Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

According to my calculations, with the help of Wikipedia, I figure I’ve traveled (roughly) 54,520,000.000 kilometers (33,872,000.000 miles) around the sun, while the Sun has gone 402,674,976,000 kilometers (250,210,629,921 miles) in its journey around our galactic center.

Good thing I’m sitting down. I might get dizzy, otherwise.

Wonder what the next leg of this journey will bring.

In May of last year (<-- By frogs and fishes! That is fun/weird to type), Yinon M. Bar-On, Rob Phillips, and Ron Milo published a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America on a census of all life on Earth, by surveying and estimating how much carbon is where, on the planet, by weight.

Vox.com published a stunning visual chart of what this all means, )here.

That's cool, and wondrous, and exciting (and sobering), and all...

But then-- in December, The Deep Carbon Observatory published its own report on a survey of carbon deep within the Earth's crust -- and came to the conclusion that all the bacterial biomass carbon from that earlier report? Is only 30% of the total bacteria on Earth.... And there are bacteria surviving so close to the Earth's core that ambient temperatures are above 100 C -- but water is still liquid, there, because the pressure is so high.

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Okay, so 70-80% of stars in our galaxy are M dwarf stars, which are rather violent when young, and this video (closed captioned) explains why that might end up making the planets ultimately uninhabitable.

But M dwarf stars are extremely long-lived, and once their violent youth is past, they become very stable (I'll put a video about the life cycle of stars at the end of this post).

And if the majority of microbial life actually starts out deep beneath the surface of planets, then (my inner plot bunnies are whispering) perhaps it could survive its home star's violence, and gradually migrate to the surface once it's calmed down ... And, as I always like to remind myself, life has a way to change a planet to make it more comfortable to life.

Or maybe they won't migrate to the surface, but they still might form comparatively complex life. Here's a neat video from Kurzgesagt (also closed captioned) that explores the possibility of subsurface life that exists on planets that don't even have any stars:

(The main thing that annoys me about Kurzgesagt videos, is that they keep judging quality of life and intelligence by current, human normativity: use of metal-based technology, fire, etc.. Also, they assume that advancement as a civilization must depend on expanding our territory, and colonizing other worlds, and also in getting as close to individual immortality as possible. ... none of which are things I agree should be taken as givens)

Anyway, here's that video on the life cycle of low-mass stars, and there's a suggestion how the Earth, itself, might become a rogue planet, 6 billion years or so, from now, when our Sun burns through its hydrogen and loses mass -- which decreases the gravity that holds planets in their orbits (also closed captioned):

(For what it's worth: I'm not really all disturbed by the thought of humanity going extinct, or even of my own personal death, as long as neither comes prematurely, due to foolish decisions -- like denying climate change -- or causes avoidable pain to others)

(Icon chosen for the rainbow)

(I've had this as a draft for weeks, in my Notepad -- been planning to post this both here and on Tumblr (where I'm spending more time, lately) -- and then, my posting agenda got derailed by the Drump going high-key evil, with kidnapping children. And I hate that. Anyway, I want to post this now, before Pride Month is over)

On Tumblr, many (a few? several? Anyway, a bunch) of very vocal younger bloggers are arguing that those in the LGBTQ community should never use the word "queer" to refer to themselves. because it's a slur (much to the annoyance of older folks on the site). So in May of last year, I entered the fray, by posting excerpts of course descriptions for "Queer Studies" available at colleges and universities around the U.S., as evidence that "The Q-Word" has a much richer, and older history than simply being a slur.

...And as I was reading through them, I kept thinking: "Damn! If these courses had been listed in the college catalogs in the '80s (when I was getting ready to graduate from high school) I would have signed up, even as a "Straight" person." Because I love me some interdisciplinary discussions, and the connections between art, cultural trends, and public policy. And if I had been in these classes as a twenty something, maybe I would have realized I was some flavor of queer before I became a fifty something.

I've been thinking about that again, during this year's Pride Month -- that maybe I'd be "queer" even if I were straight, because "heteronormivity" also excludes bodies like mine from what society considers "normal" sexual partnerships. And that got me thinking about the interdisciplinary course I did end up taking, in my Junior year of college (my academic advisor, by then, knew what intellectual buttons to push)

This would have been (*mumbling and counting on fingers*) in 1988? I think it was... ('twould be nifty if it were a round number of years ago) It was an experimental course called "Science and Society" that was taught cooperatively between a professor of philosophy and a professor of physics, focusing on two key points:

1. The scientific method is a particular thing, and not just a vague belief like faith or intuition. It is also the best tool we humans have to figure out the truth of the world. And
   
   
2. Scientists are human beings, with human limitations, and are swayed by all the bigotries and biases awash in their cultures, just like the rest of us... And that influences how they use the tool that is the scientific method.

Anyway, one day in class, we were discussing when "Homosexuality" was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), in 1973, because actually, Homosexuality is Normal.

And one of the professors explained what the distinction between "normal' and 'abnormal' actually means, in a mental health context, versus what people think it means:

Normal, she said, is something that occurs naturally, even if it occurs rarely, that causes no harm to the individual or the people around them. Gays and lesbians may only be 10% of the population (trans and nonbinary, bi, pan, and ace people weren't on our radar, yet). But even though it's unusual, being attacted to people of your own gender is something that happens naturally, and causes nobody any harm.

Therefore, homosexuality "normal."

She then went on to contrast homosexuality, which is considered 'abnormal' because it is rare, to antisemitism in to Nazi Germany where the inaction of people to resist rhe Holocaust has been excused "Because that's what everyone believed back then -- it was just 'normal'. ...But it harmed millions upon millions of people.

Therefore, Nazism is "abnormal."

Although we didn't use the word in class, I now think what our professor was actually talking about was "normativity."

According to Wikipedia, in philosophy and the social sciences, "normative" refers to those cultural expectations and beliefs which we presume to be healthy and natural, based on our prejudices:

"Normal" = Is. "Normative" = Should Be

So: being heterosexual and being some flavor of LGBTQ are both "normal," in that all variations of sexuality and gender identity are part of the natural range of human experience, and don't, in themselves, cause anyone any harm. That's why pedophilia, beastiality, and incels have no place in the LGBTQ community: they can label themselves with "Alternate" sexuality all they want. But the 'urges' they want the freedom to act out causes harm to others.

And so does "Straight Pride" and "White Pride."

LGBTQ Pride: We're here. We've a normal part of the human race. And we are healthy and loving, even if we're different.

Straight Pride/White Pride: We demand that you submit to our power over you, and be happy about it.

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So... Anyway: ...I was hoping to have come to this point and have a really strong, coherent, closing paragraph to wrap this all up. But I don't. I guess this month has just got me thinking about Queerness, and Nazis in equal measure. And that brought up the memory of a classroom discussion from 30 years ago.

Also: I'm queer... in more ways than one (I count at least 3).

Is it these octopodes, or the squeeing (human) marine biologists?

1: How long do you think it'll be before this recent picture of Pluto (7-7-2015) gets turned into memes, macros, and icons everywhere?

{... give me an hour, maybe, at least for here? ;-)}

2: On this week's Radiolab (Wednesday), there was an interview with two men who are both completely blind (Audio -- sorry there's no transcript).

The man whose blindness developed gradually decided that to be fully present and connected to the world, he had to break himself of the habit of "Visualizing" anything, and to conceptualize the world entirely using his other four senses. Because to do otherwise would mean clinging to his memory of a world that doesn't exist anymore.

The man who lost his sight in a single, devastating, moment insisted that to retain your full humanity, you have to imagine a visual world, even if you have to work at it, because humans are visual creatures, full stop.

Yeah. You can probably guess which side of the argument I side with; I'd be more sympathetic to the second man, if he hadn't insisted what was true for him was true for 6,999,999,999 other people.

Anyway, it occurred to me afterward that, compared to blind people, we sighties really live in a 2-D world (well, 3-D, but that's only if you include "Time"). Compared to the actual space around us, the surfaces of our retinas are really, really, flat. After all, that's the only reason we can get away with trompe-loeil at all.

3. The weather is brain-meltingly hot and humid, here. So this item will only be two sentences long.

4. Doctor Who Series 9 will start September 19th! Permission to Squee? I still don't have any headphones or speakers, so I don't know how the official trailer sounds.

But:

Does it seem like Capaldi's hair is channeling the spirit of Doctor Four? Or is that just me? ;-)

5. Speaking of dates in the calender being closer than they appear, I don't think I'll be able to meet my self-imposed date for getting Monsters' Legacy: Disability, Culture and Identity self-published. I mean, maybe I could. But only if I worked a lot faster than I seem to be able to at the moment (*points to #3*), and only if I skipped getting the prose portions beta-read. And I don't want to skip that. *sigh*

(But I really like this icon).

1) The dream I had this morning / through the night (it was one of the ones where I'm not sure whether each cycle through REM sleep were separate dreams, or just continuing "chapters" in one long dream) included (In order of descending complexity, incomplete):

( Cut for those who don't care about dream rambles. )

• My favorite part of the dream was that it had this musical number (yes, even dream riffs on the choreograhy) as a background theme throughout the whole thing (or nearly) which is now an earworm in my head (not that I mind):
  
  "" (Watch on YouTube)

2) Last night, I watched this video, which was posted back in January to mark the tenth anniversary of the probe Huygens landing on Saturn's moon Titan. I don't have any working earphones/speakers at the moment, so if the narration and/or background music is cringe-worthy, I apologize. But I was captivated without any sound at all; you can always mute. My favorite part is at the very beginning, where you see the Earth and Moon from Huygens' p.o.v., showing just how small the Earth is, how small the moon is, and how far away the moon really is. That's what it looks like "to scale;" good to remember:


3) Last evening, while I was having dinner, I watched a grey squirrel outside my kitchen window dig up (what I think was) an acorn and eat it -- hooray for springtime cliches (and dining companions)! BTW, squirrels don't bury their acorns because they're afraid of thieves. It's just that (contrary to Beatrix Potter illustrations) they do not have tiny kitchens with tiny stoves and tiny pots. Acorns fresh off the tree have too much tannin to be edible, but autumn rains, winter snows and spring thaws all work to leach the tannin out. This is how humans do it. The squirrel way takes longer, but seems so much much easier, I'd try that method, first, frankly.

I heard this report on the NPR, yesterday morning, and I just had to share, 'cause I have a feeling that it would give several folks in my circles a bout of science-squee:

New Clock May End Time as We Know It (Audio with text article version of the same story):

(First Quote):
At the nearby University of Colorado Boulder is a clock even more precise than the one O'Brian watches over. The basement lab that holds it is pure chaos: Wires hang from the ceilings and sprawl across lab tables. Binder clips keep the lines bunched together.

In fact, this knot of wires and lasers actually is the clock. It's spread out on a giant table, parts of it wrapped in what appears to be tinfoil. Tinfoil?

"That's research grade tinfoil," says Travis Nicholson, a graduate student here at the JILA, a joint institute between NIST and CU-Boulder. Nicholson and his fellow graduate students run the clock day to day. Most of their time is spent fixing misbehaving lasers and dealing with the rats' nest of wires. ("I think half of them go nowhere," says graduate student Sara Campbell.)
(End Quote)

TARDIS interior, anyone? ;-)

(Second Quote)
"Scientists can make these clocks into exquisite devices for sensing a whole bunch of different things," O'Brian says. Their extraordinary sensitivity to gravity might allow them to map the interior of the earth, or help scientists find water and other resources underground.

A network of clocks in space might be used to detect gravitational waves from black holes and exploding stars.

They could change our view of the universe.

They just may not be able to tell us the time.
(end quote)

In my previous post, I wrote:

The more I see of Moffat's writing, the more I'm convinced he's an Epicurean philosopher -- and not in the "Iron Chef" sort of way. I approve.

And I realized that, although I was familiar with some of the basic ideas of Epicurean thought, it's been a long time since I've read any words actually ascribed to him or his followers. So I went a-hunting. And here are the passages that made me go: "A-Hah! Yes!" [/voice=Eleventh Doctor] in my head:

(From Letter to Menoeceus. [this is the bit that I'm reminded of most by Moffat's writings])

The wise man does not deprecate life nor does he fear the cessation of life. The thought of life is no offense to him, nor is the cessation of life regarded as an evil. And even as men choose of food not merely and simply the larger portion, but the more pleasant, so the wise seek to enjoy the time which is most pleasant and not merely that which is longest.

( Bits that made me o_O, considering he was a contemporary of Alaxander the Great, rather than Isaac Newton )

I was going to wait until we were closer to the actual start, but that was before I committed to being preoccupied by Other Ideas in July... So, to get all those distracting Fannish!Thoughts (or some of the biggest ones) out of my head, I'll just put this here:

( Regeneration Ramblings, cut for length )

[ETA: More thoughts, that I don't really want to create a whole new entry for]

Not specifically Doctor Who, but some closely related stuff:

You know how, in popular science documentaries about Einstein and spacetime, at some point the presenter will say: "Although there's nothing in the laws of physics that says travel backward through time is impossible, how come, if it were possible, we never see time travelers from the future?

I heard that again the other day, in that Brian Greene Nova episode I linked to... And it occurred to me that these script writers don't think like fiction writers. Or they could easily come up with reasons why, even if it were possible, it would not be popular.

I mean, if you think dealing with security screenings just to travel from one continent to another on the same day are a hassle, imagine the restrictions and special clearances you'd have to get to go back in time. Not only would governments be paranoid about rebel factions trying to rewrite history, you'd have centers for disease control in a panic, too. What if a time traveler went back in time and brought back a deadly virus, and restarted a plague epidemic?!

So Yeah... I don't think time travel will ever be a touristy lark. There may be a few highly specialized, and trained professionals. But they'd also be well-trained to be invisible to the natives....
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And, just for fun: Here's a bit of interplanetary science news, including a bit about a new tool for directly viewing exoplanets (at least, ones about the size of Jupiter): The First Star Within a Star.

Enjoy!