A new telescope?

I currently own a Meade 2045 telescope but am looking for a bigger model. Somoene from my astronomical society wanted to hold a telescope party in which we showed our scopes to the rest of us. I figured this would be a good place to find out what scopes are available. It was not the best day to do it, as it was pouring rain much of the time. Some of us showed the hand-made scopes we made, including one called the StarStalker, named that as no commercial ad-generating enterprise will want a name like that for their scope. I got interested in the Meade LX-200, a solidly built telescope that takes 15 minutes to set up. It is a go-to scope, meaning that if you want to see the Ring Nebula, you bring up Ring Nebula in the little remote-like device that comes with it, press Go, and it slews the scope to it and hopefully you will see it. But it weighs a lot! Further, there is so much gadgetry and details involved. At $1,500-$2,500, it is a rather expensive gizmo. Still, it may be ideal to show to the public at skywatches because of the "go to" features. But if I think it is too symbolic of the conspicuous consumption in this country, I may settle for a ten-inch Dobsonian telescope: you plunk it on a lawn, use the guide scope to move the dob to your object, using old-fashioned star-hopping, and look. I still have not decided what to do.

Autumn Maple

In 1992 August we purchased a Norway red maple for our yard. It was a little taller than us, with only a thin (maybe an inch) trunk. Since then it has grown into a nice pear shape and as tall as our two-story house. It is a beautiful tree. This year the leaves stayed green all October, the first time I have seen that happen here. After the first week of November, the leaves turned into a brilliant shade of red. I took a few pictures of it admired its beauty. In just ten short years, we now have the prettiest tree on the street. Sad to say, its autumn glow did not last long. This week, some windy storms came, and all of the leaves dropped off to the ground, leaving me with a leaf raking chore this weekend. But it was something to see while it lasted.

Like Iraq!?

I would think that GM would stop these commercials hawking its SUVs, trucks and vans. I keep hearing about the Chevy Tahoe, how it is "like a rock". But that sounds a lot like "like Iraq", and while Saddam runs that country, I don't think anyone, no matter what their stand on war in Iraq is, would want themselves or items associated with them to be anything like Iraq. But if GM wants to be known in the future as having these SUVs that are like Iraq, that's their call.

Not a War

This is an interesting web site: http://irregulartimes.com. It has articles from an independent minded Republican; certainly not your run of the mill Republican. He's an "irregular Republican". Especially interesting is the article Not a War. In the article, entitled "When is a war not a war? When it's a crime", he maintains that the campaign against terror is not a war, because it is not against a nation; otherwise, anyone can attack our soldiers or our installations and claim that they are fighting a war against our country. Terror, such as what happened on 2001 September 11, does not come from a nation and so therefore it is not a war. It is an interesting article although somewhat overdrawn. His main point I feel is valid: our effort to combat terrorism is not a war.

Negative blogs

I note that I have been posting a lot of negative blogs as of late. Perhaps that is because times are negative: war with Iraq, stock market dropping, the sniper. I think we should all try to find good and happy things in life, and I shall try to find some myself.

Theft of time?

I found an editorial in the local newspaper that takes a stand that I question. The editorialist condemned the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) for its "terrorist" actions. I for one believe that the actions of the ELF do damage to the cause of environmentalism and preserving this planet as a place of beauty to live. They cause people to oppose ELF, and hence by association, environmentalism.

However, I take exception to one comment that the author makes. He quotes from the science fiction novel Dune in which he says that depriving a man of an hour and depriving him of his life is merely a difference of degree. He cites the case of a person who has to replace the tires of an SUV after they get slashed. If that's the case, then I can name quite a few mass murderers. Take the computer companies, for instance, especially Microsoft. Think of how much time has been wasted, probably billions of person-hours, because computers crash. How about the time wasted waiting for service at some of these computer and cellular phone places? I did not have cable modem service for four days, when it was the modem that was bad instead of all the other things they had me do and had me waste 10 hours or so on. Today I was forced to wait two hours for a service only to be told that I had to make an appointment another day. How about all the times that car repair places misrepaired my car or made me wait a long time for it? If this editorialist is correct, this constitutes many killings worth of time many thousands of time over.

I have never thought of things this way. To me there is a difference of level as well as one of degree between a vandalism and a murder.

Pure Theater

President Bush called the action of the Iraqi parliament in unanimously rejecting U.N. Resolution 1441 "pure theater". Interesting way of putting it. At least I'd rather have pure theater than polluted theater or dirty theater. Maybe he means a theater that has been scrubbed of germs so that you won't catch a cold there, or maybe he means one in which all of the things that are done and all that the actors ever do is devoted to producing plays in a theater. It is pure theater, and nothing else but theater. In any case, Bush still says that Iraq must comply else there will be another kind of theater - a military one.

Looms

I have noticed recently that the media likes to use the verb to loom a lot. The war on Iraq looms, unemployment looms, the top-rated Florida State Seminoles loom, new restrictions on tax shelters loom. Everything seems to loom. Here a loom, there a loom, everywhere a loom loom. Don't they get tired of using that word?

How about "approach ominously", or "is coming" or even my nonword ominate? The impending war with Iraq ominates while Iraq mulls U.N. Resolution 1441. Budget cuts ominate. At least it is new and different. But don't use it too often. Else the day when everything ominates in the media will loom.

Bubble Bees Revisited

Bubble Bees has become my favorite game on the Internet. It is relatively easy to play, has a few mysteries to pique you, and, most importantly, is non-violent. I have played many games and have deduced a few rules which I feel should have been stated up front;

1. Fast red bees are 50 points.
2. Catching two objects (clocks, ordinary bees, or red bees) gets you 100 points.
3. Catching an ordinary bee by itself counts 10 points, but does not count anything if caught with other objects; then you get the bonus instead.
4. Catching a clock gives you 5 more seconds.
5. You have 60 seconds to start with
6. Going past a multiple of 500 gets you 10 extra seconds.
7. Catching three objects at once gets you 500 points.
8. Catching four objects at once gets you 1000 points (not 2500 points).
9. Bubbles vary in size.

My strategy has improved over time and my high game is now 6,230 points. Here are some of my strategies:

1. Balance between snatching bees before time passes and waiting to get more than one at a time.
2. Catch single bees while you can while you wait for two bees to get close enough to get the 100-point bonus.
3. In catching the clock, you need to put the bubbler lower than usual, especially near the bottom of the screen.
4. Wait, if possible, to catch the clock until it is near some bees, so that catching it will get a bonus.
5. Wait, if possible, to catch the fast red bee until it is near some other bees, so that catching will get the 100-point bonus.
6. Bees porpoise up and down and go at different speeds. If you watch their flying pattern, you can anticipate groupings.
7. When your score has a 4 or 9 as the hundreds digit, catch whatever you can, even if it be ordinary bees, to get you over the next multiple of 500.
8. It is better, when going after two bees, to miss them both than to catch just one of them. If the latter happens, your chance of getting the 100-point bonus with them is forever gone. I call this a "chop", borrowing the term from bowling.
9. Don't snare bees immediately upon going on the screen. You miss groupings by doing that.

My high score is 6,230, which is a far cry from the six-digit amounts that are on the top 10 list. How does one get those? I counted the bees once and determined that in 10 seconds, 8 bees appear on the average. To stay in the game indefinitely, you need to get 500 points every 10 minutes, with a little help from the clocks. To get 500 points out of 8 bees, you need to snare three of them together or catch them with the clock and the fast red bee. Usually they are too far apart to catch in pairs, so I don't see how one can last a long time in the game to get those six-digit scores. I tried stretching the bubbles, but there is only so far that they will stretch. Another way in which you can get high scores is if catching huge bunches of bees gets you tremendous scores. That is whay I thought that 4 bees would get you 2,500 points, 5 gets you 12,500 points, and 6 gets you 62,500 points, each one being 5 times the previous. But when I caught 4 bees once, it yielded not 2,500 but 1,000 points. Apparently it goes up only arithmetically. So that rules that out.

So how then does one get those six-digit scores? There must be an Easter egg in the game.