Rock Lover

I saw you climbing heavenward
Silhouetted, flesh on rock
Poised between your life and mine.
No eagle, I, nor even flea;
My leaps are tightly kept within
A heartbeat, catching my dry throat.
Did you slip? I gasp.
My eyes would turn
And run away
But love constrains me here
To wait, and wait again.
You love the rock far more than I.
Your lover, cold and grim
Suspends you as you toy with death
Feints a hand, then laughs to see
You scramble to regain your grip.
You've never held me quite so tightly;
Must I then become a Fate?
Atropos, my scissors poised
To slice the rope that binds you there
To bring you back to me.

Oort Cloud

I didn't find you there last night
Amid the rumpled unkempt sheets
That shroud me as I sleep alone

I didn't feel your body's heat
Radiating, given freely,
Warming this small drifting speck,
An icy clump of random dirt
That happens to be me

I turn again and look around
In every path are points of light
But they are frozen, cold and distant
And Newton's laws are not enough
To bring them quickly here.

And so I wander in the dark
But still from time to time
I check to see
If one of them is brightening.

It could mean that
I'm getting closer.

Lock and Dam

In my day
I separated water from water
And made a lake that stretched for miles.
At Onalaska, they called me Number Seven, "the lucky one".
In Trempeleau, I was Number Six.

Though I was made by men, not God,
Still I was a firmament
And firm I stood.
Ice did not crush me, nor waves overtop me.
Warning lights marked my stout piers, and men and water crossed my gates
Only when I allowed. Concrete, stone, and iron I stood, and still I stand --
But without purpose.

The "drying", they called it,
As if the river was a pair of socks.
But it was clear to me that it was a dying.

As the droughts grew longer
And the rains less frequent
My life's blood ebbed
Turned muddy brown
And congealed.

The fish that had deftly evaded the hook
Now gasped a final breath
And lay by thousands in the mud.

Too strong to die
I hung alone above the stench
And raised my eyes to God.
As he waited, so did I.
We watched the seasons pass
And counted each new blade of grass
That sprouted at my feet.

Where the pike and catfish
Once had darted
Came the meadow mice.
They sniffed the air, and strained to see
My strange rocks standing
Where no stone should.

And still I survive.
Where once flowed acre-feet,
Where once scurried mouse feet,
The lizard and scorpion now contend
For whatever life remains.
Dust surrounds my feet, and the dunes threaten to overtop
What no wave could.

Let them come. I will sleep the sleep of centuries
Sheltered from the sun and wind.
And I will dream of rain.

Thank you, Sputnik I

54 years ago today the Soviet Union successfully put into orbit the first artificial satellite, Sputnik I. Less than a year later, the US government enacted the NDEA to provide new funds for engineering education:
Wikipedia article on the National Defense Education Act

Fortunately for me, I was 7 years old then, and had a keen interest in science and mathematics. NDEA-funded school programs fed that interest. I was switched to a new college-bound track of advanced classes: Adv. English, Adv. Math, Adv. Physics, etc. It made a big difference; school was fun!

In high school, exploring career options, I discovered computers: machines that could be taught to do a complex task on their own. To put a bit of your own intelligence into a machine, and have it do a job faster and better than you could ever hope to do: that was magic.

That sense of magic has never left me; today I teach tiny microcontrollers to efficiently do their jobs in products all over the world.

So, thank you, Sputnik I, for giving the US a wake-up call just in time for this budding scientist to become a software engineer. It's still magic, and it's still fun. :)

Anthropic wonders

I just read a blog entry that closed by discussing the actions of our sun's heliosphere in countering the destructive forces of cosmic rays.

That got me thinking about the chain of anthropic wonders we've discovered. Yes, I understand that I wouldn't be here to comment on it if it wasn't so, but emotionally I still feel privileged to be here.

Why did life arise and continue to live on Earth? Because:

(1) Gravity causes matter to coalesce, counteracting the dissipation of entropy, thus forming stars from some of the matter;

(2) Gravity continues to press inwards on those stars, causing them to fuse; some eventually produce carbon (but only because the triple-alpha energies are just right!) and other heavier elements. The stars expel the heavier elements into space as they die.

(3) Gravity continues to cause matter to coalesce, but now the matter includes heavier elements, forming planets as well as stars;

(4) Gravity presses inwards on the new stars, causing them to fuse and provide continuous energy to those planets, making anti-entropic chemical reactions possible in the mix of lighter and heavier elements, thus allowing matter to organize itself into life;

(5) That same fusion creates a solar wind and a magnetic field that protects the new life on the planets from being destroyed by receiving too much disruptive radiation.

And now that all the above conditions have created our own sentient form of life, with the ability to build or destroy this assemblage of matter and life, what shall we decide to do with that ability in the time we have left before our planet becomes uninhabitable for us?

In praise of excellence

Once in a while you find something that is just so well done, you have to say thank you. Last month I discovered such a gem: the newly constructed Silverwood Park in St. Anthony, MN. Here's a message I sent today to Mike Horn, the principal architect of that park and its beautiful visitor center:

----------

Mr. Horn:

To the many accolades you have already received for your excellent work on Silverwood Park, may I add this one citizen's praise for a job very well done. You have created a most beautiful and original piece of work that I hope will inspire many others. Items I particularly enjoyed on my first two visits to the park last month:

• The amphitheatre to the east of the visitor center. The large stones that provide its seating on its west side are beautifully echoed by the more widely spaced stones on the east side that complete a large circle. Then, within that, you have the semicircle of paving joined to a semicircle of earth. All this makes for a perfect gradual transition from the natural land of the east to the visitor center on the west. As a plus, the stones on the east side are low enough to be quite accessible as a play object, both mental and physical. My first impression is of stepping stones that children could run and jump from, one to the next. Then I become aware that the distance between the stones is too large for that (and rightly so, making the land beyond seem more open), but that somehow makes the imagined jumping and leaping even higher: a playground for the mind for us adults.
• The beautiful bridge to the island, and the vistas from the bridge and the island. I imagine a wedding procession of twenty or more descending in pairs from the visitor center to flow gracefully and elegantly across the bridge up to the high point of the island, where the ceremony would be held under the large tree there.
• The visitor center. The ambience of the circular room that includes the fireplace is astounding. To be present there at no cost gives me a feel of great luxury and a bit of a thrill, as if I were trespassing in the lobby of a very expensive ski resort. The fireplace reaching high, beyond sight level. The wooden mantle beam, all the more interesting and natural for its furrowed crack. The many windows forming the eastern view, encircling the viewer with a panorama! I want to be there someday during a vigorous snowfall, to see the snow descending and giving motion everywhere the eye can turn.

Thank you, thank you. I am very glad that the Three Rivers Park District had the far-sighted support to fund your vision. May it inspire and rejuvenate others for decades to come.

Wayne Farmer

Is anybody listening?

Late last week I ran a little test by posting the following messages to my Twitter account:

8 Twitter accounts started following me early today. All have since been suspended. So much spam. 9:16 PM Oct 1st from TwInbox

It makes me wonder what percentage of my followers actually read my tweets. 9:19 PM Oct 1st from TwInbox

So here's a one-shot "ping" test. If you're reading this, tweet a reply to me now with the single word "pong". I'll report the results. 9:21 PM Oct 1st from TwInbox

According to Twitter I currently have 247 followers. That'll be our 100% standard for replies. 9:23 PM Oct 1st from TwInbox

Now that nearly 5 days have passed (including a weekend) since my "ping" request, here are the results:

• 1 reply at 9:24 PM Oct 1st (T+3 minutes)
• 1 reply at 10:35 PM Oct 1st (T+74 minutes)
• 1 reply at 1:14 AM Oct 2nd (T+233 minutes)

That's it. 3 replies out of 247 followers. That's 1.2%.

Now, some of those followers may be just spam bots, designed to spread a product brand message by repeating a mix of trivial content mixed with product messages. They'll never notice a "ping" request like mine. But I try to periodically weed those followers out by using TwitBlock.

Also, I'm probably not a typical Twitter reader. On my system, at least every hour, TwInbox requests and receives all the new tweets from the people I follow. It then files those tweets into Microsoft Outlook folders on my laptop, and I read the tweets sometime later, just as I would e-mail. At first I thought this would be a workable strategy, but it's not. I receive way more tweets than I can keep up with, and currently have a backlog of 15000 tweets from the 199 people I'm following.

I'm catching on to the idea that most people don't read tweets this way. Instead, I'm guessing that they just tune in to the live Twitter stream from time to time, get a Twitter "fix" by surveying the latest few tweets from the people they follow, and then tune out. They're not aiming for 100% coverage of the people they follow; they just want to know what they've posted recently.

And, I'm guessing that "recently" is defined not by time, but by number of tweets. People probably only read the last 5 or so tweets from any one person. Over the last month, TwitterAnalyzer tells me I've averaged about 10 tweets per day, so my "ping" request may have scrolled off the radar pretty fast.

Beyond that, there's the question of when people tune in and read tweets, how many of the people they follow do they actually read? Out of the nearly 200 people I follow, I have a few favorite Twitterers that I check frequently, but there are others that I check much less often.

I'm guessing it's a combination of the two: a limited number of tweets are being read from a limited number of sources.

But you tell me. If you're on Twitter, how do you receive tweets? Do you use the web interface to twitter.com, or do you use an application such as Tweetdeck, or something else? How do you decide what to receive, and how much out of what you've received do you actually read?