Whereabouts
Hello faithful readers,
I'll be in a little town called Broken Hill for the next three weeks teaching confused third years how to look at rocks. Who knew this was a skill that needed to be taught?
I leave tomorrow morning (Monday @ 0645) and I'll return 13 July sometime in the evening. I am told there will be internet out there, but who knows... If there's nothing exciting posted for the next little while, please accept my apologies. I'll have some pictures and stories when I return, if not earlier!
Stay tuned sportsfans...
And yes, I think it does concern planes and chocolate...
When 'success' isn't 'success'
Kevin Spacey, the eminent two-time Academy Award-winning actor has this to say about his career:
Sympatico/MSN Article:
Spacey Signing Off?Just goes to show you that possessing self-sustaining wealth; reaching the pinnacle of one's chosen field twice over; and being generally regarded as a skilled, respectable, and worthy representative of one's profession don't result in the lasting feelings of success and happiness that we universally seek.
I suppose this counts as another vote for the idea that happiness results from choice over circumstance. Fulfillment must have another name...
Watching the Melbourne Ice!
I went to my first (Australian) hockey game ever yesterday afternoon... It was the
Melbourne Ice vs the Sydney Bears. They play on the same rink of which I've earlier posted pictures. No plexi and on a rink that's smaller than regulation.
You're only about 20 feet (or less) from the ice and you can hear everything going on. The penalty box is a two-seater wooden bench that takes up the first couple of spots along the bleachers and there's nothing but goodwill separating the penalty-boxed players from pounding each other. Also, because it's such a marginalised sport in this part of the world, they have some unexpected sponsors...
It's a good thing they have them as sponsors too because one fella got his noggin cranked into the ice then into the boards and play was stopped for 30 minutes while they mopped him up, called the 'ambos' and took him off the ice in a stretcher. Fun fun! It kept the figure skaters waiting and bumped everybody who was waiting to use the ice after the game by 30 minutes.
Went flying on Saturday again, which was awesome as always. The flying operation is borrowing another person's Texan while waiting for their new one to arrive from NZ. Apparently it's in the crate and waiting for the ship to take it across the Tasman. I'll be sure to post some pictures when I get some.
Isotopes: Principles and Applications
After searching for something of sufficient interest for my readership, I've stumbled across a very scientific failing for a popular cliche.
One often describes the aiming ability of ones peers in reference to being able to hit a barn door (variations: broad size of a barn, etc). Implicit in such a statement is the size of the barn door, which, one would assume, is as big as your average barn door.
However, a 'barn' is a unit used in nuclear (isotopic) science equal to 1 x 10^-24 square-cm (1 x 10^-24 = 0.000000000000000000000001 square-cm). To put that into perspective, draw a box on a sheet of paper that is 1 cm by 1 cm. Now visually divide that space into a trillion trillion equally-sized smaller boxes that all fit within the 1 square-cm box you originally drew. One of those boxes is one barn. For another reference, your personal mass (in kilograms) forms the same proportion of the entire mass of the Earth as does one barn form the same proportion of area in your 1 square-cm box.
So, it is in fact very good aim indeed that could hit a 'barn-sized' door. Those who have trouble hitting 'barn doors' can now take solace in that fact.
