So a lot has happened in the last 6 weeks through the world and in American politics and relatively little has happened in my little sphere of the world.
But I'll start with me since it's easier. The semester has started up again, and I've decided not to take any classes in order to focus my attention on research. It still blows me away that inside of three months I've gone from having a project which is largely hypothetical to having a laundry list of things to do. And I'm happy to be able to write that I really enjoy what I'm working on. Although I do miss Berkeley a bit, more the people I worked with than the city itself, it's good to be back in Ithaca.
Last weekend I went backpacking in southern PA on the Laurel Highlands Ridge Trail with Marcy and Shane and sprained my ankle on what was going to be mile 4 of 25 over two days. Me being somewhat stubborn when it comes to turning back on trails, popped some ibuprofen and pressed on (with my fellow hikers carrying most of my stuff). In retrospect not the best idea. In part because having the extra load tired M&S out quickly, and I rolled my ankle a second time close to the shelters. After 14 long miles we made it to the shelters on the last light from sunset. The strong north wind blew right into our lean-to (I hate wind), Shane got sick from tainted well water, and I knew there was no way I could hike the 11 miles to the car the next day. So I fell asleep dreading the thought of having to spend 7 or so hours alone with nothing to do in a windy shelter while I waited for the others to get the car and pick me up followed by a 6 hour drive back to Ithaca, mostly in the dark.
And then we awoke to a beautiful sunny day and view through the trees of the valley and parallel ridges. Two local guys came to our rescue and drove the three of us back to Marcy and Shane's car. They have no idea how much the ride helped us out. We finished the trip by having a huge breakfast in Ruthie's, the local diner. I love local diners by the way, and this was a good one. Next time I'm going to let them plan the trip. My ankle is still recovering but the swelling is going down.
So the side project which is consuming a lot of time is an interesting confluence of astronomy and music. In October the Division of Planetary Science is holding a meeting in Ithaca, and as part of the convention, the Cornell Symphony is going to play Holst's "The Planets" as well as a new piece being written for the conference. We also decided to put together a movie of images and videos that will be shown while the orchestra is playing. I'm in charge of organizing the grad students and post docs to put the movies together. I've really enjoyed it, but it's also been time consuming. I have the movies I made (for Mercury and Jupiter) on my astro website if you're interested in checking them out:
www.astro.cornell.edu/~lspitler
So....the world. There was the Olympics. And the whole Georgia thing. Don't have much to say there. Let's move on to politics shall we?
The major political news has been conventions and naming of VP's. Biden, ok, no problem. Palin.....WTF!?!?
In short, Palin frustrates and terrifies me. I feel this way anytime some evangelical bible-thumper has too much power. The frustration arises around the social issues mainly. Same-sex marriage, pro-life (anti-choice or anti-freedom if you'd like the me to spin it in language that conservatives can understand), abstinence-only education and all those other "values" (I really dislike that term). But my frustration level is elevated even higher in light of her daughter. (Yes, I'm going down that road. I think the situation, but not the individual is fair game.) First off, all I have to say is "Thank God for abstinence only education", because clearly it's working wonders on teenagers. Here's what gets me. All of the social conservative, "values voters" are so pleased that her daugher is *choosing* to do the right thing, have the baby and marrying the father. Great. Who wants to be that three years down the line they're not still married? So much for family values.
But here's the thing that really gets me. A decade from now, Sarah Palin will still be marching on the crusade against teaching anything but the utter absurdity that is abstinence-only sex education even after seeing how becoming a mother at 17 has hindered her daughter's potential in life.
Now on the the reasons I'm terrified. Basically she's grossly under-qualified. But I'm not going to go into that. There are plenty of people more well-versed in this that can articulate the reasons better than I.
There is one thing in particular I do want to address, and that's the ramifications of a president who doesn't believe in evolution. This is a disaster for American scientific achievement, and the ability for us to stay at the forefront of scientific and technological development. I'm sorry, but the economy is not driven by bible-thumping. As someone who is training to become a scientist by trade, this has real ramifications for me. Astronomy in this country is largely funded by the National Science Foundation. The NSF's budget is set in the Federal Budget. Having an anti-science president in office for another four (eight?!) years is very, very bad for my future.
Now I will conclude on a few exciting things I discovered today. One is iTunes finally have all of Apocalyptica's albums online, so I could finally get the most recent one. I also downloaded a couple exciting applications to my iPod touch. The most exciting of which is an ssh terminal. sshing into my workstation from my iPod blew my mind.
