Ray’s Telescope

The Pleiades rise again

It is that time of year again! My favorite little cluster of stars is up in the night sky. Around midnight it is high in the eastern sky viewed from Houston. In the city light pollution you can only see 5 stars with the naked eye easily. It looks like a tiny dipper up there. However, even with simple binoculars the cluster becomes quite a few more stars, like glittering jewels, hanging there for all of us. With the weather finally turned it is time once again for me to venture out and just look at the sky.

For me it is a time of deep thought(if I can ever be accused of having such thoughts, it is while I am gazing at my favorite objects in the sky). Orion will soon put in his appearance and the spectacular nebula cloud of baby stars will once again have me staring into an eyepiece and wishing that I had the simplest Star Trek warp shuttle! For all the wonders of the night sky it is also filled with terrible things. Asteroids the size of mountains, that we have not ever mapped yet, waiting to turn earth into a disaster area. Pulsing stars that long ago sent bursts of radiation towards us that may one day kill us all in the blink of an eye.

Yet, because of my faith, I know that this is not our destiny. Our destiny is among the stars one day, fractious, antagonistic, belligerent, friendly, generous, and ever curious. We will one day fight our way out to the stars. Exploration has always been our destiny and I see it in the future as a shining beacon of possibility and a grave warning of potential disaster. Yes, one day we will own the stars. When that day comes I can only hope it is as free men and not slaves of a state.

The election is near and I will not bore you with my politics. I will only say this. This country was founded on the most important document in human history. It is a road map to the freedom of all mankind. It has been discarded and ignored by ALL ideologies currently struggling for power in this country and abroad. No matter how much they fight to castrate the document that enshrines our very cultural identity, they can never smother the ideals that created it. A lot of you are rolling your eyes at this…that is OK. It is your right to do so. I have faith in the documents divine inspiration and a real hope for mankind’s future as free people.

You may think it is naive or ignorant to believe this. If you do, I pity you…

Ray

You want to know how much tree debris Ike created?

Official reports put the total “tree debris” at almost 6 million cubic yards of wood chips! If you were to make a perfectly solid square out of this material it would be a little over 545 feet high, wide, and deep! It doesn’t sound that big until you realize that it is nearly two football fields tall, wide, and deep. This is a small mountain! This is just the raw plant matter folks, and does not take into account the homes and fences and so forth that were destroyed. Wow…

Houston we had a problem!

Actually the city still has a horrible problem. Power is still missing in many places throughout the city. Our neighborhood was finally visited by crews yesterday and power was restored today around noon. I am thankful to finally be back home but there are so many still without power that I am somewhat miffed at the powers that be for the poor response in some areas.

The west side was far less damaged than the east and yet the poor response on the west side shows that the concentration on southern areas and eastern areas brought about little improvement for east Houston but in the west the lighter efforts showed huge results. If they had just started in the easier areas to begin with the whole west side would probably have been up in a few days! By making the plan fair they made everyone suffer far longer than they had to.

It is far past time that Houstons electrical infrastructure move underground. The cost of putting the power lines underground will nowhere exceed the cost of the clean up and restoration of power throughout the city which was nearly 100% without power. Paying 11000 crews to clear trees from powerlines 24hours a day and to rebuild destroyed transformers and lines and poles will cost us far more than burying power lines would have cost after Alicia in 83. Humans never learn…

I love fireworks!

I also love these guys. They are the best! Check it out!

Wordpress is at it again! but this time…

I was ready for them! The first attempt to update my site to WP 2.6 was a disaster, AGAIN, however this time, I had a backup of my entire site such that it is. The result was an easy restore followed by another attempt where I just ignored their instructions…Yeah I know sounds stupid but the instructions are wrong! In some fashion I cannot describe the upgrade instructions are wrong. Ignoring them to do it my way seems to have done the trick.

Now if they will just get my current themes approved…Yeah, I know, one miracle at a time!