ad astra!

What with installing the newer versions of Wordpress and K2 as well as some cosmetic changes I decided it was time to move from 14.8.6 to 15.1. These version numbers don’t really mean anything other than to me; this is the fifteenth ‘version’ since 1996. It’s stayed the same mostly since I switched to WordPress in April of 2006 but there’ve been a lot of changes under the hood as well as some aesthetic improvements. Anyhow. WordPress is great. CSS is great. That’s all.

This is it folks. If you ever feel lost or alone or far from home just think about these brave probes, four of which are quite literally astronomically far from home. Not that a probe can be brave, or lonely, or really have a home for that matter (and I really do hate anthropomorphizing) but it is rather fascinating to think that there’s stuff out there that we made that—on a human scale— is very, very, far away from us.

Spacecraft escaping the Solar System

n.b.: 1 astronomical unit (AU) ≈ 93 million miles

I’m posting this here so I can remember it because it’s kind of… bleak but kind of true as well.
(clicky)

“This is everyday music, in the sense that not only could it be listened to every day, but that it encompasses everyday things. The only part that isn’t everyday is the actual music. It’s once in a lifetime, and you’re next in line to hear it.” —onetimesone

Seriously, these guys are great. Just remember you heard it here first.

All Together Now

Barb, Mike and I were sitting around the fire tonight talking about space probes (because Barb and Mike live with a nerd) and how long their journeys out have taken. So here’s a few ditties about a few space probes.

Galileo

Galileo was launched on October 18, 1989 and sent to explore Jupiter. It was the first probe to orbit Jupiter, and witnessed the collisions of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter.

Galileo was launched toward Venus and took four months to get there (over 40,000,000 kilometers) and then swung around back toward Earth (an eight-month journey) and then swing around Earth, making a second flyby 2 years later. Galileo arrived at Jupiter four years later (for a total journey out of six years). On September 21, 2003, Galileo’s mission was ended by sending the orbiter into Jupiter’s atmosphere to avoid any chance of it contaminating local moons with bacteria from Earth.

Cassini-Huygens

Cassini-Huygens was launched on October 15, 1997 and took almost seven years to reach Saturn, entering orbit on July 1, 2004. The name of the probe, which sounds suspiciously like a second marriage, represents the twofold nature of the project: the much larger probe Cassini and its European-made attachment Huygens which was sent to Saturn’s moon Titan. Cassini continues to orbit Saturn and relay information whilst the Huygens probe only had battery life for a few hours.

New Horizons

New Horizons holds the record as the fastest spacecraft ever launched, having achieved the highest Earth-relative velocity and thus leaving Earth faster than any other spacecraft to date. It is also the first spacecraft launched directly into a solar escape trajectory. The probe was launched on January 19, 2006 toward Pluto and the Kuiper belt, a region of the solar system at least 4 billion kilometers (about 2 & 1/2 billion miles). New Horizons took a mere nine hours to reach the moon (the Apollo missions took 3 days) and just over thirteen months to reach Jupiter. The probe will reach Pluto in 2015.

Also of note is Ulysses, launched on October 6, 1990 and swung by Jupiter on February 8, 1992, for a journey out of sixteen months. Additionally, the two Voyager probes took about eighteen months each to get to Jupiter. Voyager 1 reached Saturn in another year and eight months, while Voyager 2 took another 2 years to get to Saturn. Both probes used a gravity assist from Jupiter to increase speed toward Saturn.

For more information on these probes visit these NASA pages:
Galileo project homepage
NASA Cassini-Huygens site
New Horizons Homepage
NASA Ulysses Homepage
The Voyager Interstellar Mission

“…[I]f waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.”

Christopher Hitchens (yes, that Christopher Hitchens) underwent waterboarding for Vanity Fair. His conclusion is, well, conclusive. One really must read the article.

You can watch the video to see how it’s done. It looks rather harmless, really, but as you can see he doesn’t put up with it very long—and he doesn’t have any secrets to give up.

How did we get to the point where this is okay to do? How does this make us safer? How can the United States possibly retain the moral superiority in the arguments for or against the War on Terror?
Whose idea was this?

This much I’m certain of: it doesn’t happen immediately. You’ll finish and that will be that, until a moment will come, maybe in a month, maybe in a year, maybe even several years. You’ll be sick or feeling troubled or deeply in love or quietly uncertain or even content for the first time in your life. It won’t matter. Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you’ll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all. For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You’ll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you’ll realize it’s always been shifting, life a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won’t understand why or how. You’ll have forgotten what granted you this awareness in the first place.”

It’s been six years and two months since I finished House of Leaves, and I haven’t read it since, save for a few times I’d cracked open the book to read a page or two. Tonight, on a whim, I started it and decided that it’s what I’m going to do for the next several days: Just read this book.

It’s interesting that this is still here. Quite nearly everything is vastly different than it was six years ago. It’ll be interesting to read this book where I am now compared to where I was then.

I guess that why I like stories so much—why I have so many of them. I own more movies and books than I own of anything else, and it’s these stories I keep coming back to and they always seem a little bit different after a time. The stories of course, stay the same. They exist to show me how I’ve changed (for better or for worse) and I think I like how they stay constant even though myself and my life changes quite often by comparison.

So I’ll see how House of Leaves reads this time.

A little note on where I was then: In May of 2002 my boyfriend at the time had just completed moving in (he’d been living with me basically since October, but it was the beginning of May by the time we got all of his stuff in Grand Rapids) and I was living in a house in Eastown, Grand Rapids. I think I read most of this book either at Kava House or Morningstar76, depending on the time of day. Brad was still out in Las Vegas, and a lot of the people I know now I hadn’t met yet. I still worked in Jenison, a mile from the house I grew up in and I’d only been living on my own (e.g., out of that house) for 19 months. I was 22 years old and there was so little that I knew about anything, even though I thought I did… and I was certainly unaware of the sweeping changes that were to come in the next six months…

“Unable to do otherwise, I stood and went right up to the window. Matt’s eyes were open, and as though imprinted on them forever were emotions I couldn’t help but recognize: surprise mostly, relief, curiosity. At what? Death, as it arrived?”

I’m not sure what to say, but I think I’m finally getting outta the horrendous funk that I’ve been in for the past seven months. Seven months is a long time to be down in the dumps; nothing I’ve not dealt with before but… it’s a long time to just subsist. I felt absolutely terrible on Wednesday—terrible enough I think to remember feeling that terrible before and that I didn’t ever want to feel that terrible again. Snap out of it!

There’s no real snapping out of it, but I feel as if I’ve been walking around with my eyes half open for too long. So… it’s time to stop. I’ve been getting in the way of my productivity for much too long. It’s really kind of awful, I feel like I’ve been a different person.

Good things have been happening, at least physically. I’ve managed to lose some weight, I’m sure part of it has been from not wanting to eat, and I want to lose more, but I’ve at least fallen out of some really bad habits.

It’s probably hard for some people to understand, but I had to take today off to do some heavy thinking, and I really need to work hard on not being so shitty.

I’ve been so foolish to use up so much time… But I think I know what it’s been about, and now it’s up to me to do the stitching. I have to remember that the answers to my questions aren’t out there somewhere—they’re right here with me, and only I can do the answering.

Dino once said, “you, to me, shine.” Which is one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me, but I realize it’s been several years since I’ve really shined. I’ve been trying to in fits and starts but… I’m tired of the fits and starts. I’ve been really bogged down, I’ve been tarnished by lots of things that have happened… but I think it’s about time to shine again. Brighter than ever.

Rounding the bend, I think. At least I hope so; it’s about time.

After great pain a formal feeling comes—
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions—was it He that bore?
And yesterday—or centuries before?
The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.

This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow—
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.

Sometimes I get classical migraines but it seems I’ve now graduated to cluster headaches as well. I had this probably last year around the same time. There’s nothing like a fifteen minute headache every 1/2 to 2 hours. Seriously, you ought to give it a try. A little agony is good for you.

From Mayoclinic.com:

Symptoms
A cluster headache strikes quickly, usually without warning. Within minutes, excruciating pain develops. The pain typically develops on the same side of your head throughout a cluster period, and often the headaches remain on that side throughout your life. Less frequently, the pain may switch to the opposite side of your head in the next cluster period. Rarely, the pain switches sides from one attack to another.

The pain of a cluster headache is often described as sharp, penetrating or burning. People with this condition say that the pain feels like a hot poker being stuck in the eye or that the eye is being pushed out of its socket.

Restlessness
People with cluster headache appear restless, preferring to pace or sit and rock back and forth to soothe the attack. They may press a hand against the eye or scalp or apply ice or heat over the painful area. In contrast to people with migraine, people with cluster headache usually avoid lying down during an attack because this position seems to only increase the pain.

Most people with a cluster headache prefer to be alone. They may remain outdoors, even in freezing weather, for the duration of an attack. They may scream, bang their heads against a wall or hurt themselves in some way as a distraction from the unbearable pain. Some may find relief by exercising, such as jogging in place or doing sit-ups or push-ups.

If cluster headache attacks regularly occur at night, some people try to remain awake for as long as possible to forestall the onset of a headache they know is coming. Unfortunately, doing so only speeds up the sleep cycle. The headache may occur within minutes of falling asleep in a compressed sleep cycle. In the worst cases, a vicious cycle of head pain and sleep deprivation develops. This can lead to depression and thoughts of suicide.

Teary eye and stuffed nose
Cluster headache always triggers a response from your autonomic nervous system. This system controls many vital activities without your consciously having to think about them. For example, your autonomic nervous system regulates blood pressure, heartbeat, sweating and body temperature. The most common autonomic response to a cluster headache is excessive tearing and redness of the eye on the side of your head affected by the pain.

Other signs and symptoms that may accompany cluster headache include:

1. Stuffy or runny nasal passage in the nostril on the affected side of your face
2. Flushing on the affected side of your face
3. Sweaty, pale skin (pallor)
4. Swelling around the eye on the affected side of your face
5. Reduced pupil size
6. Drooping eyelid

Most of the time, these signs and symptoms last only as long as the headache lasts. In some people, however, a drooping eyelid and reduced pupil size persist after long periods of attacks. Some migraine-like symptoms, including nausea, sensitivity to light and sound, and aura, may occur with a cluster headache.

Cluster period characteristics
A cluster period generally lasts from two to 12 weeks. Chronic cluster periods may continue for more than a year. The starting date and the duration of each cluster period often are amazingly consistent from period to period. For many people, cluster periods occur seasonally, such as every spring or every fall. It’s common for clusters to begin soon after one of the solstices — the longest and shortest days of the year. Over time, cluster periods may become more frequent, less predictable and longer lasting.

During a cluster period, headaches typically occur every day, sometimes several times a day. A single attack may last from 15 minutes to three hours. The attacks happen often at the same time within each 24-hour day. Nighttime attacks are more frequent than daytime attacks, often beginning during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the period of sleep during which most dreaming occurs.

Cluster headache can be frightening to you and to your family and friends. The debilitating attacks may seem unbearable. But the pain usually ends as suddenly as it begins, with rapidly decreasing intensity. After attacks, most people are completely free from pain but exhausted. Temporary relief during a cluster period may be only a matter of hours or may last as long as a day before the next attack.

“If you are a carpenter and you have a table to make, you dont NOT make the table because you are unhappy.” – Salman Rushdie