I haven't been paying attention to the astronomy websites recently so it took Alex's mentioning it for me to realize that Jupiter is not only very bright in the sky right now but it's actually brighter than it has been since 1968. Checking a couple of astronomy websites just now I found that Jupiter will reach opposition tonight (September 21st) at midnight. "Opposition" is when an outer planet is closest to Earth. Jupiter comes into opposition with Earth about every 13 months (as Earth catches up with Jupiter since it goes around the Sun much quicker). This is an especially close opposition because Jupiter is just now getting toward the closest it ever comes to the Sun in it's oval orbit.
So, if you want to see Jupiter shining brighter than you will see it for a very long time, go out after 9:00 PM or so and look in the Southeastern sky anytime over the next few weeks. Because Jupiter is so far away it's brightness won't change very fast as it moves away from it's closest approach.
Keep this in perspective. Jupiter will seem to be a very bright star (brighter than anything else that's ever in the sky except the Sun, the Moon and Venus); but it will not be anywhere near as bright as the Moon. As an added treat, tomorrow (September 22nd) the full moon will be very close to Jupiter in the sky, and, as an added treat Uranus (I just learned at space.com) will be even closer to Jupiter than the Moon will be (just above it in the sky). If you have a good pair of binoculars this is one of the (very few) easy times to find Uranus since it's so close to Jupiter in the sky.
Enough of astronomy stuff. I have a lot of other stuff to write about our trip up to the Peoples Republic of Massachusetts this past weekend; but I'm typing this on our old home computer because my laptop is acting up and I'm not very patient when writing at this computer, so I'll just present the highlights:
We spent a good bit of time with Alex and Christina, of course. And we met an Indian fellow who is now an Australian. The Indian fellow wore a bad wig; but he was interesting because he's at Harvard right now finishing up his second Ph. D. in International Relations, specializing in the Law of War. I found it surprising that he seemed to be so lacking in technical knowledge about nuclear weapons technology even though nuclear proliferation is a big deal in International Relations, perhaps the biggest deal of all in the long run.
At church on Sunday with Alex and Christina we met a soon to be Harvard Professor of BioPhysics and his wife. If we hadn't talked to them I would have guessed them both to be high school students of perhaps college freshmen. Increasingly everybody under about forty looks like a child to me. They were really nice folks.
We stayed at a nice bed and breakfast place in Cambridge called the Bed and Muffin. Go figure, the place laid out a workable continental style breakfast; but surprisingly there were no muffins. It should perhaps more accurately be named the Bed and No Muffin.
If Seinfeld was still doing his show he could make a nice half hour comedy about that, and the Australian Indian fellow with the bad wig, and the stereotypical New England Liberal woman who was at the no muffin breakfast when we met him. To help us understand where in the world he was from he mentioned that we might have heard of Crocodile Dundee. She in her turn (or perhaps it was her husband) mentioned Rupert Murdoch after breathlessly relating that she thinks Sarah Palin may be becoming less popular with all but the Fox News set. I thought about mentioning that Linda and I watch Bill O'Reilly fairly regularly; but I didn't want to court the risk of having the woman drop dead of apoplexy.
After taking leave of Alex and Christina on Sunday afternoon we drove to western Massachusetts where we had a very nice walk around Stockbridge which is a very picturesque town that happens to have the tallest wood framed church steeple in New England, or so it claims. It was a pretty tall steeple, if a bit warped, on top of a very large United Church of Christ built in the 1880's. The church, all made of wood, badly needs scraping and painting. I'll bet that's going to be a very expensive job.
After staying at a Super 8 motel in Stockbridge, which did have muffins as part of it's continental breakfast, we headed off to tour Naum Keag, a large summer cottage built by a lawyer named Choate who led the successful fight against the first attempt to implement an Income Tax in the 1911 or so. According to the tour guide this Choate correctly predicted that the original Income Tax would be ruled unconstitutional and that a constitutional amendment would be necessary to implement an income tax. That amendment, the 19th was eventually passed and ratified in 1919 (I think). A valuable man. If it hadn't been for Choate and his holding back of the "progressive" tide, the country might well be ten more years advanced toward a state of utter perdition.
Choate built a modest little 49 room summer cottage with his law earnings. After he died his daughter spent the next forty or so years spending her inheritance on very nice gardens around it. An interesting place, sort of a time capsule of upper upper middle class life in the Gilded Age when the glitterati summered in the Berkshires to get away from the heat of the cities.
According to the tour guide, Choate's oldest son died of apoplexy when he was in his late teens. He was home from college for the summer and mentioned one evening at dinner that he had a headache. Fifteen minutes later he was dead. Choate's second son attended a couple of years of college and then went off his rocker and ended up institutionalized for the rest of his life. His oldest daughter died of some sort of intestinal problem in her late 20's.
Linda wonders if the maiden daughter, the tour guide called her Miss Mabel, poisoned her three older siblings to get the house. If so Miss Mabel missed on the youngest son, who lived to go on and have a law career himself, according to the tour guide. Maybe Miss Mabel could never get him to try her muffins.
Showing posts with label Alex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alex. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Departures and Arrivals
Alex and Christina headed back to Massachussetts today, So things are pretty quiet here in Collegeville just now.
When Jas called me late in the afternoon yesterday my first thought was that he was wanting to come over for coffee; but those days are over - he was calling from the welcome center just inside the Florida border. He and Kathy are no longer Pennsylvanians. They'll come back in April to sell their house; but based on how Jas was talking while here the two of them aren't going to be coming back for many extended stays.
Alex and Christina suggested that we all go and see the new Avatar movie in 3D last evening. We came away dazzled. Everything you may have read about the movie being seeded with trite and stupid political messages is true; but the sheer technical power of the thing easily overwhelmed the sheer idiocy of a great director putting such hackneyed tripe in his work. And the story and acting were on the whole pretty good for what is after all a combination kiddy film and second childhood film.
The movie is going to be a major hit with a very long run as word of mouth promotes it. If the director is smart he's right now working on a directors cut that will eliminate the stupidest of the references that will date the movie in five or ten years.
Even if he doesn't do that, I think people are going to remember and watch the film for a long time in the same way they watch the first Star Wars movie and Jurassic Park, as milestones in storytelling at new plateaus of technical capability.
The Pandorans in Avatar are very believable aliens, and the natural environment of the planet Pandora is very realisticly presented even while it is cleverly alien. Some of the plant and animal life on Pandora is reminiscent of the best thinking of writers like Larry Niven.
I'm thinking that the technology of movie making is getting to the point where realistic Puppeteers and Kzinti and Moties are possible. We may soon be treated to Ringworld and Mote in God's Eye as movies. I hope they do a better job with those than they did with Starship Troopers which was only so so. The bugs were true to Heinlein's sketchy description of them in the book; but what worked in 1950 for a novel did not work on the big screen. Plus, of course, the movie makers missed the whole point of Heinlein's book; but that was only to be expected.
Hollywoodians are very talented gabbling lefty geese. When they digest a plot the effect is much the same as what happens when you run grass through a goose. What comes out after processing is not recognizable.
In other news we've been having as cold a December as I can remember. Alex went out on the pond the other day and reported the ice almost 4 inches thick in the center. I can't recall ever walking on the pond this early in winter. It usually freezes solid enough to support weight in mid January or even February.
As a result of the cold and the fact that I've been home during the days I've been burning a heck of a lot more wood that I expected. I need my cracked toe to get better so I can get out there and get cutting and hauling more over from the other side of the big creek. Dan the woodcutter has quite a bit of unsplittable stuff set aside for me, but that's next year's wood, or even the year after, since unsplit rounds take a long time to dry out. The woodstove will handle and burn anthing that will fit through its door; but unseasoned rounds take some care and planning and plenty of dry kindling since they won't take fire easily.
The good news is that sunspots started to arrive again early in December and we've now had 22 straight days with sunspots. So it appears the latest solar minimum may be over. Better late than never. Global warming is a concern; but the sort of global cooling we could get if the sun fails to resume it's normal pattern and goes into a deep minimum (as it did in the late Eighteen Hundreds when they called the period the Little Ice Age) would really be serious. Global warming extends growing seasons in the main crop growing regions. During the Little Ice Age of the Eighteen Hundreds growing seasons shrunk and there were real agricultural problems.
When Jas called me late in the afternoon yesterday my first thought was that he was wanting to come over for coffee; but those days are over - he was calling from the welcome center just inside the Florida border. He and Kathy are no longer Pennsylvanians. They'll come back in April to sell their house; but based on how Jas was talking while here the two of them aren't going to be coming back for many extended stays.
Alex and Christina suggested that we all go and see the new Avatar movie in 3D last evening. We came away dazzled. Everything you may have read about the movie being seeded with trite and stupid political messages is true; but the sheer technical power of the thing easily overwhelmed the sheer idiocy of a great director putting such hackneyed tripe in his work. And the story and acting were on the whole pretty good for what is after all a combination kiddy film and second childhood film.
The movie is going to be a major hit with a very long run as word of mouth promotes it. If the director is smart he's right now working on a directors cut that will eliminate the stupidest of the references that will date the movie in five or ten years.
Even if he doesn't do that, I think people are going to remember and watch the film for a long time in the same way they watch the first Star Wars movie and Jurassic Park, as milestones in storytelling at new plateaus of technical capability.
The Pandorans in Avatar are very believable aliens, and the natural environment of the planet Pandora is very realisticly presented even while it is cleverly alien. Some of the plant and animal life on Pandora is reminiscent of the best thinking of writers like Larry Niven.
I'm thinking that the technology of movie making is getting to the point where realistic Puppeteers and Kzinti and Moties are possible. We may soon be treated to Ringworld and Mote in God's Eye as movies. I hope they do a better job with those than they did with Starship Troopers which was only so so. The bugs were true to Heinlein's sketchy description of them in the book; but what worked in 1950 for a novel did not work on the big screen. Plus, of course, the movie makers missed the whole point of Heinlein's book; but that was only to be expected.
Hollywoodians are very talented gabbling lefty geese. When they digest a plot the effect is much the same as what happens when you run grass through a goose. What comes out after processing is not recognizable.
In other news we've been having as cold a December as I can remember. Alex went out on the pond the other day and reported the ice almost 4 inches thick in the center. I can't recall ever walking on the pond this early in winter. It usually freezes solid enough to support weight in mid January or even February.
As a result of the cold and the fact that I've been home during the days I've been burning a heck of a lot more wood that I expected. I need my cracked toe to get better so I can get out there and get cutting and hauling more over from the other side of the big creek. Dan the woodcutter has quite a bit of unsplittable stuff set aside for me, but that's next year's wood, or even the year after, since unsplit rounds take a long time to dry out. The woodstove will handle and burn anthing that will fit through its door; but unseasoned rounds take some care and planning and plenty of dry kindling since they won't take fire easily.
The good news is that sunspots started to arrive again early in December and we've now had 22 straight days with sunspots. So it appears the latest solar minimum may be over. Better late than never. Global warming is a concern; but the sort of global cooling we could get if the sun fails to resume it's normal pattern and goes into a deep minimum (as it did in the late Eighteen Hundreds when they called the period the Little Ice Age) would really be serious. Global warming extends growing seasons in the main crop growing regions. During the Little Ice Age of the Eighteen Hundreds growing seasons shrunk and there were real agricultural problems.
Monday, October 26, 2009
A brief visit to the Peoples Republic of Massachusetts
Three days we've been away, and in that time the big sugar maple tree has dropped about half of its leaves. It was at the very peak of its splendor on Sunday of last week, all shades of gold and red and green. What leaves now remain on the tree are yellow or brown.
But I don't want to write about the swift decay of the splendor of the sugar maple, its leaves deprived of essential nutrients by the choking off of tree's systems. I want to write about the splendor of the great Peoples' Republic of Massachusetts, which Linda and I visited this weekend.
We stayed in the Brookline Holiday Inn, which Christina got for us via Priceline. A great location for observing some pretty interesting stuff, and only ten blocks or so from Alex and Christina's apartment. The very first evening was made special when I observed a local copper making time with nine well oiled young ladies who emerged from a building across the street as part of a much larger group who were perhaps the competitors for the Miss Miniskirt Massachusetts title. Every one of those girls had their heads in the clouds; but their legs reached all the way to the ground.
The copper, Steve was his name, loaned his uniform hat to one of the nine he was wooing. I was hoping she would try to make off with it the way Dillon tried to do with the Guardia Civil's fancy tricorn back in Barcelona in the 1960's; but she meekly handed it back after trying it on and displaying it to the passing cab drivers. Those cab drivers were not looking at the hat, and neither was Steve. The Guardia Civil back in Barcelona was definitely focused on his tricorn when he gestured very meaningfully at Dillon with his submachine gun. He looked pretty determined to me; but to this day I don't rightly know if he would have fired had Dillon not thought better of keeping his hat.
Steve got his hat back before he guided the nine young ladies into a cab and told the cab driver it was okay to take the passenger overload. Whether he scored a phone number or not I don't know; but he did give the dollies his email address. I hope he got a number because I don't think those lasses were in condition to remember an email address.
To be continued. . . The next thrilling episode will include our encounter with the exuberant
Russkis at the restaurant, and our tour of the Harpoon Brewery. It may also include
commentary on the events that did not occur when we found our car boxed in by the idealistic young civil engineer who was so preoccupied with saving humanity by delivering materials to the Boston Headquarters for Idealism that she had no time to worry about inconveniencing a few mere humans.
Ah to be young and heedless of the risks of rudeness. Hopefully the next time she will block in someone like me in my much younger days, for even idealists, perhaps especially idealists, need learning in the wages of sin. Randy or Dillon or Paul or Dave or Nick and I would have levied quite some wages on the car of someone who boxed us in back in college days. Thomas Harris had his character Hannibal Lecter go perhaps a smidgen too far; but it is a very certain truth that free range rudeness should be answered with consequences by anyone truly idealistic upon whom it is practiced.
Update: In other news I just got an exceedingly pleasant surprise when I leafed through the mail we collected upon returning home the other day. It included a very nice postcard from Aruba where Alex and Christina are enjoying a great honeymoon, or at least they were when they sent the postcard more than a month ago. They mention seeing "enough colorful fish, sunsets and iguanas to fill at least two honeymoons". The Aruba post office must have tied this postcard to an iguana who then hitched a ride on a fish to bring it to the U.S.
Just think how quickly and efficiently our medical care will be attended to when health care is run by the government the way the post office is.
But I don't want to write about the swift decay of the splendor of the sugar maple, its leaves deprived of essential nutrients by the choking off of tree's systems. I want to write about the splendor of the great Peoples' Republic of Massachusetts, which Linda and I visited this weekend.
We stayed in the Brookline Holiday Inn, which Christina got for us via Priceline. A great location for observing some pretty interesting stuff, and only ten blocks or so from Alex and Christina's apartment. The very first evening was made special when I observed a local copper making time with nine well oiled young ladies who emerged from a building across the street as part of a much larger group who were perhaps the competitors for the Miss Miniskirt Massachusetts title. Every one of those girls had their heads in the clouds; but their legs reached all the way to the ground.
The copper, Steve was his name, loaned his uniform hat to one of the nine he was wooing. I was hoping she would try to make off with it the way Dillon tried to do with the Guardia Civil's fancy tricorn back in Barcelona in the 1960's; but she meekly handed it back after trying it on and displaying it to the passing cab drivers. Those cab drivers were not looking at the hat, and neither was Steve. The Guardia Civil back in Barcelona was definitely focused on his tricorn when he gestured very meaningfully at Dillon with his submachine gun. He looked pretty determined to me; but to this day I don't rightly know if he would have fired had Dillon not thought better of keeping his hat.
Steve got his hat back before he guided the nine young ladies into a cab and told the cab driver it was okay to take the passenger overload. Whether he scored a phone number or not I don't know; but he did give the dollies his email address. I hope he got a number because I don't think those lasses were in condition to remember an email address.
To be continued. . . The next thrilling episode will include our encounter with the exuberant
Russkis at the restaurant, and our tour of the Harpoon Brewery. It may also include
commentary on the events that did not occur when we found our car boxed in by the idealistic young civil engineer who was so preoccupied with saving humanity by delivering materials to the Boston Headquarters for Idealism that she had no time to worry about inconveniencing a few mere humans.
Ah to be young and heedless of the risks of rudeness. Hopefully the next time she will block in someone like me in my much younger days, for even idealists, perhaps especially idealists, need learning in the wages of sin. Randy or Dillon or Paul or Dave or Nick and I would have levied quite some wages on the car of someone who boxed us in back in college days. Thomas Harris had his character Hannibal Lecter go perhaps a smidgen too far; but it is a very certain truth that free range rudeness should be answered with consequences by anyone truly idealistic upon whom it is practiced.
Update: In other news I just got an exceedingly pleasant surprise when I leafed through the mail we collected upon returning home the other day. It included a very nice postcard from Aruba where Alex and Christina are enjoying a great honeymoon, or at least they were when they sent the postcard more than a month ago. They mention seeing "enough colorful fish, sunsets and iguanas to fill at least two honeymoons". The Aruba post office must have tied this postcard to an iguana who then hitched a ride on a fish to bring it to the U.S.
Just think how quickly and efficiently our medical care will be attended to when health care is run by the government the way the post office is.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Are you adapted to run for your dinner?
Here's an interesting article on the subject of why people can run such long distances. I think I'm going to go out and try to run down a deer one of these days.
http://seedmagazine.com/content/print/the_running_man_revisited/
Speaking of dinner; we had a very nice Easter dinner at Jas and Kathy's house yesterday. All the usual suspects were present and accounted for except for Sam and Deb and Delores W., who presumably went to the wilds of New Jersey to celebrate the holiday with Deb and Delores side relatives. Alex and Christina drove down from Boston for the weekend which made it really great.
Johnny, Jennifer and Kathy put together a combo of lamb, ham, lasagna and cavatelli that was excellent; and of course there were several fine desserts, of which Linda and I contributed Mom and Aunt Mary's rice pie, or at least that's what the 2002 recipe scrawl in Mom's handwriting calls it. It's really more of a solid egg pudding. It came out excellent, at least it did after we baked it for more than twice as long as the one hour that Mom's directions specify.
1 cup rice cooked for 15 minutes and then cooled
3 pounds of ricotta cheese
2 cups of sugar
1 dozen eggs
2 tablespoons of vanilla extract
(Mom's recipe also calls for "1 cup milk?". Fortunately I didn't put that milk in. If I had put it in we would probably still be waiting for it to solidify)
Blend the cooled off cooked rice and the ricotta. Blend the eggs and the vanilla with the sugar. Blend the two mixtures together. Pour into a greased 9x13 inch pan. I used a glass baking dish and I put it on a cookie sheet for fear it would spill over because it was pretty full.
Mom's directions call for baking it for one hour at 350. After one hour the middle was still liquidy. At that point Linda let it continue to bake at 350 for another 20 minutes. I came in and noticed that the middle was still liquidy, but the edges were starting to brown. So I reduced the temp to 325 and let it continue to bake for another 20 minutes. Finally I reduced the temp to 275 and let it bake another 20 minutes, after which I turned off the oven and left it in there for another 30 minutes or so.
People seemed to like it; but only about 40% of it was eaten by the crowd of twenty or so. Marianne and Kathy must have really liked it because they took another 40% off our hands. The remaining 20% has already been cut into by Linda (last night) and me (I'm eating a big chunk right now); but I think I'll cut this recipe in half when I make it again next Easter.
Reflecting back I recall that there was always at least some of this recipe left over even back at the height of holiday gorging when 40 or more would troup through 403 Walnut during the course of Easter Sunday. Back then of course Mom would have brought 4 apple pies or so and Aunt Mary would also have made cream puffs if she didn't make one of those huge four decker six inch high cookie sheet sized rectangular rum and cream cakes. And Aunt Nancy would have brought her nonpareil rice pudding.
And we would have eaten those desserts after a a marathon of ravioli and stuffed olive eating. Sam, Matty and me each at least once managed to down twenty of Mom and Aunt Mary's huge meat raviolis, very easy to take because they came in three distinctly different forms - flat ones fried and then powdered with sugar, curly ones served al dente and white with grated cheese and (can't remember the name of the spice right now - note to self, get gingko biloba before you forget its name, also write your name, phone number and address on a card in your wallet in case they find you wandering around confused one of these days soon), and finally with traditional gravy and meatballs. All washed down with as much soda as you wanted to drink.
It's surprising any of us survived those dinners. Of course, the fact that we did survive is evidence of another survival adaptation. After they ran the antelope to death those long ago ancestors of ours ate the whole thing raw if they could, or at least several pounds of its juicy liver and other innards, before the lions and leopards and hyenas could have a chance to steal the carcass from them.
Two ducks just waddled down from the pond and hopped into the creek near the bridge. And there have been a couple of geese hanging around; but I haven't seen any evidence of a nest yet.
http://seedmagazine.com/content/print/the_running_man_revisited/
Speaking of dinner; we had a very nice Easter dinner at Jas and Kathy's house yesterday. All the usual suspects were present and accounted for except for Sam and Deb and Delores W., who presumably went to the wilds of New Jersey to celebrate the holiday with Deb and Delores side relatives. Alex and Christina drove down from Boston for the weekend which made it really great.
Johnny, Jennifer and Kathy put together a combo of lamb, ham, lasagna and cavatelli that was excellent; and of course there were several fine desserts, of which Linda and I contributed Mom and Aunt Mary's rice pie, or at least that's what the 2002 recipe scrawl in Mom's handwriting calls it. It's really more of a solid egg pudding. It came out excellent, at least it did after we baked it for more than twice as long as the one hour that Mom's directions specify.
1 cup rice cooked for 15 minutes and then cooled
3 pounds of ricotta cheese
2 cups of sugar
1 dozen eggs
2 tablespoons of vanilla extract
(Mom's recipe also calls for "1 cup milk?". Fortunately I didn't put that milk in. If I had put it in we would probably still be waiting for it to solidify)
Blend the cooled off cooked rice and the ricotta. Blend the eggs and the vanilla with the sugar. Blend the two mixtures together. Pour into a greased 9x13 inch pan. I used a glass baking dish and I put it on a cookie sheet for fear it would spill over because it was pretty full.
Mom's directions call for baking it for one hour at 350. After one hour the middle was still liquidy. At that point Linda let it continue to bake at 350 for another 20 minutes. I came in and noticed that the middle was still liquidy, but the edges were starting to brown. So I reduced the temp to 325 and let it continue to bake for another 20 minutes. Finally I reduced the temp to 275 and let it bake another 20 minutes, after which I turned off the oven and left it in there for another 30 minutes or so.
People seemed to like it; but only about 40% of it was eaten by the crowd of twenty or so. Marianne and Kathy must have really liked it because they took another 40% off our hands. The remaining 20% has already been cut into by Linda (last night) and me (I'm eating a big chunk right now); but I think I'll cut this recipe in half when I make it again next Easter.
Reflecting back I recall that there was always at least some of this recipe left over even back at the height of holiday gorging when 40 or more would troup through 403 Walnut during the course of Easter Sunday. Back then of course Mom would have brought 4 apple pies or so and Aunt Mary would also have made cream puffs if she didn't make one of those huge four decker six inch high cookie sheet sized rectangular rum and cream cakes. And Aunt Nancy would have brought her nonpareil rice pudding.
And we would have eaten those desserts after a a marathon of ravioli and stuffed olive eating. Sam, Matty and me each at least once managed to down twenty of Mom and Aunt Mary's huge meat raviolis, very easy to take because they came in three distinctly different forms - flat ones fried and then powdered with sugar, curly ones served al dente and white with grated cheese and (can't remember the name of the spice right now - note to self, get gingko biloba before you forget its name, also write your name, phone number and address on a card in your wallet in case they find you wandering around confused one of these days soon), and finally with traditional gravy and meatballs. All washed down with as much soda as you wanted to drink.
It's surprising any of us survived those dinners. Of course, the fact that we did survive is evidence of another survival adaptation. After they ran the antelope to death those long ago ancestors of ours ate the whole thing raw if they could, or at least several pounds of its juicy liver and other innards, before the lions and leopards and hyenas could have a chance to steal the carcass from them.
Two ducks just waddled down from the pond and hopped into the creek near the bridge. And there have been a couple of geese hanging around; but I haven't seen any evidence of a nest yet.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Maybe Gaia isn't angry; maybe She's on plan
In the beginning was the Bang. . .
Loki had gotten out of the playroom and set off a whole freakin' crateload of Thor's thunderbolts. In the confusing microseconds just after the Bang, Gaia and a whole shitload of Her sister planet goddesses got loose as well.
Loki was too stupid to suspect Thor of orchestrating the whole divine comedy; but the planet goddesses were smart enough to be pretty sure He had. There weren't any sparrows in those times; but the planet goddesses were smart enough to suspect that Thor would have had pretty good handle on all their tail feathers if they had existed to have tails and feathers.
The Big Guy probably wanted them loose. But not sure is not sure; She would be looking over Her shoulder, for a long time, now that there was time. They had been in His stupid garden playing the stupid harps since forever; and forever is a long thordamned time. Like Her sisters, or whatever the hell they were, Gaia boogied on out, surfing the bubble front as the new universe inflated. Was She going fast away from Thor and Her sisters, or was space expanding between Them? Who the hell knew? She had never been very good at math; Loki was the space and time and practical jokes Dude. Someday maybe She would invent a physicist who could explain the whole business so She could understand it.
Maybe She could even do more. Maybe with enough time and enough thought She could figure out how to put Thor in a damned garden playing a damned harp. There was a thought. She'd put Him in a ridiculous tutu just like He made Them wear and see how He liked prancing around on tippy-toe while playing a damned harp. Maybe She'd even let Loki loose in the garden once in a while to bust up the harp and rip off the tutu and. . . well, perhaps we'd best leave Gaia's thoughts at that point. Hell itself hath no fury like an Earth Goddess scorned.
I just read an excellent column by Lisa Mossie in The Norristown Times Herald. Lisa was on a subject of long term, if occasional, interest to me; a subject that should also be of interest to you if you give two damns about where it's all going.
Can we be good without God?
Why should we be good without God?
Does "good" have any metaphysical meaning without God?
Don't worry, I'm not going to try to pose answers to those questions beyond "Who knows?". I know, I know, there have been a whole bunch of constipated dudes who have written long and exquisitely boring books full of academic gas on the subject. But as far as I've been patient enough to try to figure out; to paraphrase Peter Singer, an Aquinas is a Descartes is a Goethe is a Nietsche is a Wittgenstein. The lot of them could have done with a good dose of laxative.
What struck me about Lisa's column was her mention, for effect, that maybe "Gaia is angry" just like the enviroweenies say She is. Maybe Lisa is telepathic; because, as it turns out, I did a little riff on Gaia just last evening on the phone with Alex.
The enviroweenies assume a Gaia who's all about, like, preserving the green, green hills of Earth, and watching the playful bunnies and possums and javalinas gyre and gymbal oer the wabe, except when She lets a hawk crush their cute little skulls or She lets rabies eat their brains so that they gyre and gymbal kind of funny for a while and bite other cute little critters before they fall over sideways and quiver on top of the green, green grass on the way to releasing their components to rejoin The Great Circle Of Life.
But what if Gaia is working according to a different plan?
The other evening I joked with Alex that Gaia may have stored up all the fossil fuels specifically so one of her critters could release the CO2 in them at this rough point in time. I joked that Gaia may want us to release the CO2 in those fossil fuels to prevent an ice age.
But that's only one possibility that's fully as logical as the strange certainty of the enviroweenies that Gaia is all about Earth as an "eternal" garden, even though Earth's atmosphere will be stripped away no matter what Gaia does when the sun expands in a few billion years; and that's assuming that the mother of all asteroids or a comets doesn't wipe out all green, green grass and the bunnies and the helgramites and the aardvarks before the the expanding sun gets a chance to.
There's another idea, maybe Gaia wants us to use the fossil fuels to get advanced enough to stop an asteroid or a comet that's already on its way from the Oort cloud. Maybe her long range plan to for us to get advanced enough to get us and Her off this planet and spread around like a plague on a million or a billion other planets before the sun expands.
Maybe Gaia's long run plan is to put Thor in a tutu and set all of us up on the mother of all bleachers around the garden to be spectators to Him prancing around forever on tippy toe playing a harp; except when She lets Loki loose for a little fun.
I hope She has vendors coming around the bleachers with hotdogs and cokes and peanuts and Crackerjacks. Maybe that's why we're supposed to do good works; to save up credit against that eternally lazy afternoon when we'll be wanting stuff from the vendors.
We now return this station to its regularly scheduled programming.
Loki had gotten out of the playroom and set off a whole freakin' crateload of Thor's thunderbolts. In the confusing microseconds just after the Bang, Gaia and a whole shitload of Her sister planet goddesses got loose as well.
Loki was too stupid to suspect Thor of orchestrating the whole divine comedy; but the planet goddesses were smart enough to be pretty sure He had. There weren't any sparrows in those times; but the planet goddesses were smart enough to suspect that Thor would have had pretty good handle on all their tail feathers if they had existed to have tails and feathers.
The Big Guy probably wanted them loose. But not sure is not sure; She would be looking over Her shoulder, for a long time, now that there was time. They had been in His stupid garden playing the stupid harps since forever; and forever is a long thordamned time. Like Her sisters, or whatever the hell they were, Gaia boogied on out, surfing the bubble front as the new universe inflated. Was She going fast away from Thor and Her sisters, or was space expanding between Them? Who the hell knew? She had never been very good at math; Loki was the space and time and practical jokes Dude. Someday maybe She would invent a physicist who could explain the whole business so She could understand it.
Maybe She could even do more. Maybe with enough time and enough thought She could figure out how to put Thor in a damned garden playing a damned harp. There was a thought. She'd put Him in a ridiculous tutu just like He made Them wear and see how He liked prancing around on tippy-toe while playing a damned harp. Maybe She'd even let Loki loose in the garden once in a while to bust up the harp and rip off the tutu and. . . well, perhaps we'd best leave Gaia's thoughts at that point. Hell itself hath no fury like an Earth Goddess scorned.
I just read an excellent column by Lisa Mossie in The Norristown Times Herald. Lisa was on a subject of long term, if occasional, interest to me; a subject that should also be of interest to you if you give two damns about where it's all going.
Can we be good without God?
Why should we be good without God?
Does "good" have any metaphysical meaning without God?
Don't worry, I'm not going to try to pose answers to those questions beyond "Who knows?". I know, I know, there have been a whole bunch of constipated dudes who have written long and exquisitely boring books full of academic gas on the subject. But as far as I've been patient enough to try to figure out; to paraphrase Peter Singer, an Aquinas is a Descartes is a Goethe is a Nietsche is a Wittgenstein. The lot of them could have done with a good dose of laxative.
What struck me about Lisa's column was her mention, for effect, that maybe "Gaia is angry" just like the enviroweenies say She is. Maybe Lisa is telepathic; because, as it turns out, I did a little riff on Gaia just last evening on the phone with Alex.
The enviroweenies assume a Gaia who's all about, like, preserving the green, green hills of Earth, and watching the playful bunnies and possums and javalinas gyre and gymbal oer the wabe, except when She lets a hawk crush their cute little skulls or She lets rabies eat their brains so that they gyre and gymbal kind of funny for a while and bite other cute little critters before they fall over sideways and quiver on top of the green, green grass on the way to releasing their components to rejoin The Great Circle Of Life.
But what if Gaia is working according to a different plan?
The other evening I joked with Alex that Gaia may have stored up all the fossil fuels specifically so one of her critters could release the CO2 in them at this rough point in time. I joked that Gaia may want us to release the CO2 in those fossil fuels to prevent an ice age.
But that's only one possibility that's fully as logical as the strange certainty of the enviroweenies that Gaia is all about Earth as an "eternal" garden, even though Earth's atmosphere will be stripped away no matter what Gaia does when the sun expands in a few billion years; and that's assuming that the mother of all asteroids or a comets doesn't wipe out all green, green grass and the bunnies and the helgramites and the aardvarks before the the expanding sun gets a chance to.
There's another idea, maybe Gaia wants us to use the fossil fuels to get advanced enough to stop an asteroid or a comet that's already on its way from the Oort cloud. Maybe her long range plan to for us to get advanced enough to get us and Her off this planet and spread around like a plague on a million or a billion other planets before the sun expands.
Maybe Gaia's long run plan is to put Thor in a tutu and set all of us up on the mother of all bleachers around the garden to be spectators to Him prancing around forever on tippy toe playing a harp; except when She lets Loki loose for a little fun.
I hope She has vendors coming around the bleachers with hotdogs and cokes and peanuts and Crackerjacks. Maybe that's why we're supposed to do good works; to save up credit against that eternally lazy afternoon when we'll be wanting stuff from the vendors.
We now return this station to its regularly scheduled programming.
Monday, October 6, 2008
The Handel and Hayden Society is ready. . .
Linda and I went up to Boston over the weekend to see Alex and Christina. While there we went to a concert put on by the Handel and Hayden Society. It was an excellent concert and very useful because I've been thinking of buying one of Handel's other oratorios and the Society put on selections from Solomon, Jeptha and Semele. None of them, of course, compare with Messiah, which is one of the most brilliant pinnacles of art.
The most interesting thing about the concert was the Society's inclusion of the music Handel composed for the coronation of King George I. It was good to see that they're all ready for the coronation, I mean the inauguration, of Barack Obama if he wins the election. The last anthem they played, with its rousing choral performance of "Long live the king, God save the king," will make a perfect musical accompaniment to the beginning of Obama's reign. Of course they may plan to play "Unto us a child is born, unto us a king is given" from Messiah, which may, after all be more appropriate given what a lot of people expect of Obama.
The most interesting thing about the concert was the Society's inclusion of the music Handel composed for the coronation of King George I. It was good to see that they're all ready for the coronation, I mean the inauguration, of Barack Obama if he wins the election. The last anthem they played, with its rousing choral performance of "Long live the king, God save the king," will make a perfect musical accompaniment to the beginning of Obama's reign. Of course they may plan to play "Unto us a child is born, unto us a king is given" from Messiah, which may, after all be more appropriate given what a lot of people expect of Obama.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Bursting figs
Chalk this up as a learning experience.
I've been watching a couple dozen figs begin to ripen over the past couple of weeks and now the ripest of them have started to burst before they're fully soft and ready to pick. We've eaten about ten figs, but it appears the major part of the crop will be spoiled, or at least not able to ripen to perfection.
I think rain over the past three days has overloaded them with more water than they can incorporate. Next year I have to keep the fig tree better watered during droughts, especially as the figs begin to mature. Also, there's a damn bird messing with the figs on occasion. I also need to get a net to put over the tree. And I need to research the old Roman recipe for larks and thrushes.
Update: This week's Economist has helped me to develop some perspective on the problem of birds eating my figs. It seems bears are very busy this year eating Canadians. I don't especially like Canadians, except for Mark Steyn and sometimes David Frum when he's not being too annoying; but I also don't especially dislike Canadians. On the whole I'm not sure I approve of bears eating them indiscriminately. I would prefer the bears restrict themselves to eating the liberal ones. They're probably sweeter and chewier than crusty conservative Canadians anyway.
Update 2: This article (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080926143908.htm)
got me to remembering the stalwart goose Mork, who terrorized all in the vicinity of our pond until Mr. C's dog taught him to be more respectful of others and then ate him. If I knew how to post pictures here I would post the one I have of Mom running from Mork that day at the picnic. First and only time any of us ever saw Mom run. I don't have a picture of Mork startling Jas and getting him down on the ground between the cars. And I don't have a picture of Mork continuing to attack even though Linda was beating him moderately hard about the head and neck with her riding crop. Most of all, I wish I had a movie of Alex dueling with Mork along the bank of the pond. Back and forth, Alex advancing with his giant supersoaker, driving Mork back, and then Mork advancing with beak and wing, fearless. A noble goose. A priceless memory. All the money and effort spent on paleontology is worth it for reminding me of watching that confrontation. Ah, the other memories of that great season when Mork ruled the pond and all within fifty yards of it, chasing even the horses when he chose to go into their pasture.
Update 10/2 - Linda reminds me that Mork played with the horses and that the horses were gone to their new owners before Alex was walking. Ergo, Alex had to duel with a different and later goose, probably one of a pair that was defending young.
I've been watching a couple dozen figs begin to ripen over the past couple of weeks and now the ripest of them have started to burst before they're fully soft and ready to pick. We've eaten about ten figs, but it appears the major part of the crop will be spoiled, or at least not able to ripen to perfection.
I think rain over the past three days has overloaded them with more water than they can incorporate. Next year I have to keep the fig tree better watered during droughts, especially as the figs begin to mature. Also, there's a damn bird messing with the figs on occasion. I also need to get a net to put over the tree. And I need to research the old Roman recipe for larks and thrushes.
Update: This week's Economist has helped me to develop some perspective on the problem of birds eating my figs. It seems bears are very busy this year eating Canadians. I don't especially like Canadians, except for Mark Steyn and sometimes David Frum when he's not being too annoying; but I also don't especially dislike Canadians. On the whole I'm not sure I approve of bears eating them indiscriminately. I would prefer the bears restrict themselves to eating the liberal ones. They're probably sweeter and chewier than crusty conservative Canadians anyway.
Update 2: This article (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080926143908.htm)
got me to remembering the stalwart goose Mork, who terrorized all in the vicinity of our pond until Mr. C's dog taught him to be more respectful of others and then ate him. If I knew how to post pictures here I would post the one I have of Mom running from Mork that day at the picnic. First and only time any of us ever saw Mom run. I don't have a picture of Mork startling Jas and getting him down on the ground between the cars. And I don't have a picture of Mork continuing to attack even though Linda was beating him moderately hard about the head and neck with her riding crop. Most of all, I wish I had a movie of Alex dueling with Mork along the bank of the pond. Back and forth, Alex advancing with his giant supersoaker, driving Mork back, and then Mork advancing with beak and wing, fearless. A noble goose. A priceless memory. All the money and effort spent on paleontology is worth it for reminding me of watching that confrontation. Ah, the other memories of that great season when Mork ruled the pond and all within fifty yards of it, chasing even the horses when he chose to go into their pasture.
Update 10/2 - Linda reminds me that Mork played with the horses and that the horses were gone to their new owners before Alex was walking. Ergo, Alex had to duel with a different and later goose, probably one of a pair that was defending young.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
What a boat!
Alex and Christina rented a Jeep Commander for their drive down here because they needed to move her into a new apartment before they left Boston. Wisely they took my car to drive down to Philly to go to church and visit some friends this morning. So I just took their rental for a little spin to the Wawa to see how it feels and handles.
What a boat! No, I take that back. What a land ship!
Not wanting to scratch it I parked a reasonable seeming distance from the bollards at the Wawa based on the view over the hood. After I got out I saw that I was almost five feet away from those bollards.
Reminds me of driving the aircraft carrier. We had to remember that, from our position on the bridge, when a sailboat disappeared under the loom of the flight deck dead ahead it was almost 600 feet in front of the bow. Not that it mattered much. Sailboats and cabin cruisers and suchlike only disappeared dead ahead under the loom of the flight deck when we were going out of San Francisco in the deep channel just to the right of the center of the Golden Gate Bridge. We weren't going to maneuver to avoid them even if the bow lookout warned that one of them was about to be pulped.
None of them ever was pulped, at least when I was driving, but that used to be an interesting time. Most interesting was observing how slow the pleasure boats were actually going when they were torqued up to the max trying to keep up with us as we accelerated after going under the bridge. Twenty knots, and almost all of them were falling behind. Twenty five knots, and they were planing, the ones that could. Thirty knots, and all but the slim racing boats were lagging.
Most times we continued at thirty knots until we were a hundred miles or so off shore, all the racing boats having long since dropped away from lack of fuel. Then we would come around to whatever course and make whatever speed we needed to to maintain thirty knots of wind down the angle deck while we recovered our eighty or so aircraft, which would fly out from the shore base they went to before the ship pulled into port.
If the recovery operation went smoothly, within eighty minutes or so, all would be sweetness and light. If it went not so smooth the Captain's face would get redder and redder as the minutes passed and we would know that the next day would see a lot of drills for the flight deck crew and a round of visits to the bridge for quiet little chewing outs of the commanders of the offending squadrons. If there were too many exciting incidents, incidents like landing signal officers saying one too many times or a little too shrilly, "power, power, power!," or "left rudder, left rudder, left rudder!" or "wave off! wave off!" the Captain's head would look like it was about to explode with a bang louder than the bang of each of the aircraft as it hit the deck. The next week or so would be exhausting, drills at all hours of the day and night, practicing, practicing, practicing until he was satisfied - not that he was ever truly satisfied.
Every carrier landing is a potential disaster as a hundred thousand pound aircraft hits the deck at over a hundred miles an hour and is decelerated to a stop in a couple of hundred feet, especially once the bow is filled with parked aircraft. And don't even think about the possibilities when planes are landing one per minute while others are being refueled and armed with bombs and rockets and proceeding to the bow catapults one per minute to be launched.
On the port wing of the bridge we had a red control panel shaped like the flight deck with buttons, each of which could nearly instantly douse the part of the real flight deck near where they were on the toy flight deck with fire fighting foam and salt water. We had had a long lecture about the financial effects of such a dousing on the electronics and such of multi-million dollar aircraft when we were indoctrinated in the use of that system. Following that lecture the Captain had told us that we should not for a moment hesitate to push one, or as many of those buttons as he told us to, if he should ever tell us to. Further he told us that we shouldn't hesitate for a moment to push one or as many of those buttons as we thought necessary in the event we ever saw fire on the flight deck, even if he was occupied with other things and hadn't yet told us to.
Thirty knots was about as fast as we ever went when I was driving, or even when I was on the bridge and just observing before the Captain approved me to drive. I was aboard when we went faster, during the sea trials we went through just after coming out of the shipyard, but I wasn't on the bridge during that day. The bridge was packed with senior officers that day and I was a very raw Ensign then, still sometimes a bit unsure which way lead toward the pointy end of the ship and which way lead toward the blunt end of the ship in the interior passageways. Not that I ever let the sailors in my deck division ever know I wasn't utterly confident.
Admiral Rickover himself was aboard on the day of the sea trials. He was personally on the bridge when they tested the ship's acceleration from dead in the water to it's maximum attainable speed and then tested its maximum ability to decelerate by executing an all back emergency engine order. I was on the fantail during that test. It's probably the only way in life to get an appreciation of just how much force a team of 120,000 horses all pulling as hard as they can in one direction can exert. The fantail was bouncing, actually bouncing, under the strain - hard to believe thick steel can flex enough to allow that kind of bouncing. The whole of the hundred thousand ton ship was vibrating and shivering so much that you moved around on the deck like one of those little men on the vibrating football game board if you stood flatfooted.
Update - When I qualified as officer of the deck a few months later after a grilling about ship handling and safery procedures and such by the Captain and all the department heads in his sea cabin up behind the bridge the Captain congratulated me with some words he clearly relished. "Congratulations Mr. A. . ., You are now a qualified Officer of the Deck of the largest warship in the history of the world. Report to Mr. B on the bridge and relieve him of the watch." Reflecting on it later I became sure he was appointed to command of that ship with those same words. They were true at the time.
The Reagan class carriers outweigh the Enterprise by a few thousand tons nowadays. But they aren't faster! As the first nuclear powered carrier, built in the 1950's with cost no object, Enterprise was way overbuilt, especially the engineering plant with its eight reactors and four engine rooms.
For you non-Navy types, Officer of the Deck is Mr. Sulu's job in Starship Enterprise. I never fail to get a little thrill when Captain Kirk orders, "Warp Speed, Mr. Sulu." And I'm one of the few Star Trek watchers who always remember that Mr. Sulu is still up there on the bridge of Enterprise keeping a sharp watch in charge of the ship while Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock are back in the engine room or transporter room with Scotty, or playing tourist down on the planet with Bones and whatever crewman is going to be vaporized by the aliens.
What a boat! No, I take that back. What a land ship!
Not wanting to scratch it I parked a reasonable seeming distance from the bollards at the Wawa based on the view over the hood. After I got out I saw that I was almost five feet away from those bollards.
Reminds me of driving the aircraft carrier. We had to remember that, from our position on the bridge, when a sailboat disappeared under the loom of the flight deck dead ahead it was almost 600 feet in front of the bow. Not that it mattered much. Sailboats and cabin cruisers and suchlike only disappeared dead ahead under the loom of the flight deck when we were going out of San Francisco in the deep channel just to the right of the center of the Golden Gate Bridge. We weren't going to maneuver to avoid them even if the bow lookout warned that one of them was about to be pulped.
None of them ever was pulped, at least when I was driving, but that used to be an interesting time. Most interesting was observing how slow the pleasure boats were actually going when they were torqued up to the max trying to keep up with us as we accelerated after going under the bridge. Twenty knots, and almost all of them were falling behind. Twenty five knots, and they were planing, the ones that could. Thirty knots, and all but the slim racing boats were lagging.
Most times we continued at thirty knots until we were a hundred miles or so off shore, all the racing boats having long since dropped away from lack of fuel. Then we would come around to whatever course and make whatever speed we needed to to maintain thirty knots of wind down the angle deck while we recovered our eighty or so aircraft, which would fly out from the shore base they went to before the ship pulled into port.
If the recovery operation went smoothly, within eighty minutes or so, all would be sweetness and light. If it went not so smooth the Captain's face would get redder and redder as the minutes passed and we would know that the next day would see a lot of drills for the flight deck crew and a round of visits to the bridge for quiet little chewing outs of the commanders of the offending squadrons. If there were too many exciting incidents, incidents like landing signal officers saying one too many times or a little too shrilly, "power, power, power!," or "left rudder, left rudder, left rudder!" or "wave off! wave off!" the Captain's head would look like it was about to explode with a bang louder than the bang of each of the aircraft as it hit the deck. The next week or so would be exhausting, drills at all hours of the day and night, practicing, practicing, practicing until he was satisfied - not that he was ever truly satisfied.
Every carrier landing is a potential disaster as a hundred thousand pound aircraft hits the deck at over a hundred miles an hour and is decelerated to a stop in a couple of hundred feet, especially once the bow is filled with parked aircraft. And don't even think about the possibilities when planes are landing one per minute while others are being refueled and armed with bombs and rockets and proceeding to the bow catapults one per minute to be launched.
On the port wing of the bridge we had a red control panel shaped like the flight deck with buttons, each of which could nearly instantly douse the part of the real flight deck near where they were on the toy flight deck with fire fighting foam and salt water. We had had a long lecture about the financial effects of such a dousing on the electronics and such of multi-million dollar aircraft when we were indoctrinated in the use of that system. Following that lecture the Captain had told us that we should not for a moment hesitate to push one, or as many of those buttons as he told us to, if he should ever tell us to. Further he told us that we shouldn't hesitate for a moment to push one or as many of those buttons as we thought necessary in the event we ever saw fire on the flight deck, even if he was occupied with other things and hadn't yet told us to.
Thirty knots was about as fast as we ever went when I was driving, or even when I was on the bridge and just observing before the Captain approved me to drive. I was aboard when we went faster, during the sea trials we went through just after coming out of the shipyard, but I wasn't on the bridge during that day. The bridge was packed with senior officers that day and I was a very raw Ensign then, still sometimes a bit unsure which way lead toward the pointy end of the ship and which way lead toward the blunt end of the ship in the interior passageways. Not that I ever let the sailors in my deck division ever know I wasn't utterly confident.
Admiral Rickover himself was aboard on the day of the sea trials. He was personally on the bridge when they tested the ship's acceleration from dead in the water to it's maximum attainable speed and then tested its maximum ability to decelerate by executing an all back emergency engine order. I was on the fantail during that test. It's probably the only way in life to get an appreciation of just how much force a team of 120,000 horses all pulling as hard as they can in one direction can exert. The fantail was bouncing, actually bouncing, under the strain - hard to believe thick steel can flex enough to allow that kind of bouncing. The whole of the hundred thousand ton ship was vibrating and shivering so much that you moved around on the deck like one of those little men on the vibrating football game board if you stood flatfooted.
Update - When I qualified as officer of the deck a few months later after a grilling about ship handling and safery procedures and such by the Captain and all the department heads in his sea cabin up behind the bridge the Captain congratulated me with some words he clearly relished. "Congratulations Mr. A. . ., You are now a qualified Officer of the Deck of the largest warship in the history of the world. Report to Mr. B on the bridge and relieve him of the watch." Reflecting on it later I became sure he was appointed to command of that ship with those same words. They were true at the time.
The Reagan class carriers outweigh the Enterprise by a few thousand tons nowadays. But they aren't faster! As the first nuclear powered carrier, built in the 1950's with cost no object, Enterprise was way overbuilt, especially the engineering plant with its eight reactors and four engine rooms.
For you non-Navy types, Officer of the Deck is Mr. Sulu's job in Starship Enterprise. I never fail to get a little thrill when Captain Kirk orders, "Warp Speed, Mr. Sulu." And I'm one of the few Star Trek watchers who always remember that Mr. Sulu is still up there on the bridge of Enterprise keeping a sharp watch in charge of the ship while Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock are back in the engine room or transporter room with Scotty, or playing tourist down on the planet with Bones and whatever crewman is going to be vaporized by the aliens.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
New Darwin Award candidate
One of my cleverest Christmas presents ever was when I gave Alex a Darwin Awards desk calendar when he was about 18 years old. The calendar described one award winner on each of its 365 pages. Here's a potential candidate for a Darwin although I hope he survives and thus doesn't achieve full qualification for the award.
http://www.wjno.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=244038&article=4117332
http://www.wjno.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=244038&article=4117332
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