About 147 years ago, give or take, I decided to start keeping a journal.
While it wasn’t a New Year’s Day or New Year’s Resolution sort of thing, I did set some ground rules for myself. Number One was that I would NOT waste journal space and writing time just bitching about stuff. The journal was going to be at best positive, at worst, blah, but never negative.
Somehow I managed to keep that journal for several years, before I got tangled up in e-mail (and convinced myself that that was a reasonable substitute) and chat and god knows what else, and somehow, I managed to stay true to the resolution to stay positive.
I wrote about tiny little kindnesses people had shown me, any given day--and there were a LOT of them, like the nurse telling me how proud she was of me for not smoking in my office on the day our hospital went smoke-free, or my doctor-boss walking to the lunchroom with me, just chatting casually about our everyday lives, people saying “thank you” or giving me a smile or just sharing part of themselves with me. There were unimaginable moments like one sparkling January day when the temperature magically climbed to 70 and people were stretched out on park benches just soaking up sun, and one March day when I went for my lunchtime walk and ran into hard-blowing snow and leaned against a tree for just a moment, and just for that moment felt so incredibly ALIVE, and there was the total solar eclipse and people all over “Hospital Hill” coming outside to watch--and the nurse poking a hole in a little piece of cardboard and projecting the eclipse on the floor for some patients who could NOT go outside.
I wrote down conversations that resonate with me even now, mostly little simple things, little simple moments, that somehow made me “connect” with other people in ways I had never imagined possible.
I wrote down LIFE. And it was cool.
Maybe it doesn’t qualify as a “New Year’s Resolution,” given that I started the journal in October. I could lie and tell you that I started it on January 1, but what would be the point of that? Writing the journal started with a resolution; it was my New Year, at that point in my life.
I’ll curse AOL for leading me away from it later. Or not.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Methane, the God particle, and the axis of evil.
Interesting news day . . . .
In one corner of our world, physicists playing with the giant atom smasher in Europe announce that they believe that they are getting tantalizingly close to finding the Higgs boson, aka “The God Particle.” I know nothing of physics, but gather that this subatomic particle would prove the scientific view of the universe and how it was born. Hence, “God” particle.
Meanwhile, a Russian scientific survey team studying methane emissions off the northern (Arctic) coast of Siberia were shocked and astonished, perhaps even awed by the scale, volume and force of methane being released into the atmosphere. Apparently enough ice has been melted and permafrost thawed that thitherto captured methane has begun to escape its earthly bounds much faster than anyone had even feared, with the potential to spur global warming to “runaway” state--with what one headline (couldn’t find the reference in the article) claiming possible “dramatic” climatic change in as little as a year.
Methane release. Basically, the earth farts, and we’re all suddenly history (or rather, pre-history to any civilization that springs up here thousands of years after we fade to dust). That would be an act of flatulence more impressive even than what we have spewing out of Washington, DC in this election cycle.
So on one hand we have scientists on the verge of unmasking God, and on the other, a discovery that could mean the end of life as we know it, much sooner than anyone had dreamed or nightmared.
Now, I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. Still . . . Maybe God would rather not be unmasked.
Fast forward to today (yes, world events move quickly), and an opinion piece over on CNN tells us that the world should prepare for a “near nuclear” Iran. Of course, for those of us who came of age during the Cold War, that conjures up disturbing images of “Nuclear Winter” and all the misery accompanying that.
And suddenly it occurred to me that we do in fact hold the key to stopping global warming in its tracks.
Should Earth’s arctic farting indeed lead to runaway global warming, how about a tactical nuclear strike (or a few) to counter the life-threatening climatic catastrophe with its potential equal? Would nuclear winter trump global warming? Would they battle to a cosmic standoff, allowing at least some of humanity to survive?
Most of the problems of our world, obviously, are born in the northern hemisphere--obviously we would start here.
Smarter people than I, along with computer models and such, would have to plan specific targets, but I humbly suggest that we start with the “axis of evil”--no, not Iraq, Iran and North Korea. That is so Bush! I’m talking about the REAL axis of evil: Washington, Wall Street, and Hollywood. That fits nicely with our cultural preference for “trinities,” as well. Nuke them, plunge the northern hemisphere into nuclear winter, and global warming is solved!
Of course, that will never happen--by human design, anyway. It’s one thing for the U.S. president to sacrifice New York City in exchange for having accidentally destroyed Moscow, a la “Fail Safe,” quite another for heads of state in the top half of the world to agree to sacrifice themselves and their citizenry for the greater good of humanity.
Intriguing thought, though. Maybe I should pitch it to Hollywood as a “reality show.”
In one corner of our world, physicists playing with the giant atom smasher in Europe announce that they believe that they are getting tantalizingly close to finding the Higgs boson, aka “The God Particle.” I know nothing of physics, but gather that this subatomic particle would prove the scientific view of the universe and how it was born. Hence, “God” particle.
Meanwhile, a Russian scientific survey team studying methane emissions off the northern (Arctic) coast of Siberia were shocked and astonished, perhaps even awed by the scale, volume and force of methane being released into the atmosphere. Apparently enough ice has been melted and permafrost thawed that thitherto captured methane has begun to escape its earthly bounds much faster than anyone had even feared, with the potential to spur global warming to “runaway” state--with what one headline (couldn’t find the reference in the article) claiming possible “dramatic” climatic change in as little as a year.
Methane release. Basically, the earth farts, and we’re all suddenly history (or rather, pre-history to any civilization that springs up here thousands of years after we fade to dust). That would be an act of flatulence more impressive even than what we have spewing out of Washington, DC in this election cycle.
So on one hand we have scientists on the verge of unmasking God, and on the other, a discovery that could mean the end of life as we know it, much sooner than anyone had dreamed or nightmared.
Now, I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. Still . . . Maybe God would rather not be unmasked.
Fast forward to today (yes, world events move quickly), and an opinion piece over on CNN tells us that the world should prepare for a “near nuclear” Iran. Of course, for those of us who came of age during the Cold War, that conjures up disturbing images of “Nuclear Winter” and all the misery accompanying that.
And suddenly it occurred to me that we do in fact hold the key to stopping global warming in its tracks.
Should Earth’s arctic farting indeed lead to runaway global warming, how about a tactical nuclear strike (or a few) to counter the life-threatening climatic catastrophe with its potential equal? Would nuclear winter trump global warming? Would they battle to a cosmic standoff, allowing at least some of humanity to survive?
Most of the problems of our world, obviously, are born in the northern hemisphere--obviously we would start here.
Smarter people than I, along with computer models and such, would have to plan specific targets, but I humbly suggest that we start with the “axis of evil”--no, not Iraq, Iran and North Korea. That is so Bush! I’m talking about the REAL axis of evil: Washington, Wall Street, and Hollywood. That fits nicely with our cultural preference for “trinities,” as well. Nuke them, plunge the northern hemisphere into nuclear winter, and global warming is solved!
Of course, that will never happen--by human design, anyway. It’s one thing for the U.S. president to sacrifice New York City in exchange for having accidentally destroyed Moscow, a la “Fail Safe,” quite another for heads of state in the top half of the world to agree to sacrifice themselves and their citizenry for the greater good of humanity.
Intriguing thought, though. Maybe I should pitch it to Hollywood as a “reality show.”
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