Dobson Syndrome

I am seeking a post-retirement job, so I have been finding ways of rating possible job prospects. I came up with several criteria, two of which are desire and skills. The first describes what I want to do; those jobs dealing with things I am most interested in. The second deals with the knowledge and skills I bring to the job. Which jobs can I do the best. I tried to devise an overall index including these two scales and found them to be so correlated that I am reduced to considering them as a single scale. In other words, I am most interested in what I am best at doing, and vice versa. That seemed logical to me, and it is verified by several job-seeking and self help books I have.

Then I got the word. It is not true. There are people and jobs such that what the person is best at doing is not what the person really wants to do. The example I got this morning is an 87-year-old astronomer named John Dobson. Earlier in his life, he invented the Dobsonian telescope to help bring astronomy to everyone with a simple design. As of late, however, he has been more interested in theories of the universe and in the boundary between science and religion. This means when he gives talks to amateur astronomer groups, he wants to talk about these metaphysical theories, but the astronomers want him to talk about telescope, especially his own design. It is not a happy situation.

And it shows that it is not necessarily true that what you want to do is what you are best at doing. Dobson wants to talk about metaphysics, but he is best at making telescopes. I call this Dobson Syndrome and feel it can hinder you in finding what you really want to do for a living. How can it happen? One guess is that a person changes as he gets older, so what interested him in his younger days does not interest him any more, but he remains skilled in the area. Another is that what you really want to do is not desired by others, so you go into something else that you are skilled at and people appreciate but you don't like to do it.

At this moment the only thing I can say for how to deal with Dobson Syndrome is either to get interested in what you do the best, or get others interested in what you really want to do. This could be hard, and it means that my two scales of desire and skills/knowledge need to be considered separately.

A parable

Once upon a time, a woman by the name of Irene Renee Ann Quinton lived miserably with her husband, who was abusive. He would threaten and belittle her and has attacked her on numerous occasions, even in front of her children. But she persisted in living with him despite the abuse. One day, however, a bunch of people, including police, came into the house, arrested her husband and took him away. Then these people proceeded to tell her just how she should live in her house and how she may manage her life. She replied, "I don't need you to tell me how to live my life. Thank you for getting rid of him, but get lost!"

The Plural of Mouse

Here is another Google game. Search for "plural of mouse is *" -mice. If the plural of mouse is not mice, then what is it? The most frequent answer I got from Google's search of Web sites was meeces. A lot of us are still hung up on the old Trixie, Dixie and Jinxie cartoons, as in "I hates those meeces to pieces!". The first answer I got was irregular. Well, yes, mouse does have an irregular plural. I also got mouses. Several sites insist that the plural of a computer mouse is mouses. This is because a computer mouse is not a tiny mammal, the one that cats go for. It may not be, but it certainly got its name from its resemblance to this creature: the eyes on the front, the general shape, and the corded tail. So in my opinion the plural of a computer mouse is mice. Another plural I found was rats. Not one site said that it was meece. A coworker of mine from 15 years ago, who subsequently died in an automobile accident, said in a newsletter that he distributed that the plural of a computer mouse was "mousi". My favorite plural, though, among the plurals that turned up in the search, was mousies. There's a whole bunch of mousies in this housie!

Followup

Some followup on previous blogs. It looks like people are reacting to Madonna's decoy file which snaps "What the f are you doing?" when you click on it to download it. People are hacking her site, among other things. The full story, at least for a while, is on CNN. I don't approve of such actions as hacking her website either. The best way to reply to Madonna's decoys is not to buy her album.

It looks like SARS is being contained. Vietnam, of all countries, has stopped it. Other countries show a decline, and while the number of cases grew 107 per day over the weekend to 5,020, the rate of growth appears to be slowing.

SARS epidemic

Among other things these past few years, we have been confronted with a disease called sudden acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The action that some people have taken in the world reminds me of the Sliders episode in which the slidonauts wind up in a world overtaken by a disease, and everyone on the streets wears face masks and signs in the restaurant guarantee sterileness and cleanliness. This was a forbidding landscape, and it is lucky that the slidonauts got out OK.

Epidemics have occurred before (such as the AIDS epidemic), but people haven't reacted like this. It is as though people are willing to sacrifice their freedom to protect from a disease. Is this warranted? What are the facts?

So far, SARS has 4,836 cases with 293 deaths, so it kills about 4% of the people it strikes. The symptoms resemble influenza, and in many respects this disease is like influenza. The two start out the same: fever, aches in the joints, and so forth. Recovery usually comes with both diseases, but both are contagious. I graphed the number of cases on Excel and fit an exponential curve to it. I found that on 2004 March 15 if the current growth rate of about 1.1% per day continues, there will be 1,200,000,000 cases, or about the same as the population of China and a significant percentage of the world. I think something is going to intervene by then, because of all the measures taken to control it. Even though it is like influenza, it is caused by a coronavirus, just like the common cold is.

So is this overblown? I say yes. AIDS and Ebola are far more serious threats - they kill everybody (almost) that they infect. This one kills only a small percentage. In future years, they will look back on this epidemic and how we reacted to it, but I feel it will not be as bad as the influenza epidemic of 1918, which killed millions, including my great aunt.

SUUSI and Mars

It's that time of the year again, when I register to go to the Southeast Unitarian Universalist Summer Institute (or SUUSI). So what am I going to do this year?

I enrolled in a workshop to empower my voice, and I also signed up for contra and swing dancing. I am also going on some nature trips, including one to a swimming place in a river.

I am giving three workshops, on Astronomy, Stories of the Sky, and Weaving Paper Polyhedra (see my SUUSI site for details). This will be the first time I have given Astronomy as a workshop to SUUSI, although I have given it to other organizations. So this should be interesting.

Especially since besides SUUSI, the event of the year is Mars. It will be coming closer than it has for the past 15 years; not only is there an opposition this August, but this occurs when Mars is closest to the Sun (perihelion), and hence to Earth. Mars is going to shine big, red, and blazingly bright in the southern sky on all clear nights at SUUSI. This is a planet which we may have our hopes on, that we may be able to walk on it someday, and find out if, perhaps, there ever was life on Mars. And it will be there in the sky, tantalizing us with hope as we go to SUUSI to the enjoyment that provides. This will be the Martian SUUSI.

The Georgia Flag

Since 1956, until two years ago, Georgia had a state flag with the Confederate flag embedded in it. Many people, especially African Americans, found this flag offensive. Therefore the Georgia state legislature created a new flag that shows an emblem and a string of five flags below it, starting with the 13-star US flag, ending with the 50-star US flag, and including a Confederate flag as well. The Confederate flag was still on the Georgia Flag but was much less conspicuous.

But this left many people dissatisfied. So they sought to change the flag again, the second change in two years. The new flag is simpler, consisting of a blue left with an emblem on it, and a red, then a white, then a red stripe, with no Confederate flag on it. I thought, this must be the flag that Georgia should adopt, although I would really like to see a peach on that flag. However, one phrase on the white field of the flag to me makes it unacceptable: "In God We Trust". We already have a problem with this phrase on our currency. It should not be there. It is a violation of separation of church and state, and for the same reason, the Georgia flag should not have that motto on it. To me that is almost as unacceptable as the original Confederate-flag-carrying flag. The new flag of Georgia is OK, but first the phrase "In God We Trust" needs to be stricken out.

April Greer vs Laci Peterson

A young late-pregnant woman disappears. It is a long period of time, a month or more, and no one has seen her. Finally she is found, and her significant other is charged with murder. It is unfortunate when something like this happens; it transfixes the entire metropolitan area when something like this happen. But should it reach national news? I say no. There are hundreds of murders in the USA every year, and to report each on national news would mean that nothing else would get reported. So I feel that these stories should remain local stories.

I have heard of two such instances recently. One was in California, the case of Laci Peterson. The other was in North Carolina, the case of April Greer. Just about everyone in the US has heard of Laci Peterson. Hardly anyone has heard of April Greer. To me the difference is solely due to media hype. The media saw fit to escalate the Laci Peterson story to national proportions, but not the April Greer story, although much the same thing happened in both instances. To me this is a form of deception. The media should report equal cases equally, and this means keeping both April Greer and Laci Peterson as local cases. Laci should never have entered our national news screens.

Madonna's American Life? I say NO!

Madonna Ciccone has been around for about two decades, ever since she started her career with the alluring number Like a Virgin. Since then she has come up with a number of enthusiastic hits, including In the Groove and Holiday. Most recently she came out with an antiwar video and song in an album entitled American Life. The video shows some footage about Bush that she felt might not be good to put out during the recent War on Iraq, but now that that war is over, the album has come to press. I find her antiwar message interesting, especially since it seems to be anti-material instead, coming rather paradoxically from The Material Girl. So will I buy this album?

No. Absolutely not.

No, it is not because of the strange outfits she has worn; for example a bikini wedding gown. No, it is not because of the "trashy" style of music that some has said she produces. Indeed, the music seems commercially driven, and I feel that true from-the-heart music comes from other than the pecuniary motive, but it is not because of that. No, it is not because she has simulated masturbation on stage. This type of liberation is needed. If more people masturbated in Africa instead of having sex, the continent would not be in trouble because of AIDS. No, it is not because the video bashes the Bush administration. The heart of any free democracy is the freedom to criticize those in power. No, it is not because of her lifestyle, either. It is not going to be for any of these things.

The reason I am not going to buy the album is because of her tactics in marketing the album. I heard from a website that she has issued decoy sound files of her songs that instead of playing the songs throws up an obscenity in your face and says something about your copying her music without paying for it; in other words, piracy. This is one type of technique that I will not put up with. No, as long as she is going to resort to tactics like this, then I am [obscenity] not going to buy any of her albums. I know that songwriters need to be paid so they can earn their living, but there are more civil ways of doing it.

What's your playing card deck like?

Well first the Iraqi regime was defeated. And Saddam Hussein, Tariq Aziz, and all the others are killed, captured or something else happened to them. Then all at once the news takes a strange twist: we hear that the five of clubs is captured, that the King of clubs may have escaped to Syria and so forth. It's as though we were like Alice in Wonderland, when she challenges a whole card deck that has arisen around her. Well at least Saddam was dealing with a full deck, or so the military with their card deck issued to soldiers would have us believe. Maybe they should have left out the two of clubs.

But this is an interesting idea. Represent a collection of people by playing cards. How about the people in your life? Find four classifications of people and 13 types of people in each classification and you have yourself a card deck. So I tried that. I chose these four categories (determined partially by Maslow's hierarchy): Spades, the necessary and irksome, what has to be done. Hearts, the love in my life. Clubs, those who have helped me to success, and Diamonds, those who have inspired me the most.

For the ranks, I let the ace represent the top person in my life in that category. The King then represents the top man, unless he is the ace, in which case, the second top man. The Queen is then the top woman, unless she's the ace, in which case the second woman. The Jack or Jane then represents the most unusual, fool-like or trickster-like person in my life in that category. The 10 is the person who has enabled me the most in the category, and the 9 is the best teacher (unless they rank higher). I divide my life into 8 acts, so I let the 2-8 represent the top person in that category in that act of my life.

Some examples: the five of diamonds is the person who inspired me the most in my Fifth Act (i.e., when I was around 30). The Queen of Spades is the woman who most represented the necessary things in my life. The 9 of hearts is the woman who has given me the best teaching in love in my life, and so forth. I am not going to tell any of these here, except I will say that the Ace of Spades is my father, who died in 1999; he represents the necessary because he fought in World War II, which needed to be done but I hope it is never repeated again.

So what is your card deck like? Who in your life is part of your deck of living?

Independence Day: April 15

I mentioned in an earlier blog that for an American to declare his true patriotism for his or her nation, we need to celebrate the independence of our nation not on July 4 but on April 15. On July 4 we can fly fireworks and flags, put on red, white, and blue and play patriotic songs while we picnic and go on vacations in the middle of the summer. None of this tests our patriotism for our nation. April 15 does. On that day we turn in our income tax 1040 to the IRS. Are we willing to pay for what our government does? Are we willing to put our patriotism down not in fireworks but in greenbacks? We were so gung ho about attacking Iraq and getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Now comes the hard part. The bill. About $60,000,000,000 to maybe $200,000,000,000 or so, or hundreds of dollars per each of us. It might want us to think twice before doing things like attacking Iraq, setting up a myriad of bureaucratic agencies, or building a missile defense system that depends on 10 million lines of code going right the first time it is used. Sure, we can party on July 4, but when we see what happens on April 15, we may want to do something on another day - the first Tuesday in November. Sometimes patriotism means saving our government a few bucks.

Did Casper Weinberger predict the War in Iraq?

In the late 1990s I read an interesting book by former US Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, The Next War. This book is a fascinating look at what war could be like in the future, including wars against Russia, China, and North Korea. But it is the War with Mexico in 2003 that is now of interest. To me it seems the war is occurring! The main difference is that the war is not against Mexico but against Iraq.

According to the Weinberger scenario, in 1999 June, the president of Mexico is assassinated, and Eduardo Francisco Ruiz takes over later that year, and sets up a radical regime in which he denounces Washington and makes numerous policy changes in Mexico's government. Over the next three years, huge waves of immigrants, millions, of them, flee the country into the United States, prompting US officials to call for action. Eventually the Mexicans overrun the US embassy.

The US decides to take action against Mexico, so they pile up troops in neighboring Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California. Then the US invades, on 2003 April 14, quickly going to Mexico City, where they are greeted with cheers. However, absolutely no sign of the Ruiz regime is present; all the offices are empty. The US then charges into the badlands northwest of Mexico City and encounter a force of Mexicans. A fierce battle with casualties on both sides ensues, and eventually US forces prevail, and a new government is set up with aid from the US military. However, no sign of Ruiz is ever found.

It seems to me that is what is happening in Iraq! The date is even close; 2003 April 14 will probably be the end of the war instead of the beginning, but it is close enough. Like with Mexico in Weinberger's book, US troops quickly invade from a neighboring desert, and walk in mostly unhindered into Baghdad. The terrain is also similar: desert with some big cities. If the rest of the scenario goes according to Weinberger, there will be some fierce fighting in northern Iraq, and eventually the US will prevail, but we may never be able to find any of the senior Iraqi leadership, including Saddam Hussein.

So it seems to me that Weinberger was correct; it is just that he got the country wrong. So maybe a look at his other scenarios may be warranted.

The Fourth Turning

In 1996 William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote a book called the The Fourth Turning, in which the authors find that the four phases of life (childhood, young adulthood, midlife, and elderhood) and the four generational groups (prophet, nomad, hero, adaptive) imply a series of periods or "turnings" of history, which he numbers from First to Fourth. The Fourth Turning is a crisis period in which society is reconstructed. According to the authors, that should begin around 2005. I found an article from them today, however, that suggests that maybe it has already started: http://www.axess.se/english/currentissue/millennial_generation.php. The authors talks mostly about generations but suggests that Planeattack (that is, 9/11) was the catalyst that started this Fourth Turning. So is the crisis upon us?

Some Interesting Google Searches

Here is a new game. Think of a word and enter just that word into news.google.com, the news google search site. You will get the latest news that has that word. For example, today, entering "dead" yields "Is Saddam dead?" Here are some other ones:

dead: Is Saddam dead?
Baghdad: Allies tighten control over Baghdad.
51st state: Iraq, the 51st state?
kerry: Kerry calls for US regime change.
ill: Illinois. 3rd talks about SARS
war: the endless war.
tulip: The Commonwealth Chess Championship from April 20

I think that "51st state" was the most interesting of these. But be sure if your tulips are in check to get them out of check.

Sorcerer's Apprentice

I heard the other day that Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt, said that the war against Iraq should not be fought and that it will result in a hundred bin Ladens. This really stirs my imagination up good. What I envision is Osama bin Laden wandering around after Planeattack, bringing lots of trouble just like the broom in "Sorcerer's Apprentice" brought all that water to the apprentice. So what do we do? Smash the Iraq broom into a zillion pieces. And then the haunting music starts again. And all those pieces and rubble left over from the Saddam regime grow and turn into copies of bin Laden, and then I see the entire landscape covered with copies of Osama bin Laden wandering off into the world to do their dirty work. Dum de Dum de dun-dun-dun Dum de dum de dun-dun-dun …

National Dark Sky Week

Today is the day of National Dark Sky Week. For the next eight days, keep your lights off between 10 am and midnight Mountain and Eastern time, between 9 and 11 pm Pacific and Central Time, and if you are elsewhere, for two hours just before your local midnight. National Dark Sky Week is the brainchild of a 15-year-old woman named Jennifer Barlow, of Midlothian, Virginia. It was her idea to do more than just the usual A project in Science Class, more than a Science Fair even, but to engage in a project that affects all of us. This nationwide project is sponsored by many organizations, including the Astronomical League. So turn off your lights tonight.

I did tonight and I brought out my telescope for viewing. I aimed it at Jupiter and saw one moon on one side and one on the other. Then I tried for a tougher object. Spring is galaxy time, as the Milky Way is along the horizon and not very visible. The constellation Virgo is loaded with galaxies, including the elliptical galaxy M87, which looks like a ball of fuzzy light with a jet emanating from it, most likely caused by a supermassive black hole at the galaxy's center. This object is more than 40 million light years away. I did see a galaxy, and I remembered some guide stars. I then looked it up in Uranometria 2000 and found that I most likely saw NGC 4452 instead. It is also probably a member of the Virgo Cluster, as is M87, and appears to be an edge-on galaxy.

I'll try again some other night for M87. But note that I had darker skies than usual because of my telling my community association about National Dark Sky Week.

The Grumble Zone

I heard on CNN tonight that soldiers like to grumble at each other about things. I probably could not tolerate too much of this. I feel that people should work things out amicably rather than grumble or argue about it. Please get me out of the Grumble Zone. My favorite place to be is as far away from the Grumble Zone as I can get.

Some interesting sites

One interesting site I found out about lately was www.whatreallyhappened.com, which finds unusual viewpoints in the news and presents them in a list of links. The site has an enormous number of links to sites that most of us are not even aware of. Among the things that this site presents is an argument as to why the big chemical plant in Iraq that was recently discovered is probably not a factory of weapons of mass destruction, and the discovery of British weapons in Iraqi inventories.

Another one is that of the Iraqi who has been blogging to the world, http://www.dear_raed.blogspot.com/. He does not have any sympathy for the Hussein regime but he does not like the bombing in Baghdad either, saying that one of his favorite buildings collapsed before his eyes.

And here's a real scary one: http://www.rea-alp.com/~dragnfly/index.html. It is about the upcoming ultimate oil shortage, the time in the future when the demand for oil will exceed the supply, even with all oil suppliers pumping full tilt. One interesting passage is where he calls to task a friend who understands that this oil shortage is coming, but that he still plans a rich retirement full of travel all over the place. The two thoughts contradict. Or you can go to K.S. Deffeyes' site at http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/ and read that not only is the peak of oil production very soon, but that perhaps it may have already happened! Oil production has declined since 2000 November.

Also look at the Interactive Sky Chart of Sky and Telescope's site. When you step through it, it shows you the constellations that are up at each hour on a sky circle representing the dome of the sky. When the Sun rises, you see the background lighten, and when it is daytime, no stars show at all in the chart, only the Sun (and planets) which is what we would actually see.

Astronomy Weekend

We had unexpectedly clear skies this weekend. It is past full Moon and it is the anti-harvest moon in March, when first the Moon is full, then it disappears from the evening sky, leaving dark skies. On Friday night I took my new 8-inch Celestron NexStar telescope to the Science Museum's skywatch. This telescope is a "go to" scope. This means that you find the object on a keyboard, then hit a key to tell the telescope where to point to to view the object. It took a while to get started, as I had to level and align the telescope to north, then aim at the two reference stars Sirius and Capella. Then I told it to go to Jupiter and it went there, and I showed the public Jupiter from my telescope. I also showed Saturn and M42. I also tested out some new equipment, such as a star diagonal, a Barlow lens, and a 9.7mm Super Plössl eyepiece. I found that the Barlow lens magnified the image two times, making it the same, nearly, as the 9.7mm eyepiece, which is a high power (about 160X) eyepiece.

The next night I went out in my back yard and was surprised to see Jupiter with five moons! Now Jupiter has 52 moons or so, but most are captured asteroids. Only four moons deserve the appellation "moon", as they are the size of our Moon. They are easily visible in an amateur telescope, and make a dramatic sight: a solar system within a solar system. On Saturday night, 2003 March 22, however, I saw five moons. Two were on the right, and three on the left. Huhh? I knew that one of them, the faintest one, had to be a background star, and it had to be the inner moon on the right. Indeed, someone in the Richmond Astronomical Society told me that the star was SAO 98075. I looked it up on the Internet and found that Jupiter had occulted (eclipsed) it on 2003 March 20. I also saw M44 Beehive cluster, M42, and made an attempt to see the two galaxies of M51. I tested more equipment. I tried something called a field reducer. That made the image smaller and brighter. With the 40mm Plössl eyepiece, that really made the Beehive cluster stand out. Jupiter was small but bright. I also tried a star diagonal and saw results similar to using my other diagonal.

Last night I went out again, this time to another astronomer's house, where we were having a telescope party. There a telescope that was willed to my astronomical society in 1957 and somehow came apart to several owners came together again when we put two parts together and they exactly fit.

So I saw several stars and gave my telescope a good workout this weekend. I hope for good skies again this weekend.

It finally begins

Tonight I heard that an attack had begun on Iraq; and that further, an attempt was made to hit the high leadership. As I expected, news of this event has swamped all of the stations, even to the extent of trumping sports events; usually the news on the weekend get sportsed out. The headline on the CNN site was the largest I have ever seen, and I expect the headline in tomorrow's paper to fill the front page. These all mean that the start of this war is a Memorable Event, only six of which have occurred in my lifetime, with the other five being the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy, the manned landing on the Moon, the start of Persian Gulf War I, and Planeattack. Let us hope this war ends quickly with only a few civilian and military casualties and with new hope for the people of Iraq.