– Definition: n. An auctioneer’s shill
– Used in a sentence: “Some of these political rallies seem to reek of illicitators.”
– Why: It’s obscure, yes, but how many illicitators have YOU spotted recently?
Why I Love: Astronomy
Fig. 1.
First Graf(s): The Book of the Damned
Fig. 1
Night, Fog, and One Hell of a Bang
IF I HAD KNOWN THAT our galleon would collide with a freighter, I would have worn a life jacket.
The time was February 1988. Through a curious series of circumstances, I had signed aboard the replica galleon Golden Hinde II a few months earlier as a deckhand and docent, sailing around the Bay Area and down the California coast giving tours of our fine ship. Our plan that night was to motor (yes, we had a small engine) from San Francisco to the Farallon Islands, then sail down to Half Moon Bay. We left San Francisco well after midnight in order to take advantage of the outgoing tide, and were soon past the Golden Gate Bridge and into the open sea.
A cold and foggy 3 a. m. found me atop the foredeck on bow-watch (front lookout) with a couple of other chilly souls.
And Now, A Moment of Science
SWIMMING AGAINST THE ANTI-INTELLECTUAL TIDE that these days governs too much of mediated public discourse is a modest little one-minute radio programlet called StarDate. It’s “the longest-running national radio science feature in the country,” according to the description on the StarDate website, and airs daily on more than 300 stations around the United States. A production of the University of Texas’ McDonald Observatory, each episode features something about astronomy (both historical and observable), planetary or space science, exploration, or even stellar mythology. (Everything stops in our house at 9:50 every morning so we can hear the broadcast on San Francisco’s KCBS.) You can catch it on the unstreamed local airwaves, or also listen online at http://stardate.org. Tune in, turn on and look up!
Wee Little Me
NEAR THE TOP OF THE Beloved Things list are landscapes that make me feel small. Deserts, mountains, beaches, redwood forests, prairies — anything requiring a wide perspective with which to take it all in, and which likewise reminds me of my true place in the Universe.
Part of the reason is that I have lived in a valley of one sort or another for most of my life. Valleys can’t help but breed insularity; when you can see the borders of your world, you can get the idea that the world is a small one and that the people inside it are the only people there are.
Praying for Strength, and Other Sure Things
IS G?D GRANTING FAVORS, OR am I just fooling my brain into higher functioning?
That’s the question I ask myself every time I pray for either greater strength (read: endurance) or greater understanding. That’s about all I ever pray for[1], and either way, those prayers always get answered (so far). But the question is also a loaded one: as a Religious Agnostic, I am somewhat prejudiced against the idea of the nameless, genderless Man Upstairs (if It is a man, and if It is upstairs) making dreams come true for me when they have so tragically gone wrong for others (e.g., and canonically, the Six Million, but also any refugees/terminal patients/soldiers/etc anywhere/anywhen). That’s also an argument against Divine Intervention: that people who have “miraculously” survived illness and disaster must necessarily be more holy than those who didn’t. I don’t think that’s fair, or accurate.
But praying for something that expands you in some way —