Saturday, July 30, 2005
COUNT TO TEN! Let me be the first to ask if you know how many planets we now have in our solar system? Have you been keeping track of such matters, have you been more concerned with keeping the one we do have in our care intact? There are ten planets at the moment. That's one more than we have been claiming. This situation came about because of the work of Dr. Mike Brown, at Cal Tech and his associates looking through the Palomar Observatory telescope located near San Diego, CA. along with Chad Trujillo at the Gemini Observatory at Mauna Kea, Hawaii and David Rabinowitz, at Yale University, New Haven, CT. Mike Brown took three fine photographs of the object on October 21, 2003, using the famous Samuel Oschin scope at Palomar. He did the three exposures of the object at ninety minute intervals and typical planetary movements and other traits to be properly recorded and identified - then checked and re-checked by other members of the discovering group. That sort of work cannot be hurried and it must be meticulously precise in every phase. Brown says "we are one hundred per confident that this is the first object bigger than Pluto ever found in outer solar system." The telescopic studies have not, as yet, revealed the precise dimensions of the plane but it has been shown that all planets, shining by reflected light as they do, can be measured by the amount of light they reflect light. The larger the object the more light would be reflected and with such known facts in mind the present group has decided the new planet is a big larger than Pluto. If Pluto, our Number Nine planet, measures 1400 miles across , then the new planet will prove to be about one and half times larger...possible two thousand miles across. None of this can, as yet, be called "official". It must be presented before the International Astronomical Union, received and approved. There a individuals who claim the work of this group has been flawed from the start. If the "Plant Number Ten" tag doesn't suit your fancy call it by its unofficial, temporary name which is: 2003UB313. A.L.M. July 30, 2004 [c402wds]
Friday, July 29, 2005
FOOD FIGHT It appears that we often select a special evil to be featured for a time as bring the root of all evil which comes comes our way. Right now, it came be any one of a host of things: the Internet, TV, same-sex marriages, global warming riparian rights on the far side of the moon, sex offenders on parole, plus others who can be our scapegoat - just to mention a few of them and cause you to think of a dozen favorites of your very own. Some are silly, of course of course, -other people's in particular. I recall one particularly wild one which overwhelmed our part of the nation in he early 1930's...a terrible horror which faced our civilization - the dreaded coming of the "Chain Store"! We were, as I recall, quite happy with our "local: grocery stores. Many of them had family backgrounds we all knew about, too, One got started because a family could not make a go of farming or livestock raising because illness in the family. They started a small business of buying and selling excess produce from the area and then added a box-like addition to their house which became their grocery store. The had "drummers" selling canned goods and boxed foods call on them regular local truck owners owners started hauling in fine apples from the upper Valley, peaches from across the mountain range to the east. We hear talk about how the stores in the cities were changing at about the same time and we started to hear terrible stories about some which were connected together like a chain in city after city. They could buy in large quantities at lower prices and sell for whatever they could get in local areas. The movement again chain stores started in local settings but it quickly became a nation-wide thing. I forget the call letters of a fifty-thousand watt radio station, I think, located in Shreveport, La. which devoted most of its air time to vilifying the evil chain stories telling how the people were being robbed by the greedy chain store owners; how they were killing local firms and destroying our way of life. They were the direct cause of most of our maturing troubles - both real and imaginary. Our town we had a burst of crime associated with the establishment of a Kroger's store on our main street. They trucked everything from distribution centers, the nearest one about fifty miles away down a mountain road - unpaved in those days and with many twists and turns which slowed traffic going up the mountain to a snail's pace. It took one hour, at least, for delivery trucks to get up ole Burg Mountain. Such trucks in those days were , of course, much smaller than our trucks today and seldom closed across the rear end. A slack chain or rope, sometimes a net barrier. It doesn't seem possible but it took months before they realized how and why so much of their shipments bound for our Main Street store never got there. Eventually, putting doors - locked doors -on the rear end or hiring a man to ride shotgun to fend off stuff-dumpers during the long upgrade climb...helped. The chain store did well on Main Street in our town and we got over the "I hate chain stores" thing right fast.I don't remember what took up the slack. You can bet we had something ready to blame for whatever we felt we didn't like at that time. A.L.M. July 29, 2005 [c597wds]
Thursday, July 28, 2005
F.B.I. = YARD In recent, events-pressured weeks we have witnessed some marked changes in our attitudes concerning both the "Federal Bureau of Investigation", in Washington, and of "Scotland Yard," in London. The subtle change in both areas will, I feel, prove to be most welcome in the days ahead. Listen carefully as you say the very names of the two organizations. They sound staid, formal, old-fashioned, and each tediously reminiscent of bygone days. The long name for the American force conjures up post-prohibition, gang-ruled days when a "federal" force of "bureau" size was deemed necessary to combat forces undermining peaceful living in our land. In a similar manner, many Americans think too frequently of the likes of an oft clumsy Yard person being out done by skilled amateurs During the initial hours of the 7-7 bombings the London police moved in force against terrorist threats and actual attacks in four or five different locations...most of the being in the Underground system beneath the busy city plus a blast in one double-decked bus on the surface moments later. Police were on the scenes promptly and the took precise and definite actions to rescue those in need, to ferret out evidence which would enable them - within hours of the fatal blasts - to name names, show hard evidence in identifying those who did the bombings. Even the unfortunate death of an innocent suspect during the July 2lst attacks won approval from millions watching on TV. Those watching TV saw evidence of prompt British action against a man who was oddly attired - suggesting he might be bomb-laden - who ran. He made it into a subway car; so did the police. He was knocked to the floor struggling and was dispatched with five shots to the head. "Now, that's the way to do it!" I heard TV watchers shout. Even after the details were set forth showing he was in no way implicated in bombings he average person seem to think the British police had reacted properly. A subtle change is taking place in the F.B.I., as well. Notice the regard Americans seem to feel for our F.B.I. now that it is being compared, contrasted and discussed with the local constabulary on the island of Aruba - unfairly, I feel. Since the Holloway-Twitty disappearance case started a month ago there has been far too much speculation on what American seems to think our own FBI could have done to resolve the case weeks ago. The F.B I has no jurisdiction in Arubian affairs, only an interest because the victim is an American high school from Alabama. A.L.M. July 28, 2005 [c456wds]
Sunday, July 24, 2005
DO IT MY WAY Today, when some people are expressing concern with the situations in which our Court tend to do legislative work rather than to look after our discipline problems, I am reminded of a situation which took place two-hundred and twenty-six years ago in Rockingham County,Virginia. When that court met on the 25th day of May 1779 they named three men of their group to of their body to see about building a new Court House. The record reads: "On a majority of the justices being present and comfortable to the resolution of the court in March last for fixing a place for the court house, the several members having proposed three different places, a majority were for fixing it on the plantation of Thomas Harrison near the head of the spring." That would be the site where, today, an ornamental Springhouse stands to mark the spot on Court Square in downtown Harrisonburg, Va. to mark the site. The actual spring was, some years ago, diverted. The Court named three members who were to "lay off the bounds and make a report." In November of that year of 1779, and again on the 26th of June 1780 the Court "ordered that Benja. Harrison, William Herring and John Davis, Gent. or any two let out the building of the Courthouse of square logs with diamond corners thirty feet long by 20 feet from out to out with a partition twelve feet in the clear across the room divided into two rooms, one 12 feet wide and the other 8 feet wide, the room 12 feet wide to have a heat stone chimney inside at the gavel end of it, the whole two to be floored with earth as far as the lawyer's bar and then to be raised with a plank floor to the justices bench which is to be raised three feet above the floor and the breast of the bench is to be studded with a rail at top, the pitch of the house is 10 feet clear ceiling and lofted with inch plank with two windows on each side of the house facing the Clerk's table and one in each of the jury rooms, the windows 18 lights each, glass 8 by 10 inches with a door on (____?) just clear of the jury rooms." As might happen today, changes and modifications were sent down by the Court - dated 26 June 1780: "It is ordered that Benja. and Wm. Herring, Gent. be empowered to agree with the undertaker of the courthouse to omit the portion of the east end of the house for the jury rooms and to sink the joist over the upper room from the gavel of the said east end to the joist over the front doors so as to make a jury room above with a pair of stairs in the corner, or two jury rooms if space will admit to it." Got all that? Now...where were we....? Uh.... It is amazing how our forefathers ever got anything built, isn't it? A.L.M. July 24, 2005 [c522wds]
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