Who wants a cosmic latte?

I just love astronomy -- physical science in general. It can even tell us what 'colour' the universe is. I say, I rather like the name they picked for it, "Cosmic Latte".

You can check out the full page here, which I have set as my home-page.

Back into the swing of things

I'm finally getting back to school, which is awesome, since I always seem to become a bit of a solitary old grump during the summer. I'd hate for the two people (if that??) who read this thing to think I was neglectful of my blog because I was in a funk -- au contaire, this summer was pretty fun. I did a lot of swimming at this marvelous beach that not many people in town seem to know about or visit. The waves are awesome and the water is always warm. I'm sort of already looking forward to next summer (GAWD what am I saying?!?)

Anyhow, I am still glad to be back to school. That's where I tend to perk up a bit. Will blog more as the semester goes on, as long as my school work doesn't keep me too busy (although if it does, I can always procrastinate by writing something here...)

The grass is always greener...

When I am in university, I often think about how nice it will be when summer arrives and I don't have to worry about the pressures of school. Then again, whenever summer comes, I yearn to begin the fall semester and get to all of those neat sounding classes that stare at me every day from the list I have stuck to my refrigerator.

Now I'm in summer, and the green grass of the university is looking ever greener from this side of the fence. Of course, it's snowing right now as I'm writing this...which is neato and unnerving at the same time...so it's an odd summer so far.

Yes, I know...

...it's been forever. I know it's been forever because a few of my friends have reminded me that I've been slacking off a little where my bloggery is concerned. So, I am here to make an entry, and hopefully, amends.

I could go into a rather self-indulgent tirade about my emotions, or how I did at university this year, or something else, but I'll save the juicy stuff for further entries...not that there is much 'juicy stuff' in my life...although I have to make it seem as though I have something for my readers to follow...right? For now, I'll just say that I have a wisdom tooth coming in at the moment, and it's really bugging me. I'll have to make an appointment with my Dentist. I just had a wisdom tooth extracted a few months ago and it wasn't nearly as bad as I had expected...actually, the lisp caused by the drugs that numbed my jaw, and the extra saliva I wasn't able to swallow because of those drugs, made for a pretty fun drive home with my mom.

But whenever I go through tough times like those recounted above, I just think about slapping my troubles away with the SlapChop:

Extrasolar planets and stuff

Thanks to the Planetary Society as well as many other individuals whom I have neglected to look up simply because I am so darn excited about this, I can now keep track of extrasolar planets on my desktop! I, one tiny little ape on this floating bit of rock flying through the proverbial wilderness of the Milky Way Galaxy, can see what other star systems look like, what planets and stars compose them, how long their years are...the feeling I get from that is a mixture of awe, excitement, wonder, pride and curiosity.

In days gone by, when I was quite involved in lots of debates (which took place over the internet) about whether or not God existed, I sometimes was accused of deifying science. Maybe those people were right about me...I find it difficult to tell now. I do not think about science as if it is something which ought to be worshiped. Instead I tend to think of it as more of a tool, along with a number of others like history, philosophy, etc., which we humans have invented in order to find things out. I (borrowing the idea from Daniel C. Dennet) like to group these disciplines together, as is done in German, as Wissenschaft, which refers to systematic study in science or scholarship, which can be taught. What I suppose I do regard with a sort of religious reverence is what science and all of those other disciplines have collectively revealed about ourselves and the world that we're a part of. So, I guess I don't really deify science; if anything I am religious about the fascinating facts we've uncovered about our existence.

So, that was my little speech about science and how cool it is, inspired by the great folks that made the Planetary Society's extrasolar planet catalogue available to nerds like me. Have a look at this catalogue here.

Lucid Dream

A few nights ago I had a lucid dream shortly before I woke up. A lucid dream is simply a dream wherein the dreamer knows he or she is dreaming. It can be very fun doing his sort of thing -- my dream was one of those really fun dreams:


I found myself in a coffee shop on a bright summer day. Seeing the blue sky made me happy, and I thought of how I had been seeing more and more blue skies as we approach spring. Then it dawned on me that the weather outside the coffee shop was like a day in June. "How could that be? It's only February!" The explanation, I realized, must have been that I was dreaming.
With this knowledge I went out of the cafe into the sunlight. This had been my first lucid dream in several months, so what happened next surprised me: I began concentrating on the sensations I was feeling; the sunlight beaming on me; the air going in and out of my lungs;* the pattering sound my shoes made on the cement (which was of course, only made out of dream stuff); doing this exercise helped to heighten my awareness. I was now very aware that I was dreaming -- the reason I say this is surprising is because I would always forget to do this in many of my subsequent lucid dreams.
Once the idea that I was in a dream was set firmly in my consciousness, I decided to attempt to fly, which is another thing I have always been bad at in my dreams (I could never seem to get over the fact that dream gravity isn't real gravity). However this time, I suppose due to my "increased awareness" exercise, I took off with no troubles at all, and raced upward and to the south. Apparently the coffee shop I was in was a dream replica of a real cafe which lies downtown from my house. The dream geography roughly matched the geography of the real town in which I live, so as I went south I traveled over the lake. Now, oddly enough, the sun was starting to set (brilliant sunsets are common in my lucid dreams), and I noticed several larger-than-you'd-expect boats cruising on the lake. I made a number of passes over them -- I later figured that, judging from how these boats seemed to move relative to me as I passed them, as well as how large they appeared, that I must have been traveling very quickly.

This continued until I woke up to the sound of my alarm going off. It felt nice, since this experience is usually very fun, and this is the first time it's happened to me in a long time =)


*To quote Morpheus from The Matrix, as he says after kicking Neo's ass in the dojo, "You think that's air you're breathing now?"

Darwin Day

Today is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birthday, and the third "Darwin Day" that I've observed so far...I don't do much -- usually just a blog entry or something, just to let people know that this day actually exists.

Why observe it? Well, I guess because it is not a religious holiday, so I don't have to reconcile any of my secular tendencies with anyone else's religious traditions for this particular holiday...PLUS it's a day on which I have an excuse to talk about some way cool science (which I have always liked to do since I was a kid). So basically, this day sort of formalizes these traits that I have...which is nice since there are fewer people who seem to share interests like mine that there who do.

Unfortunately I don't have time to say much myself, so here is a link to some way cool science you can watch on Google if you like.