History of the Future

You may remember from way back in May that I wrote about the work Edwin Hubble did with the 100 inch Hooker telescope in the blog post The Big Pffft!; essentially redefining the nature and size of the Universe.  I will not recount the details laid out in that offering, but if you missed it, I believe it is well worth reading.

This week’s offering is about an offshoot of the work done on Mt. Wilson (the location of the Hooker telescope), the design and construction of the 200 inch Hale telescope atop Mt. Palomar.  It was of course the natural progression of the astronomical sciences as the field was dominated by men at the time of its initial conception.  Their motto, “Make it bigger!” which of course is what they did: Always with the measuring sticks, these scientists.

The telescope is the property of the California Institute of Technology.  Yes, the very same Cal Tech made famous by those two rascally physicists, Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter of the CBS comedy, The Big Bang Theory.  The 200 inch instrument was regarded the most important telescope in the world from its first light (the first time it was focused on an astronomical image) in 1949 until 1992 when the Keck observatory (390 inch telescope) in Hawaii began operating.

The contributions to our understanding of the nature of our Universe are innumerable.  But it is not my intent this week to add to your working knowledge of nature.

“So why then, Dale, have you introduced this subject?” you ask.

“Because,” I respond, “it’s in my backyard; literally.  As the crow flies, this wonder of Twentieth Century engineering and technology is probably about ten miles from my house.  Driving distance, because of the mountainous terrain, is about twenty-five miles.

Nestled in the rolling valleys of Palomar Mountain, the campus sits atop one of San Diego County’s highest mountain ranges.  It is unique in that the range, or ridge, transverses the real estate from west to east (or vice-versa if you are a Buddha-centric thinker) while other ranges in the county run generally north and south.  It is an island in the sky as it does not connect to any other elevation feature.  The peak is right around 6,500 feet.  Okay, you Colorado readers can stop snickering, surrounded by your 14,000 ft peaks.  But remember, elevation is measured relative to sea level.  Can you see the ocean from one of your precious 14,000 ft peaks? Yeah, well I can see the ocean from Mount Palomar (on a clear day).  But I digress.

The astronomy campus is, as I previously revealed, owned by the California Institute of Technology and thus a private operation (Cal Tech is not part of the University of California).  So, they are gracious enough to open the facility to the public.  During daylight hours (I trust you can guess why they are not open during hours of darkness… if you can’t, e-mail me and I will explain it to you in monosyllabic language), the campus is available to visitors on all days but December 24 and 25.  The staff there may be involved in some small way with reindeer navigation, but no one is talking!

Although there is an appreciable elevation climb, the road leading to the top of the mountain is paved and well maintained.  In addition to the observatory, the mountain top is home to a hamlet community, which offers a small restaurant and gift shop (not affiliated with, and located a few miles from the observatory) and a California State Park campground (reservations recommended).  The mountain is lofty enough that mid-winter rain storms in San Diego will result in snow at the upper elevations.  But the snow usually melts within days and the County General Services people plow the roads quickly.

If you are a science minded type, the observatory offers a gallery of photographs and displays relevant to its history and contributions. If you are not in search of astronomy knowledge, the grounds offer a serene, scenic locale for a day’s respite.  If, like me, you are drawn to art-deco styling, the buildings of the campus will be right up your architectural alley.

San Diego residents who have not taken advantage of this day-long outing are missing a wonderful opportunity for a no cost adventure (admission is free).  On weekend days, there are often docents available to help the visitor make sense of what they are seeing.  Even during the week, there are displays and exhibits enough to edify even the most astronomically naïve.

You can go to http://www.astro.caltech.edu/palomar/visiting.html for directions and information.  For San Diego residents it is an easy trek.  If you are from out of town, I live only about an hour from the observatory and am a willing guide.  I have two spare bedrooms and a guest bath for you convenience. Also, as I live in Indian Country, I am surrounded by casinos within ten minutes, for your night time entertainment.

Time Travel

Let me be ruthlessly honest on this point.  I believe in time travel.  Now I know the dreamers out there are saying, “Yea! The maestro has validated the basis of our philosophy.”  While the pragmatists (those are people steeped, or mired depending on your point of view, Swee’Pea, in reality) are recoiling from this blatant example of scientific blasphemy.

Let me return the Universe to its normal state.  I believe we all travel through time as the mechanics of the Universe require that we occupy a discrete place within it at any particular instant and that place vis-à-vis other places in the Universe is constantly changing relative to any perceived fixed point of reference, of which there is in reality none.

I must pause here to share my pride in the previous sentence which is a superlative example of the progress I have made in my attempt to construct the most rambling of run-ons while still meeting the requirement that it be cogent. No, it really does make sense… read it over until it does. Okay, are you ready to go on?

Let’s discuss time for just a bit.  I firmly believe that time (as we define it) is a human construct.  We use it to measure our lives against the inevitable, death.  If we didn’t know that we were destined to die, would we have been motivated, as individuals or members of society, to attempt betterment of our condition?  It is proffered by the community of anthropologists that the chimpanzee is our closest living evolutionary relative.  I have observed the behavior of people and compared it to what I have witnessed on trips to the zoo.  I believe there are some gaps in current evolutionary theory that are in need of the application of heavy spackle!  But I digress.

Chimpanzees spend the day lolling in trees, eating leaves and sniffing the air for any indication that a female of the clan has come into season.  They do not enact laws, build cathedrals or write poetry (interestingly enough though, they do engage in combat over territory, something we might recognize as war); still more digression.

People engage in productive behavior because of the pressures of time (and an innate ability to imagine an alternative reality… but that is a subject for another day). 

I do not believe it is, or ever will be, possible for a person (insert own definition here, I’m not going to get sucked into that controversy) to experience the passage of time at a rate different from the natural evolution of the physical universe. We are caught in the stream.

Travel into the future is a ridiculous concept as it hasn’t yet happened.  It would be like trying to paddle a canoe down a river before the glacial ice has melted.  You can only proceed as fast as the river is long.  Give it some time and thought and I promise that last sentence will make sense.  If not, well you are getting this for free.

Travel into the past is a more attractive daydream.  But think about it for just a second.  The Universe is a finite (albeit, really big) physical entity.  If you displaced the matter of just one person, and maybe his time-travelling machine, by moving from now to then, wouldn’t you leave a big hole in the space-time we know as now?  And wouldn’t that time we know as then be suddenly stressed by the addition of unexplained material?  Does this make sense to anybody out there?

Remember, energy is neither created nor destroyed; it merely changes from higher to lower states over time.  And scientists are trying very hard to convince us, via research funds spent on such useful tools as the Large Hadron Collider, that matter is just energy at a very, very (really, really very) low frequency. All energy present in the Universe today was present at the moment the alleged singularity released it.  All changes from that point on can be attributed to the evolution of energy from higher states to lower.  For those of you struggling with this paragraph: The gas in your car’s fuel tank is converted into motion by the release of potential energy within the molecules of the gas. For any volume of gas burned, the car will travel a calculable distance (but not as far as the government’s EPA estimates brag), by which time the energy released by that burning will have been expended.  To move the car further, you must burn more gasoline.  But once the gasoline has been burned and the car moved, you can’t go backwards and un-burn the gasoline and return the car back to its original location (place in space-time, as it were).  To move the car back to its starting point, you must burn additional gasoline.  And all the while, the rest of the Universe is winding its way merrily along the stream of time.  You can’t go home again, unless you have the gas money.

If, by this time I have not convinced you of the impossibility of time travel, then take it up when we meet on the street.  As I am probably bigger and meaner than you, I will pound you into intellectual submission with my fists.  If, by chance you are bigger and meaner than I, you just go ahead and believe what you want.  I am a strict adherent to the constructionist interpretation of the Constitution and therefore recognize and defend your right to believe as your conscience dictates.  Thank you for your kind attention.

A Little Lizard Goes a Long Way

By now you have realized I am a fan of movies, cinema, film.  And you have probably concluded, quite correctly, that I have an affinity for bad movies.  Now I recognize that applying “bad” to any example of art in any medium is purely a judgment call.  But the truth is, unless one is a saint, it is within the nature of human behavior to assign meritorious relevance to all things; i.e. ‘This is better than that”.

And so it goes with movies. In my porous brain, a movie that entertains me with its utter disregard for production quality, lack of plot continuity or scenery chewing line delivery is far more memorable, and therefore more likely to be viewed and viewed again to the point of dialogue memorization.  For example: I have seen Gone with the Wind (1939 MGM); once was enough and quite frankly I believe this hallowed icon of American Cinema to be a waste of good celluloid.  On the other hand, I never pass up a chance to see Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956 Columbia Pictures).  If you are a fan of Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks (1996 Warner Bros.), Earth vs. the Flying Saucers is the source code and you must see it.

But let me rein myself in, as true to form, I have wandered afar from my original intent, Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956 Embassy Pictures or TransWorld Releasing Corp depending on region).  Everyone knows Godzilla, the radio-active ray-breathing dinosaur, but have you seen the original episode that spawned the franchise?  No, you haven’t and neither have I!

With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound

He pulls the spitting high tension wires down

Helpless people on a subway train

Scream for God as he looks in on them

He picks up a bus and he throws it back down

As he wades through buildings toward the center of town

Oh no, they say he’s got to go

Go go Godzilla, yeah

Oh no, there goes Tokyo

Go go Godzilla, yeah

I do not remember at which age I first experienced this exemplar offering of Japanese film art, but I do remember that I was equally impressed with the stern delivery of Raymond Burr and the magnificent modeling of the city of Tokyo.  Those people must build killer miniature train layouts.  I was surely relatively young (as I am confident I saw it well before I started drinking). At any length, I carried very vivid memories.

So I was taken aback recently when I watched a few minutes of Godzilla, King of the Monsters! broadcast on one of the more daring cable channels dedicated to airing really bad movies.  I noticed that there was a peculiarity in any of the scenes in which the film’s story-telling lead character, Steve Martin (amply portrayed by Raymond Burr of subsequent TV Perry Mason fame… oh, yeah and TV wheelchair-bound sleuth Ironsides). You youngsters out there will want to look into these examples of the golden and pewter (respectively) ages of TV.

I recognized, after a few minutes of confusion, that all of Raymond’s scenes were eerily similar.  They all consisted of Burr, and a few Japanese actors, posed in front of a set backdrop (a wall painted and decorated to simulate a real-life scene) staring off intently at some odd angle as if they were looking upon the action that we had witnessed in the previous shot.  Burr would voice over a description of the action.  This technique struck me as odd.  Eventually, my confused brain was able to decipher the dilemma.

Oh no, they say he’s got to go

Go go Godzilla, yeah

Oh no, there goes Tokyo

Go, go Godzilla

History shows again and again

How nature points out the folly of men

Godzilla

All of the scenes with Raymond Burr had been cut into the film after the initial production was complete!  It explained clearly why, in each scene featuring Burr speaking to one of the movie’s principals, all we ever saw was the back of a Japanese head (kudos to their barbers, by the way). Now, I thought, that was one accommodating production company.  And Burr wasn't even that big an actor.  Well, in girth he was one of the biggest, but in relative star status, not so much. Then it dawned on me, Godzilla, King of the Monsters! was not the original.  This was a rework intended specifically for the American and international theater markets. I had been living my life the victim of a con job.

The original movie responsible for this franchise that has spawned over thirty sequels was titled simply, Godzilla, being released for the domestic Japanese market in 1954 by Toho Studios.  It is doubtful that the original version will ever be aired in the U.S. as the American version is language dubbed and is American-centric.  But given the then recent history of the use of atomic weapons on Japan by the United States to end the Second World War, it would be interesting to get some insight into the Japanese sense of things.

History shows again and again

How nature points out the folly of men

Godzilla

Confidential Information

It was a cloudy, breezy day.  I needed comfort food.  For days, the thought of Chinese cuisine had been bubbling up from my unconscious.  But where, in the white-bread world of San Diego, could I find superior, authentic Mandarin?  I finally gave up the impossible dream and headed off to Panda Express.

While picking the remnants of Chow Mein out of my teeth with my right hand, I dutifully popped open the cellophane wrapped fortune cookie with my left.  As I crunched away on the, well, I’m not sure just what fortune cookies are made of; I stripped the slender paper purporting to offer insight into my future out of the remaining half of the cookie.  I read it.  I read it again.

 

Keep your plan secret for now!

Hmmm, I pondered, “Keep your plan secret for now!”  Immediately, I was awash in a sea of confusion.  Well, that maybe an overstatement.  Perhaps it was just a lagoon of confusion as my plans are generally rather inconsequential. I pushed thoughts of magnitude aside.  The more important consideration was, “What plan?”  I retraced the steps of my day so far.  I had arisen comparatively late today, but I had no plan for sleeping in. It just happened.  I toasted an English muffin, applied peanut butter and jelly (Knott’s Berry Farm Boysenberry Preserves, with seeds… mmm) and ate it.  I hadn't really given breakfast much forethought so I was pretty confident I had not violated the intent of the fortune there.  Then I finished a borrowed book I was reading.  I realized there was some planning involved here because I wanted to make sure I could return the book the next day.  But upon review, I hadn't really shared the plan with anyone so on the outside chance I was the victim of some time warp anomaly where I received the warning after the critical event occurred, I was sure I was safe where the book was concerned.

Keep your plan secret for now!

Satisfied I was not retroactively guilty of challenging fate; I cleaned off my table and made for Starbuck’s.  When I reached the front of the cue and it was my turn to order, I was struck by the conundrum, “Is ordering coffee, which is part of my planned activity for the afternoon (I’m retired folks, and reading at Starbuck’s in the afternoon while all of the saps are still working away is one of my greatest joys… not the greatest, but right up there in the top ten percent), a violation of the oriental admonishment?”

With the quick mental reflexes of a predatory cat, I chicaned.  “I’ll have a grande coffee and, a chocolate chunk cookie!” The chocolate chunk cookie was not part of the original plan.  So inserting spontaneity into the plan at the last second should mollify the fates.  I ate my cookie, drank my coffee, read my book without event.  I’m confident the bullet had been dodged so far.

Keep your plan secret for now!

While I was gratified to escape Starbuck’s without spilling on my shirt or being goaded into conversation by a complete stranger (By the way, have you ever considered how gruesome it would be to encounter an incomplete stranger?  Ick!) whom I am sure would have attempted to pries my plan from my lips by wile and craft, I was not confident that I had accurately identified the plan of concern.  My mind reeled.  Did I have any other plans?  My life is lived in a rather haphazard manner; on a wing and a prayer as it were.

Keep your plan secret for now!

Having successfully found my way home without resorting to the use of a plan, I parked myself upon the couch to cogitate on this dilemma.  Was I supposed to have a plan?  It had been a few weeks since my most recent trip to Panda Express.  Perhaps I missed a visit as the result of some cosmic misstep.  Was there some hapless schmoe out there racking his brains to formulate a plan as instructed by a fortune targeted at me but intercepted by accident?  And if so, when constructed, how would this play toy of the fates know to keep it secret as I had successfully intercepted the step two instruction?

Keep your plan secret for now!

But let’s assume that I do stumble upon a plan and am able to decipher it correctly.  I must keep it secret for now.  How will I know when the time is right to reveal my plan?  Am I committed then to eating lunch every day at Panda Express until I am given a cookie that contains the fortune, “You should share your preciously secret plan”?  If I do lunch at Panda Express, will fate assure that I am in the correct ordered place in line to get the appropriate cookie?  If I arrive at the door coincidentally with an aged dowager do I follow conventional decorum and hold the door for her, allowing her to take what should have been my place in line?  Or do I risk offending the gods by slamming her to the floor in an attempt to ensure I find the instructions I am seeking?  What if I then get a cookie whose fortune reads, “Courtesy is the true path to achieving your goals.”?

 Keep your plan secret for now!

As I retrace the critical path that has led me to this indecision, there are two things of which I am certain: one, I am not going to share my solution with you; two, from now on, it’s Mexican food.

The Irrational, Rationalized

As do all writers, I occasionally draw a blank when it comes to digestible subject matter.  The ideal of course is to lay responsibility for topic selection at someone else’s feet and then run like the wind across the keyboard without sense of responsibility. But when you write a regular column (or blog, if you will), that external source of inspiration is sometimes nowhere to be found.  If I were to break my promise to avoid political commentary I would have nearly infinite opportunity, but I am not yet that desperate.  There is nothing going on in my life this week worth reporting on; at least that I would be foolish enough to commit to print. And after last week’s debacle with the corrupted hard drive, you know there is not much I would be too embarrassed to share.

So at times like these, I can’t speak for other writers; I find a peek inside the room where the typewriter qualified chimpanzees reside offers an opportunity to pick some interesting tidbits off of the floor. If you do not understand this reference, please refer to the infinite monkey theorem. As we enter the room, I admonish you to speak softly, move slowly and avoid eye contact as the chimpanzees are rather surly when their concentration is broken.

A Journey Out of Reality

The joy, and danger, of peeking behind this curtain is the joy of infinite possibilities.  Here, probability is moot.  One need not consider the likeliness of stumbling across a pile that mixes absolute absurdity with incontrovertible logic.  In here, it’s all the same.  Our motto is, “If it can happen, it will happen… eventually… and you’ll be blamed.  Of course, with an infinite number of possibilities, there must be an infinite number of corners in which to look.  There is no logical place to start as any one corner is as likely to inform, entertain, delight or disgust as any other.

My Gray Matter Is Better than Yours

Ah, here is an interesting notion; brane theory.  No, this is not a misspelling (try to convince Word of that) but jargon short hand for Membrane Theory.  This hypothesis is an alternative to the Big Bang Theory (the wildly popular explanation for the Universe and everything in it, not the wildly popular sitcom airing Thursday nights at eight o’clock on CBS) attempting to address some of its scientific short comings (for more on this, see my blog The Big Pffft! posted 5/9/13).  The most glaring hole in the Big Bang Theory is the lack of explanation as to what caused the bang in the first place; brane theory proponents  pooh-poohing the notion that something can spontaneously appear from nothing.  Their alternative being the existence of multiple membranes (each a universe unto itself) that are mutually attracted by a force similar to gravity.  When brane to brane contact is made, an explosion occurs which produces the initial energy that eventually cools into what we observe as our universe.  The problem with their offering of course is lack of explanation for the presence of the membranes, or parallel universes, in the first place.

Obamacare Explained!

Yes, it’s obvious there are words printed on these sheets of paper.  But there doesn’t seem to be any punctuation.  No matter how you group the words into phrases, the outcome just doesn’t seem to make sense.  I guess they missed the period in Obama’s speech, silly monkeys (…er, bureaucrats?).

Enemies, Foreign and Domestic

“...support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;” Those of you who have served in the military will recognize this as an excerpt of the U.S. Armed Forces Oath of Enlistment.  And while the rhetoric seems patriotic and noble, just what does it mean?  How does one defend the principles of a document which is subject to amendment and open to interpretation?  We will assume here that intent is the defense of the principles and not the physical document itself, although one can never be absolutely sure about government intent.  Does the provision for defense against domestic enemies violate the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878? (You’ll have to look that one up yourself, the monkeys are due a break as per their union contract).

Now you legal beagles out there needn’t write comments as to the history of the act, the exceptions as provided by statute or the exemptions for National Guard, U.S. Coast Guard or natural disasters.  Our goal is not accuracy, but to have fun at the monkeys’ expense.

Einstein on Beauty

In his 1916 general theory of relativity, Albert Einstein defined gravity as the curvature of the fabric of space-time by the presence of matter.  If you don’t understand that, not to worry; the monkeys have an explanation.

On a superficial level, it translates to this: The universe has dimples.  Now Einstein is reputed to have been quite the hound so we should meet this with no great surprise.  As certainly as “…God doesn’t play dice with the world”, we can infer that the universe is female, comely and a bit coquettish.

Almost the Bard

Look over here!  It’s a complete, typewritten copy of Hamnet?  Ooh, missed it by that much.

 

The Truth is Out There!

Today's Special Edition is prompted by evidence of a government cover up!

While perusing the interweb for salacious stories about East Coast politicians, I uncovered this appetizing tidbit buried deep on the front page of my Yahoo! news feed.

http://news.yahoo.com/bizarre-asteroid-six-tails-spotted-hubble-telescope-photos-214743038.html


While government toadies are claiming the pictured space phenomenon is a meteor with multiple tails, in the same article they state that there have been no historical occurrences of multi-tailed, or any-tailed meteors recorded.  Just like mind-control conspiratorial astronomers (I'll bet you didn't even no such a cadre of nefarious scientists existed) to shove an unidentifiable object into a category where it doesn't belong.

Clearly, the pictures have captured a controlled space vessel with multi-dimensional, parallel-universe transversing engines.  Six jetted asteroid... Please!

Get ready to learn the language of the new masters.

Stand by for future news as I can conjure it up from the deep recesses of my paranoid mind!

What I Like About You

There is a time honored adage that suggests we never really appreciate something (someone?) until it is gone. The truth of this postulate, unfortunately, is not likely to be tested until that fateful occurrence by which we lose what we then realize was so cherished.

What I like about you

You hold me tight

Tell me I’m the only one

Wanna come over tonight

 

Last week I came dangerously close to losing a very dear friend, my computer. On Sunday afternoon, I was apparently looking where I should not have been and acquired a rather nasty virus.  This particular malware hijacked my Fujitsu, claimed I had committed some amorphous federal crime and was holding me hostage for a $300 fee in exchange for relinquishing control of my dear, dear friend.

You’re whispering in my ear

Tell me all the things that I wanna hear

‘Cause that’s true

That’s what I like about you

 I, of course, did not panic.  Your humble reporter had been through this before. I resigned myself to the fact that I would have to have my hard drive wiped (no, that is not a double entendre) to bring it back to life.  So, without hesitation, I wrapped up my poor, wounded baby and sped, Mercury like, to Fry’s.

What I like about you

You really know how to dance

When you go up, down, jump around

Think about true romance

 To my everlasting shame, I am not diligent in backing up my data in anticipation of catastrophic computer calamities.  So, as I drove the comatose patient to the aid station, I tallied up the important information I would either lose or have to recreate from source documents.  A pall fell over my heretofore optimistic outlook.

You’re whispering in my ear

Tell me all the things that I wanna hear

‘Cause that’s true

That’s what I like about you

That’s what I like about you

That’s what I like about you

Luckily, Fry’s technical service and repair department, unlike most hospital emergency rooms, is not inundated by a swarm of desperate, drunken bar-b-cue incident victims.  We did not have to wait long for assistance. I presented Fuji (I don’t really call my computer Fuji, but I figured this gesture would serve to heighten the sense of pathos.  Writers, can’t live with ‘em, can’t make them live in the real world!).  The technician dutifully listened to my tale of woe.  He turned on the computer and examined the offending screen image.  He restarted it and began furiously mashing keys.  He repeated this procedure several times and, with each iteration, delayed the hijacking of the boot-up just a bit longer.  “I think we can extract and rebuild your data, then remove the virus from your hard disk,” he said, offhandedly, “We have to charge a fee for that. Is that what you want to do?”

What I like about you

You keep me warm at night

Never wanna let you go

Know you make me feel alright

 My heart was filled with joy.  The birds were singing.  I’m sure my eyes moistened.  I gathered my composure and replied, “Yeah, that’ll be okay.”  So the dance began.  The technician guessed it would take two days to get it done.  So dutifully, I waited until Monday afternoon to call and inquire of the status.  Whomever it was that took my call, read the status report as updated by the technician servicing my Fujitsu, “Remove and restore data on hard drive… wha, wha, wha…”

“When will that be done?” I queried, hopefully.

“Should be done tomorrow, we’ll call when it’s ready.”

 My patience evaporated on Thursday and I dropped in to Fry’s to check the progress of the victim.  I spoke to a technician previously unknown to me who read from a computer screen, “Backed up hard drive, removed virus.”  He turned his attention to me and said that the next step would be to reinstall the recaptured data and test it. He could not tell me where the responsible technician was at that moment, but assured me the process would take no more than two hours.  The machine should be ready by tomorrow (Friday).

I called Friday.  I called Saturday.  Sunday, I decided to drop in again.  My original technician was there, but he had passed the machine off to another to do the reinstall.  The case notes stated he had begun the reinstall but did not indicate successful conclusion.  He wandered off to find the patient.  He brought it to the counter, the hard drive not installed. “I don’t know what the status is.  I can drop the hard drive in and see if it starts.”

“Please do!”  With bated breath, I waited.  Then, Daffy Duck (my desktop wallpaper) popped into view.  One by one, the icons settled into their regimented positions.  He launched Internet Explorer and, voila, there was connectivity. The angels sang.



 

You’re whispering in my ear

Tell me all things that I wanna hear

‘Cause that’s true

That’s what I like about you

That’s what I like about you

That’s what I like about you 

What was it like to live for a week without the internet?  It was horrendous.  Now those of you who really know me well will not be surprised to read that I consider myself something of a loner.  I have few people I really consider friends.  And being isolated from them (e-mail is my main communications medium) really brought home how important they are.

That’s what I like about you

That’s what I like about you

That’s what I like about you