Light Years and the Palomar Plunge
June 16 Sun 11:59
Why does God always punish his people? In Numbers they understandably get sick of eating nothing but manna day after day, and they pine for a little meat. The punishment for this infraction? Death by plague. Cool God.
I guess he'll become kinder after the birth of Jesus.
The middle school kids were a good group. Howlin' like wolves in the brush, having sword fights with old tree limbs, squealing at bugs. Dan is the same. He had an effective reign over the kids. I got a fire going and grilled a couple of catfish fillets and ears of corn and heated up a can of vegetables. I told an edited version of the Baja 3000. We talked about UFOs and stuff around the campfire. The next morning we hiked the trail up to the observatory at the top of Palomar. They say the 200 inch Hale Telescope has doubled the size of the known universe since 1948. There is a simple museum displaying photographs of different galaxies and nebulae discovered from the top of that mountain with the Hale Telescope. It is MIND BOGGLING the distances covered by these telescopes. Light travels 186,000 miles per second. The distance light travels in one year. How many seconds are in a year? 60 x 60 x24 x 356 x 186,000 is the number of miles in a light year, (so it is both a unit of time and distance)--and they have pictures of glaxies that are billions of light years away, and millions of light years across! Incredible. I regret that I talked myself out of buying a poster of the horsehead nebula. A Cal Tech geek gave us an uninspired tour of the inside of the observatory. After that, we took "The Palomar Plunge", a fifteen mile, 5,000 foot drop from the top of the mountain to the bottom on moutain bikes. It was even more dangerous that I had hoped and way cool.
I slept at my mom's on the way back to LA. Today I golfed with John at Brea. We were paired with an old trucker with hula girls and dice and panthers tattooed on his forearm, and his son. After golf, we went to my cunado's for a BBQ and to watch the Sonics blow their chance to upset the mighty Bulls. The Dodgers won today and are now tied for first with the fading Padres. Tomorrow I'll read and write and see a movie and get a haircut and maybe wash my car. Definitely have to add a few more sentences to Jim. Without a doubt. Tomorrow. Until then...!
Why does God always punish his people? In Numbers they understandably get sick of eating nothing but manna day after day, and they pine for a little meat. The punishment for this infraction? Death by plague. Cool God.
I guess he'll become kinder after the birth of Jesus.
The middle school kids were a good group. Howlin' like wolves in the brush, having sword fights with old tree limbs, squealing at bugs. Dan is the same. He had an effective reign over the kids. I got a fire going and grilled a couple of catfish fillets and ears of corn and heated up a can of vegetables. I told an edited version of the Baja 3000. We talked about UFOs and stuff around the campfire. The next morning we hiked the trail up to the observatory at the top of Palomar. They say the 200 inch Hale Telescope has doubled the size of the known universe since 1948. There is a simple museum displaying photographs of different galaxies and nebulae discovered from the top of that mountain with the Hale Telescope. It is MIND BOGGLING the distances covered by these telescopes. Light travels 186,000 miles per second. The distance light travels in one year. How many seconds are in a year? 60 x 60 x24 x 356 x 186,000 is the number of miles in a light year, (so it is both a unit of time and distance)--and they have pictures of glaxies that are billions of light years away, and millions of light years across! Incredible. I regret that I talked myself out of buying a poster of the horsehead nebula. A Cal Tech geek gave us an uninspired tour of the inside of the observatory. After that, we took "The Palomar Plunge", a fifteen mile, 5,000 foot drop from the top of the mountain to the bottom on moutain bikes. It was even more dangerous that I had hoped and way cool.
I slept at my mom's on the way back to LA. Today I golfed with John at Brea. We were paired with an old trucker with hula girls and dice and panthers tattooed on his forearm, and his son. After golf, we went to my cunado's for a BBQ and to watch the Sonics blow their chance to upset the mighty Bulls. The Dodgers won today and are now tied for first with the fading Padres. Tomorrow I'll read and write and see a movie and get a haircut and maybe wash my car. Definitely have to add a few more sentences to Jim. Without a doubt. Tomorrow. Until then...!
posted by johnz at 12:36 PM
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