Excogitation

Excogitate; big word, right?  It means to take something and study it intently, carefully to try and grasp or comprehend something fully, to think something out.  I do that a lot.  I’ve spent a lot more time doing it recently, because, well, I seem to have more time on my hands for pondering things.

When I was in Astronomy 101 class in 1982 at the University of New Mexico, I did a lot of excogitation.  One day, out of the blue, Professor Zeilik makes the statement that when you look at the night sky you’re looking at a time machine.  Because of the time it takes for light to travel to earth, what you are in effect seeing is the sky the way it looked millions of years ago.  In fact, he stated, “it’s possible that many of the stars you see are no longer there.”

Now that got me to pondering.  When I look up at the stars, I’m looking at something that is millions of years old, seeing it today, it kind of overwhelms the mind.  You are looking at the past, clearly and without a doubt.  I haven’t looked at the night sky the same since.

Light travels at the speed of 186,000 miles per second.  If you could travel at the speed of light, you could circumnavigate the globe at the equator 7.5 times every second.  The space shuttle, in comparison, had to maintain a speed of about 17,500 miles per hour to stay in earth orbit.  At that speed, you would circumnavigate the planet at an average altitude of 333.25 kilometers once every hour, 31 minutes and 12 seconds.  The shuttle astronauts saw around 16 sunrises per day.

Take something easy to comprehend, like the sun.  The sun is the closest star to us and it takes 8.3 minutes for the light from the sun to reach the earth.  So when you look at the sun, and you’re not supposed to do that, you are seeing the sun 8.3 minutes in the past.  Now if you think about the nearest star after that, it is Proxima Centauri which is 4.3 light years away.  So 4.3 x 186,000 = 799,800 miles distant.  The light reaches earth in 4.3 years.  So when you are looking at Proxima Centauri that is how it appeared 4.3 years ago.  Boggles the mind.  Not sure exactly where you would look to see that star, I only took Astronomy for one semester, but I’m sure it can be figured out.

So if we could travel at the speed of light around the planet could we know what the score of, say, the Redskins and Cowboys game was, travel around the planet in .075 seconds and make a bet before the game begins?  The Super Bowl is played on a Sunday afternoon in February, but in Australia the game is on Monday morning.  Why can’t I know what the final score is on Sunday afternoon, travel to Australia at the speed of light and place a huge bet on the outcome on Monday morning?  Notice how this got around to gambling. 

Jules Verne version of a time machine.

Obviously the problem is I can see into the past, but I can’t see into the future. The Super Bowl on Sunday afternoon and on Monday morning is being played at the same time.  I need a time machine.  Something, however fast it goes, but faster than the speed of light probably, that will get me into the future so I know the outcome of the game, and then can travel back in time, before the game begins and make that all important bet.

This all came up in “Back to the Future II.” Biff picks up a copy of “Gray’s Sports Almanac” that Doc had thrown in the trash.  He steals the De Lorean, now knowing that it is a time machine, and goes back to November 12, 1955 to give the almanac to his younger self.  A series of complications with the time paradox, and the younger Biff uses the book to make bets because he now knows the outcome of sporting events, and wins big at the track on his 21^st birthday.  He then goes on a winning streak and becomes not only newsworthy as the luckiest man alive, but also as America’s richest and most powerful man.

So now you can see where I got the idea.   Doesn’t work out for Biff in the end though.  He ends up dead.

At this point I’m starting to excogitate about my selfish and limited use of a time machine.  If you had access to a time machine, shouldn’t you go back in time and stop Booth from shooting Lincoln, or thwart the Lindbergh kidnapper, alert the authorities about Marilyn’s overdose before it happens, surprise Oswald on the sixth floor of the book depository just as he’s taking aim, warn NASA about the O-ring failure before they launch Challenger, and warn the airlines about a terrorist plot to use Boeing 767s as bombs to reduce the World Trade Center to rubble?

What little I know about time travel, (it wasn’t covered in Astronomy 101), it seems there are numerous theories about your inability to change history should you be able to travel back in time.  There has been a lot of excogitating on the subject.  It appears in most cases to be impossible.  The “Novikov self-consistency principle” states that if you travel back in time, anything you do in the past must be part of history all along.  The “Grandfather Paradox” where you go back in time to kill your grandfather, would prevent you from returning because you would no longer exist since you have eliminated one of your parents.  Of course, providing you kill your grandfather before your father or mother is born.  The Novikov principle would make this impossible because you wouldn’t be able to kill your grandfather.  The gun would jam, or you would be unable to go through with it.

And what about time traveling into the future?  Forget about it.  I don’t want to know what the future holds because I might not like it.  Then I would have to travel back to the present and deal with what I know is going to happen.  Although there are probably just as many theories about how I can change the outcome by taking some action now, there are just as many that will argue that it doesn’t matter what I do, the future will be the same.

All I want to do is know the final score of the Super Bowl before it’s played so I can place a huge bet.  No, that won’t be enough.  I need a future copy of Gray’s Sports Almanac so I can use it to win lots of money and become the luckiest man in America and rich beyond my wildest dreams.  WTF.  I think that makes the whole thing unexcogitable.

 

My Dog Has My Back

My dog, Domino, watches my back….when I’m peeing.  Well, you know, you’re in a pretty vulnerable position while you’re emptying your bladder, and my dog has figured out that this is a time where his protection might be required.

I’m not sure when he started doing this, but anytime I have to go, he follows me into the bathroom, and as I assume the position over the bowl, legs slightly spread, he sits down between my legs, back to the toilet, and watches for trouble.  Trouble that I wouldn’t be able to see because I’m totally committed to making sure every drop makes it into the commode.  I’m married; don’t have a maid, so completing that task successfully is not tossed around lightly.  Poor aim is attacked as severely as leaving up the seat.

I was a little uneasy the first time he did it, wondering what he was doing down there sitting between my legs, but it seemed he had a purpose so I let him do it.  Then I got to thinking over time that was a pretty handy thing for him to do, because it’s hard to look over your shoulder, if, for example, you hear something behind you, while still managing to hit the target.  I mean someone could sneak up behind you with a knife while you’re busy, but Domino is there to make sure that doesn’t happen.

I don’t have any physical evidence of this dog behavior, you’re just going to have to take my word for it, because I haven’t figured out a way to take a selfie over my shoulder, and I’m not letting anyone in to photograph the guy peeing with the guard dog between his legs.  I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t sit still for the photo op.

I feel pretty safe though.  Domino is a Boston Terrier.  It is the only true American dog breed.  They were originally bred in Boston, Massachusetts, hence the name, and were a cross between an English Bulldog, known as “Hooper’s Judge” and a white English Terrier.  I don’t know the name of the English Terrier, maybe there were several, but almost all true Boston Terriers can trace their ancestry back to “Hooper’s Judge.”  That was back in 1870, and the breed became known as Boston Terriers in 1891.  Boston Terriers were recognized by the American Kennel Club as a companion dog in 1893.

Although the large jowls on the Boston would make them a good candidate for a fighting dog, it turned out they were too docile for brawling.  They are a very intelligent dog, have a gentle personality, and are said to be perfect apartment dwellers.  Bostons require minimal exercise, and they are easily trained.  They are short-haired and only come in three colors: black, brindle or seal with white markings.  In Domino’s case, he had a perfect black spot on the top of his head when he was a pup, and it’s how he got his name.  It’s more of an oval now, but it is still a single dot on his head.

In case you’re wondering what brindle is, these Boston Terriers are gray or tawny with darker streaks or spots.  Domino is a little brindled.  He has brownish streaks through his black coat.  It makes him look like he’s been playing out in the mud, but Boston Terriers don’t need a lot of grooming.  Domino gets a bath once every few months, and it’s not his favorite time.  The brindle doesn’t wash out.

Domino sits in a chair like he’s human.   I know other dogs do that, but he looks like he’s watching the game on TV, and he is.  Any other time he’s asleep between my legs on the recliner chair.

In recent years, he’s started staring at me.  He’ll sit at my feet and stare intently at me.  Most dogs don’t hold your gaze, but he’ll do it for hours.  He wants something, and if he could talk it would be easy to determine what it is exactly that he wants.  I think he’s trying to use dog telepathy, but I’m not advanced enough to get it.   Instead I have to let him continue staring or go down a list of things he might possibly want.  I always start with “Do you need to go out?”

If his ears perk up, and he has some pretty large ears, then I’ll get up and walk towards the back door.  If he doesn’t stretch and then follow, then that wasn’t it. 

“Do you need food?”  Again watching for the perk in the ears before getting out of the comfortable chair and heading off to the kitchen location for the dog dishes.  “You need water?”

Sometimes he just wants me to put up the recliner because I’m sitting up in the chair.  He’ll sit there and stare and stare, until I finally recline the chair so he can jump up there and relax.

Sometimes we don’t have the heat up high enough for him.

As I’ve mentioned before, he hates people coming to the door.  He hates my landlord the most.  The ferocious sound that comes out of him when Andy comes up to the door once a month to collect his rent scares me.  If there wasn’t a glass door between Andy and the attacking dog I’m sure it wouldn’t go well.  He scares Andy too, because he always stands off to the side and away from the glass.  Domino will be jumping four feet off the ground, banging against the glass, and growling and barking menacingly.  I don’t need to know what the date is, to know that the person standing off to the side of the door, out of sight, is the landlord.  I have to pick him up before Andy even begins to come towards the door.

Domino is forced to wear Santa Claus outfits during the Christmas holidays.  We don’t force him to dress up for Halloween, but he has been known to sport a jack-o-lantern sweater.  In fact, he’s sported a lot of different sweaters, camouflage, turtle neck and hoodie.

He always has to be with you.  Close.  He’ll follow you from room to room, watching closely for any danger; landlords, or window salesmen, or religious freaks, or knife-toting assassins.  That’s another tendency of the breed.  They generally don’t run off, but choose to stay by their masters.  Domino would run off, guaranteed.

Although I hardly consider myself his master (I think it’s the other way around.), he’s curled up right now under my feet, below the desk, pressed up against the computer terminal.  It’s thundering outside right now, and he doesn’t like that much.  He thinks running back and forth, barking, from the front door to the back door will have some effect.   He spent most of the month of July doing that in response to fireworks being deployed in the neighborhood too.  But right now he’s asleep, content to let someone else deal with the noise.  He’s off duty I guess.  

This is how he looks out the window to check on the neighborhood.

You know, I feel sorry for people who have never been loved by a dog.

Mozart Was a Drunk

Did you know that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a procrastinator and a drunk?  Me neither.  I read that somewhere recently.  Not exactly those words, but what I read indicated that Mozart wrote “Don Giovanni,” a two act opera, the same day it was performed for the first time, while suffering from a massive hangover.  Well, I found it a little hard to believe, so I did a little fact-finding.

That particular story, about writing it the same day it premiered, is everywhere.  Some information claims that he was being nagged by his wife to finish it in time for the premiere that evening while he suffered from that hangover.  But the facts don’t really corroborate that

It does appear that there is some conflict about when the opera was actually finished, either the day before, October 28, 1787, or on the day it was performed in Prague at the Teatro di Praga, October 29, 1787.  Maybe Wolfgang was putting some finishing touches on the piece the day of the performance, but he penned the completion of the opera on October 28, 1787.  That doesn’t mean he wrote it that day either, it means he finished it that day.  He could have worked on it for months.  And when the hell did the orchestra get a chance to practice it?  I don’t care how good an orchestra is, they’re not going to do the piece flawless the first time the music is put in front of them.

He was supposed to have it finished on October 15, 1787, but it wasn’t ready, and I can’t find a specific date that it was commissioned; sometime after February of 1787 it seems.  So he could have had as much as 8 months to write it.  Listen to it sometime, (yes it’s on YouTube), and you will absolutely understand that there is no way he wrote that opera in a few hours and had it performance ready that evening.  My theory is that he finished it on the 27^th, did a bit of celebrating, overdid it in fact, and then dated it completed the following day while suffering that alleged hangover.  But the orchestra was practicing parts of it long before that.

By the way, the full title is “Il Dissoluto Punito ossia Il Don Giovanni – Dramma Giocoso in due atti.”   That last part means “in two acts.”  It’s about the life of one, fictional, Don Juan.  Who cares, right?  You couldn’t force me to go to an opera anyway, especially if I found out the guy only put a few hours of effort into it.

I once heard Lionel Richie say, in an interview, that he wrote songs in the shower.  A song would just pop into his head and he’d have “All Night Long (All Night)” finished by the time he dried off.  Somehow hearing that irritated me.  Admitting that I watched an interview with Lionel Ritchie irritates me too.  People shouldn’t be able to write songs in the shower.  Songs that end up number one on the billboard charts shouldn’t be that easy.  Michael Jackson once said the music was always in his head too.

Jana Kramer

I heard this story from Jana Kramer while listening to the radio the other day.  She claims to have bumped into an old boyfriend on the way to the recording studio and he was wearing this old T-shirt that she used to wear.  When she got to the studio, her and another band member sat down and put together the song in an hour or so.   “Why ya Wanna.”  Well, it’s a good story, and a good song, but she’s not credited to have written it.  The song was written by Ashley Gorley, Catt Gravitt and Chris DeStefano.  They probably have their own story about how the song came about.  Probably just rattling around in one of their heads.

 I’ve heard a lot of artists say they can write a song in a few minutes, and even record them the same day.  Kenny Chesney could sit in an old blue chair and write a top 10 song about it and a whole album of other songs while he sat there.   The second big hit of his career, “The Tin Man,” he claims to have written after watching the “Wizard of Oz” in 1991.  Supposedly he had just broken up with a girl that had moved back to Florida.  He says they didn’t actually break up, she just moved.  He watched the Tin Man go through the whole movie wanting a heart, and then in the end he realizes, when Dorothy goes home, that there’s a downside to having one.  Kenny said, “That just hit me deep.”  That’s what the song is about.  Of course, the melody was probably just in his head.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, except that people that can write songs with little or no effort seems a little iniquitous.  Shouldn’t we all be able to do it?  I know I have music in my head all the time.  Those nasty ear-worms; a song that gets stuck in your head and plays over and over.  The only way to get rid of it is to start playing another song in your head.  The reason they get stuck is because you don’t know all the words.  At least that’s what they say.  So logically, if you pull up the lyrics to the song that is stuck in your head, and you sing it through (not necessarily recommending that you do this out loud) you should be able to stop the ear-worm.    I think I’m going to try that now because “All Night Long” can’t be allowed to continue.  What the hell does “Karamu, fiesta, forever” mean?