Planet List

I just had a revelatory experience.  

while surfing for “extrasolar planets” 

Feeling sad for Pluto 

Demoted to a dwarf planet.

I happened to click here, 

then scrolled down.  

Try it; I’ll wait here. . . 

You feel it?  

I knew we had discovered quite a few, 

but scrolling through them 

makes the number visceral. 

And these just in our backyard

out here in the suburbs 

of the Milky Way.  

Once TESS deploys, 

and then the Webb, 

the list is going to explode!  

Our galaxy alone 

Is estimated to have 

at least 160 billion planets.  

Forget Pluto!  

I just want to see the list 

of the first million planets found 

The first 0.00000625%.  

We’d need 160,000 such lists 

to cover them all.  

So you tell me:  

Are we alone?

I Put a Toaster in the Dishwasher

I put a toaster in the dishwasher.  I know; some of you have just decided that I am a total moron, and won’t read further.  That’s OK.  I learned two very important lessons from this little experiment:  (1) It is very difficult to discern the difference between Conventional Wisdom and Conventional Ignorance;  (2) When Conventional Ignorance is challenged, things can get nasty. 

So, I had this toaster that had several years of dust, grease splatter, and burned greasy crumbs stuck way down inside.  I had heard that people sometimes put computer keyboards in the dishwasher, and that this is OK as long as you let them dry thoroughly before connecting them again.  So I looked online about cleaning toasters in the dishwasher.  A few places, a few people have tentatively asked “Can I put a toaster in a dishwasher?”  The conventional wisdom was nearly unanimous: “What kind of F--ing idiot would put a toaster in a dishwasher?” 

The tone alone made me want to find out more, because I thought those creative questioners at least deserved a real answer to a fair question.

Dear Reader, before continuing I must tell you that I am a Physics teacher.  I know a few things about electricity. Some of what I know was hard-earned. For example, in my first year of teaching, during my first period Physics class, on the first day of Electricity, I plunged a hair dryer running on “High” into an aquarium full of tap water to demonstrate how Ground-Fault Circuit Interrupters work.  It kept running.  All day.  We could see the water going through the hair dryer, getting sucked in the back, passing through the heating coils and getting blown out the front, round and round, slightly warmer with each pass.  All that day, kids got to see Mr. Stillwater’s hair dryer running under water in a fish tank.  I thought I knew about electricity and water, but what I possessed was Conventional Ignorance posing as Conventional Wisdom.  Humbling. 

Skip ahead fourteen years and I know a whole lot more about water and electricity.  What I don’t know is whether there are parts in a toaster that might be destroyed by water, destroyed in such a manner that a good drying out won’t cure.  But I persisted, and here are some more samples of Conventional Wisdom, from YahooAnswers, with literacy-level intact.  The question was “Can I put my toaster in the dishwasher?”

you mean , mommy's toaster...theres no way you could have made it to adulthood...

Sure you can, you can also do the same for your cordless phone, small TV, laptop computer, just anything that will fit into the dishwasher. Really now, Use your head for something other than a hat rack.

As previous answers have stated, NO, IT WILL RUIN THE TOASTER!!!!!

Only do it if you want to buy a new toaster. The water and harsh chemicals of the dishwasher will cause the electrical element to corrode.

NO! A toaster is an electronic device. The dishwasher will soak it and ruin it.

You can put your toaster in a dishwasher you can also put your hairdryer and CD player in a dishwasher BUT from a safety perspective it's very dangerous.

Water will seep into the heating elements of the toaster and may not dry off.  Plug in the toaster and you'll short circuit the toaster and probably start a fire.

I chose these seven examples because each writer is either clearly wrong on their main point based on my own first-hand knowledge, or is strident without evidence.  For example, I might respond: “Sorry #5, but a toaster is an electrical device, not an electronic one, and I’ve already soaked an electrical device in a fish tank for several hours, while it was running.” 

These commenters are speaking authoritatively on subjects about which they are completely ignorant, but they are strident in doing so because they are repeating what everybody knows.  They are intellectually secure in the center of a vast mob; their wisdom was received, not crafted.  It doesn’t need to be crafted, because it is already known, established, beyond question (but demonstrably wrong).

This is Faith, presenting itself as Reason, with sarcasm. 

For my part, I ‘kept the faith,’ and continued searching for Reason.  I found two blogs (and one comment) on which people admitted putting a toaster through a dishwasher.  In every case they let it dry for several days, then plugged in and used their fully-functional, beautifully clean toaster.   They were a bit sheepish in reporting it though, as if maybe they just got lucky.  I vacillated.  A colleague pointed out that toasters are cheap.  So I tried it.

Mine works, too.

JD

Ps: Yeah, I know.  I have to say more about the fish tank thing before your head explodes.  I learned two things that day long ago:  (1) Tap water is a poor conductor at 120 volts.  I already knew from chemistry that distilled (pure) water is not conductive at all, but tap water is pretty far from pure.  As it turned out, I had to stir an entire cylinder of table salt into the aquarium before it shorted inside the hair dryer and tripped a breaker.  Even then, when I rinsed the hair dryer and let it dry itself out for a while, it worked fine.  I still have it, and it still works. 

A year later the school’s band-room got flooded by a burst pipe.  I helped rescue the digital pianos, which were all plugged into a power strip under four inches of water.  We could see it from the steps, but no one wanted to go into that water!  With the fish tank/hair dryer episode in mind, I took off my shoes and waded in.  No problem, until I planted my bare foot on that bare concrete floor a few inches from the submerged power strip, at which point I felt a mild but discernable tingle in that one foot.  I unplugged the power strip from the wall above the water line, and the tingling stopped.  Onlookers cheered. 

(2) GFIs only trip off when in bodies of water that are grounded.  They won’t work in an aquarium sitting on a lab table, or in a plastic laundry sink with plastic drainpipes, or in a plastic shower with plastic drainpipes.  That doesn’t mean you’re not protected in those situations; the GFI will trip when it detects that current is leaking out some other route than expected.  That is the condition for you to get fried – electricity has to go through you (or the water) to the ground.  The GFI prevents that.  If there’s no way for electricity to get to ground, it won’t go through you, and it won’t trip the GFI.

Measure Me

Measure me, oh Maker.

Measure me at three AM,

in the shower,

on the road,

during breakfast,

making love.

Stand me barefoot at the wall;

lower the boom to kiss my crown,

while I stretch my spine upwards,

heels pressed down tight.

Set me laid bare on the balance

while you heap diamonds

on the pan until even,

and the glittering carbon glares enviously across.

Submerge me in Archimedes’ tub

where sparkling warmth

caresses my skin and runneth over

splashing “Eureka!” on the tile.

Press gently the pulse at my wrist

counting silently the deep-time seconds

lips absently forming the numbers

of the ancient flow inside.

Let me feel the cool tailor’s tape

and the backs of your practiced fingers

on my ribs, my waist, my hips, my

whole being tingling, blushing.

Calibrate my calcium core

against the limestone bedrock

articulate the tendons from depths to peaks

and back to an ocean of stars.

Pour me steaming into pyrex,

discount my meniscus,

jot me in your margins,

plot me on logarithmic axes.

Determine with vernier sextant

my molecules’ angular alignment

with the infinite soul’s arrow

from Then through Now to Then.

Take my measure, Creator.

Show me again and again

I am both ocean and rain

smaller and vaster, stiller and faster,

fleeting photon and untracked cosmos.

Take my measure, dear One, and

Deliver me beyond measure.

Conservative

Since when does “conservative” mean squandering the family fortune on frivolous purchases, wasteful, whimsical impulse buying, and obsessively avoiding minor discomforts?

A great conservative value I inherited from my grandparents on both sides goes something like this: The modest inheritance we are passing to you does not belong to you, but to your children and grandchildren. It is your job to make sure that the family’s nest egg is maintained or increased during your stewardship of it. I am attempting to do that, because I don’t consider the resources to be mine. I want it to be there for my children and grandchildren, because I can’t know what economic storms life might bring them. Being reckless with the money I inherited might literally cost my descendants their lives.

You and I and every other person on the planet have inherited a vast fortune, a fortune that, once spent, cannot be re-established by any known means. It was collected carefully, bit by bit, painstakingly, over eons, by our ancestors and second cousins. It is our collective fortune, worth trillions on trillions of dollars, and we are squandering it in a single generation, and conservatives seem to be the loudest champions of this obscenity.

I’m talking about fossil fuels. They are a great gift, the inheritance of all humanity. Stored solar energy, collected and concentrated over millions of years. I want my grandchildren to have access to this vast fortune. Why are we, especially conservatives, squandering it as fast as possible? Are we so callous about the needs of our children and grandchildren? Or are we addicted, the spoiled generation that wastes the family fortune through wanton substance abuse, letting the money gush through the fire hose of our dysfunctions? Are we even trying to do right by our kids, but are just unable to stay away from the greasy dealer behind the gas station on the corner?

We are squandering humanity’s family fortune, and unless we save some for them, our grandchildren are not likely to see any benefit from it. And that’s just not conservative.

Inescapably

The sermon is titled "Standing on the Side of Love."

I can’t hear it. All I can think is:

Love doesn’t take sides.

Love is the field on which our petty battles rage,

each, on our side, glares across at the Other,

mindless of the supporting ground.

Love is the humble crawlers that clean up our carnage,

unsophisticatedly present, but oh so surely

setting things right once again.

Love is the quiet leafy stuff that empearls our ugly achievements,

growing and dying with infinite grace,

a dignity beyond interests, beyond divisions.

Love is the cool water deep underground,

the dying stars that birthed it,

and the flowing, glowing rock still below.

A dividing line creates two sides.

A square, six.

A box, eight, and so on;

Too many sides; insides, outsides, our sides, theirs.

Love’s infinite sphere has none,

yet encloses all spaces,

Infuses all particles.

You cannot stand outside the universe.

You cannot stand outside yourself.

No, my beloveds, you are not standing on the side of Love.

You are Love, all of you, on every side,

within, without,

inescapably.

The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street Should Be Friends.

I know, I can hear you laughing from here. Or maybe you’re laughing while also trying to sing “the cowboy and the farmer…” Bear with me.

In broad terms, the Tea Party says “Big government is the problem not the solution” and the Occupiers say “Greedy corporations are the problem, not the solution.” Am I the only one who agrees with both of these?

I believe in the creative power of individuals. Many of humanity’s greatest leaps forward have come through outstanding individuals who were willing to take fantastic risks to promote a wacky idea. Some of those people are entrepreneurs and some are activists. Besides a bold and creative spirit, what they have in common is that they make positive change even (especially!) in the absence of personal wealth, government funding, noble birth, or pre-existing celebrity. I’m talking about Thomas Edison, Susan B. Anthony, Steve Jobs, Eli Whitney, Harriet Tubman, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Ford, George W. Carver, Bill Gates, and Martin Luther King Jr., among thousands of others.

I want to live in a society that gives these folks the greatest possible freedom to improve my world.

Among many other things, that means fewer government grants to entrepreneurs and activist community groups, because these folks wouldn’t have received such grants! (Can you imagine the state of Alabama giving a “community improvement grant” to MLK in 1964?!) I could go on and on about silly regulations, complicated tax codes, K Street, incentives for bad behavior, the war on drugs, etcetera etcetera, but you already know all that. The point is, we need some government to write and referee the rules, mediate disputes, and defend the nation, but it is all too easy for government to take on tasks that are far-better handled by activists or entrepreneurs, and when that happens, government becomes the problem, not the solution.

It also means not letting big corporations (or unions, or PACs) rig the system against little ones, or to run amok in every environment (the green one, the litigation one, the legislative one, the financial one). Freedom without responsibility is anarchy. I could go on and on about the financial crisis, Monsanto’s predation on small farmers, mountain-top removal, influence peddling, the military-industrial incest-fest, etcetera etcetera, but you already know all that. The point is that we need capitalist corporations to create wealth, provide meaningful work, and structure economies efficiently, but when they amass too much wealth, with no accountability for impacts beyond profit, it is all too easy for them to become oppressive behemoths that hinder the achievement of those same goals, and when that happens, big corporations are the problem, not the solution.

Here’s the deal: I want a small, flexible government that lets people succeed or fail on their own, and uses a minimum of regulations to maximize responsible freedom. I want a free and responsible marketplace, where I am fully accountable for my behavior, and so is the CEO of Goldman Sachs. I don't want my neighbors to watch me die of starvation, but neither do I want to support someone who is fully capable of supporting herself. I think this is pretty much what most people want, including both the angry conservatives who forged a new political party and the dancing liberals pitching tents in downtown Manhattan.

If Tea Party activists and Occupy activists can pierce the fog of cultural warfare, their unlikely mating might birth something truly amazing. The dancing maid and the bitter lad make hasty love on a battlefield, and conceive… liberty!

Appreciation (for Steve Jobs)

Think Different

Truly madly deeply different

Faster stronger lighter brighter

Cleaner cooler smarter smoother

Tools on my desk, in my hand, warm in pocket

Like the Tardis, vaster inside than out

Reaching entire worlds with my fingers

All the way back to the mouse, fonts, color.

Different you sought, different you were

Be we Mac-soldiers or DOS-geeks

You inspired, forged, created, cajoled

Invited us into this new age of power and beauty.

Thank you, Steve.