Random Thoughts, the Twelfth

Posted on | January 27, 2012 | 1 Comment

• We are now three weeks into 2012 and, at this time last year, New England had already received dozens of inches of snow and pretty much a blizzard a week. My, how the times have changed. Despite a freak Halloween weekend storm and a few smaller storms last week, Boston is experiencing a shocking dearth of snowbanks. It’s still pretty cold, but we are quite precipitation-less. But I’m not complaining. Oh no! I quite enjoy not having to dig my car out every morning. Of course, now that I’ve just put all of this in writing, I’m going to have to knock on every wood surface I can find, say a few prayers and generally hope with all my heart that I didn’t just jinx myself.
• If you are not watching the second season of Downton Abbey on PBS on Sunday nights, you are seriously missing out. Part period piece, part soap opera, part war drama, part star-crossed romance, this is one of the best Masterpiece originals I’ve seen – and trust me when I say I’ve seen nearly all of them. I suppose that British television series aren’t for everyone, and that World War I period dramas aren’t for everyone either, but I say bollocks to that! Start watching Downton Abbey. You will thank me later. (You’re welcome.)
• I’ve documented my abiding love for awards shows here before, but even I was surprised by how bored I was with this year’s Golden Globes. I wanted to enjoy it more than I did, but the Hollywood magic just wasn’t there. Ricky Gervais should have been funnier (he’s definitely capable of it when the Hollywood Foreign Press isn’t telling him to play nice and cut all the mean jokes), and I couldn’t make myself care about who won in most categories. Still, I loved the Meryl Streep swore on national, live television and I have decided that Steve Levitan, creator and writer of Modern Family is now giving Tina Fey some competition at being the best of giving awards show speeches.
• I feel like I need to temper everything with a caveat these days, but so far, I’m loving my new job. After six months of unemployment, it’s so nice to have other intelligent people to talk to every day and I especially love working in an office with more than one person. I could do without the early wake-up call and the general annoyances that come with taking the T (that’s Boston’s subway to the uninformed among you), but on the whole, I’m quite happy. And the fact that a new job meant having to buy new clothes? Well, that’s just a bonus.
• Of course, with the new job territory comes new temptations. My office is right in downtown Boston and is therefore surrounded by restaurants of all varieties (some fancy sit-downs, some quick sandwich shops) and no less than three different Starbucks on the way from the T to the office. I’d say that 95% of the time, I’m a good girl. I bring my lunch from home and I do my best to avoid whatever goodies have been left by the printer and fax machine (last week, it was Munchkins!). But there’s still that 5% (usually on Fridays, when I figure, it’s the end of the week, so why not) when I just give in. And I’m okay with that.
• I went for my regularly scheduled hair cut and color this past weekend and thank god! I think I’m partly paranoid, given the rapidly approaching date of my 30th birthday, but I swear I’ve noticed more gray hairs than usual. And of course you can’t pluck or cut them or they’ll just grow back even more intently. I’ve been dying my hair for so long that I don’t remember my original color, so it’s not like a few gray hairs are going to stop me, but it’s the principal of the thing. I’m far too young to be worrying about gray hair. Even if I do feel old.
• I have two new blogs I want to point out to you. The first belongs to my friend, who’s currently dealing with unemployment just like I was a month or so ago. He’s a funny guy with really sharp insights about life, work and the stupid people we encounter in both. I have no idea if he’s going to be updating a lot, but it’s worth a look. The second blog is written by my cousin, who is currently in Nairobi, Kenya for a college semester abroad. She’s writing these great detailed posts about her experiences and it’s a fascinating look at modern African life through the eyes of a student. Please show her some Internet love.
• Since the New England Patriots thoroughly trounced and defeated the Denever Broncos a few weeks ago in a playoff game, can we PLEASE stop hearing all this nonsense about Tim Tebow now? I’d like to squash the urge to throw things at people’s heads every time I hear another story about him. I promise – he’s really not that interesting.
• In other football news, I’m a bad New Englander because there was a part of me that really hoped the Patriots would lose their game against the Ravens last weekend so football season would be over. Instead, I now have to pay attention to the Super Bowl. *dramatic sigh* (For the record, the Patriots better not screw up this Super Bowl like they did the last time they faced the Giants in the SB. I want them to win. I just don’t want to have to watch the game too.)

Wordless Wednesday (55)

Posted on | January 25, 2012 | 1 Comment

The Truth is Out There

Posted on | January 23, 2012 | 1 Comment

I think it’s pretty obvious by now that I’m a pretty big geek and that much of my geek-dom centers on science-fiction. I love the Star Wars movies more than I love some of my family members, I can make the “live long and prosper” sign with both hands, I have a star-covered teddy bear named Mr. Sagan from New York City’s Hayden Planetarium, and I know what you mean if or when you use “frak” as a swear word. Oh, and I totally believe in aliens.

The origins of my belief in extra-terrestrial life are two-fold: first, I saw the novel Contact by Carl Sagan and subsequently saw the movie starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey (the movie’s good; the book is better); and second, I saw a planetarium show narrated by Tom Hanks in New York City.*

The planetarium show was called “Passport to the Universe” and, among other things, it emphasized just how microscopically tiny Earth (and therefore all of human existence) is when compared to the rest of the known – and unknown – universe:

“During the last four hundred years, in a series of astonishing discoveries, we filled out our Cosmic Address. We learned that, far from being the center of the universe, the Earth is actually but one of the planets, moving in orbit around the Sun. Our Sun in turn is just an ordinary star. It is one of over a hundred billion stars in our Milky Way Galaxy. And our Milky Way Galaxy is one of several thousand galaxies in the Virgo Supercluster. Finally, this vast supercluster of galaxies is but a tiny part of the Observable Universe.”

Meanwhile, in Contact, one of the tag lines for the film and one of the more memorable quotes was the line: “If it’s just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.” Both the planetarium show and the tag line have stuck with me for years and from the two, I can only come to one conclusion: if it really is just humans on Earth, then it probably would be an awful waste of space (pun totally intended).

As long as humans have been building and constructing civilizations, we’ve been fascinated by the unknown. Astronomy is one of the oldest sciences and dates back to the earliest civilizations and the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Chinese and the Mayans all studied the stars and tried to imagine what they were, what they meant and how we fit in. And not long after we discovered the stars, someone started to think about the possibility that life could exist elsewhere in the universe, even if we don’t exactly understand how, where or why.

In the 15th century, Nicolaus Copernicus became the first person to propose a heliocentric cosmology, which stated the Sun was the center of our universe, not the Earth. Centuries later, this Copernican principle has been expanded and generalized to mean that the Earth – and by default, humans – are not central in the universe and don’t have a favored position. The implications, of course, are that we – Earth-bound humans – are insignificant in relation to the known universe and to assume that we are the only forms of life, let alone the only forms of intelligent life, well, that’s rather arrogant, isn’t it?

Of course, the prospect of alien life or even of intelligent alien life is kind of scary. We have no way of knowing whether these extraterrestrials would friendly, hostile or merely indifferent, though Hollywood has certainly let its collective imagination run wild for years. (I vote for merely indifferent, especially if the aliens are intelligent. Surely they would be smart enough to see we’re doing a fine job of fighting and killing amongst ourselves.) Still, even if the aliens do turn out to be hostile, I like the idea that there may be other forms of life out there in the great cosmos. Somehow, it makes me feel that, as random as evolution is, it all still happened for a reason.

* Interestingly enough, the “Passport to the Universe” script was penned, in part, by Ann Drugan, who was the wife of Carl Sagan. Coincidence? Perhaps, but then there are few things in this universe that are truly coincidental.