Post by tjaman on Aug 2, 2007 23:58:02 GMT -5
I wonder if I were a completely different person if I'd be happier.
It feels to me like when these History Channel presentations of "The Universe" come on that they're just really interesting to me. I've watched the one on the Sun and the Moon and the Earth and Mercury and Venus and Saturn and the one on alien galaxies and I just feel like it would be so cool, if I had any engineering skills whatsoever, to explore things we hadn't explored and get all interplanetary with my bad self.
Or more to the point, playing with quantum physics all day trying to reconcile the infinitely small with the infinitely massive and unlock the secrets of the universe and of life itself.
And then I realize that the fundamental problem with Midwesterners and theoretical physics is that we're largely a terribly practical people and if we didn't actually do anything with the knowledge we gained (because really, exploring virtual particles, for example, that show up and are annihilated in the same instant, while intriguing, is a little pointless).
And I do love what I do. This week I let everyone know about an exhibit at the college that is absolutely amazing -- a woman took her great grandparents' love-letters and a lot of other family artifacts and blended them digitally to create these absolutely incredible pieces. And last week I wrote about a trio of area women who came together a couple years ago just to fill in a performance slot in the summer concert series and who have since become one of the major attractions in the series itself -- as evidenced by the 1,000-plus people who came out in iffy weather to take in their show. I took some of the best photos of them that we've run in the arts section all year. I was so pleased with the photo, in fact, that I bought a mug with them on it.
So I'm not peering into telescopes or microscopes or sitting around wondering about subatomic particles and why they spin about the way they do. The stars and the various bits that make them up can take care of themselves, and I can enjoy these mini-excursions into that world via the history channel (I'm sad to say I also caught a very disappointing biographical sketch of Einstein while I was at it -- poor guy's too dead to defend himself). Which reminds me -- I've gotta track down that book one of these days.
For right now, I'm happy to let other people do the math. I've got singers to write about.
It feels to me like when these History Channel presentations of "The Universe" come on that they're just really interesting to me. I've watched the one on the Sun and the Moon and the Earth and Mercury and Venus and Saturn and the one on alien galaxies and I just feel like it would be so cool, if I had any engineering skills whatsoever, to explore things we hadn't explored and get all interplanetary with my bad self.
Or more to the point, playing with quantum physics all day trying to reconcile the infinitely small with the infinitely massive and unlock the secrets of the universe and of life itself.
And then I realize that the fundamental problem with Midwesterners and theoretical physics is that we're largely a terribly practical people and if we didn't actually do anything with the knowledge we gained (because really, exploring virtual particles, for example, that show up and are annihilated in the same instant, while intriguing, is a little pointless).
And I do love what I do. This week I let everyone know about an exhibit at the college that is absolutely amazing -- a woman took her great grandparents' love-letters and a lot of other family artifacts and blended them digitally to create these absolutely incredible pieces. And last week I wrote about a trio of area women who came together a couple years ago just to fill in a performance slot in the summer concert series and who have since become one of the major attractions in the series itself -- as evidenced by the 1,000-plus people who came out in iffy weather to take in their show. I took some of the best photos of them that we've run in the arts section all year. I was so pleased with the photo, in fact, that I bought a mug with them on it.
So I'm not peering into telescopes or microscopes or sitting around wondering about subatomic particles and why they spin about the way they do. The stars and the various bits that make them up can take care of themselves, and I can enjoy these mini-excursions into that world via the history channel (I'm sad to say I also caught a very disappointing biographical sketch of Einstein while I was at it -- poor guy's too dead to defend himself). Which reminds me -- I've gotta track down that book one of these days.
For right now, I'm happy to let other people do the math. I've got singers to write about.