why blackholes give me hope...

The single most hopeful thought I have had in the last four years, and you have to remember that I gave birth to a child less than four years ago, so I rate this thought even above that, on the scale of giving me hope, is - 'you can dump garbage in to a blackhole and actually get energy out of it.' I do not know the mechanics of how it works but boy, I remember reading this, walking in to my class and saying 'People there is hope.! We just might survive idiots.'

You see it wakes me up at night, the amount of garbage we produce,t eh number of landfills we have, I live in a city that has filled up all its landfills, we, put our garbage in a truck and drive it five-six hours to dump into another town, we pay a huge amount of money to this other town. And now people in that other town are waking up to the environmental hazard this is and saying, no matter what you pay us, we don't want your garbage. When the contract finally expires what are we going to do? (yes, I know I can worry about this all I want, but no one at the city council cares what I think, and I refuse totell them, coz I am not yet, one of those people who writes letters to all and sundry solving the world's problems. nope. I write a blog. )

And people, whoa they take my breath away, I know a lot of them, who still refuse to recycle, they will not reduce their consumption, and reuse? what is that?

You could cry yourself hoarse and it would not matter to them. People, they just don't listen, we need to figure out how to survive idiots and black holes, yes sir they are the solution. There that is why they give me so much hope.

I hope my daughter never takes offense to this, but darling, it gives me hope that your generation might figure something out and survive the mess mine has created.

Tom Lehrer's Elements song

Here is a You tube link to Tom Lehrer's elements song. I love it and the thing is my kids do too. Even the ones who sit in a corner looking all wise, bored, and I could not care less about your chemistry miss seem to actually wake up and go can we hear that again.

While the academic purposes served by the song may be debatable it does have a huge fun quotient.

Besides, i just need an excuse to hear it again :)


And here are the lyrics for those of you who would like to sing along:

There’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium
And gold, protactinium and indium and gallium
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.

There’s yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium
And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium and barium.

There’s holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium
And phosphorous and francium and fluorine and terbium
And manganese and mercury, molybdinum, magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium
And lead, praseodymium, and platinum, plutonium,
Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium,
Tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium,
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.

There’s sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium
And also mendelevium, einsteinium and nobelium
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper,
Tungsten, tin and sodium.

These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,
And there may be many others but they haven’t been discovered.

Schulman's history of the universe

So here is Eric Schulman's famous "The History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less" , instructive isn't it?

Quantum fluctuation. Inflation. Expansion. Strong nuclear interaction. Particle-antiparticle annihilation. Deuterium and helium production. Density perturbations. Recombination. Blackbody radiation. Local contraction. Cluster formation. Reionization? Violent relaxation. Virialization. Biased galaxy formation? Turbulent fragmentation. Contraction. Ionization. Compression. Opaque hydrogen. Massive star formation. Deuterium ignition. Hydrogen fusion. Hydrogen depletion. Core contraction. Envelope expansion. Helium fusion. Carbon, oxygen, and silicon fusion. Iron production. Implosion. Supernova explosion. Metals injection. Star formation. Supernova explosions. Star formation. Condensation. Planetesimal accretion. Planetary differentiation. Crust solidification. Volatile gas expulsion. Water condensation. Water dissociation. Ozone production. Ultraviolet absorption. Photosynthetic unicellular organisms. Oxidation. Mutation. Natural selection and evolution. Respiration. Cell differentiation. Sexual reproduction. Fossilization. Land exploration. Dinosaur extinction. Mammal expansion. Glaciation. Homo sapiens manifestation. Animal domestication. Food surplus production. Civilization! Innovation. Exploration. Religion. Warring nations. Empire creation and destruction. Exploration. Colonization. Taxation without representation. Revolution. Constitution. Election. Expansion. Industrialization. Rebellion. Emancipation Proclamation. Invention. Mass production. Urbanization. Immigration. World conflagration. League of Nations. Suffrage extension. Depression. World conflagration. Fission explosions. United Nations. Space exploration. Assassinations. Lunar excursions. Resignation. Computerization. World Trade Organization. Terrorism. Internet expansion. Reunification. Dissolution. World-Wide Web creation. Composition. Extrapolation?


too many "tions" in there for my liking, but, i guess that's a limitation of the English language. I hear it has been translated in to many other languages, if anyone has a link to the Hindi version, tell me please. Shall be eternally grateful.