue, as part of our overall concern for mental health.

5. Crime. We hold a record number of our citizens in prison. Do we feel safer now than we used to? Something is out of whack.

6. Fighting communicable disease. The present government did not live up to its promises to do so. This fight must be waged overseas as well as at home. There are no borders for viruses. Pandemic is a villain waiting to strike.

7. Poverty. We have heard nothing of late but crickets chirping on this core, moral issue.

Posted by hockey at 2:36 PM | Comments (0)

November 4, 2008

The Darkness of Night

Look down into the abysmal distances!--attempt to force
the gaze down the multitudinous vistas of the stars, as
we sweep slowly through them thus—and thus—and thus!
Even the spiritual vision, is it not at all points
arrested by the continuous golden walls of the
universe?—the walls of the myriads of the shining bodies
that mere number has appeared to blend into unity?

Edgar Alan Poe (1845)

The question, “Why is the sky dark at night?” is often called Olbers’s Paradox, after the eighteenth-century astronomer Heinrich Olbers. In recent times it was popularized by oft-read cosmologist Hermann Bondi (1919-2005). Astrophysicist Edward Harrison traced its history in his book, Darkness at Night: A Riddle of the Universe. It is an oddity of science that ideas and phenomena often are named after the wrong person. The darkness-of-night question was stated correctly, in print, by the French gentry, Jean-Philippe Loys de Chéseaux (1718-1751). (It predates him, though.) Chéseaux answered his own question by saying that a not-quite transparent medium (gas?) between the stars absorbs the light from the most distant stars before it reaches us. Modern physics points out that this is, in fact, no solution: All the energy from the myriad of stars cannot be lost at absorption—the absorbing medium must eventually heat up such that it begins to glow itself!

Heinrich Olbers (1758-1840) was a famous German astronomer who discovered two of the largest asteroids. He proposed the paradox in 1823, in much the same way (and with the same incorrect deduction as the solution) as had Chéseaux in his 1744 book.

Olbers owned Chéseaux’s nearly eight-year-old book. Presumably he read it. Let us be charitable and assume that Olbers forgot about Chéseaux work and actually thought that the paradox was original with him. Regardless, the name of Heinrich Olbers is better known in astronomy than that of Jean-Philippe Loys de Chéseaux. (Chéseaux’s early death did not help his fame.) The question in its current form was credited to Olbers by the great textbook author of the time, John Herschel (1792-1871). And once it made it into the textbooks, I think it was assured that “Chéseaux’s Paradox” would always be Olbers Paradox.

The unambiguous, correct solution to Olbers’s Paradox was posited by popular-writer Edward d’Albe in his of 1907 book: The light of really, really distant stars has not had time to reach us in the lifetime of the Universe. However, in that Edwardian Age, when nobody had ever so much as heard of a “Big Bang Theory,” the idea of the Universe’s finite age was dismissed for what it was, d’Albe’s speculation.

Posted by hockey at 7:32 PM | Comments (0)

October 28, 2008

Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc?

In science we refer to a logical falacy called "post hoc, ergo propter hoc." It refers to the fact that, just because event B takes place after event A, one cannot conclude that B was caused by A.

A topical example of PHEPH can be seen in the decreased violence within Iraq. What is the explanation? The following events occured beforehand:

1. The surge: American troop strengths were bolstered.
2. Iraqi police and military forces came "on line" as they completed requisit training.
3. Iraqi communities decided to take responsibility for their own security and disowned foreign groups such as al Qaeda. (They were paid for doing so.)
4. Muqtada al-Sadr, who controls a private army, declared a ceasefire.
5. Ethnic clensing was virtually completed in Iraq. Waring factions were effectively separated from each other.
6. Something else.

While #1 usually gets credit in the United States, there is, in fact, no way to know which factor (or combination of factors) resulted in the desired outcome. It is my hope that the causal agent was not something as superficial as the surge. This is not because I do not wish to give credit where credit is due. It is because it would mean that no idiological change has necessarily taken place in Iraq. In other words, a grim status quo could just as easily return.

Posted by hockey at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

October 21, 2008

Hockeys with Friends in Spain

At the Alhambra, in Grenada, last month. Thanks to Ari Belenkiy for sending us the photo.

Posted by hockey at 10:43 AM | Comments (1)

October 20, 2008

Who Should Get My Vote?

John McCain is certifiably a hero. And I try to use the word "hero" in a very limited sense: No sports stars or pop musicians. He is a hero, not for being a prisoner of war--you can be captured, yet not heroic--but for his behavior while imprisoned.

His war service was an excellent way for the McCain campaign to introduce its candidate to the electorate. However, I am surprised to still hear it featured with two weeks to go before the election. The trials that McCain experienced in Vietnam were great. Still, those he will face as President almost surely will be dissimilar. History does not demonstrate that character exhibited in one circumstance neccessarily carries over into a very different circumstance.

John McCain is, and always will be, an American hero. It does not logically follow from this fact (by itself) that he deserves my vote.

Posted by hockey at 12:35 PM | Comments (0)

October 15, 2008

Afghanistan 2008

As the American casualties there now exceed those in Iraq, is it time to take a new look at the war in Afghanistan? I think that any new strategy there must take into account the following realities:

1. The original intent of the Afghan incursion--to eliminate Al Qaeda--failed. Osama bin Laden is not there anymore. Our mission in that country today, if there is a mission, can only be to stop a reactionary and violent government-in-exile from returning.

2. Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan is a NATO operation. We must be a team player. This includes when the "team" decides to use tactics that our government may not second, such as negotiation. Moreover, the US cannot maintain a high profile. Fair or not, it is our face that is associated with invasion, an unpopular act regardless of your politics.

3. We can no longer do it on the cheap. We cannot afford to place all our best resources (troops, intelligence, materiel) a thousand kilometers to the East and expect good results in Afghanistan.

4. There is no easy route to "success" in Afghanistan. Lobbing bombs at suspected targets does not work. The Taliban always seems to be able to reinforce, by bringing in zealots from Pakistan or farther afield. The hearts and minds of the Afghan people are in finite supply, however. The civilian casualties our airborne assaults routinely yield poison far more of those than any number of terrorists we "take out."

Posted by hockey at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)

October 8, 2008

Lutheran Astronomy: A Quotation

"Let superior minds, originating from the heavens, think about where they come from; from time to time let them study this theme and realize that this most beautiful spectacle of celestial bodies and movements has not been set forth to humankind in vain, and let them enquire into the order of these most admirable things, because it is most appropriate to human nature and because it carries great usefulness for life . . ."

Philip Melanchthon
Corpus Reformatorium

Posted by hockey at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)

September 29, 2008

How Astronomers Die

[Written for the 211th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, January, 2008. - TH]

How do astronomers (and cosmologists) die?

I deal in death. Most of the entries in the Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, which I edited, fit the definition. Moreover, as vice-chair of the American Astronomical Society’s Historical Astronomy Division, I edit all the obituaries that appear in the B. A. A. S.

I have learned, not unexpectedly, that most astronomers die of natural causes--like everyone else. But this is unfortunate for the history of astronomy, because an unexpected death leaves behind a documentary snapshot of the deceased’s undertakings in life at the time of mortality.

The classic case is Giordano Bruno, who was famously burnt at the stake. Yet Bruno is a bad example of martyrdom to science: His crime was heresy, not astronomy, and he almost invited execution by returning from Protestant Europe to Rome. While it may be true that “nobody expects the Spanish inquisition,” any sane person must surely expect the Italian inquisition!

For me, a more poignant example is Boris Vasilevich Numerov, one of the principal organizers of Soviet astronomy after the Bolshevik revolution. He was “rewarded” by a firing squad during a Stalin purge, sadly, not before implicating (implausibly) nearly the entire staff of the Pulkovo Observatory as fascist spies. This led to their arrests and Pulkovo’s demise as one of the world’s great observatories. It is an episode further reminding us that torture is an unreliable source of truth.

Less well known is the fact that asteroid-hunter Auguste Charlois was murdered in cold blood--as he stood poised to discover his one-hundredth minor planet. Was it the work of a jealous competitor? Did Charlois play Mozart to another astronomer’s Salieri? It might be the makings of a profitable screen play were that the case. However, the reality of the matter is that Charlois’s killer was his own sister’s husband, during an argument over a matter unrelated to astronomy. (And you and I thought that our brothers-in-law were a little “off”!)

The French Revolution was hard on astronomers: Celestial mechanists Jean-Sylvain Bailly and Jean-Baptiste-Gaspard Bochart de Saron were guillotined. Moreover, there were several near misses. (By “near miss” I mean other French astronomers who narrowly avoided the death penalty; As far as I know, the guillotine itself did not miss.)

The list of astronomers killed in battle begins with Archimedes’s fall to a roman sword. (Archimedes deserves to be called an astronomer, I think, because the “sand reckoner” was one of the first to attempt calculation of the distance to the Sun.) The man who first accessorized his telescope for astrometry, William Gascoigne, was lost fighting on the Royalist side during the Battle of Marston Moor. Peter Ramus rejected Scholasticism, and embraced Protestantism--bad timing: He died in the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre

Sultan Ulugh Beg founded the Samarqand Observatory. He was assassinated during a palace insurrection--by his own son. This is the only instance of astronomical patricide that I have discovered. Still, if you know others, be sure to let me know.)

Travel is a grim reaper of astronomers: Margaritta Palmer, Howard Percy Robertson, Carl Keenan Seyfert, and Andrew David Thackeray all died in automobile accidents,the latter on his way back from an observing “run.”

In the nineteenth century, it was the train that wrecked and killed sunspot-modeler Balfour Stewart. Several astronomers have expired at sea. However, Charles-Eugene Delaunay, one-time director of the Paris Observatory, actually passed away in the line of duty, when his ship wrecked. Ironically, it was a surveying expedition . . . My favorite astronomical transportation disaster--if “favorite” is the right word for it--is the end of Arthur Bambridge Wyse, who perished in a freak blimp accident.

Here is my top-three list of truly horrible astronomical demises:

#3. Qattan al-Mazari, who wrote an influential astronomical treatise in Persian, was tortured to death by filling his mouth with soil. I intend to consult an Islamicist about whether an astronomer being choked by earth was considered to be symbolic, or whether that was just how people did business back then.

#2. The leader of the Alexandrine Neo-platonic school was Hypatia. She was pulled from her chariot, stripped, and skinned alive using sharp oyster shells. The murderous mob was made up of my fellow Christians: Thank goodness; “otherwise” the event might have been quite nasty! Did I mention that Hypatia was the last leader of the pagan Alexandrine Neo-platonic school?

And #1. After the west lost touch with Byzantium, one of our few links to the Hellenistic past was Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus Böthius. Böthius’s written work bridged the Medieval and Renaissance periods. Regrettably, his execution was more on the medieval side: A cord was tied around Böthius’s forehead and: (I now quote.) “So tightly that his eyes cracked in their sockets, and finally, while under torture, he was beaten to death with a cudgel.” I appreciate the paper sorters not positioning me immediately before lunch . . .

I began today with skepticism over Bruno’s status as a martyr to astronomy. I close with a man i consider to be a much better example: John James Waterston was one of the many fine British scientists who tried to solve the solar energy problem. While attempting to measure the solar radiant energy, Waterston suffered heat stroke. Thereafter he was subject to unpredictable fits of dizziness. The story is sketchy, but apparently such a spell hit him while strolling along the bank of the Edinburgh River. Waterston is supposed to have fallen in and drowned. Oddly, his body was never found.

I believe that how astronomers died is an important part of astronomical biography. It is second only to how they lived. I move on now to my latest task, as managing editor of the journal Archaeoastronomy, where the subjects are even “deader.”

Thank you.

Posted by hockey at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)

September 26, 2008

Catching Up on the News

I'm just back from two weeks in Europe, and catching up on American headlines. It's been a busy two weeks!

Bank bailouts. The way I read it, the government will end up holding lots of mortgages. In effect, it will own the homes of millions of Americans. Doesn't this sound feudal?

The President’s tutorial the other evening was amusing: "How We Got Into This Situation." You could tell he didn't understand what he was reading. But that's alright. Most of us listening didn't, either.

Candidates rush to support Georgia. Fine. But entry into NATO? Newsflash. By using its military on Georgians, Georgia demonstrated that it's not yet ready for Prime Time. If you lower the bar to admit Georgia to NATO, you might as well let in Russia. Come to think of it, that would kind of make the confrontation moot, wouldn't it?

Cuba is devastated by a hurricane. This is the opportunity we've been waiting for. The American economic blockade of Cuba doesn't work. In fact, it hasn’t done any good, and it hasn't done any good for an awfully long time. Nobody wants to admit that trying to isolate Cuba was a mistake, by lifting the trade ban. Now it can be done by citing humanitarian relief. Convenient face-saving.

Senator McCain wants to postpone the first presidential candidates' debate. Why? It's not like either of these guys is a particularly gifted debater. There's no risk of not meeting expectations. The voters don't have any.

Posted by hockey at 9:59 AM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2008

Night in the Museum

Yuliana and I are just back from my conferences in Spain and Portugal. Every once in a while there is That Trip on which everything that can go wrong does in fact go wrong. This was That Trip.

Among the standard items was the fact that the airline lost our luggage. Meanwhile, I lost myself multiple times on the streets of Grenada. (Those street signs? They’re just made up!) Oh, and our parked car back in Chicago almost got towed.

Our bad luck extended to the trivial: for example, setting up a photograph at a fountain only to have the water shut off the moment before clicking the camera.

My “favorite” disaster, though, was at the museum where the Lisbon conference was held. Yuliana and I were attending a cocktail party and decided to use the free internet to write home. Just before I hit the send button, all the power went off. Our carefully composed message disappeared, and we were alone in the dark. We felt our way to the corridor, where there was some light, only to find the doors to our wing locked! It was childhood nightmare of being trapped in the museum come true. There we were, stuck behind glass doors, much like one of the dinosaurs on display. Thankfully, a museum employee came by. He looked at us straight faced, as if we were on exhibit, and asked, “Who put you in there?”

Posted by hockey at 11:36 PM | Comments (0)

September 3, 2008

Mongolia is the Original Big Sky Country

[Commissioned by the webzine Totality! - TH]

1 August 2008

Mongolia is the original Big Sky Country. There the sky’s deep blue expanse and unlimited horizon alone make it a dominant player in every story of the steppe. Decorated with massive cloud formations, vivid sunrises, rainbows, or simply a nighttime abundance of stars (including a Milky Way right down to the horizon), the Mongolian sky simply cannot be ignored. It was the perfect place to observe the ultimate overhead performance, a total eclipse of the Sun.

To arrive on the 1 August 2008 eclipse path, twelve of us flew from the Mongolian capitol of Ulaan Baatar to the far western city of Oglii. Here we ger (yurt) camped before completing our journey by land. The path of totality ran NW to SE through Mongolia; the southwestern-pointing road terminated at the village of Sangsai, our destination. Keep in mind that, in this country, the main transnational road has yet to be completely paved. We traversed “secondary roads” that were not graded, leveled, nor marked. Still, our Russian-manufactured vans made the best of it. Only one flat tire.

Sangsai is in a small river valley—we forded the stream—just before the Altai Mountains begin a precipitous climb. We did not want peaks encroaching on our western horizon for this late, low-altitude eclipse. There was not much to the village, but it provided an emergency oasis should the need have arisen. In Mongolia, when you ask to drive to a place fifty kilometers away, the driver takes along enough petrol to travel exactly one-hundred kilometers!

We set up in a pasture west of town. The site meant that there were few hills about that might generate PM clouds and that, if cumulous did pop up, we had several kilometers with which to dodge it, north or south. We were just in sight of the Sangsai mosque. (Western Mongolia is populated by Islamic Kazaks, famed for hunting with eagles.) I wondered: How would the Friday muezzin deal with a total solar eclipse occurring between afternoon and evening prayer?

In Mongolian pastures, there are no fences. We were pleased to be joined by local shepherds (some on horseback; first the children, then the men, then the women) with whom we shared the great event. We were pleased only slightly less by the more abundant goats, sheep, and yaks. Conversation--with people!--was easy because we brought along a Russian interpreter, and nearly all the native adults spoke Russian.

While it was not a featureless sky, clouds blocked only a few seconds of the partial eclipse and did not come near to jeopardizing the time between second and third contact. It was light duty for our state-side meteorologist, who kept in touch via satellite telephone.

This was my first sunspot-less eclipse. We witnessed the Bailey’s Beads, Diamond Rings, and totality prominences that everybody else no doubt saw. Regulus and the Sun sat within the field of view of my telescope. However, I was most struck with the atmospheric effects: The three-hundred-sixty-degree sunset colors were as deep as on any desert night. It definitely got cooler, too.

Most spectacular were the shadow bands. In my previous five TSEs, shadow bands were an iffy proposition, a subtle phenomenon at most, best seen at one’s feet on a smooth, white surface such as a sheet or beach. Not in Mongolia! They ran past us in waves so pronounced that it was impossible not to see them—even over variegated, rocky ground—and at great distance from where one stood.

I had taken along a “backpack” 60mm refractor with which to study the solar corona. (I fitted it with an aluminized aperture filter for the partial phases.) A computerized drive and paddle allowed me to circumnavigate the Sun during totality without TSE jitters endangering my pointing. I was interest in how close the magnetohydrodynamicists had succeeded in predicting the eclipse-time shape of the corona. As it turned out, they did so very closely: an asymmetric butterfly pattern.

At fourth contact, we celebrated with Mongolian vodka (not the finest product in the land, I have to say). Two nights later we spotted the newest, waning crescent. And, of course, we began planning for 22 July 2009!

Thomas Hockey
Professor of Astronomy
University of Northern Iowa

Posted by hockey at 3:21 PM | Comments (0)

August 26, 2008

How I Did As a Political Prognosticator

OK. I failed to guess Barack Obama's VP nomination. I had Joe Biden at the State Department. In hindsight, the Demos could not of continued to make fun of John McCain's age if they had nominated Sam Nunn.

The GOP already has begun to gleen recorded material from Biden's own Presidential bid, in search for clips that disagree with Obama. If they are smart, the Obama campaign should turn this around by pointing out that their candiate is brave enough to pick someone who has a different point of view and who can provide the President with alternative advice. In reality, the primaries are designed to accentuate differences; Obama and Biden do not disagree substantively on the issues. Meanwhile, for his VP choice, McCain now has to go with a total sycophant.

All that said, the Biden nomination is problemmatic. Senators have histories--voting records--that can be attacked. Running a pair of Senators has not worked out since Kennedy/Johnson, and they won just barely. The only more recent example is Kerry/Edwards, and that's not a good model!

Posted by hockey at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)

August 22, 2008

Radio Scripts #6 & #7

[Versions of these scripts were broadcast on Public Radio's StarDate and appear on WWW.StarDate.org. - TH]

Carl Zenger

It is no disgrace to be proven wrong in science. Still, some scientists are so wrong that they become famous. One is Czech astronomer Carl Venceslas Zenger. He achieved fame for a single observation.

The Sun can shine on just one half of a round planet at a time. The planet Venus sometimes appears to us as a bright crescent. This is because it revolves about the Sun within the Earth’s orbit: During Venus’s “crescent phase,” the Sun mostly illuminates the side facing away from us. The same thing happens with the Moon. But Venus looks so tiny in our sky that its shape only is seen through a telescope.

Carl Zenger observed Venus as a crescent in 1876; that is no surprise. The surprise (to Zenger) was that the inner curve of the crescent seemed irregular. In the case of the Moon, this effect is due to lunar mountains projecting above the shadowed hemisphere, and into sunlight. So Zenger concluded that Venus, too, must have mountains—spectacularly high ones (so as to be seen from the Earth). To Zenger, tall, bright mountains equaled cold mountaintops. In other words, they were snowcapped!

Modern space-probe cameras reveal modest mountains on Venus. However, Zenger’s amazingly lofty peaks were an illusion. Moreover, we now know that Venus is the hottest planet in our Solar System. It is far from icy. Zenger was as wrong as he could be. He was famously wrong.

Professor Carl Zenger died one-hundred years ago, on 22 January 1908.

Henry Parkhurst

Where would one least expect to find an astronomer? We might guess a cloudy coastline. Yet even places where inclement weather is common have occasional clear nights. A better candidate might be the heart of a big metropolis, where artificial illumination drowns out starlight.

Henry M. Parkhurst lived in the biggest American city, New York. In the late nineteenth century, he was a Superior Court reporter by day, and an astronomer by night. He observed variable stars—stars that slightly dim and brighten. Parkhurst’s stellar brightness measurements were regarded highly and sought out by Harvard College Observatory, the great repository of astronomical data at the time. In 1882 Parkhurst proposed a decade-long project for himself: He would systematically measure long-period variables, which change in brightness regularly over intervals lasting months or years. Observations were made from Parkhurst’s Manhattan yard.

But unknown to Parkhurst and other New Yorkers, 1882 would be a year that would change the appearance of their city forever. In 1882 Thomas Edison and his electric bulb came to town. The next year, while Parkhurst began his project, the Brooklyn Bridge was completed—and illuminated by electric arcs. That was less than ten blocks from his telescope!

This was to be the last major astronomical contribution made from that famous American island. Parkhurst became the first victim of “light pollution.” Modern astronomers continue his flight; most astronomical research now is conducted at remote observatories, far from the nearest town.

Henry Parkhurst died an octogenarian one-hundred years ago today.

21 January 2008

Posted by hockey at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)

August 21, 2008

It Is Time to Repeal the 22nd Amendment

It's time to repeal the 22nd Amendment. It is the most undemocratic thing in the United States Constitution. The 22nd Amendment? That's the one that says, for our highest office, the Presidency, we can't vote for the person we want--if that person already has served two terms. If a Vice President has taken over for a President, we may only be able to vote for that individual as President once.

The 22nd Amendment was a knee-jerk reaction to Franklin Roosevelt's four terms. Should he have run for four terms? It's hard to say; the circumstances were unique. But who serves and for how long should remain the decision of the electorate.

The 22nd Amendment probably has not altered history much so far. Eisenhower and Reagan would have been eligible for a third term without it. It appears to me, though, that both men, aged at the end of their second term, would have had the wisdom to decline renomination.

But think of Barack Obama. Now I don't know that he will be the next President. The polls are ambiguous right now. It might be John McCain. However, McCain already has signalled that he's not going for any record in Presidential longevity. However, Obama, if elected twice, would only be 54 at the end of his second term. He would be at the peak of his political ife. Is it not up to the voters whether or not to sentence him to a (maybe) thirty-year retirement?

This is the time to change the Constitution because there is no incumbency at stake. We are "between Presidents." I propose it now, knowing that I cannot be accused of "sour grapes" as a motive: I am on record as favoring neither an extension of the Clinton nor Bush administration!

Constitution Day is 17 September.

Posted by hockey at 9:13 AM | Comments (0)

August 20, 2008

I'll Take a Stab at Forecasting an Obama Administration

I list the five jobs that are often the most powerful (and most political).

Vice President = Sam Nunn (safe, foreign-affairs expertise, different regional base, a little time "out of the beltway")

Secreatry of State = Joe Biden (mentioned for VP, too, but "just another Senator.")

Secretary of Treasury = Chris Dodd (A gift. Dodd did a lot of work for an Obama agenda back in the Senate--while BO was out campaigning.)

Attorney General = Bill Richardson (long resume, Hispanic base)

Secretary of Defense = Hillary Clinton (Didn't think I'd forget her, did you? She'd be the first female in this position.)

Posted by hockey at 2:56 PM | Comments (0)

August 19, 2008

John McCain Says, "In the Twenty-first, Century, Nations Don't Invade Other Nations"

Big Country ______________ United States _________ Russia

Little Country _____________ Iraq _________________ Georgia

Newly Elected leader _______ George W. Bush ______ Dmitrii Medvedev
of Big Country
(in questionable election)

Major voice _______________ Dick Cheney _________ Vladmir Putin
in the ear of above

Breakaway province in _____ Kurdistan ____________ South Ossetia
Little Country

Result __________________ dead Kurds __________ dead ethnic Russians

Big Country's reaction _____ invasion _____________ invasion

Exaggerated excuse ______ "weapons of mass ____ "ethnic cleansing"
________________________ destruction"

Motivating geopolitics ______ oil __________________ oil

Tried to arbitrate __________ Kofi Annan ___________ Nicolas Sarkozy

Supposed finish __________ "end of military ________ "ceasefire"
________________________ operations"

Real result _______________ occupation ___________ occupation

Consequence ____________ lots of dead Iraqis ______ lots of dead Georgians

Meanwhile, Big __________ silent _________________silent
Country legislature is

Effect on world __________ loss of respect for ______ loss of respect for
_______________________ Big Country ___________ Big Country

Future ________________ long-term terrorism _____ long-term terrorism?

Posted by hockey at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)

August 18, 2008

The Four Great Heads

Our country has been blessed with few truly great Presidents. The idea was to enshrine the the few on Mount Rushmore. Four were found to qualify by the time of the landmark's completion. (Franklin Roosevelt was as yet unavailable for the judgement of history.) Washington and Lincoln are up there, of course: We once celebrated their birthdays as national holidays! And two others.

Interesting aside: None of these Presidents-in-stone are Democrats. In its nearly two-hundred year run, the Democratic Party arguably has produced only one Great President (FDR?)--and not everybody would agree on that one.

But back to Mount Rushmore. It's a pretty good list. However, I would make one change. I would delete Thomas Jefferson.

People who know me as a Jefferson fan will be shocked. Jefferson was a great polymath, a true American philosopher. Yet his Presidency was not an outstanding example of Jeffersonia. Recall that it was won, dubiously, over the back of TJ's erstwhile friend, John Adams. The Jefferson Adminstration is chiefly known for the Louisiana Purchase and subsequent Lewis and Clark Expedition. This is ironic because these acts were in the face of Jefferson's political theory of limited Federal powers.

Who would I replace Jefferson with? Maybe James Monroe. Monroe is an often overlooked President. Perhaps this is because he was at the back of thirty-two (out of thirty-six) years of Virginian Presidents. That's four of the first five. In other words, we may blurr our Presidents together by the time we get to JM (Monroe, not James Madison).

Monroe's administration was so successful it was practically devoid of party politics. It boasted a strong, bipartisan cabinet. Indeed, Monroe's Presidency was dubbed the Era of Good Feeling. Several new states were added to the Union (including the tricky Missouri Compromise) during these eight years. We acquired Florida. The Monroe Doctrine still guides American foreign policy today. What is more, Monore was popular with the electorate and cheered on frequent tours of the young country. Said Monroe, "The best form of government is that which is most likely to prevent the greatest sum of evil."

Another reason for Monroe over Jefferson: They were contemporaries and wore similar styles. Just a little mortar and jack hammering, and you've turned a Jefferson into a Monroe. Kidding!

Posted by hockey at 9:19 AM | Comments (0)

August 15, 2008

What is it Good For?

Now its Russia and Georgia. Sigh. Aren't we suppose to suspend wars during the Olympics? They didn't even have the decency to trump up a UN resolution before going in . . .

In 1945, War became an untenable means of resolving conflict. The means overshadowed the outcome. Think about it: No war (little "w") since 1945 has had a definitive outcome. But for sixty years, the world has been in denial. Millenia of warfare is a hard habit to break.

When will the great realization occur? I hope it's in my lifetime, or that of my children. It's already too late for a lot of Georgians.

Posted by hockey at 11:28 AM | Comments (0)

July 25, 2008

If I were a Phisherman

Dear Child of Adam,

Lucifer has hacked into the Great Roll Up Yonder. Your immortal soul is in danger. Please provide the following information, and we'll verify the security of your predestination:

full name
aliases
birthdate
deathdate (if applicable)
childrens' first names
parents' middle names
wife's maiden name
name they called you in school when your back was turned
passport number
SSN
bank account number(s)
credit card numbers
usual lottery ticket number
number of the beast
favorite color
favorite comic character
first pet
street on which you were born
street on which your first pet was born
all the PINs you remember
all the PINs you've forgotten
every password you've ever used
every pasword you're going to use

E-mail your responses to saintpeter@Gmail.com. (Optional items are marked with an asterisk.) We already know all this stuff of course . . . we're just checking.

Sincerely,

God

Posted by hockey at 1:41 PM | Comments (0)

July 24, 2008

Spam of the Month

Like everybody, I get a lot of spam. Here is my favorite from July. It's a direct lift--except for the annotations I've made in brackets.

"Hi! I'm a single girl and I'm 26 years old. [I'm really a 16-year-old boy at an internet cafe in Turkey.] Please take a look at my pictures and let me know if you like them! [I scanned them out of a magazine I found at the barbers.] I live in Russia and I'm going to come to your country and work over there very soon! [Or--depending upon the availability of a visa--never.] I don't know anybody over there and I thought it would be great to meet someone who is open to anything (as I am!). [Funny. Absolutely nobody has ever characterized TH as "open to anything."] I would be happy to be friends, lovers or create a serious relationship! [Multiple answers appear to be allowed.] We will see what happens! [And whether it involves PayPal!] I hope you will write me back and I will write more info about myself and send more photos!!!!!!!!!!! [!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]"

Posted by hockey at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)

July 23, 2008

History: Nobody Could Make This Stuff Up

Iowa has been a pretty peaceful place in United States history. None of our major wars were fought on its soil. Yet the white settlement of Iowa was due to the outcome of one of our lesser, drearer wars: the Black Hawk War.

Blackhawk was a native leader upset with the american invasion of his lands. He attacked white settlers and was eventually tracked down and chased by the US Army's Colonel Taylor. The war ended in the infamous Bad Axe Massacre: Taylor had Blackhawk's people pinned at the Mississippi River. At the same time, his troop-transport steamer was coming up the river. Blackhawk waved the traditional white flag of surrender at the steamboat. The boat responded by raking the native americans with cannon fire. At a minimum, 150 men, women, and children were killed.

Blackhawk ultimately was captured and imprisoned. What happened to the Colonel Taylor who seemed a little shaky on the etiquette of warfare?

We elected him President of the United States.

No kidding.

Posted by hockey at 1:32 PM | Comments (0)

July 5, 2008

Script of a YouTube-style Question for the Presidential Candidate

[We see the narrator and the "hind quarters" of a sow and cow, side by side.]

CAPTION: The View From Iowa

Narrator [indicates sow]: "Pretend that this sow is a conventional coal-buring power plant. Like the sow, the power plant produces an unwanted gas. In the case of the power plant, that gas is carbon dioxide."

Narrator [moves to cow]: "Pretend that this cow is a nuclear power plant. It does not present as much of a problem with greenhouse gases, but it does produce a solid waste that is unacceptable for those who step in it. In the case of the power plant, that waste is dangerous radioactive fuel rods."

Narrator [close]: "John McCain proposes commissioning 40 new nuclear power plants. Is he willing to, at the same time, decommission 40 conventional coal-fired plants? Yes or no. No but[t]s allowed . . ."

Posted by hockey at 12:32 PM | Comments (0)

July 4, 2008

Uvulopalatopharyngoplasty

I continue to convolesce from surgery, at home. I'm a lucky man to be able to say that my most serious operation in half a lifetime was elective.

With sutures on my pallate, the diet is a bit dull. I've been feasting on jello, pudding, oatmeal, and macaroni-and-cheese, a consistency in consistency. The pharmacy gave me a numbing lollipop to use in case of extreme pain. I yet haven't had to unwrap that sucker. There is also a salve to relieve nausea (that I haven't had). You rub it on your wrists. What's next? Coning and acupuncture?

My dog has been attentive. She keeps walking into the bedroom to check up on me--several times a day. She's never exhibited this behavior before, say when I've been bedridden with a chest cold. I figure she smells the blood. I like to think she's concerned that I'm injured. On the other hand, she *is* a carnovoir.

I no longer have a uvula. I can't say that I miss it very much. I never did master those German umlauts, anyway. I am told, though, that some languages are dependent upon the uvula for pronouncing words. For instance, I may now never master Hmong. A future opera career is also out of the question: The ulula is used for vibratto. I think I can handle all of these disappointments.

Posted by hockey at 1:20 PM | Comments (2)

July 3, 2008

Three Disasters in One Month for NE Iowa

You might be surprised that I list the first event as a disaster. However, the people who live there would not be.

POSTVILLE

On 12 May, ICE officers detained 400 people at a Postville meat processing plant. It was the biggest single-site immigration raid in US history. Unusually, they actually arrested the illegals--one sixth of the town's populatiion. Obviously, the feds wanted to make a statement.

The problem is that Postville is one of those midwestern towns on the edge of failure. The illegals are the only ones who would work at the plant, Postville's major source of income. They were also the ones paying up front for their rent, groceries, and gas. The "hit" the legal business peope of Postville will take is easily comparable to that of a natural disaster.

PARKERSBURG

On 25 May, a rare EF5 tornado wiped out half of Parkersburg (population = 1300). Seven were killed; many more were injured. New Hartford also suffered a fatality, and two other small Iowa towns were damaged. (This disaster is not to be confused with the western Iowa tornado that later killed the Boy Scouts.) Today you can follow the path of the Parkersburg tornado along the county road--just look for the toppled trees. The tornado diverged from its eastward trek finally, turning slightly north. This caused it to cross Cedar Falls just at the city line. If the tornado had curved south, it would have barrelled through mid Cedar Falls and, likely, even-more-populated Waterloo. My house would have become a victim, but more significantly, the death and destruction easily could have been ten times greater because of the population density in Cedar Falls/Waterloo.

CEDAR FALLS

The floods of mid-June affected towns up and down the eastern Iowa rivers. For instance, Cedar Rapids was submerged. My experience was with Cedar Falls. Volunteers were called out to reinforce the levy protecting the downtown business district and water plant. A thousand of us arrived, and, without any real instruction, managed to hold off the waters in a style of labor reminiscent of swarming ants.

Regrettably, AP picked up on this idea of citizens saving their own town. They neglected the fact that there is no levy protecting the northern part of town, and there was no hope of saving it. Hundreds were flooded out. Some grumbled that Cedar Falls had succeeded in banding together to save the rich, white people's part of town. The truth lies somewhere inbetween.

Posted by hockey at 12:58 PM | Comments (0)

July 1, 2008

George Carlin

George Carlin died last week. He was seventy-one. But, hey, he was seventy-one! George Carlin was not always known for taking good care of his body. Congratulations on that one, George.

One of my memories from Freshman Orientation Week at college was some kid blaring Carlin's "Seven Words You Can't Say on Television" routine out a second-storey window. It was 1977, when comedy came on LPs. Little did Carlin know when he recorded this that he'd be the subject of a Supreme Court case on the perogatives of the FCC. Today, my failing memory cannot recall all seven words. However, I suspect that the list of words has decreased with time.

Carlin was famous for profanity. Yet it was in the larger context of his pasion for free speech. The words he used he used for a purpose--not just to fill time, as I suspect is the motivation of some of our newer stand ups.

I admired Carlin for another reason: his love for all words and ability to put them together in such a way as to resemble truth. George could detect--and skewer--what in the 2000s we call "spin," from a mile a away. It is my belief that he single-handedly forced change on the script used by all airlines: We no longer hear euphemistic phrases like, "In the event of a water landing . . ." Who you kidding? That's a crash, baby! Meanwhile, I use bits of "Hippy-Dippy Weatherman" in own class even now.

Bye, George. Thanks. And also "Monte, Monte, Monte!"

Posted by hockey at 3:53 PM | Comments (0)

June 12, 2008

Mongols and Missiles

The Mongolian army of Ghengis Khan had a neat trick: Their horsemen would feign a retreat and then, using specially designed saddles, would turn on the pursuing opposing calvary and fire an arrow from behind. This unexpected counter offensive could decimate the now-too-close-for-cover enemy. It was what we call the “Parthian Shot.”

To my knowledge, the United States military is longer prepared to execute the Parthian Shot. Why has an army abandoned a weapons system (horse/saddles/bow)? Because, it is hard to imagine a modern scenario in which it would be useful. Not impossible. Just hard to imagine.

Yet we maintain a Cold War arsenal of hair-trigger missiles with high-yield nuclear bombs atop them. We do this even though these weapons have no use against current threats (e. g., suicide bombers). Strange.

The world is a dangerous place. The future is unknown. Might there not be a scenario in which nuclear-tipped ICBMs may be of future use? It is not impossible. It is just hard to imagine. Failure to adapt a weapons strategy to changing times is one of the reasons the Mongols are no longer a factor in world security. We may be safe from the “Mongol Hord,” but whether we are or not, our expensive (and, on occasion, misplaced) nuclear forces are irrelevant to the question and to many others regarding our national security.

Posted by hockey at 2:31 PM | Comments (0)

June 2, 2008

Vote for the Alliteration Ticket

Posted by hockey at 9:05 PM | Comments (0)

May 28, 2008

Somebody Somewhere will be Interested

[I wrote this by mistake. Rats. Still, I hate to waste anything! - TH]

Metochites, Theodorus [Theodore]

Born: Constantinople, 1270

Died: Constantinople, 13 March 1332

Grand Logothete Theodorus Metochites was a minister to Byzantine Emperor Andronicus II. Circa 1313 he studied astronomy with Manuel Bryennius. His Stoicheiosis Astronomike was the first astronomical work of the Palaiologic Renaissance (after the Fourth Crusade). It followed heavily in the footsteps of Theon of Alexandria and Ptolemy. Nicephoros Gregoras was a student of Metochites.

Posted by hockey at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)

May 22, 2008

A Dialog in the Kitchen

(Dog is staring at Tom.)

Dog: Give me a bone, please.

Tom: You just had a bone!

Dog: I want another one.

Tom: You can’t have a bone every day.

Dog: But I want a bone today.

Tom: We will run out of bones!

Dog: I still will have a bone—today.

Tom: Let me put this another way: What if every dog wants a bone every day?

Dog: I don’t want a bone for every dog. I want a bone for me.

Tom: That’s my point: There wouldn’t be enough for everyone.

Dog: But there’s enough for me.

Tom: Is that fair to the other dogs?

Dog: I’m sorry that this is so complicated for you. We are not talking about other dogs. We are talking about this dog. Does that make it simpler?

Tom: (Pause.) Have a bone. (Gives her one.)

Dog: Thank you.

Posted by hockey at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)

May 6, 2008

Keep Those Cards and Letters Coming

From a Student:

"During the Big Bang theory/creation of the universe discussion in class on Monday, I did have a question, but I decided not to ask, as it is a personal question. While talking about the beginning of the universe, you mentioned several times that there were no answers to most of our questions, and at one point you even said "maybe it's just the way God willed it". So my question is: Do you believe in God? and if so, Do you have a faith base, in Christianity or anything? Or just in a higher being?"

Answer:

Sure. I'm a Christian and choose to believe in God. That's a choice I make. I try to to keep matters I take on faith to a minimum, to keep things simple, but feel that ours would be an awfully dull reality in the absence of God.

I can't prove that God created the Universe. That's OK with me. If I could prove it, or even provide empirical evidence for God, the god I would be proving would somehow be smaller than the transcendental God I can imagine!

TH

Posted by hockey at 10:53 AM | Comments (1)

May 5, 2008

Road Bed

My family and I were driving along the highway when we ran over a mattress. Yes, that's right: a mattress. Apparently it had fallen off a truck. As far as I know, nobody was sleeping on it at the time.

But we didn't just run over it. My car straddled the mattress, which fit perfectly between the wheels. The result was that the mattress dragged beneath the chasis for many meters before we realized what had happened, stopped on the shoulder, and reversed off.

By now, though, road friction had ignited the mattress! Old mattresses burn pretty well. I acknowledged this as I saw the dry grass nearby and the housing development in the not-so-far distance. I pictured a newpaper headline about a devastating wildfire, and I was in it!

Luckily, I had some "survival" water in my car that doused the flames. Everybody was OK, though the mattress was much worse for wear.

Posted by hockey at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)

May 2, 2008

A Letter from a Former Student

Thanks for the add! I didn't know if you would know me--I took your gen ed Astronomy class way back in. . . 2000 or so.

Am I an astronomer now? No, but I am a poet as I was then and as Walt Whitman once observed about the relationship between poets and astronomers:

"how soon. . .I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars."

While Whitman seems in his poem to have a distaste for some of the mathematical elements of your science, I am like him in that, after having had the earth put into its solar and universal perspective day in day out for one semester, I feel like a smaller member of a smaller species after having taken your class--a feeling that has given me much perspective and insight. All of known matter has become much larger and more awesome to me since.

So here's a nod to you for giving insightful and enjoyable lectures to non-scholars. Your words are not received without gratitude.

[name]

Posted by hockey at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)

April 25, 2008

What We Pay for at the Pump

I grumble at the gas station as much as the next guy. However, the rationale side of my brain concedes that we probably ought to raise the gas tax a dollar per gallon. Normally I am loathe to propose any flat tax. However, Americans do not pay the true cost of fuel: Not included in the price are the envirnomental/climate-change effects (which we ignore) or the cost we apparently must pay to defend the unsustainable supply (which we borrow).

Anything we pour into the tank would be taxed; biofuels consume petroleum in their production. In total the tax would raise $150,000,000,000. (I am basing that number on present consumption, which hopefully would decline.) This starts to sound like real money. If the funds raised are not used by our lawmakers to remit the hidden price of fossil fuel--tax our President and Congress a million bucks a head!

We likely cannot sell this idea as a "gas tax" to the consumer. Call it a "national-security tax." Put pictures of battleships (or windpower generators) up on the pumps. I believe that citizens are smart enough to pick up on the cause and effect.

Meanwhile, I think I will go out to the garage and put some air in my bicycle tires.

Posted by hockey at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)

April 21, 2008

Amazing Nobody Else Has Thought of It

Here is my idea for painless energy: Let’s burn down our houses for fuel. Dubious, you say? It’s OK. Trust me. Houses are re-new-a-ble. And we have a LOT of houses here in the US—we won’t miss some of them. Burning down our houses will allow us to continue expending energy without self-sacrifice. We’ll call them “arche-fuels.” A whole new industry! Tax credits. Government investment. The whole bit. I mean, it’s not as silly as, oh, say, burning our food and turning it into energy . . .

No wait. Never mind.

Posted by hockey at 12:58 PM | Comments (0)

April 15, 2008

Riddles

What do you drink after reading a famous, mid-twentieth-century American novel?

Tequlia Mockingbird

.
.
.
.
.

Where does a rich astronomer live?

in a star-spangled manor

.
.
.
.
.

I said riddles. I didn't say that they were good riddles!

Posted by hockey at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)

April 14, 2008

Write of Spring

Finally, after a so-far dreary Spring, it is a nice, bright,
cheerful Sunday afternoon. Time to check how the rest of the
world is faring this weekend:

Well, for starters, the war in Afghanistan drags out. There
is more fighting in Bagdad, Iraq, between the government and
private army of Mullah al-Sadr. Rumor has it that Hizbullah
is gearing up for another bout with Israel, while Israelis and
Palistinians continue to kill each other over the Gaza border.
It has been five years of war, now, in Darfur, Sudan. Nobody can
remember how long the civil war in Sri Lanka has gone on;
recently there were new attacks there. Pakistan and India are
battling people they think are terrorists. Some say that the
government of Zimbabwe is preparing for violence after disputed
elections. In Niger it is government soldiers versus dissidents I have
never heard of.

Things are tense in Nepal. Kosovo is about to flare up. There is something
going on in Congo. Don't forget Somalia. Or East Timor. Haiti is, well, like it
usually is. And tides have washed away the sands covering a WWII mine
beneath a British beach. I guess that war is not over yet.

All this makes it kind of hard for me to complain about my crocuses
not coming up.

Posted by hockey at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)

April 2, 2008

I Really Think So

Say my name. Say it over again and again. Quickly.

Thomas Hockey, Thomas Hockey, Thomashockey, Thomashockey, Tomashocke, Tomashocke, Tomasake . . . .

Notice? I’m turning Japanese!

Posted by hockey at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)

April 1, 2008

April Fools

“My fellow Americans, the recent violence south of Bagdad demonstrates that my “surge” was ineffective. The “surge,” you will recall, is my latest failed strategy in Iraq. Now that I’m the “legacy-er,” my only hope at double-digit approval ratings is to take charge of “mission accomplished” myself. So for the rest of my term as your President, I’m going to command-in-chief from the green zone.

I’ll be taking over for General Petraeus while he’s in Washington. Kind of a house swapping arrangement. I was in uniform long enough to remember how to return a salute, and I’ve been out hunting with Dick Cheney. Shouldn’t be too hard. John McCain’s over there all the time! Plus, I’ll have Blackwater looking out for my back. Heck, if me showing in Shia-land doesn’t turn things around by itself, I might throw on a flak vest, bolt some steel plate onto Hum-vee One, and go out on a few house-to-houses myself.

Don’t worry. Keep eating your MREs. It’s not like I’ll be in dereliction of my duty back here at the White House. I’m not in Washington much anymore these days, any way. When I am, it’s just to veto some fool thing Congress has come up with. Or waiting for a Supreme Court Justice to die. Or picking up the keys from another member of my administration high-tailing it for private life on the lobbying circuit. After all, by now you’ve all figured out that there isn’t anything I can do now to keep the economy from tanking.

Good luck and Fiimaan illaah. I’m deploying on outta here. This duck’s going to be sitting in Basra.”

GWB

Posted by hockey at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)

March 31, 2008

Legacy

He was a wealthy businessman, one of several sons of a well-known politician. Though leader of the only true world superpower, he did not have much of a reputation as a military man: Prior to his election, he was noteworthy as a hawk only for the number of criminals he had executed.

However, it was he who decided to attack an old enemy in Iraq. There were other wars to fight, and the intelligence was bad, but he went east anyway. Of course, his forces were numerically superior to, and boasted weaponry more technologically avanced than that of, the opposition. The invasion went swiftly. Yet once in the enemy's home territory, his occupying army was subjected to non-traditional warfare and unable to secure a victory. He was never heard from again. History has almost forgotten him.

He was Marcus Licinius Crassus (died: 53 BCE).

Posted by hockey at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)

March 22, 2008

Another Quote I Like

"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 not clothed."

Dwight David Eisenhower (1950)

Posted by hockey at 6:57 PM | Comments (0)

March 21, 2008

Geologist and Meteorologists Just Don't Speak the Same Language

Cable TV weatherperson I heard the other night:

"In the event of flooding, seek out heavier ground."

Posted by hockey at 2:23 PM | Comments (0)

March 17, 2008

What Up?

I tried to write a paragraph with the most English words not occuring (in their current use) within the pages of my dated dictionary. Can anybody beat 20/50? It's got to be words; abbreviations are too easy. LOL.

"He dissed me on his blog! He's got no cred at ground zero, but lots of tude in his crib. Dude's 411 on cyberspace is ill. Text from him is spam, too. Geek's pimpped cell is just bliing-bling. My posse needs to swiftboat him. I feel like I've been plutoed."

I tried to fit in "hillbilly armor," but couldn't. Plus I do wonder: Would my imaginary correspondent who uses the noun "posse" really use the verb "swiftboat" as well?

Posted by hockey at 2:49 PM | Comments (0)

March 12, 2008

Recently Unearthed Photo of TAH 1978

Randoom Hall (dorm), MIT
Josip Loncaric

Posted by hockey at 4:05 PM | Comments (0)

March 5, 2008

Thoughts on John McCain

Now that John McCain is the Republican Party nominee 2008, he might have tough sledding to the Presidency. For some reason, when there’s fighting going on, we tend not to elect the person with practical warfare experience. I don’t know if this is good or bad. Regardless, we didn’t elect John Kerry. We didn’t elect Al Gore. We didn’t even elect Bob Dole. Moreover, when we think of W, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, and Johnson, we don’t picture of mortal combat.

Wait a minute. We did elect George H. W Bush. Navy. Bailing out of planes. GOP. Nevermind.

Hey, while I’m writing about McCain, here’s my suggestion for his TV commercial:

VOICE OVER: Your family is safe and asleep in bed. But somewhere in the world something is happening. In Washington, the phone rings. Who do you want to pick it up?

(Telephone ringing.)

HILLARY CLINTON: Hello?

SEVENTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD JOHN McCAIN (VOICE): Hillary! What the hell are you doing still in bed?

Posted by hockey at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)

February 18, 2008

Prediction: Our Next President Will Be a US Senator!

The fact that our present choice for President is between a woman, an African-American, and an ex-POW is unique. Yet even the fact that the next President will be a United States Senator is unusual. Surprisingly, few of our Presidents have come from the upper house of Congress. Nine. But let us look at that number a bit more carefully.

Of the nine, three were better known for their war record as generals: Andrew Jackson, Benjamin Harrison, William Henry Harrison, and Franklin Pierce. Warren Harding also had been Lieutenant Governor of Ohio. (And the Harding Administration was not a showcase for executive skills, anyway.) That leaves John Quincy Adams, John Kennedy, and James Monroe. Now, Monroe had been previously a member of the historic Continental Congress, so he, perhaps, should not be counted as exclusively a Senator, either. Meanwhile, Adams and Kennedy had famous names.

Yet all this does not mean that Senators Clinton, McCain, and Obama lack the administrative qualifications necessary to become President. We elected two one-term governors to the office, though both William McKinley and Jimmy Carter did have such experience as military officers. Even after 2008, George W. Bush will remain our President with the weakest resume.

Posted by hockey at 11:38 AM | Comments (0)

February 7, 2008

Portrait for Lakeside Laboratory

They wanted a casual shot of me "in the field." - TH

Posted by hockey at 1:12 PM | Comments (0)

February 6, 2008

Lies My Grocery Store Told Me

Baby carrots. Not true!

French fries, German chocolate, Russian dressing, Tartar sauce, Neapolitan ice cream, and Lima beans really come from no more than a few hundred kilometers away. Or less! Later the 411 on Scotch tape . . .

Marshmallows are made in a factory and do not come from wetlands at all.

Iceberg lettuce is actually grown in the ground.

Eggplant. I tried planting an egg once, but it just got smelly.

Honey crisp apples, Honeyed ham, and honeydew melons. Where’s the honey?

Horseradish has little of either in it. (Unless they puree it really finely.)

Wearable Depends. No it doesn’t. If you need to wear one, you really should.

Light beer is pretty heavy by the keg.

Bun-sized hotdogs. How big are your buns?

Posted by hockey at 11:57 AM | Comments (0)

February 5, 2008

Cheating II

Some sample questions to consider:

• Should teachers be placed in the role of policeman? Are students willing to seek mentoring, the foremost role of the graduate teacher, from a cop?

• If college is about providing a liberal-arts education to the individual, then cheating is simply the student not getting his or her money's worth. On the other hand, if we are training people for a job, discouraging cheating is protecting the reputation of a product. Which is it?

• If a teacher designs a test that can be cheated on, is it not her problem?

• Tests are artificial. Often the skills a student might draw upon in order to cheat are those skills that will be useful legitimately to him or her in the "real world" (e. g., working well in a group). Is teaching not to cheat, in the end, counterproductive?

• If he is smart enough to cheat, isn’t he is smart enough to pass?

• A student who has cheated ultimately will be shown to have a knowledge or skill deficit (licensure, job evaluation, etc.) and fail in real life. Or will he? What if cheating has no consequences beyond the university that he will never visit again?

• What if somebody turns in another student for cheating? Do we reward "snitching"? When we punish a cheating student who has been reported by a "snitch," are we doing it for legitimate reasons or are we doing it because, if we do not, the "snitch" will hold power over us?

• What should we do if a student implicates another falsely? Is that in itself cheating--or "just" lying? Is it a greater or lesser crime than cheating?

• These are the days of flash drives and wireless connectivity. How do we assure that the computer is "clean"? It gets worse: A computer genius could invent a virus that puts her notes in every computer on campus, unknown to and unreadable by, anybody but her. Just how much of a computer geek must a proctor become?

• If we accuse somebody of cheating, are we making ourselves and our university vulnerable to law suit? Even if not, are we prepared for all the time it takes (paperwork, hearings, etc.) to pursue a cheating charge? How do we learn how to become prosecuting attorneys?

•Should a parent with a sick child at home be allowed to carry a cell phone in a test? What if the phone has text messaging? Music or white noise can relax the test taker and mask distractions produced by others. Should she be allowed to use an Ipod? The same effect can be attributed to chewing gum. But what about the wrapper? What if he needs to go to the restroom? How far do we follow him?

•Should we have a special Testing Lab? Computers equipped with “lock down” software? Jamming devices? Cameras? Microphones?

• Some teachers encourage you to bring in a piece of paper to the test on which all the relevant equations are printed. Others find this the very definition of cheating. Are we not sending mixed messages?

• We tell the cheater that doing so "is not fair to the others." How do we say this with a straight face, considering that there are a hundred other variables guaranteeing that no two test takers are on a level playing field?

• Is it possible to proctor fairly? Consciously or not, won't we watch one student more than another--for a myriad of different reasons? Is not this "profiling"? What if a teacher is just really good at proctoring—but another, in another course, section is not. Is that fair?

• Do we scale punishment depending upon whether or not the cheater admits doing so? Or not? What if, in confession, a cheating student implicates another student? What do we say about the other student who convinced, or bullied, our student to cheat? Do we expose a clever cheater? In doing so, we may publicize her clever method to copycats!

• Do teachers have to be careful that we don’t cheat--accidentally? Instructors have been sued by Testing Boards for providing students with practice questions too similar to the real things.

• What happens when cheating is discovered after the fact? What if it is long after? Do we still punish the--former?--student? Yet that individual now may no longer be the same person. Is there a statute of limitations?

• Many of us excuse a student from an exam with a “doctor’s note.” Who trains a physician to determine whether a person can take a test or not? Does not that physician’s note violate confidentiality? For example, what if the note is signed by the only psychiatrist in town?

• Computer gamers use “cheats.” Are contemporary children learning another, benign definition of the word “cheating”? Do we need a new word?

• What do we think of books on the market such as Exam Scams: Best Cheating Stories and Excuses from Around the World and The Cheater's Handbook: The Naughty Student's Bible?

• What if you cheat to avoid unethical alternate consequences? For example, what if you cheat in order to avoid serving in an immoral war? (Think Vietnam.) On the other hand, is it cheating to intentionally fail an exam?

• If the teacher cheats (in the lab, in relationships, on the income tax), is it immoral for her to penalize a student for academic cheating? Just about everybody has cheated in some venue, at least once in life, have they not? Or are the two kinds of cheating—academic and everything else--different?

• What does it tell us about ourselves if a cheater does "prosper"?

Posted by hockey at 11:38 AM | Comments (0)

February 4, 2008

Cheating I

Cheating is a subject often discussed informally but seldom in public. Most UNI students (I strongly believe) do not regularly cheat. The topic might seem the agenda of a controversialist. However, it is certainly true that, if academic honesty is to have meaning, the concept of cheating must be explored. After all, national data suggests that cheating is becoming more frequent and more socially acceptable. Without discourse on this topic, different divisions across campus, working in isolation, all too easily can define and address cheating provincially and ad hoc. But might we not benefit as educators and scholars by sharing our views on cheating across the disciplines? While we may each live in our own ivory tower, our students are required to navigate between them.

I wish to engage the academy’s thoughts on cheating, at a time when more light is shining on the subject than ever before. (An example: The Psychology of Academic Cheating [Anderman, E. M. & Murdock, T. B. Amsterdam: Elsevier Academic Press] was published just last year.) Exchanging views on cheating is especially apropos, I feel, for graduate faculty. The mechanism of bestowing a graduate degree, based more clearly on a traditional European model than our present American undergraduate plan, involves a few high-stakes events (such as comprehensive examinations) that invite cheating.

What guidance does the Graduate Faculty presently have on cheating? Surprisingly little. There is, of course, the passage on cheating from the UNI Policies and Procedures (accepted: 1983). Still, much of this describes the procedures to be used when the standards are violated. It is not prophylactic. In my search I find that the Department of Political Science has its own supplementary policy on cheating. Beyond this, one has to look at the level of classroom honor codes and individual course syllabi.

I do not propose to begin our conversation from some a priori high ground. While practical mechanisms for preventing teaching will be one aspect of my Institute, more challenging and time consuming, I think, will be trying to discover how students come to cross the line we call cheating. Who cheats? What is cheating? What is it not? How does one know someone is cheating? How do you know when you are cheating?

Posted by hockey at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)

January 31, 2008

What Were They Thinking?

A listing in my American Astronomical Society Directory shows one colleague to be located at the:

"University of Amsterdamn"

Posted by hockey at 1:35 PM | Comments (0)

January 22, 2008

To Paraphrase Carl Sagan

"We all may be made of stardust, but some of us are dustier than others."

Posted by hockey at 2:52 PM | Comments (0)

January 21, 2008

How Iowa Won the Cold War

[Just a different version of an old posting, but, hey, it''s a holiday. - TH]

Nikita Kruschev often is pictured as a Soviet hard-liner, but much of that was theater. His famous "we will bury you" really translates more like the much-less-belicose "we will remain after you have passed away." Remember, it was he who flinched in the Cuban Missle Crisis.

Something of a reformer, Kruschev amazingly traveled to the United States. On that trip, he visited the Garst farm in central Iowa. Roy Garst is famous as one of the pioneers in corn hybridization. Nikita was impressed. He was so impressed that he returned to the USSR and made everybody plant hybrid corn. Everywhere. To the exclusion of other crops. Including in places that had no business trying to grow corn.

The resulting famine ticked off so many people that Kruschev was replaced by the traditional party-liner Leonid Brezhnev. It was Brezhnev who dim-wittedly went head-to-head with Ronald Reagan in an arms build-up that ultimately wrecked the Soviet economy. Once Brezhnev was gone, it was already too late: The days of the Soviet Union were numbered.

And that's how Iowa won the Cold War.

Posted by hockey at 1:58 PM | Comments (1)

January 4, 2008

Prisoner of the Caucuses

With all the media attention given to last night’s Iowa Caucuses, the impression may be given that the phenomenon has all the import and solemnity of the Founding Fathers at Philadelphia. Instead, it’s more like a church-basement supper in Lake Wobegon.

Ninety-eight percent of the citizens in attendance do not really understand what they are doing--or why they are doing it--as they sit uncomfortably in classroom chairs. Heck, there is always a non-negligible number of people who don’t even know if they’re at the right place. So we end up with somebody, perhaps a college student, finally saying, “OK, dudes . . . you guys for Edwards, like, sit over in the corner, and you guys for Obama all get around that kid holding the sign . . .”

Then comes counting time. Nobody ever gets the number right the first time. So we do it again. And again. Now the calculators come out. Nobody can agree on what those things say, either. However, by now, folk are bored and ready for any excuse to go home. (Was the reason they came out in the first place the fact that there is nothing interesting on TV—as it’s channel-to-channel Iowa Caucuses?)

Luckily the weather was good this year. If you live in the country, you may have to travel a good ways to get to your caucus site. Would Huckabee have won if a blizzard covered the more rural precincts of western Iowa?

So don’t take our vote as any necessary wisdom to live by. The number of people deciding at the caucuses may be hundreds of thousands, but not millions. I don’t understand why people want to “back a winner”: Who cares if the man/woman you like loses? What’s the penalty? It’s not as if you have to go and do it all over.

Posted by hockey at 3:33 PM | Comments (0)

December 27, 2007

An Allegory

Suppose that instead of going to Afganistan, Osama bin Laden became the president of a country much like the United States. I know it sounds silly that such a country would elect a religious fundamentalist, but remember . . . this is just a "what if."

What does Osama do? He has grown up in a rich and well-placed family. He's had few cares in life up until now. Yet he realizes that he needs a cause--something that has been absent in his life so far. He's very open to suggestion and latches onto a goal placed in his ear: Osama is going to protect his people, and their way of life, from the Foreigners who wish to supplant both. And President Osama knows that God is on his side.

Now, to accomplish his goal, Osama does not need to use terrorism. He's the leader of a major country, right? So he does what major countries do: He convinces his people to go to war. Osama brings the battle to the enemy, and at first appears successful. But the enemy, fighting on their home turf, does not give up. The war wages year after year, until President Osama becomes largely irrelevant.

It's a dreadful fantasy, isn't it?

Posted by hockey at 2:51 PM | Comments (1)

December 19, 2007

Tested Under Fire

Back in the 70s, I thought that there were two groups of young people: There were those who heeded their government's call and valiantly fought for our cause in Vietnam. There also were those who were brave enough to accept the consequences of dissenting against the actions of that government. From among these two proud groups would come the leaders of the future.

What flew beneath my radar was a third, smaller, group of my peers: those who used deferments or dubious alternate service to avoid service and, at the same time, to avoid any consequences. Little did I know that it would be from this privileged bunch that our present leaders would emerge.

Once again, in 2008, my generation will vie for President of the United States. (Every one of the candidates is --by some definition--a "baby boomer.") What I am thinking now is that we should choose a man or woman who actually has experienced some trauma in his or her life. It need not have been during a big, national, upheaval, of course. It might well be personal. Still, something that put the candidate to the test.

It was likely no picnic for Governor Richardson, growing up as "the Mexican kid." The same goes for Senator Obama. Senators McCain and Edwards have dealt with family illness, Governor Huckabee has faced his own. Senator Biden and Senator Edwards (again) lost loved ones prematurely. Even Congressman Hunter got burned out in the infamous California wildfires. However, for the rest of the contenders, it pretty much has been a cakewalk.

So the majority of Presidential candidates had a pretty good end-of-the-twentieth-century. One of them may well slide on into the Presidency, capping a lucky life. In other words, history may once more repeat itself.

Posted by hockey at 11:54 AM | Comments (0)

December 17, 2007

TAH 2007

[Here is the text from this year's Department newsletter. - TH]

Introducing the “Institute for Cultural Astronomy"

The “Institute for Cultural Astronomy” occupies what some of you remember as the Latham Hall darkroom. (We rarely take analog photographs anymore.) It is the fancy name I give to three, related projects that take up my time these days. First, there is my on-going Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers (Springer 2007-). This set is available on-line, as well as in print; the on-line version allows regular additions and updates. Second, as Vice Chair of the American Astronomical Society’s Historical Astronomy Division, I commission and edit all the obituaries-of-record that appear in the Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society. Thirdly, I now manage Archaeoastronomy: The Journal of Astronomy in Culture, the peer-reviewed journal sponsored by the International Society for Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture and published by the University of Texas Press. As you can tell, I have a lively time with a lot of dead people. Stop by to visit on any occasion—as long as you’re not afraid of the . . . darkroom.

My UNI RAISE Program abstract (with student Matt Oliphant) is at: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006DPS....38.1108S

What I did at this year’s Biennial History of Astronomy Workshop is at: http://www.nd.edu/~histast/abstracts.html

My interview on Iowa Public Radio is podcast at: http://stream.public http://weblogs.uni.edu/hockey/ broadcasting.net/production/mp3/kuni/local-kuni-599023.mp3

My latest NPR StarDate (script by TAH) is at:
pnm://realaudio.cc.utexas.edu/general/stardate/sd20060722. rm

I’m still Blogging at:
http://weblogs.uni.edu/hockey/

Tom Hockey

P. S.: I did leave Latham Hall long enough to travel with Yuliana to the Dominican Republic this year (foreign country number thirty), but quickly scurried back to teach Investigations in Earth Science!

Posted by hockey at 1:20 PM | Comments (0)

December 14, 2007

Islands

I like islands. It is difficult to become lost on an island. Here are the islands I have visited, both large and very small.

Anguilla
Antigua
Great Britain
Hawaii
Hispaniola
Honshu
Islamorada
Jamaica
Kauai
Key Largo
Layton
Liberty
Long
Manhattan
Marathon
Maui
Molokai
Montserrat
Nova Scotia
Oahu
Prince Edward’s
Puerto Rico
Rapa Nui
Saint Martin
Singapore
South Padre
Staten
Vancouver
Whidbey

Posted by hockey at 4:44 PM | Comments (0)

December 6, 2007

What Iowans Do in the Snow

It’s hard work in Iowa these days. So many Presidential candidates, so little time. Do I shop for Christmas or listen to Joe Biden? Do I grade final exams or meet Dennis Kucinich?

My personal rule is that I will not go out-of-town to interview a candidate for President. I broke this rule only once: I drove a few miles into the adjacent burg of Waterloo in order to hear Hillary; however, that was because it was one of her rare appearances in which she brought along her husband. I got two politicians for the price of one.

With only 36,000 people in Cedar Falls, you might think that my rule is impractical. Nevertheless, this is Iowa—in the year immediately preceding a year divisible by four. No problem. With a month yet to go before the caucuses, I’ve already encountered all the Democratic candidates except Mike Gravel. Does he count?

What about the Republicans? Rudi Giuliani and Mike Huckabee showed up while I was in class. Still, on average, there are less Republican candidates wandering through than Democrats. I suppose that is because this is a college town that they consider to be a lost cause.

Back to the issue of time. Presidential candidates are always running late. “We have heard that Senator Edwards will be here in just a few minutes.” This means that he is at least in the limo, even if it hasn’t pulled out onto the street yet. “Governor Richardson will be here in a short while.” This means that he still is speaking in another town.

Maybe it is all worth it. We sure won’t see any of these folk after 3 January. And someday I’ll show up on C-Span.

You might wonder what my favorite “line” of the campaign is so far. It was amusing to hear Barak Obama invite this ethnically bland town to “join my crew.” But the winner would have to be Chris Dodd, who spoke in a small room with only thirty people in attendance. A “Dodd for President” poster, hastily tacked on the wall behind him, fell down mid Q & A. It hit the candidate in the back. Says Dodd with a straight face: “That’s not a good sign.”

Posted by hockey at 11:31 AM | Comments (1)

December 5, 2007

Photo of Me from this Year's Department Newsletter

Following the extremely successful Earth Science Open House ’07, Hockey lectures in what remains of Latham Hall. The subject is Ptolemaic astronomy. Based on attendance, it must have been a Friday.

Posted by hockey at 2:17 PM | Comments (0)

December 3, 2007

Apparently the Intellectual Standards Are a Little Lower in Georgia

A real position announcement from the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Position: Assistant Professor - Vegetables
Salary: Unspecified
Institution: University of Georgia
Location: Georgia
Date posted: 11/26/2007

Posted by hockey at 11:32 AM | Comments (1)

November 27, 2007

My Students Like My Class So Much That They Tatoo Astronomy to Their Bodies :)

Posted by hockey at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)

November 26, 2007

Gravity Waves, Church, and State

Once upon a time I talked to a sociologist who had done a detailed, many-year-long study of gravitational-wave astronomers. (Yes. There are flavors of astronomers.) We were speaking about one subject’s philosophy of science, the subject being a man I knew to be Jewish. I asked the scholar what influence—if any—the subject’s religion had. The sociologist paused. He didn’t know. In all those hundreds of hours of interviews, asking about everything and anything that took place in these men’s and women’s lives, he never asked about their religious views.

The sociologist was from Europe. This gap in knowledge likely would not have occurred in the USA. Take Presidential politics: Right now we nearly have more candidates of admittedly different faith persuasions than, well, since the Founding Fathers were running. The difference is that today they’re talking about it.

Starting with Jimmy Carter, religion was no longer off limits, as it was through most of the Republic’s history. (Can you imagine somebody asking Richard Nixon if he’d been saved?) I think that this shift is part of the break in the wall dividing American private and public culture, something I’ve written about before. Religion has been important in this country for a long time; it just wasn’t spoken about on the “stump.”

This broadening of the conversation is all fine and dandy with me—it makes people a lot more interesting, more “real.” But let’s not conclude from it that the old chestnut of America as a “Christian nation” is true. It’s not. How do I know? I read it in the Constitution. Of late, the government has (unconstitutionally) given money to religious organizations, yet even this doesn’t make the bromide so.

Separation of state and church for some folk means separation between state and church-with-which-they-don’t-agree. The one that they agree with . . . hey, that’s OK. However, this is not how it works. Of course, if any of the candidates advocate changing this fundamental separation tradition, they have a good role model for how the result operates: Iraq. Little separation problem there! And we all know how well that’s going.

Posted by hockey at 9:51 PM | Comments (0)

November 12, 2007

The Situation

creation
gestation
animation
sensation
lactation
sanitation
recreation
communication
temptation
education
transformation
elevation
fast food nation
provocation
maturation
transportation
separation
occupation
compensation
summer vacation
infatuation
conjugation
habitation
replication
fascination
consternation
consolation
matriculation
commendation
avocation
inspiration
realization
incarnation?

Posted by hockey at 11:41 AM | Comments (2)

November 8, 2007

Movie Stars with Not So Much as One Oscar Nomination

We love to watch them. However, they star in the sorts of movies that do not get a nod from the Academy. Here they are, with their number of career roles from IMdb (some on TV, admittedly).

Steven Seagal, 32
Chevy Chase, 35
Demi Moore, 43
Arnold Schwarzenegger, 43
Steve Martin, 50
Jamie Lee Curtis, 64
Eugene Levy, 64
Daryl Hannah, 68
Bruce Willis, 75
Jackie Chan, 97

But there's still time!

Posted by hockey at 10:40 AM | Comments (0)

November 6, 2007

Something's Fishy Here

...........................................IRAQ (2001).........................PAKISTAN (Today)

Type of Government.................dictatorship.........................dictatorship

Legal System..........................martial law...........................martial law

Plays Well With Others?.............thousands of.....................thousands of
..........................................human rights abuses...........human rights abuses

What Do the Neighbors...........starts wars with them............starts wars with them
.Say?

WMDs..................................chemical (disabled in 90s)......nukes!

Opposition............................in exile...............................in exile

Leader Wears Uniform.............yep....................................yep
.and Moustache?

Oil .....................................lots....................................not especially

US Foreign Policy Toward.......invasion & occupation...........billions of $$$ in aid

Posted by hockey at 7:28 PM | Comments (0)

October 31, 2007

Zero for Four

Current United States foreign policy in the Middle East seeks to contain Iraq, Afghanistan, Hammas, and Iran. This is totally eye-off-the-ball. Our efforts in Iraq continue to catalysize the poison of terrorism. Afghanistan was never a threat to the USA in itself: The Taliban at most “hosted” Al Qaida; it is unclear whether they would do so now. (Apparently the Taliban treat their guests far better than their own population.) Hammas? It is capable of major terrorist acts, but not toward us--they are a “blip” on the radar of power.

Regarding the Iranians, we have no idea with what we are dealing. We do not know if they have a nuclear weapons program or not. We do not really know who is in charge. Though we give him great attention, it is obvious that the Iranian President is not really running the show. We do not know what the Iranians want, other than that some still are brooding about American intervention in their country during the twentieth century. And we will not know the answers to these questions any time soon because we will not talk to anybody from Iran.

Who, then, are the real states to look out for? Saudi Arabia. It is the home of Islamicism, plain and simple. Pakistan. We have Al Qaida’s base and a nuclear weapon in the same (unstable) country. This is Not Good. Israel. As long as a militant Israel possesses The Bomb—and even we no longer deny this—there will exist a dangerous arms race in the Middle East. Egypt. The Egyptians dislike their not-very-well-disguised dictatorship. Can you imagine what it would be like if a place such as Egypt went over to the other side? United States foreign policy says “hands off” in regard to all four of these countries.

It is a sad day when the Russians understand how the world works and we do not. However, I am sure that if we elect as President a foreign-policy wonk like Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney, he will get it all straightened out . . .

Posted by hockey at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2007

Perks

Recently, my university gave me two free tickets to a performance of a visiting Indian dance troupe. Maybe the sponsors worried about embarrassingly low attendance otherwise; I'll not further speculate as to motive. The show was lovely, and my wife and I had a delightful evening.

This event caused me to catalogue all the other things (not job-related, like pencils and toilet paper) that my employer has given me over the years:

an ID card with a picture of me on it

a calendar with pictures of the University of Northern Iowa on it

free photocopying at the library (but only up to one-hundred copies)

a brat and potato salad at the president's fall picnic + chocolate chip cookies and lemonade at the annual faculty meeting

a UNI Homecoming refridgerator magnet

selection from a bowl of Tootsie Rolls at the Registrar's Office, on days we turn in our final grades

And, in honor of my two decades of service, I was presented--well, actually I had to go pick it up--with my own chair (folding, suitable for tailgating)

That's about it. No free parking. No free use of Wellness facilities. No free tickets to major sports or concerts. And certainly no free personal mailing or faxing.

The myth that we get a break on admission or tuition for our children is just that. A myth.

You see, we are state employees. If anybody hands us anything more valuable than a coffee mug, we end up in the newspaper. And not in a good way.

That's it for now. I'm off to pay my on-campus parking ticket.

P. S.: It's all said with love, UNI. :)

Posted by hockey at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)

October 19, 2007

Higher Educational-ese

We professors have our jargon. Sometimes we use it to access. A document recently crossed my desk that exemplifies unnecessarily complex verbage. In fact, I discovered that it made about the same amount of sense (none) in any order I read it. Below, I have rearranged randomly the phrases in the document--but that's all. It even took my colleagues a few moments to catch on that the result was fake!

If you insist that I provide a citation, I will do so. Riight now, I'd like to spare the original author. All in fun, and all that. - TH

Why Do Assessment?

Assessing for collective inquiry among educators is a systematic ability to integrate evidence of students’ abilities to translate our intentions. It is a systemic process of student progression of their studies and construction of their own meaning into their own work. The efficacy of collective institutional processes of ascertaining how well students extend their curiosity to our profession is the collective educational practice. It is guided by questions about achievement of higher education’s promotion of programmatic and institutional self-reflection. Based on pedagogy, multiple experiences stimulate the design of curricula becoming the collective responsibility. The design habits of the mind reform and modify educational opportunities. Ways of thinking become revisions of students’ work, and behaving becomes rethinking of educational practices. Through examining students’ work, constituencies together from across campus, and across the continuum of learning, strengthen learning. Moreover, we gain knowledge about external constituencies through the efficacy of our work.

That’s why.

Posted by hockey at 3:23 PM | Comments (0)

October 18, 2007

Hate and Crime

I am reluctantly one of those people who question the validity of so-called hate-crime laws. I’m sure that these were proposed and enacted with good motives. But they don’t make sense to me.

Hate is an emotion. It is to be distinguished from intent. If somebody moves to strike you, their intent is likely to strike you (regardless of whether the punch hits its mark or not). The emotion the perpetrator feels at the time seems largely irrelevant. The intent to do harm (without provocation) is a Bad Thing, in and of itself. We already have laws based on intent.

The existence of hate crimes suggests the possibility of “love crimes.” Far fetched? What if someone sets fire to a structure--without permission!--not because they hate the building (a strange motive), nor because he or she hopes to profit from doing so (a common motive), but instead because the pyrophile loves burning buildings, thinks they are beautiful, and enjoys spending time watching them. That’s sick, of course. Yet does the back story really matter? It’s arson any way you look at it.

What about “fear crimes”? Sounds a little redundant, doesn’t it?

If somebody hates a class of people, say rich people, and batters an individual from that class solely because of this hatred, that criminal behavior in judged heinous. However, if somebody intentionally hurts another needlessly, I think that judgment already is established.

Emotion is something we usually try to remove from our legal system. In court, defendants and plaintiffs do not decide a verdict; judges and juries do. Indeed, we go to some trouble to obtain an impartial jury, asking whether prospective jurors have some connection to the litigants that may produce an emotional bias. Trials are supposedly based upon reason. Is adding emotion to the courtroom desirable?

Posted by hockey at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

October 8, 2007

There Must Be Something Wrong with my Math

The United States is getting a lot of flack this month for supporting undemocratic measures in Pakistan. At the same time, it opposes the government of Iran, which may or may not be mildly democratic—the system of government there is so complicated that nobody appears to understand it, including the Iranians. (Of course, only the current American administration thinks that Iran’s president speaks with authority for Iran.)

However, the US also supports the states of Qatar, Djibouti, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and the United Arab Emirates. Bahrain recently undertook democratic reforms; it is too early to assess the result. Still, if it is correct that we are supporting two tentative democracies in the region, Afghanistan and Iraq, these are out numbered three-to-one by our oligarchic friends.

Posted by hockey at 3:08 PM | Comments (0)

September 25, 2007

Coarse Correction?

Some speak of the coarsening of American civility. This is true inasmuch as we are seeing and hearing in public much that can offend. However, I see another side. I do not believe that we are becoming baser than the America of the past. I believe that what we are undergoing is a blurring of public and private culture. Nothing is said or done loudly in 2007 that was not also said or done quietly in 1807. Now, though, people—especially young people--are not as likely to maintain separate private and societal postures, expressed beliefs, or behaviors.

Perhaps the change is the inevitable consequence of allowing mass media into our homes, a process that began with radio, accelerated with television, and is presently manifest by the internet. Alternately, it is modern urbanization, which has forced us to exist more communally. (Recall that two centuries ago most of us lived isolated, agricultural lives.) The technology that makes us a global village also makes it easier for us to see each other’s dirty laundry.

To view the glass as half full, I do not acknowledge a necessary tendency to arrive at the lowest common denominator. It goes both ways. If there is less hypocrisy in our actions behind and before closed doors, we experience less cognitive dissonance. Maybe if we no longer partition our minds, we may arrive whole at some intermediate level that expresses a clearer headed, common worldview regarding human respect and social interaction. It could happen.

That which we do in secret is the worst of human frailty and experience. I don’t know if “keeping it real” will result in less closeted skeletons. Nevertheless, I won’t mind if being forced to see, on the sunlit street, the gutter as it really is, at the same time causes us to pause and look up, at the angels, more often while doing unto each other in dark.

Posted by hockey at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)

September 24, 2007

Too Many States Anyway

Today, for the first time in more than thirty years, the Canadian dollar is equal in value to the US dollar. Thus, this might be the perfect time for that which I am about to propose.

Let’s downsize the USA. We’ll cut it off at the latitude of Chicago (about 42-degrees N.) and cede all that lies north to Canada. Let’s face it: Doesn’t Michigan have more in common with Ontario than with the states “below”? Doesn’t Minnesota relish the same obscurity as Manitoba? Maine and New Brunswick?

And don’t pretend that you southerners would miss us all that much. Quick. Name a city north of the line . . . took you a moment, didn’t it? (You probably went all the way West with “Seattle,” right?) The USA still would have access to the Great Lakes, at Indiana and Ohio. Plus we’d be fair about the now-divided city of Chicago; we’d make sure that one major-league baseball team remains in each country.

Think about it.

P. S.: Does Canada’s currency ascendancy have to do with the recent Greenhouse Warming-induced opening of the fabled Northwest Sea Passage?

Posted by hockey at 9:38 AM | Comments (0)

September 18, 2007

The deal with the Automobile

Folk searching for a practical car want safety and good fuel mileage. The problem is that they can’t have both.

Safety largely depends on size (mass). Newton’s Third Law reminds us that the car must be able to produce a resisting force equal and opposite to the force of impact. And Newton’s Second Law states that force is proportional to mass.

Yet energy (in this case, the energy needed to propel the car) is also proportional to mass. Fuel mileage is inversely proportional to energy consumed. This means that if you graph safety versus fuel mileage, there is no major inflection point in the curve. Safety always must come at the price of poor fuel mileage. There’s no conspiracy by the automakers; it’s the physics that stinks.

Of course, you can try to minimize the energy wasted—that is, the energy consumption that does not go into the kinetic energy (energy of motion) of the car. Reducing friction by keeping your tires properly inflated is one low-tech method. So is driving such that you don’t have to slam on the breaks often. A high-tech solution is to generate some of your own energy along the way, so that you’re not paying for all of it. This is what the modern hybrid accomplishes. Nevertheless, these hedges only work so far. Eventually Newton catches up with you.

There are essentially two ways to affect (not eliminate) the curve: One is to restrict the potential force of impact. For car-car collisions, this means regulating the size (mass) of automobiles. However, that goes against people’s perceived right to own any darn car they want.

The other way is to change the price of fuel. This is not likely to happen with petroleum, which is in limited supply. Basic economics teaches us that items that are finite increase in price, as they become more scarce. So changing the price of fuel really means switching to alternative (and hopefully cheaper) fuels.

One viable alternate fuel is electricity. Oh oh. Electricity is stored in batteries. What’s wrong with that? Batteries are heavy. They increase the mass of the car, thus suppressing fuel mileage and increasing the force of potential impact. Right now, alternate fuels result in a negative feedback.

Clearly the Universe didn’t mean for each and every one of us to have a car! But there is a third way to affect the curve that I haven’t mentioned. It raises our personal fuel mileage while at the same time adding minimal mass--as a percent of the whole--to the vehicle. That’s right: It’s called the bus. Now I’m limiting people’s perceived right to drive (their own car) itself! Once again, we’ve got a politically unviable solution.

How’s all this going to play out? I don’t know. Only you won’t find me betting against the physics.

Posted by hockey at 7:36 PM | Comments (1)

September 17, 2007

I Feel Sorry for Young People Today

I feel sorry for young people today. They don’t have The Word.

The Word was the one word that was so vile, so offensive, that the mere utterance of it would freeze a crowd. It would stop traffic. It was used only in infrequent moments of ultra-duress. The Word was voiced rarely and exclusively. It was unexpected. It was useful in that it assured you that everybody within ear range had your immediate attention. With the spread of American pop culture around the world, The Word was universal—because it had become devoid of intrinsic meaning.

What used to be The Word is so commonplace now that it evokes little reaction at all. And there’s nothing to take its place. (We still have racial epithets, unfortunately, but only certain individuals can use them, and they serve no other purpose than to inflame.) So in 2007, if somebody wants to express the most extreme emotion . . . they can’t. Some people try to rescue The Word by heaping on adjectives, but even that technique is losing its uniqueness.

Do we need a new Word? I shudder. However, the question is moot because The Word took centuries to reach its status. All the potential candidates for The new Word, which might be waiting in the wings, are themselves being diluted through repetition as we speak. Mass media will make banal any new term before it comes close to becoming The Word.

As repugnant is it is to hear The Word, I cannot help but think it regrettable that the English language has lost a means of expression. You see, when a situation or feeling becomes inexpressible, people substitute action for words. And this is often dangerous. The Word filled an important void.

Ironically, the shear popularity of The Word was the cause of its demise. Even though I’ll likely listen to its public utterance more often this year than in all the years I’ve lived so far, The Word will never be the same. I’ll miss it in a very weird sort of nostalgia.

Posted by hockey at 9:49 AM | Comments (1)

September 12, 2007

Six Years Ago

Six years ago, President George W. Bush was scarred. We all were. The September 11 attacks had taken place. Moreover, the President had more reason for personal fear than most: Likely for the first time in his to-that-date, rather easy life, George W. Bush realized that he might be killed. (It seems reasonable to think that the fourth, failed airliner hijacking probably targeted the White House.)

However, there was a second element to Bush’s fear that few of us could share. If another such attack took place during his term of office, George W. Bush could go down in history with the likes of James Buchanan. (Buchanan was the President who watched while the country collapsed into civil war.) Bush’s legacy conceivably might then be viewed as the time when the USA began sliding down a slope that had peaked with it’s becoming the victor in the “Cold War” and the sole superpower.

There is nothing wrong with fear. It can be useful and motivating. The problem is that in the last six years, our President’s fears have turned into terror. Simply put, George Bush is terrified. Terror is not a useful emotion. It blocks logical, informed, and balanced reason. Terror can make one incapable of thinking beyond a single issue—in this case, preventing another 9/11. Even if the goal is noble, terror-inspired dedication to the cause, where everything else can be sacrificed to achieve that goal, is morally and physically dangerous.

In 2007 our President is willing to do anything to protect himself and the rest of us. Anything. And that makes me afraid.

Posted by hockey at 2:52 PM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2007

One Nation?

Technically, the United States is not a “nation.” As we learned in junior-high-school civics, it is a federation of fifty states.

Maybe the distinction is not just technical. Nations often are distinguished by a national culture. Yet there is no unique American culture, beyond that of Native Americans. The rest of us share cultures (or a mix of cultures) from other nationalities, with a large dose coming from Europe.

There is no doubt about the existence of an American pop culture, of course. It threatens to take over the world. However, popular culture is ephemeral and fickle. Here, I am talking about the affectations of more formal, longstanding culture: arts, dress, speech, lifestyle, etc.

If we are not a nation, we are still a country. It is one founded, not on a shared culture, but instead on shared political beliefs. That was the idea. The absence of an American culture is not something to be ashamed of; it was the point.

Posted by hockey at 1:26 PM | Comments (0)

September 6, 2007

We're Special . . . I Guess

Why do other countries of the world think that the United States is not a “team player” on the planet? Here is a list of treaties signed and ratified by a large majority of United Nations member states:

The International Criminal Court (ICC)
2002 and still not ratified by the USA

The Convention on the Prohibition, Use,
Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of
Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their
Destruction (The Ottawa Treaty)
1997 and still not signed by the USA

Kyoto Protocol
1997 and still not signed by the USA

The Convention on the Rights of the
Child (CRC)
1989 and still not ratified by the USA

The Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination Against Women
1979 and still not ratified by the USA

The International Covenant on Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)
Sometimes called the International Bill of Rights - 1976 and still not ratified by the USA

International Labor Organization (ILO)
Conventions
1948 and most conventions still not ratified by the USA

Posted by hockey at 1:06 PM | Comments (0)

September 4, 2007

Who's Your Favorite Beatle?

Who’s your favorite Beatle? Everybody’s got one. Common answers tend to be evenly divided between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. There is also a small-but-loyal fan-base for Ringo Starr.

Few people answer the question the way I do: George Harrison. George was probably the most accomplished musician in the band. He didn’t contribute that many tracks/singles to Beatles albums and records, but those he did were all noteworthy.

It was George who wrote the Beatle’s first “protest” piece (“Taxman”) –even though it sounds strangely right-wing today. More importantly, it was George who introduced nonwestern chords into pop music. (Listen to the Harrison tunes that appear on the back side of the albums.)

George Harrison wrote only one “Number One” Beatles hit. And “Here Comes the Sun” isn’t even his best work. While John and Paul penned some amazing songs, even they coasted occasionally. Yet every George composition pushed pop music to the next level. There’s just “Something” about George Harrison.

Posted by hockey at 4:31 PM | Comments (1)

July 14, 2007

Independence Day 1977

The Bicentennial was a year past, but we still had fun.

Posted by hockey at 7:33 PM | Comments (3)

July 13, 2007

Radio Script #5

A version of this script was broadcast 22 July 2006 and appears on WWW.StarDate.org. - TH]

In the first part of the nineteenth century, prospects for American astronomers were poor: Should you travel to Europe to study the astronomical arts, there likely would be no job for you when you got back! Nobody in this country needed astronomers.

One exception was the United States Coast Survey. You probably have not heard of this government office. However, it was the ancestor of today’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and all other scientific agencies in the U. S. Its Director, from 1843 to the Civil War, was Benjamin Franklin’s great-grandson, Alexander Dallas Bache.

Bache was willing to employ astronomers. In doing so, he nurtured the first “crop” of American-born scientists. These included George Bond, who helped pioneer the new technique of celestial photography. There was Charles Davis; he would later publish the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, vital reference for every American sailor. Coast-Survey alumnus Benjamin Gould inaugurated the prestigious Astronomical Journal. His colleague, Homer Lane, used physics to figure out what conditions must be like in the unseen interior of the Sun. Ormsby Mitchel became a nationally recognized lecturer. And Sears Walker, also hired by Bache, applied the recently invented telegraph to pin-point locations of American cities. Cleveland Abbe, a Bache-mentored astronomer, is better known as the father of weather forecasting in the United States.

Alexander Dallas Bache made no great astronomical discovery himself. Instead, he was the “midwife” at the very birth of American astronomy as an institution. Today would be Bache’s two-hundredth birthday.

Posted by hockey at 8:32 AM | Comments (0)

July 9, 2007

Opus 200

[Here are some bits and pieces, each of which never matured into a full-fledged Blog entry. - TH]

Hardly anybody is scared of “death.” People are afraid of dying--today.

Most folk will staunchly defend your right to say anything that they agree with.

Except for the occasional “hit” and “contract,” professional criminals normally do not shoot and kill people. Doing so gets in the way of business. I fear the amateurs with guns . . .

Recently a Congressman was indicted for taking $500,000 in bribes. Why so little? In the world of legal bribery--campaign contributions--$500,000 is a pretty small tab!

I’m left a bit sad when I encounter somebody who has the proof for the existence of God. Such a provable God always ends up sounding so small.

Paranoia must be a terrible disease. The last thing on Earth a person is willing to give up is his or her perception of reality. If your perception of reality is faulty, only a trusted voice very, very close to you is likely to convince you of that fact. Such a voice is exactly what the paranoiac does not have.

What goes on in black holes, stays in black holes.

Xenophile—For Hire

Posted by hockey at 1:43 PM | Comments (0)

July 6, 2007

Iowa: The Place to be on a Political Holiday (at Least Every Four Years)

I went to Hillary Clinton’s Independence Day Rally in Waterloo. The venue was decorated with—and I’m not making this up—hay bales and garlanded, vintage John Deere tractors.

This event was locally historic, not just because of the date, but because the Senator brought her husband Bill with her. Wearing a plain polo shirt, he looked like any other sixty-ish man with a really good haircut. There was a lot of obligatory hugging and hand holding between the two.

The First Couple was introduced by our local congressman. Hillary delivered the same “whistle stop” speech that candidates have given since the Day of Andrew Jackson. And she did it well. (I always thought that she was taller than that . . .) Only one person fainted; for Iowa in July, that’s pretty good.

Bill chose to shake the hand of the lady on my left and the guy on my right. He looked straight through me. No big deal. I’ve become used to that first impression! I got Tom Vilsack.

I don’t think that Hillary Clinton will become President. Conservatives fear that her new, more right-leaning persona is fake and that she will revert to liberal policies once elected. Liberals fear that it’s not fake!

Still, if she is elected, how do we refer to the two Clintons? “Hello, Madam President-Elect and Mister Clinton”? But he should properly be addressed as “Mister President.” “Mister Past President”? No, that won’t do. “Greetings, Madam President-Elect and Mr. President”? Doesn’t President trump President Elect?

Once Rodham Clinton is inaugurated, our protocol troubles continue: “Welcome, Madam President and Mister President”? Too long. “Madam and Mister President”? Grammatically wrong. And doesn’t Madam indicate marital status—just the thing that this first female President ought to avoid?

I’m left concluding that we need a new word, specifically for this unusual case. It should be short, but get the point across. I propose “Welcome, HillandBill.”

Posted by hockey at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)

June 29, 2007

Defending the United States by Defending the United States

Americans have discussed for some time now changing its military in order to better reflect the needs of the twenty-first century. Much of this talk comes, appropriately, from the military itself. Almost everybody recognizes that the present armed forces still are organized to fight the Cold War. Now we need to prepare and train the Army, Navy, and Air Force for what is really an old mission: defending the borders of the United States.

Here’s a suggestion. There are 1.6 million men and women on active duty. Bring home all those not required to be deployed overseas by treaty. The perimeter of the United States is roughly 16,000 miles. Therefore, we will then have the capacity to station a company-strength force on each and every mile of the US border. Foreign entities wishing us ill will think twice before taking on that.

Do I really believe that this is a good idea? No, of course not. Not literally. But you get my point. If our military is “stretched thinly” (a phrase used often today), why not stretch it where doing so counts the most—around us?

Posted by hockey at 12:07 PM | Comments (0)

June 28, 2007

Well, the Book is Real, Anyway

Michael Rodzianko’s firsthand The Fall of Empire discusses the role of Grigori Rasputin in the court of Czar Nicholas II. Here I have “translated” a passage of this prophetic work, into “American English.” For example, it is a little known fact that the Russian word for “Empress” literally translates to “Carlrove.”

Profiting by the President’s arrival at Crawford, I asked for an audience and was received by him on March 8th. "I must tell you Mr. President that this cannot continue much longer. No one opens your eyes to the true role which this man Cheney is playing. His presence in the White House undermines confidence in the Supreme Power and may have an evil effect on the fate of the dynasty and turn the hearts of the people from their President." My report did some good. On March 11th an order was issued sending Cheney to an undisclosed location; but a few days later, at the demand of Carl Rove, the order was cancelled.

1916?

Posted by hockey at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)

June 27, 2007

Can You Help Me Find Just the Right Sky Myth, Legend, or Fable?

[I recently posted this on the History of Astronomy Listserve. - TH]

Can you help me find just the right sky myth, legend, or fable?

Background: Twenty years ago I was a semi (very semi) professional filmmaker. However, it was cultural astronomy that eventually became my life's work. Now at mid career, I'd like to turn to filmmaking once more, using an astronomical theme so as to combine my two interests.

2009 is an auspicious year. One of the American Astronomical Society's goals for the International Year of Astronomy is to highlight astronomy in Arts, Entertainment, and Storytelling. What I would like to do, in short, is to dramatize some of our human cultures' astronomical lore in short film. Almost all peoples that I know of have astronomical myths and legends; it should be easy to come up with source material. Yet it hasn't been!

First of all, I'm looking for a storyline that attempts to explain an astronomical phenomenon, not an entire cosmology. Moreover, it must have a discernable plot (expected by most audiences) that can be scripted to last a mere few minutes. I want human stories; the adventures of anthropomorphic animals or fantastic creatures are best left to CGI animators. Lastly, I want a "PG rating"--no incest, murder, or rape. These limitations narrow the sample pool considerably!

The Japanese Hagoromo tale is a good example of what I'm looking for. But it's one of the few. What is the favorite, "filmable" (see criteria above) sky lore of HASTRO-L members?

Thomas Hockey
University of Northern Iowa

Posted by hockey at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)

June 25, 2007

I’m a Fifth Chapter of Matthew Kind of Christian

I’m a Fifth Chapter of Matthew kind of Christian. Never heard of it? That’s because I just made it up!

The Fifth Chapter of Matthew (through the seventh Chapter) is unusual in the New Testament in that it is a continuous piece of dialog, supposedly the actual words of Jesus—that which later copyists would be least likely to alter on purpose. And as it comes down to us, it contains material so radical that it’s rarely quoted literally.

I’m not a biblical literalist. However, in the Gospels it’s pretty easy to pick out that which is to be taken allegorically and that which is not. For instance, when speaking in metaphor, Jesus uses parables. Here I am talking about the portions of the Sermon on the Mount that are not parables.

Suppose for a minute that Jesus really means what he says? In some future heaven perhaps, but also in an Earthly Kingdom of God? Blessed are the poor? Blessed are the meek? Blessed are the merciful? Blessed are the peacemakers?

If so, something’s askew down here. Matt 5 would make quite an election platform, though, wouldn’t it?

Posted by hockey at 1:11 PM | Comments (0)

June 18, 2007

NASA TV

The best thing on satellite/cable TV this summer-of-reruns is NASA TV. Most of the time it plays filler, but during a Space Shuttle mission, NASA continuously shows views from cameras on the Shuttle, on the International Space Station [ISS], and at NASA Mission Control [MCC]. There’s hardly any narration; we’re watching what the ground controllers are watching.

In an age when everything we’re shown on television is suspect, NASA TV is remarkably “spin-less.” It’s really real reality TV! And there are gems, like the astronaut who has been aboard the ISS so long (six months) that she doesn’t realize she’s holding the writing on an instrument display upside down to the camera. After all, what’s right side up in space?

Here’s an example scene I caught. The dialog is as I remember it. If it’s wrong, one of the participants can e-mail me!

The set up: Shuttle Atlantis is docked to the ISS. Installation of a new solar panel on the space station has led to computer problems. Both crews have been asked to trouble shoot the electrical system. In other words, there was no rehearsal or script for this.

SCENE: The astronauts and cosmonauts are removing a wall panel. Obviously what’s behind it is seldom accessed, because they have to carry away obstacles from in front. After the sci-fi looking panel is pulled off, the inside, which looks like the back of my garage, is exposed. The astronauts and cosmonauts examine it with flashlights, much as you or I would hunt for a blown fuse. All this is hard, time-consuming work in the “weightlessness” of space. A voice from the ground interjects. . . .

MCC: ISS, we just want to confirm that you’re opening the starboard panel.

Astronaut: Come again, Houston?

MCC: On our camera it looks like the port panel.

Astronaut: Houston, we confirm that we’re opening the port panel.

MCC: We need you to open the starboard panel.

Astronaut: (pause.) Can we not do the procedure on the starboard panel?

MCC: No.

Astronaut: (after much consultation): OK, Houston, we’ll just finish up what we’re doing on the port panel and then move over and open up the starboard panel.

MCC: ISS, the thing is that the cables you’re handling are hot.

Astronaut: (long pause.) We confirm, Houston. We’re going to stop working on the left panel and start on the right panel.

This would have driven you or me crazy. It’s just another day in space for the astronauts and cosmonauts. Stuff doesn’t get any more “Real (not on this) World” than that!

Posted by hockey at 1:52 PM | Comments (0)

June 17, 2007

A Song in the Air

[Our Department has inaugurated a new Air Quality Major. To "help" the faculty member in charge, I made a few suggestions on marketing. - TH]

Dear Alan,

I've been trying to come up with a slogan for our new Air Quality Major. Something catchy.

There's

"Air Quality - It Makes Scents"

or

"What's that Smell? Ask an Air Quality Major!"

or

"Air Quality - We Put the (K)no(w) in Nose"

or

"Breathed Lately? Thank an Air Quality Major"

or

"With a Career in Air Quality, You Can Make Dollars and Scents?"

or

"The Air Quality Major: A Whiff of Tomorrow--Today"

or

"Put Aroma on Your Diploma!"

or

"Air Quality Majors Do it in the Stench"

or

"We're Looking for a Few Good (de)Stinkers"

or

"Don't Know an Aerosol from a Parasol? Major in Air Quality"

or

"Air Quality: For When the Scents Go Marching In"

or maybe a song

"Odor There! Odor There! . . ."

or not

"Air Quality Majors - Pungent is Our Middle Name"

To tell the truth, I don't even know what that last one means.

Somehow I have not yet captured the true essence of our new major. But I'll keep my nose to the grindstone . . . For instance, is it "par fume" or "perfume"?

Tom H.

P. S.: As a spokesperson, do you think we could get that fellow--I think his name is--Nostrildamus?

Posted by hockey at 9:26 PM | Comments (1)

June 16, 2007

Give Me the Flip, Long Live the Flop

Since the 1970s or so, it has gone out of fashion for our leaders to apologize for anything they did. To do so would show "weakness." Today, it is unacceptable for those in high office (or candidates for high office) to change their opinion on anything. If you do, you are charged with the dreaded "flip flop."

Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has gone on record to say that while he used to favor a pro-choice platform, he no longer does so. I disagree with his current stance. However, it does not appear to be capriciously derived. So I admit Romney's right to change his mind.

If politicians must remain steadfast to their first, perhaps only partly formed convictions--so as to be seen as "rock solid" on the issues--where is there room for maturation, experience, or education? At what point must they freeze their opinions for life? College? High school? Whenever they begin to leave a paper trail?

The ability to change one's mind separates us from animals relying on "wired-in" instinct. And as circumstances always change, what we think about them can--and must, I argue--change as well. Give me the nominee who thoughtfully allows his or her views to evolve. That person is, at least, thinking like a human. If it's sincere, I prefer that man or woman even if I do not agree with what he or she has now concluded.

Posted by hockey at 11:03 PM | Comments (0)

June 15, 2007

Some More Thoughts on Agriculture

We Iowans can be smug when California lettuce or some other truck crop arrives tainted. We have our own crops. However, we are largely silent when citrus fruit shows up at odd times of year.

In the debate about global food marketing versus growing food locally, I take a third view: Food is too important to rely on only one distribution system. We need local “farmers’ markets” to turn to when our imports fail or are contaminated. Yet we need that food-on-a-truck when local drought, frost, or flood takes out our neighbors’ farms.

Local, small-scale food production means modest fields, patches, and vineyards tailored to individual agricultural tastes. Do you want you food grown using hydroponics? Do you want it sprouting organically? Do you want it certifiably free from genetic modification? Which ever you pick, there’s likely an appropriate boutique garden, cottage farm, or hot house near you. No economy of scale is required; we pay more, but our American food is normally so cheap (as a fraction of our income) that we can afford to do so. Fell free to experiment, for taste, appearance, maximized nutrition, or purity of essence. There’s always Wal-Mart if it flops.

That’s in this country, where the living is easy. A two-tiered food distribution system is impractical in countries where neither flourishes.

When I hear people speaking about the evils of chemicals used in food production, farm mechanization, or genetic manipulation, it sounds a little snooty to me. There’s no option if your population is starving. You need to make the most food you can—quickly and cheaply. And whether you like it or not, technology-based, “unnatural” food production is your best shot at bountiful yields.

We, too, once owed our sustenance to the food we could grow in our backyard. Americans not long ago were nearly all family farmers. Many people in the world still are and would love the option of stepping into a Hy Vee supermarket from time to time as a backup. Junky food is, well, food.

Nowadays Americans are growing food close to home once again—complete with the bugs, weeds, and weak yields that are a bane to the third world. This time we do it on purpose, as an affectation. What a wonderful privilege! But let’s not be smug about it.

Posted by hockey at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)

June 14, 2007

Some Thoughts About Agriculture

I have to decide whether it’s my patriotic duty, as an Iowan, to convert my car for operation on E85. E85 is a gasoline mix with 85% ethanol, locally produced from corn. There’s a lot of buzz about it, as an environmentally friendly fuel. It is true that E85 burns more cleanly than regular petrol. Its green reputation ignores the fact that E85 takes a great deal of energy to produce; generation of this energy may result in major pollution. It also ignores the environmental degradation cause merely by growing modern corn (lots of chemicals applied, hard on the soil, etc.). Never mind. The price of corn has gone up fifty percent in the biofuel boom. It is likely to continue to increase in price—at least until somebody notices that there are more efficient crops with which to produce ethanol than Iowa corn.

One wants to share the farmer’s excitement, though. Farming lately can be a downer of a business. Farmers don’t get to play on a level supply-and-demand field. Their product is not easily transportable, it has a shelf life, and there are today a small number of corporate buyers. In other words, things are stacked against the farmer.

Now, don’t write to remind me: Yes, I know that farmers can get government subsides that are unavailable to other small businessmen. But these do not boost morale.

And farmers sorely need something to get excited about, to boost morale. Farmers are getting old. Young people have not been going into farming. Even if farming becomes fashionable again, the new farmer’s granddad may have been a farmer, but not our young entrepreneur’s father. Who’s going to teach him or her how to do it?

E85. GM (genetically modified) crops. What ever. There has to be something exciting to attract a new crop of farmers. (Pun intended.) Otherwise, we’ll wake up one day and there will be no one left alive who knows how to farm. On that day we wake up hungry.

Posted by hockey at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

June 13, 2007

Paris in the Springtime

Paris Hilton is convicted of reckless and drunk driving in California. She is sentenced to parole and suspension from driving. She is caught driving anyway—twice. Paris says she’s just like everybody else.

A judge convicts her for parole violation. The sentence is weeks in jail instead of the usual days. The judge says he’s treating Paris just like everybody else.

The sheriff releases Paris to serve her sentence in her home/mansion contrary to the explicit instructions of the court. The sheriff says he’s treating her just like everybody else.

The media gives Paris more attention than the war in Iraq. They say they’re treating her just like everybody else.

It’s good to know that, in California, “celebrities are treated just like everybody else.”

Who really believes that?

O. J.?

Posted by hockey at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)

June 12, 2007

My Name Is Thomas

My name is Thomas. There is a lot of baggage associated with that name: Tom Cat, Peeping Tom, Uncle Tom, and, foremost, Doubting Thomas.

I think the eponymous disciple gets a lame rap. While in the Bible Jesus teases him about his doubt, there’s no punishment for it. Clearly he must be pardoned if we are to believe that Thomas went on to become a great apostle. It is Saint Thomas, after all.

In my chosen field, science, doubt has fewer of the negative connotations associated with the word at large. It can be equated with healthy skepticism. Doubt is a mechanism for growth. A life without doubt is a comfortable but intellectually bankrupt one. Hardly a life at all.

So I identify with Thomas. In the end it’s not a bad name. And I’m not the only one to think so. Take, for instance, the parents of Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Posted by hockey at 11:26 PM | Comments (0)

June 8, 2007

My Group

[I didn't create this Facebook Group, but note that membership has never exactly taken off! - TH]

We Heart Hockey

UNI
Information
Group InfoName:
We Heart Hockey
Type:
n/a
Description:
If anyone else loves listening to Thomas Hockey talk about annular solar eclipses and astronomical units, then this is for you.

http://www.facebook.com

Posted by hockey at 4:59 PM | Comments (0)

May 30, 2007

The Iowa Caucuses Are Coming: An Inconvenient Truth

If ole Al Gore is going to get into the race and Save the Earth, he’d better do it soon! We Iowans only have six months or so until we have to pick a nominee.

I’ve voted for Gore ever since he first sought the Presidency in ’88. He got the nod from me in that year’s Ohio primary and four years later in the Iowa caucuses. I even cast a ballot for Al Gore in the general election of 1996. Yep. That’s right. Gore, not Clinton. (It was a protest vote over the pathetic selection of candidates with which we were presented.) And then, of course, there was the chad I punched for Gore in 2000 . . . too bad it wasn’t in the state of Florida.

Parenthetically: I was one of the last to see the 2000 Gore campaign in action. He touched down at the Waterloo airport (of all places) just before midnight on election eve. My date that evening also was a political junkie, so we, and a hundred or so others, greeted Al. He looked like he’d had way too much caffeine.

Back to 2008. It’s actually unlikely that, even if he ran, his party would select Gore as its standard bearer—again. Ever since they kept putting up William Jennings Bryan over and over (and losing over and over), the Democrats have been loathe to rerun a candidate. (Oh, there was Adlai Stevenson; still, neither he nor anybody else had a chance of winning against General Ike, anyway.) Nevertheless, if it happens, I’m there for you, Al. On your quest for the Greenhouse. Oops. White House.

Posted by hockey at 8:08 PM | Comments (0)

May 29, 2007

The e-ness of it All

Yesterday I traveled back home from Chicago and had arranged by e-mail to meet a high-school friend living near my route. Kathy R. and I got together at a restaurant that Mr. Google told me would be at a convenient intersection. While Kathy and I chatted, we included another friend from the same era, Dean P. now in Texas, by cell phone.

How did people stay in touch before electronics? All my life folk have warned about the perils of technology, its impersonal nature and its ability to isolate the individual. Yet the results so far are just the opposite.

Of course, keeping in contact used to require much less: A hundred years ago you probably would find an old friend right where you left him or her—in your hometown. It is technology (again) that has made us so mobile.

In 2007 I have reached a digital watershed. It struck me as I listened to Kathy refer to events in my life that I had not related to her in person. Rather, she had read of them on my blog. I realize that I now have more virtual friends than I do neighbor friends (people whom I visit regularly person-to-person). Technology affects me profoundly in one of life’s most important aspects: experiencing and interacting with the lives of other people.

If you are reading this blog—any blog—it is likely that you have already had my epiphany. I am just a little slow on the uptake. Or should I say download?

Posted by hockey at 2:48 PM | Comments (0)

May 28, 2007

Trivia Pursuit Questions II (Answered)

To see the answers to the questions I posted Friday, go to "Extended Entry." If you want to try your hand at the questions first, go to Trivia Pursuit Questions II (25 May 2007).

Continue reading "Trivia Pursuit Questions II (Answered)"

Posted by hockey at 11:09 PM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2007

Trivia Pursuit Questions (of My Own Wicked Design) II

GEOGRAPHY

Through which country does the Indus River flow?

ENTERTAINMENT

In how many TV shows of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s did the ubiquitous Bill Bixby star?

HISTORY

In July 1863, Union troops invaded which major American city?

ARTS & LITERATURE

In painting, what does the skull and crossed bones symbolize?

SCIENCE & NATURE

Why does burning a lump of coal in your fireplace contribute to global climate change whereas burning a log does not?

SPORTS & LEISURE

n the nineteenth century, an amateur entomologist imported Gypsy Moths to the Americas, hoping to break into the silk business. The result of his hobby was the defoliation of entire forests. Who was the idiot?

Answers next time!

Posted by hockey at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)

May 14, 2007

Corporate Advice

The Amana corporation was a longstanding employer in Iowa, a maker of large appliances. Alas, it failed and merged with Maytag, farther west in Marshalltown, Iowa. Now Maytag is gone.

Amana, Iowa, is not a sexy place. And neither Amana nor Maytag is a sexy name. Perhaps they could have made a go of it if the firm had moved still farther west in Iowa. The new, more marketable company moniker would be . . .

(Wait for it.)

The Fridges of Madison County

Inc.

Posted by hockey at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)

May 11, 2007

Knowing Just When to Snap the Picture

She clicked this one just as my son broke the pinatta. Notice the flying Tootsie Pop!

Posted by hockey at 12:48 PM | Comments (1)

May 9, 2007

My Power Point

Another school year ends, another year in which I avoided PowerPoint. PowerPoint is the Microsoft program that has all but taken over the classroom. It allows projection of text, pictures, and even sound, onto a screen or monitor, using a computer.

I’ve used PowerPoint, but not in my classroom. Don't mistake me for a Ludite: When others were running film, I was experimenting with 1/2-inch video on reel--to-reel! I'm just not gushy about PowerPoint.

PowerPoint has the faults of overhead transparencies (e. g., the temptation to include too much text, unreadable text, or headache-inducing colors) only it costs more. Like the overhead projector, PowerPoint allows the teacher to easily slide into reading off the screen, thereby avoiding preparation or any glimmer of spontaneity.

I rarely see a PowerPoint presentation that is transportable. By that I mean a presentation that easily can be moved from one platform (yours) to another (their’s) without a lot of fiddling with cables and buttons—lost time.

And why intentionally use a technology that requires the room lights to be dimmed? Isn’t there enough boring ambience in the lecture hall to lull students to sleep?

As for photographs, I still believe a good 35mm slide appears better projected than a digital image. The digital is almost there, but not quite, at least for my astronomical photos. Of course, this comparison becomes mute when slide projectors go the way of the mimeograph machine.

The most insidious thing about PowerPoint is that the user puts so much time into preparing a presentation that PowerPoint often becomes the only medium used. A single blown bulb ruins the entire program! I use an assortment of media in any given class; a sole tech failure won’t much hamper me.

Not all students effectively learn through the same medium, be it books, audio, chalk, or motion pictures. I try them all. Some day I even may add a little PowerPoint. But not this year.

Posted by hockey at 4:12 PM | Comments (0)

May 4, 2007

Let’s Make a Deal

Let’s make a deal. Challenge every annoying third-world country that manages to produce a nuclear bomb, plus efficient delivery system, thusly: “If you give up your new toy, the United States will give up N of ours,” where N is some number greater than one.

These days, countries do not produce The Bomb in order to use it. They produce it in order to get attention. (They might say respect.) Such a tantrum often is successful. My way, the country gets the added prestige of helping to reduce the world’s nuclear weapons total. They will have “forced” the USA to give up something—something it has plenty of and can afford to deplete. We're ahead 100-to-1 in this game, compared to any other potential players.

Moreover, we won’t have to give up much. Most nations don’t have the technological capability. Most likely won’t have it for a very long time. (Limits on proliferation would remain in place.) An “efficient delivery system” (for both sides) almost certainly means a missile. The only thing scarier than a nuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon poised atop a hair-trigger rocket.

Lots of “trust but verify” is implicit in this. All parties must be transparent. The arsenals of non-third-world militaries must remain frozen, too.

That’s the deal. How many would take us up on it? Maybe none. Still, it puts the United States on a higher moral plane: No longer will we pressure others to reduce their weapons of mass destruction while ignoring our own. And as an incentive “chip” is the only useful purpose of a nuclear weapon I can think of, anyway.

My plan can’t hurt (us). Really, is it any worse than what we’ve got now?

Posted by hockey at 2:45 PM | Comments (0)

May 3, 2007

Dorrit Hoffleit: One Hundred Years in Astronomy

[I was asked to write this for the Newsletter of the Americian Astronomical Society. I was honored to have met Dorrit Hoffleit and to have received from Dorrit her autobiography as a gift. Dorrit's articles for my forthcoming encyclopedia likely will be her final publications to appear in print. - TH]

The American Astronomical Society lost one of its most longstanding members when Ellen Dorrit Hoffleit passed away on 9 April 2007. A native of Florence, Alabama, she was born on 12 March 1907; she joined the Society on 1 January 1930.

Dorrit Hoffleit earned her Radcliffe PhD. (1938) with a dissertation under the direction of Harvard College Observatory Director Harlow Shapley. She became an expert in spectroscopic parallax determination. At Yale University Observatory (from 1956) Hoffleit helped prepared the several editions of the Yale Catalogue of Bright Stars and the General Catalogue of Trigonometric Stellar Parallaxes.

During her twenty-one years as Director, Hoffleit turned the Maria Mitchell Observatory into a mentoring institution for young astronomers. The American Association of Variable Star Observers elected her president in 1961. She received our Society’s George Van Biesbroeck Prize in 1988. Minor planet (3416) Dorrit is named for Hoffleit.

Hoffleit died in New Haven, Connecticut, from complications of cancer. She had recently attended her 100th birthday party.

Posted by hockey at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)

May 2, 2007

The Sky Subtly Rewards Those Who Observe It

[Another school year ends. Three days later, I start summer school!
Here's how I begin all my students' laboratory experience. - TH]

The sky subtly rewards those who observe it.

The views you see of the stars and planets through a telescope
may disappoint you at first if you are used to the dramatic
space-probe-produced and computer-enhanced photographs that
appear in textbooks or on television. But one of the joys of
observing is that the longer you look and the more you learn, the
more you will "see." Be patient. Remember, what you are looking
at is real. It is not recorded and edited for your consumption
as is so much of what we experience in today's world. You are
watching the Universe "live" . . .

Posted by hockey at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)

April 30, 2007

How an Iowa Farmer Caused the Downfall of the USSR

Roy Garst liked corn. In fact, he grew wealthy in the 1950s by promoting hybrid corn, a new notion at the time. By the 1960s, Garst had agricultural connections all over the world, including the Eastern Block. With East/West tensions at their height, Garst decided to try a little cob diplomacy. When Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev visited the United States, Garst invited him to the Garst Farm.

Khrushev accepted. The two got along famously. Moreover, Khrushchev became so enamoured of Garst's farming techniques that he brought them back with him to the Communist sphere. Khrushchev planted corn all over the Soviet Union. But Nikita was no farmer. He planted corn on the hills. He planted corn in the valleys. He planted corn on the steppe. He planted corn where corn had no business growing--and didn't. He did so to the exclusion of other, diversified and traditional crops. He brought about an artificial famine.

People were so disgusted with Khrushchev's Big Idea, that the Powers that Be in his country had the opportunity to replace him. In Khrushchev's place, they put a series of unimaginative technocrats who saw the Soviet identity wrapped up in an arms race with the Americans, a race they could not win. And you know what happened after that.

The USSR fell. The USA had won the Corn War.

Posted by hockey at 9:34 AM | Comments (0)

April 24, 2007

Speaking About

Public discussion recently has taken place on what can and cannot be said in the interest of comedy. This is not a conversation about rights; it is about taste.

The topic is confusing. However, I believe there is a line that can be drawn. To put it succinctly, I think one can lampoon or make fun of persons more powerful than you are.

“More powerful” can be literal, but also is to be interpreted broadly. It can be economic. (I’ve never understood why it’s funny to say somebody lives in a trailer.) It can reflect majority/minority status, e. g., race, religion, or even health. It can be political—indeed, perhaps it is the duty of the citizenry to mock its leaders so as to curb the inevitable inflation of ego caused by holding high office! Notice that “more” means it might be humorous to deprecate yourself (unless doing so becomes pathological).

“More powerful” also encompasses those who would usurp it. A criminal, in the midst of his or her criminal act, is temporarily trying to do just that.

Finally, I find it acceptable to poke fun at people who intentionally cross the line. I don’t mean those who make an unintentional gaff. This can be judged by the immediacy of their apology: If it follows hemming, hawing, excuses, rationalizations, and public outcry, the apology is suspect. On the other hand, I give some slack to somebody who blurts and then follows it up with a sincere “Oops. That was a stupid thing to say.”

The line is fuzzy. The line is not the same for everyone. Yet civility requires that there be a line. And it should be self-policed, by social approval or disapproval, without treading on anybody’s freedoms of speech.

Posted by hockey at 4:25 PM | Comments (0)

April 19, 2007

Stereotyping Our Presidents

As readers may know, the United States Presidency intrigues me. My historical interest lies in antebellum America, when the Presidency and Congress were on more equal political footing. However, I notice a trend regarding more modern Presidents: We want to place them in simple boxes. Moreover, these boxes tend to be misleading.

To give just examples from my own lifetime, we learn that

- George Bush can’t speak. (Then why would the “Great Communicator” keep him around as Vice-President for eight years?)
- George W. Bush is an alcoholic. (Irrelevant, as he stopped drinking years ago.)
- Jimmy Carter is weak kneed, e. g., attack rabbits and sinning in his heart. (If true, how come he went to all those world hotspots trying to bring peace, a more difficult task than bringing war?)
- Bill Clinton is a philanderer. (Something that affects the Republic little if at all.)
- Gerald Ford was clumsy. (Please. He was an athlete.)
- Lyndon Johnson was a yokel. (In fact, he was the consummate beltway insider.)
- Richard Nixon was nefarious. (Over simplistic. It is more scary that he believed in what he was doing . . . exhibiting an “end justifies the means” mentality.
- Ronald Reagan was doddering. (Not even close.)

The Presidents of the United States are more complicated than labels. So are we.

Posted by hockey at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

April 18, 2007

April 16

Last night, TV was all about the attacks at Virginia Tech University. One part bothered me. In a historical review, the deaths eight years ago at Columbine High School were mentioned. The names of the killers were spoken; none of the names of the victims were.

What do these gunmen want? They are so mentally imbalanced, it is impossible to know. What ever it is, they are prepared to die for it. So too will death be no barrier for those who might come after. But anonymity may be.

In Iraq, suicide bombers are promised remembrance, both in heaven and on Earth. It is called martyrdom. We need not give the would-be perpetrators of these horrific, meaningless massacres at home such comfort.

After their initial newsworthiness expends itself, let us try to forget the names of these death-worshiping individuals—and recall just the victims. The victims were the ones who had something yet to contribute to life. The killers clearly did not. Let us simply refer to the Virginia Tech murderer as the cowardly shooter he was—and dearly hope this resonates in ears that may be tempted down his abominably dark road. It has been said: Worse than death is to be forgotten.

Posted by hockey at 9:14 AM | Comments (0)

April 17, 2007

Next, the Forecast

Hello, this is your WAIR Accu-track-precision-quadruple-radar meteorologist, Joe Drizzle. Here at WAIR we're in a fog . . . but enough about last night--let's get to the weather.

Well, this evening we have winds from the West, snow from the North, humidity from the South, and smog from the East. It's pretty crowded here in the middle. Otherwise, local conditions are seasonable--perhaps a bit spicey, with oregano.

The jetstream is moving the upper air flow to lower latitudes. Nobody knows what the heck that has to do with whether it will rain here or not, but I thought I'd throw it in.

Otherwise, we'll see Mr. Sun all day. His son, too. Sonny. Maybe it'll be the whole Sun family. I don't know. There could be a blizzard, I suppose.

The UV index is low; the heat index is high. I'd sell if I were you.

Currently, from the rooftop of our weather center, we see a few flakes. But that's OK. They deserve to hang out up there, too.

Our local weather spotter tonight is Jake from Bumpus County. Jake is measuring precipitation. Yeah right, Jake. Instead of all that measuring, why don't you stick your head out the window once in a while?

Do you miss those old radars that looked like a washing machine with a green mixer in the middle? So do I. Our "modern" radar is clear, almost certainly do to the fact that I haven't plugged it in.

The barometer is falling. No, wait. John the cameraman caught it.

The forecast is for showers, lightning, gale, frogs, pestilence, loaves, and fishes. Pretty much the whole Biblical scene. There is a high probability of weather. Or not.

The National Weather Service--which doesn't deliver, by the way--has issued a severe storm warning for those viewers south of First Street and north of Second Street. Hey, you family living at 150 Main Street: Today is not your lucky day.

This is your WAIR Accu-track-precision-quadruple-radar meteorologist saying: Remember, it's impolite to dew point. And somewhere over the rainbow is a polar continental air mass.

I'll be back at 10:00, 10:17, 10:24, and 10:41 . . . pretty much anytime we don't have another Hardees commercial to run. Don't forget your morning weather right here with my colleague Hale N. Sleet.

(Signature sign off:) Try not to let it graupel on your parade!

Posted by hockey at 10:24 AM | Comments (0)

April 16, 2007

Fibbing

Riddle:

Q: What do two university professors say to each other when they accidentally meet at WalMart?

A: "What a coincidence! I never shop here . . ."

Posted by hockey at 11:43 AM | Comments (1)

April 12, 2007

Sad News from Janice

[Paul Coke was a very influential teacher of mine--right into my graduate school days. His title comes from a first career in the Air Force, which started when he flew B-17s in WWII. - TH]

"To all my friends from Peoria High School:

I just wanted you all to know the news. Charlie [name] and I was looking to find Col Coke to invite him to our wedding on August 24. We were unable to find him, as his phone number had been disconnected. I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Charlie inquired through the Mesa Library. We got a letter in the mail saying that they found that he had died on August 30, 2005. My mom talked to their next door neighbor today and found that in June, he had gone to the Doctor and got a clean bill of health. In August he died suddenly of cancer. His wife, [name] had dimensia and was very lost and confused. Their son, [name] moved her to live by him in Denver Colorado and they believe that is where they burried Col Coke.

Col Coke touched so many lives, including mine. I am so glad that we got to honor him one last time at the ROTC Reunion in Sept of 2004. He was so touched by all of our efforts that he went home and told his neighbors about how his former students honored him in such a special way. Thank you all for caring so much.

I just wanted you all to know. I am so sad. I know he lived a good life. He survived so much more than most others would have. Of all the teachers I had in school, Col Coke was the one I respected most. He was the one that made the biggest impact in my life. I'm sad . . . but I am glad that I got to tell him before he died, what a wonderful person he was and that I apprecated him and all he did for all of us.

Again, I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you all, as I know you all cared as I did. But God has taken him to a much better place and we will all see him when our time on earth is done as well.

God Bless You All,

Jan"

[I redact names from private letters that I post on my blog. - TH]

Posted by hockey at 4:05 PM | Comments (0)

April 9, 2007

AAS Historical Astronomy Division and Me

In 1981, at my first meeting of the American Astronomical Society, I happened to stumble into the Historical Astronomy Division's inaugural session. After serving as the Division's secretary and as a member of its admiinistrative committee, I'm now vice chair and chair elect. Here's the link to the HAD Website, nicely done by Joe Tenn.

http://www.aas.org/had/officers/

Posted by hockey at 9:35 AM | Comments (0)

April 6, 2007

The Best (or Most Thought Provoking) War Movies

At least among English-language films:

Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) While David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962) or even Doctor Zhivago (1965) are also contenders.

A Bridge Too Far (1977) Directed by Richard Attenborough and starring everybody.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) Based on the Remarque novel, it's still worth a look even though it's silent.

The Big Red One (1980) "The real glory of war is surviving." Who can forget that tag line?

Full Metal Jacket (1987) No matter that it takes place mostly on the home front, and the battle scenes involve street fighting (unusual in any of our Asian conflicts), Stanley Kubrick's is the best Vietnam movie out of a large field.

Glory (1989) The worst kind of warfare, fratricidal civil wars are likely undescribable. But, yes, the U. S. Civil War was probably a lot like this. (Bet you thought I was going to invoke Gone with the Wind.)

Patton (1970) Was he nuts or a genious? I mean Patton, not George C. Scott.

Saving Private Ryan (1998) For the first twenty minutes, at least.

Starship Troopers (1997) For those who think of this as a sci-fi monster movie, it's easy to miss its unsettling allegory of a facist state at time of war.

Three Kings (1999) Relevant today. Unusual for Hollywood, there is no gratuitous violence in this film. Every violent act is for a reason.

I've left comedies, like Doctor Strangelove, off the list. However, they can be meaningful, too. And, no, I don't think MASH was a great movie (despite the fact that the TV show was).

By the way, was Casablanca a war movie?

Posted by hockey at 2:13 PM | Comments (0)

April 5, 2007

My Son Wrote This at School

"If I were to ask my dog Lada what her point of view of me is and she could tell me she would say that I'm good at playing fetch, tug of war and pull the rope under the swing with her. She believes that I stand by her side no matter what. Secondly, she believes that I will never let her down, ever. Lastly, she believes that I will always have fun with her and love her forever."

MBH, 5th Grade

Posted by hockey at 3:52 PM | Comments (0)

March 21, 2007

A Reader Asks: How Did I Come to Know Clyde Tombaugh?

Clyde Tombaugh? Discoverer of Pluto? I was pretty naive about deciding what to do after college graduation. Just as finding the right university is sometimes an afterthought as one negotiates twelfth grade, so too is Graduate School. How do you think about that when you're trying to finish up a bachelor's degree and Get the Heck Out before there's another tuition bill? Nevertheless, I knew that my undergraduate degree wasn't very useful by itself. Who ever heard of Planetary Science? So when I learned that the fiftieth anniversary of Pluto's discovery was to be celebrated at New Mexico State University, I figured "they must do something with planets there." I applied and was accepted.

It turned out that Tombaugh founded that Astronomy Department. While retired, he still came to the office regularly. Clyde and I got along well: I because I'm interested in history, and CWT because he made it!

More to the point, I connect fairly easily with elderly people, inasmuch as I'm the youngest cousin in a large, extended family. When his first wife died, my father remarried and had me at age 53. Dad (deceased since I was seventeen) and Clyde were born in the same year! Moreover, both were Midwesterners, grew up on farms, and taught for a living. At any rate, I went on to produce the film Clyde Tombaugh and the Discovery of Pluto, sort of a video biography with Clyde himself as the “star.” I like to think of myself as Professor Tombaugh's last student.

Posted by hockey at 3:28 PM | Comments (0)

March 20, 2007

Just Got A Bummer Note From A Good Friend

"Thomas, my friend,

Have my head phones on here at work, with the volume so high my ears may
bleed; listening to Boston -- the first and best album.

I heard over the weekend of the death of the Boston Lead Singer Brad
Delp at 55 years old, and my first thought was of you. I know Boston
was one of your all-time fav's, and had a big MIT following. I hope
you are well. I got the Christmas letter, just have been too lazy to
reply.

See you soon,

dean"

Posted by hockey at 2:01 PM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2007

Book Review

Students do not always approach professors’ offices for help on their homework. Or with questions about the upcoming test. Sometimes their visits are more confessional, with the goal being atonement for the “sins” of poor academic performance. One thing that I found striking in the just-completed school year was the number of young people who self-divulged their mental illness, or treatment for mental disorders. While such a revelation was a rare, every-year-or-two phenomenon for much of my teaching career, in 2005/2006 its frequency jumped tenfold.

Mental problems are finally something we talk about. Apologetically. With unnecessary embarrassment. In hushed tones of confidence. But we are starting to talk about them. And write about them.

The year 2005/2006 also saw the publication of Lincoln’s Melancholy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin). It is an examination of an American icon’s experience with depression. The author acknowledges and tries to avoid the psycho-history applied to prominent figures twenty years ago—when we learned all about Thomas Jefferson’s sex life and so on. Instead, Joshua Wolf Shenk details Abraham Lincoln’s episodes of depression, its evolution, and his reaction to it, aptly summarized in the book’s subtitle: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness. It is not a biography Lincoln. (We have plenty of those.) It is a “biography” of one man’s disease—a famous man who could be Any Man.

When students tell me that they are suffering from depression, they probably do not know that I was diagnosed with depression more than ten years ago. This is a fact about myself that I neither advertise nor hide. It is just part of being me. Happily, this monopolar disorder is readily treatable with medication. Those medications did not exist at the time of my dysthemia’s onset, likely when I was the age of my present students. This is a typical age for first depressive episodes. Such was the case for Lincoln.

However, in Lincoln’s time, there was no “depression.” There was “melancholy,” a word that has since slipped from our modern vocabulary. Melancholy was not so much a disease as a disposition. The nineteenth century was not medically too distant from Galen and his philosophy of bodily humors. Melancholy was supposedly a manifestation of the body’s balance of these humors. This character may have been with us since birth. Just as (in the nineteenth century) a prince might be born a prince and not a pauper, and a man might grow tall or remain short, so was a person melancholic (or some other stereotype). One questioned that fact as little as one questioned one’s adult height or economic status in the Age of Lincoln.

Joshua Shenk points out that melancholy carried different baggage than does depression today. While most contemporaries recognized Lincoln’s melancholic personality, the sum of its traits was value neutral. A melancholic person might seem downbeat or distracted, but at the same time he might seem learned, creative, or wise. An entire set of both useful and less-than-useful characteristics were tied up in that one word: melancholy.

This is not to say that Lincoln did not seek professional relief to alleviate the symptoms of melancholy. However, these harsh and unconventional treatments were on the medical fringe. In Lincoln’s case, they also were a failure. Only after Freud would mental disease became the (step)child of the medical establishment.

Shenk is not a scholar, but does a scholarly job in deconstructing the sources on Lincoln, extracting Lincoln’s melancholy, as it lurks like a literary character hidden in the shadows of documentation. The standard story of Lincoln is a wave with peaks and troughs: The man splits rails, debates Douglas, and wins the Civil War before he is shot dead. Yet it is the troughs—the gaps in the tale—where we find the melancholy. However, Lincoln did not do anything “famous” while he was incapacitated by depression, and our political history dotes on the acts of fame, not the interludes between them.

On the other hand, Shenk is a very good writer who gives structure to a story that has no real plot. Shenk never identifies himself as a dysthemic; nevertheless his words nail this disease, which, as much or more than any other human experience, defies written description.

Just as interesting as the narrative is in Lincoln’s Melancholy, so is the saga of the historiography behind it. My Abraham Lincoln was a silhouette on the penny, who pitched February clearance sales and did his homework on a slate. (“What’s a slate?,” the second-grader in me asked.) He exhibited no character other than saintliness and was therefore completely boring to any school kid after reaching puberty.

This was not the case during Lincoln’s life, and shortly after his death. Lincoln’s melancholy was the regular stuff of gossip, newspaper articles, reminiscences, worried neighbors’ over-the-fence chats, and legend. People who had only seen photographs of Lincoln—a newly invented technology--looked at them, and actually saw what we have taught ourselves to ignore in each and every example: his profound sadness.

It was only in the last (modern!) century that the possibility that there might be something “wrong” with our poster-boy President caused any historical concern. It was then, after eyewitnesses had died and melancholy had become anachronistic, that Lincoln’s lifelong fight for mental well being was expunged.

Instead, we were presented with an orthodox Lincoln who was the very opposite of melancholy. The genius of his rhetorical skill was predicated on using humor to favorably predispose an audience. We remember Lincoln’s jokes, forgetting that mirth is a common tool for fending off depression. Most everyone knows a Lincoln anecdote. But did you know he could also write this?

My childhood’s home I see again,
And gladden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds my brain,
There’s sadness in it too.

O Memory! Thou midway world
‘Twixt earth and paradise,
Where things decayed and loved ones lost
In dreamy shadows rise.

I hear the loved survivors tell
How naught from death could save,
Till every sound appears a knell,
And every spot a grave.

I range the fields with pensive tread,
And pace the hollow rooms,
And feel (companion of the dead)
I’m living in the tombs.

But here’s an object more of dread
Than ought the grave contains—
A human form with reason fled,
While wretched life remains.

And now away to seek some scene
Less painful than the last—
With less of horror mingled in
The present and the past

The very spot where grew the bread
That formed my bones, I see
How strange, old field, on thee to tread
And feel I’m part of thee.*

I did not.

More recently, historians have ventured that Lincoln did What Lincoln Did despite mental distress. Shenk takes the next, controversial step: Lincoln may have been the Lincoln we remember just as much because of his depression as in spite of it. We are the sum of our parts. All of them.

I do not believe that my students are any more depressed today than they were a decade ago. They may be recognizing it more readily in 2006—a step forward, I can say from experience.

Abraham Lincoln knew his depression intimately. He never cured it. He never understood it. Yet he did great things with it.

It is tempting to write at this point something like “Author Shenk shows us that if even Lincoln can overcome the debilitation of mental disorder . . . “ Yet I cannot make myself complete the sentence. Readers of Lincoln’s Melancholy will close the last page having no doubt that Lincoln would have traded everything—immortality in granite, the freed slaves, Gettysburg on the back of an envelope—to be rid of this particular burden. And that is what, for me, makes this book more “real” than much of what passes for whiggish American history. Real history is contingent—just like everything my students will and will not do in their lives, thereafter the moment they quietly slip out of my office.

* quoted from Basler, Roy P., ed. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. 9 vols. New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953.

Posted by hockey at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)

February 28, 2007

A Reader Asks How I Got Into Blogging

You asked how I got into blogging. I've always liked reading nonfiction. Even today, I'll watch a (good) "reality" TV program over a (bad) drama or comedy. Of course, there's no such thing, really, as reality TV, but you know what I mean.

As for writing, I enjoy that just as much. In the past I kept a diary. And I used to write a lot of letters that often contained the sort of material that appears in blogs today. That was back when there was no electrical cord or battery attached to the typewriter!

Come to think of it, that was also back when people wrote letters. (I'm trying to remember the last time that I got a personal letter in the mail . . . a Christmas card, I suppose.) Blogging is simply the latest of the many media I’ve used over the years for this sort of personal “therapy.” The same could be said of Facebook.

Certainly, I do other writing, too: a few books, etc. I even made a documentary film. Still, that's business. In my blogging, I'm intentionally avoiding most anything that has to do with astronomy. I love astronomy, but don't want to be totally identified in life for any one thing.

Thomas Hockey

Posted by hockey at 2:47 PM | Comments (0)

February 27, 2007

I Love GoogleEarth II

Arizona House Where I Grew Up
Notice All the Houses around Have Swimming Pools
On the Other Hand, We Had Fruit Trees

Peoria High School
Long, Red-Roofed Structure Is Principal Classroom Building
At North: New Gymnasium Is on the Right;
Old Gym Where We Had Sawdust-On-the-Floor Dances Is on the Left

Posted by hockey at 2:17 PM | Comments (0)

February 26, 2007

I Love GoogleEarth I

House My Father Built (I Was Born) in Angola, Indiana
I Yet Remember the Address My Primary School Teacher Told Me to Memorize:
"615 South West Street"

Henry Park Elementary School I Attended
I Walked Six Blocks!
You Can Still See the Playground Equipment I fell Off

Posted by hockey at 3:25 PM | Comments (0)

February 19, 2007

Remembrance of Turkey

[Here's the travel section from my annual letter to family. - TH]

We didn’t know what to expect from Turkey. What we encountered was an utter delight. Never have we been met with such native hospitality in Europe or Asia. Touring by private car, driven by our chauffer/guide/new friend Fuad, enabled us to see the country close-up. Highlights—though every day of the two weeks held a highlight for us—included staying at our own rented villa in Cappadocia (home of some of the most exotic landscapes this side of Mars) and Bodrum (an idyllic seaside town, rich in history as was the entire Aegean coast). Move aside Greece and Rome. If you want the story of western civilization in large doses, go to Turkey. (As you can tell, Tom was really into this stuff!) We walked in the footsteps of Alexander, Thales, Cleopatra, Paul, Galen, Constantine, Sulaymin, the Khan, and Michael Jackson. Moreover, we sailed up the Bosphorus, soaked in a two-thousand-year-old spa, spied wild wolves, got preached to in the mosque, shopped the Grand Bazaar, danced with belly dancers, were massaged in the hamam (Turkish bath), visited the harem, climbed into the Trojan Horse (OK, maybe not the real one), crawled about an underground city, paid our respects at Gallipoli, were eyed by camels, found ourselves (temporarily!) trapped in a castle dungeon, squeezed into a Shiite shrine, slept in the shadow of the Hagia Sofia, did not buy a carpet (despite a thousand entreaties to do so), and even witnessed the eclipse!

We also ate, and ate, and ate . . . For instance, Tom’s birthday was a fillet mignon dinner cooked over an open fire with a view of the entire fairy-kingdom-like city of Nevisher. Another feast was had at a restaurant in an ancient Roman cistern. Elsewhere, there were fish delicacies served meters from the sea in which they were caught.

Posted by hockey at 9:05 AM | Comments (1)

February 16, 2007

2006 Astronomy Class at Lakeside Laboratory

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February 14, 2007

Guide to the Candidates (in Verse)

McCain’s red front runner.
Gilmore was governor.
Hunter talks immigration.
Vilsack knows irrigation.

Tancredo’s a teacher.
Huckabee’s a preacher.
Kucinich’s run before.
That’s true too of Al Gore.

Gravel’s from Alaska
What’s a Mitt? I ask ya . . .
Richardson’s New Mexican.
What if Kerry runs again?

Tommy Thompson’s the same,
which ever way that you read.
Ralph Nader’s spoiler blame
can’t win--at any speed.

B. Obama became
today’s anointed one.
In the Democrat game,
that toasts Hillary’s bun.

Posted by hockey at 3:35 PM | Comments (0)