Stargazing

I opened my bank account when I was 9 in hopes of saving up enough money to buy myself a telescope. After a year or so, the goal was too far away for it to matter anymore, and I spent what money I'd earned on whatever it is that little girls with money decide to buy. My Scene dolls were big then, before they were sued by Barbie. I think I may have bought one of them. I still kept reading up on astronomy wherever I could, but there was always a disconnect between what I read in the books and what I could see or experience, as is to be expected when you're studying the reasonably large part of the universe that isn't you. As the years passed and my pursuit of astronomy led me down more and more theoretical path, the cosmos became a nice escape. My textbooks were like the ultimate fantasy books: all the excitement and drama with all the safety of knowing that it could never effect you in your day to day life.

A few months ago, I had gotten back from a late night run and my dad was sitting on the front porch enjoying what was left of summer. When I first got seriously interested in astronomy, he was always my go-to guy. It's one thing to be scientifically literate, but it's another to be able to communicate somewhat complicated concepts to a twelve year old. It was sort of a shock to me when I came home with a new piece of physics he was unfamiliar with. Of course, the disconnect probably owed itself to the fact that I lean towards theoretical science while he himself is a decidedly experimental scientist. As we were sitting on the porch talking, it was hard not to notice a particularly bright star blinking red. It turned out to be Antares, as we discovered on the starwalk app. There was a little blurb describing Antares as the 16th brightest star in the night sky, which is pretty surprising if you've seen how bright Antares is.

I found Capella on the app before I found it in the sky and spent the night looking forward to seeing the 4-star system. I'm sure I'd seen it a hundred times before, but seeing it rise and knowing what I was looking at was was a completely different experience. It helped reconnect me with everything I had been reading about and reminded me what was so appealing about the Cosmos in the first place- that there are very few true dividers in the universe. There's not a universal classification system that doles out levels. There's just existence, whatever that means for me in the universe. I believe I've written about perspective before, but seeing the Andromeda galaxy was simply incredible.

So, I'm once again in the market for a telescope- this time a family one, as the kids have really enjoyed their stargazing sessions. My child self is uncontrollably giddy.

Shocking News: Women are Not Cupcakes and People Will Have Sex

There’s an analogy I’ve heard many times regarding sex that seems to be pretty popular amongst Youth Leaders and parents alike. Some form of “nobody wants a cupcake that somebody else has already taken a bite out of.” Regardless of your own personal opinions on premarital sex, let me try to explain to you what a terrible, stupid thing this is to say to a young woman. Let me start out by saying that people want to have sex. And young people really want to have sex. If you are not aware of this fact, you have probably not hit puberty yet. Give it a few more years. At any rate, regardless of what you believe, or where you live, the psychological and physical desire to get busy is as persistent as the desire to eat. If that weren’t true, the species would have died out long before such conservative views of sex took hold of us.

I would now like to assert something a little more controversial. Some people will, at some point, have sex outside of marriage. Have I lost some of you? I hope not. This seems like a perfectly reasonably statement. Still, far too many people are shocked to find out that many of the girls from “good families” are having sex before they’re married (scandal!). Then all sort of explanations fly around about how dad must have been too busy at work to pay attention, or how her parents weren’t approachable enough, or how they were too strict and pushed her over the edge. Sometimes these factors might way in to her decision to have sex, but ultimately, it was her decision. There are elements in everybody’s mind that can’t be engineered to read, “Don’t have sex.” I don’t care how hard you try to teach somebody that sex is immoral, dirty, unacceptable, obligatory, or the only good thing in life, what they choose to do about it is all on them.

Now that we’ve established that people will have sex (that was a lot lengthier than expected), let me tell you what is so horribly wrong with the analogy. Women are not cupcakes. Comparing a woman to an already tasted sweet is the ultimate in objectification. Really? I couldn’t have come up with a more offensive analogy if I tried. It’s a transparent, overly fluffy way of phrasing “your vagina is the only thing I like about you, but only under certain circumstances. Having expressed how no one could ever love you without a hymen, you must marry first so you can lose your only redeeming feature in a 30 second, unsatisfying and awkward session.” Can anybody see how that’s a psychologically damaging thing to tell a vulnerable and insecure young woman? I certainly hope so.

So suppose a girl believes the whole cupcake thing, but being a human, she has sex anyway. In her mind, there’s no point in trying to find a good relationship anymore. She’s been taught that she is undeserving of a caring partner and that her worth is completely dried up. So, in a nasty little bit of irony, she seeks external validation that she still has worth. Keep in mind that she believes her worth to be entirely tied up in her sexual status. So guess how she seeks validation? Lots and lots of sex, usually with anyone who asks for it since she assumes that no one wants her anymore. It’s the result of a false dichotomy perpetrated by this analogy and conservative conceptions of sex in general: an unmarried woman is either a virgin, or a slut.

(As a side note, women are supposed to be an active part of a sexual partnership. Cupcakes are non-sentient, for the record. If you’d rather make love to a cupcake, have at it. Sweaty, messy, delicious cupcake sex. Just beware of sprinkles- those will get lodged in unspeakable places.)

So can we put an end to this, please? Who's it for, anyhow?

Some of my Favorite (Pointless) Facts

I love the random article feature on Wiki. Here are some of my favorite pieces of trivia:

• Almonds are in the same family as the peach (in the same subgenus, actually)
• The word "candidate" comes from the Latin "candida", meaning "white." This is because men running for office in ancient Rome would bleach and chalk their togas to make them whiter.
• Some planets are tidally locked, meaning that one side of the planet always faces the sun, and one side always faces away.
• The flavor of tea can be changed by pouring it from different heights. This technique is typically used in Northern Africa.
• Cockney Rhyming Slang produces slang using a process called hemiteleia. It takes the original word, finds a phrase of 2 or 3 words that rhymes with it that word, eliminates the part of the phrase that rhymes with the original word, and the remaining word(s) are the new slang. For example, "bread" means money in Cockney Rhyming Slang. It was arrived at by taking the word "money", rhyming it with "bread and honey", dropping the "honey", and leaving us with "bread."
• The human eye responds with maximum sensitivity to the color green
• In the wild, the Axolotl is only found in Lake Texcoco, Mexico. It is technically an amphibian, but because it does not naturally undergo metamorphosis, it remains in an aquatic state.
• Speaking of trivia, trivia is the name of a genus of tiny sea shells, known in Britain as cowries, although they are not closely related to them at all.

Color by Number

For as long as I can remember, numbers have been tied to adjectives like pretty, dull, vibrant, bold, harsh, quiet, the list goes on. It wasn't until a couple years ago that I realized these were not adjectives usually attributed to numbers. I was watching a science channel special on neuroscience and the subject of synesthesia came up. For those who don't know, synesthesia is when stimulation of one sense leads to an involuntary stimulation of another sense. For example, people might taste sounds or associate months of the year with positions in space. I see numbers in colors and textures. I was surprised to find out that this isn't something most people experience. You know the stoner's favorite question about whether "your red is the same as my red?" Yeah, that's what it was like. I had assumed for my whole life that numbers had a visual, almost physical and definitely emotional manifestation in the human brain. That, supposedly, was just how it worked. But apparently, it wasn't a very common phenomenon.

I remember talking to Jack one day, and for no particular reason, felt compelled to ask him what color the number one was. He didn't hesitate at all to tell me that one was black, zero was white and 9397 was a crushed-velvet type of red. It was great to tell someone that the number 5 made me angry and 1038 calmed me down and have them just nod or say, " I actually find 5 to be a very confident number."

There is a notable difference between my number-color synesthesia and how most people with the same kind of synesthesia experience it. Generally, people with grapheme-color synesthesia will see a single digit as a solid color. If 2 is red and 3 is purple, then 23 will look like this: 23. For me, the numbers 1-9 have their own color, but when I stick them together, that number takes on a new color and form of its own. For example, 1 is black and 7 is purple-pink, but 17 is blood red. The numbers also have textures. Dull, shiny, translucent, velvety, metallic. And often, the numbers are a gradient, gradually shifting between colors.

One thing that a lot of people ask is how this manifests itself. For example, if I'm reading a textbook with the number 4049 printed in it in black, do I know that it's printed in black? Does this happen all in my mind? It's a difficult thing to explain to someone who hasn't experienced, so I'm going to try to explain what generally happens when I see a printed number. For just an instant, between when I see the number printed and when I recognize the number, I know that it's printed in black. But the second I see the shape of the number and recognize it, it jumps off the page in color, in this case, a moving, sparkling, ice-blue. When the image enters my eyes, it's printed in black. And I know that it's printed in black. But the second I see that number, I know that it can't be anything but a light, vibrant, blue in motion. I don't know how else to explain it. I might be better off trying to explain how salt tastes.

For those who are curious, I'll try to match certain numbers to colors and describe their texture as I see them.

0

1

2
3
4/4 This one is sort of a gradient. Changing between yellow and blue depending on how the "light" hits it, but it's generally more yellow-orange
5 Dull, gray. I'm not a big fan of this number
6 six is a product of 2 and 3, which explains the teal color
7 This is a sheer, purple-pink. More like colored smoke than anything
8/8 Like four, this shifts between yellow and blue, but it's much more blue than four
9  I always expect this one to be green like 3, but it's not. Hmm.
19 This yellow doesn't do it justice. This is by far, the most vibrant color I've found so far
1038 I love this number. It's sheer, reflective and ribbon-like
9397 I mentioned this number earlier. It's like crushed velvet. Very deep and almost sensual- weird word to describe a number, I know
259003 I just hit the keyboard to see what number I would get. This one is really bold, with harsh lines. Definitely not a gradient. It's a number with a lot of energy

Wanderlust

The need to get out of your bubble and travel the world is a pretty common one. If you get the opportunity, I've heard it's a very liberating experience. If you don't get the opportunity, it's easy to feel trapped. For years, I've felt like I was stagnating in this town, so I looked forward to every road trip as a cleansing experience. But now, the prospect of going far away from this country isn't such an attractive one anymore. Not that I wouldn't like to see the rest of the world, but I know that it would still leave me feeling unfulfilled. See, there's only a very small range of experiences we can have on this planet. Even, maybe especially, with the physical things that's true. Acceleration, temperature, light, gravity. They're all very small slices of a huge spectrum here on this planet. Knowing that I can't leave this planet, this small collection of set variables, leaves me with an enormous feeling of dissatisfaction.

Sometimes, I lie on the driveway at night, looking up at the stars, and I get a feeling remarkably similar to homesickness. The atoms in my body and those in a distant star could have been synthesized in the same, long gone red giant. There's a connection to the rest of the universe that is obvious, persistent and full of disappointment and unfulfilled desires. This planet is good. I was made for it. This is, undoubtedly, where I belong. But I'm not sure I want to be here. Maybe one day, when the sun finally engulfs the earth and explodes, scattering little bits of what was once my body through the galaxy, a little bit of me will find its way to a brand new system to build a star.

Perception

I've often wondered how people can be conscious and still be disenchanted or bored with the world. Sometimes, I'll see someone crush a beetle scuttling around their feet and it ties my stomach in knots. They didn't hate it. They had no anti-beetle agenda. The bug was just annoying to them. Pointless, maybe. I'd bet that most of these people have never thought about how that beetle breathes in the same oxygen as them, moves it through a maze of tubes and into increasingly fine fibers, replacing the nitrogen in that air with oxygen through diffusion, allowing the creature to last on a single bubble for longer than we could last on several chest fulls. How they use an intricate system of chemical signaling to avoid conflict between each other. Hell, some species even care for their young. As a species, they have spent 299 million years producing the most fit specimens and the only thing that bothers this guy is that he has to scrape the rest of this fantastic bit of life off the bottom of his new kicks.

About a month ago, I had an experience that helped me understand why we can't always be aware of how fantastic the existence of this universe really is. It wasn't brought on by any life-changing event. It wasn't even arrived at by a particular thought process. It was pure realization, the kind that Zen Buddhism gets so uppity about. Now here's where the writing of this entry gets difficult. The realization was more of a feeling than a thought. Perhaps I can compare it to a more common feeling. You know that feeling you get when you wake up in a strange place? You expect to open your eyes to your bedroom, but instead, you're assaulted with the vision of a hotel room or the living room of a friends house. Think about the feeling between when you realize you're not at home and when you come to terms with where you actually are. There's surprise. Anxiety, certainly. Excitement. That's what it feels like to see your existence from the outside. It's a paradigm shift, and an especially surprising one.

The human brain has evolved to deal with a very limited range of numbers. 25,000 miles around the earth. 70 years from birth to death. Think of a dozen pizzas. Now think of 14 billion pizzas. You can't visualize that. Our brains have simply never needed to know how long 14 billion years is in order to survive (it's as long as the universe has existed, by the way.) That night last month, I began to comprehend just how long that is. It was a beautiful moment, but it was frightening and disorientating. Coupled with a brief realization of just how far it is from me to the Alpha Centauri, it left me reeling. I was shaking, I was crying, I was physically ill. This lasted for about twenty minutes and by the end of it, I was exhausted. I was also enlightened.

I can't expect anybody to live a normal life with this sort of perception. Not if that's how you always see the universe, at least. It would be too easy to see human existence as pointless. And maybe it is. Maybe there is no resolution between our existence and the enormity of the universe. Maybe that's the cost of a paradigm shift. But maybe it's worth it. The way I see it, the universe is a beautiful thing as are we, as a part of it.  There's no reason we have to compare ourselves to the rest of the universe. We are not separate from it. Once you understand that, the rest should follow.