Seeing Stars
Although I miss "orange glow" for its LA-ness, one nice thing about South Dakota is the ability to see the night sky. I've been tempted to get into amateur astronomy, but it seems like a dangerous hobby since you can spend as much money as you want on it. I'll stick to hobbyist programming - all I need is my laptop and an idea.
Last night the sky lit up with the Northern Lights but each time I stepped into the backyard to have a look they were gone. It would have been a real disappointment except that, for the first time in my 31 years, I saw shooting shooting stars. Because of forgiving weather - it was a balmy 45 degrees with no wind - I lingered and found some of the familiar constellations.
In moments like this I do a thought expiriment: if I was a person living BCE, looking at the sky and the stars, how would I have reconciled that with my reality? How far have we come and how much more do we know? Just like my spending a thousand dollars on a telescope would make me even more lustful over a multi-million dollar one, I think what we know exposes even more mystery about the true nature the thing we are striving to know.
Astronomy programming is very difficult because of the complexity of calculations but maybe that's a happy medium. I'd be interested in stepping into the void.
1:03:35 PM 
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