Wednesday, November 5, 2008

The One-Sided Mirror Ceiling


Coffee just isn't doing the trick this morning. I sprang out of bed with only 4 hours of sleep, and indulged in a few minutes of news surfing just to assure myself it wasn't all a dream. Now, I'm peacefully tired for the first time in a long time. There are countless articles and reactions about Obama's big win, and I don't wish to echo those reports, but record my sentiments for my kids before they fade from my notoriously weak episodic memory.

I guess even though I sucked it up to knock on doors for the man and stood in line for hours just to get a glimpse of him in person, I was nearly convinced that democracy in America was a joke. That "they" were going to purge , rig, and preach John McCain into the white house, no matter what. That is the difference between today and yesterday for me. There is no "they", there never was, but my generation was somehow lulled into that notion after a lifetime of political doldrum and exclusivity. People like to talk about shattering glass ceilings, but surprisingly the "highest and hardest" had nothing to do with gender or race. It was that misconception that WE couldn't make a difference, that WE weren't really a part of the process, that WE weren't the ones running the show. The glass in this ceiling was a one sided mirror. We didn't have a clue what the view from the roof would be. There's still some time to take it all in, but I think we're pretty anxious to get to work installing solar panels while we're up here.

Image courtesy of Hopeful in NJ on Flickr

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Thursday, October 9, 2008

Palling Around with Scientists!

During the 2nd presidential debate, John McCain slammed Obama for earmarking $3M for an "overhead projector". Maybe teachers flipping around transparencies and the smell of dry erase markers came to mind for you.




The Adler Planetarium in Chicago is what he was referring to. From their website, adlerplanetarium.org:

"The Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum has taken the lead among planetariums world-wide in establishing an astronomy and astrophysics research group in a museum setting. Adler Planetarium astronomers possess rich and diverse expertise in many areas of astronomy as well as other closely related science fields such as particle physics and geophysics. Several members of the Adler Astronomy Department also hold joint appointments at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University."
If you call that pork, then break out the BBQ sauce, because I do not want to pass on a world to my kids where institutions like this have withered away due to underfunding and science classrooms have posters of humans walking alongside dinosaurs.


For serious. Copernicus must be orbiting in a heliocentric system in his grave.


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