Reunion, the After Part

(Second of two parts: part one was Reunion, the Before Part.)

It wasn’t bad. The reunion, I mean. Oh, there were a lot of geezers there. At times I felt like I was in a bad movie. “What the hell am I doing here with all these old people?” But all in all, I enjoyed it, I think. I sat at a table with my best high school buddies, and I enjoyed connecting with them again. There was food and drink. There was music. God, was there music. The decibel level equaled a 747 on its takeoff roll. My ears are still ringing. Some guys showed up dressed like Jake Blues and his brother Elwood, and they performed a Blues Brothers act; they sang and danced, and they were not bad at all. There was a roll call of our fallen classmates: 24 out of a class of 116.

There was dancing. The best dancer by far was a slender gal named Elaine. It was fun to watch her dance. She was good and everyone could see she loved to dance. She had moves a teenager would envy. More than once, I almost asked her to dance with me, but really it was just more fun to watch her dance. We talked a little bit and discovered that in school we had lived on the same street. She had lived down the street in the next block. Her house is long gone now, having been converted into a parking lot for a church across the street.

It’s almost midnight. I’ll pour a nightcap and watch some Modern Family, then hit the rack. Sleep well, dear readers.

Reunion, the Before Part

I was planning to mow the grass in my yard on Saturday afternoon. Really, I was. But then something happened.

It all began with my decision to cook a pork roast Friday night. I bought two 2-pound roasts Friday. Friday night I put them into my slow cooker. I poured cider vinegar over them, patted them with salt and pepper, and poured more vinegar over them. I put the lid on the cooker, set it to Low, and went to bed.

When I awoke Saturday morning, the house was filled with the aroma of pork BBQ. Mmmm. I got up and took the roasts out of the cooker and put them on a platter. Using forks, I pulled the meat apart. I reserved two cups of juice from the cooker and discarded the rest. I put the meat back into the cooker. I mixed brown sugar and crushed red pepper flakes into the juice and poured it over the meat, and put the lid on the cooker.

The next step was to make white, Alabama-style BBQ sauce. I needed some vinegar, which I was almost out of, so I thought, “No problem, I’ll drive to the Martins store and get vinegar.” There were several other things I wanted to buy there, anyway.

In Martins, I immediately ran into Homer, a friend I hadn’t seen in three or four years. So naturally, I wanted to chat with him and catch up with what he and his wife, Sara, had been up to. That conversation delayed me for a few crucial minutes, just long enough to prevent me from making a quick escape from the store. If it weren’t for stopping to talk to Homer, I probably wouldn’t have run into Douglas.

But a couple minutes after I left Homer, I was walking down an aisle when who did I see walking toward me – it was Douglas. I hadn’t seen Doug in five or six years. He and his wife, Cynthia, were in town for their high school reunion. Doug and I had been best friends in school; I think we met in the third grade, and we were pals until we graduated high school and went our separate ways. So, of course, that means his high school reunion was also my high school reunion.

I hadn’t planned on going to my high school reunion. I have to confess something here, which may frighten some of my readers. It was my 50th high school reunion. Yes, I admit it, folks; I’m a geezer. I hang my head in shame. I’ve tried to live right and eat the right foods and not smoke (at least, not since I was 38) and what good did it do me because here I am, anyway: a geezer. I’m a young geezer – it’s that age where younger (but still middle-aged) people will be friends until they learn my age, and then they can’t get away fast enough.

I haven’t attended any of my class reunions. Most of the people in my senior class were people that I knew by face only. They were only classmates. We didn’t have any other connection. We didn’t talk to each other. Kids at my high school were kind of cliquish. I didn’t belong to any cliques, nor did I have any desire to pretend to be on some rung of a social ladder. I just lived for the day high school would be over.

Doug and Cynthia asked me to have lunch with them at Panera Bread, which was next to the hotel where they were staying. So I did, and that’s where I ran into another high school friend named Wayne, and his wife Carol. They were in town to attend the reunion. I knew they would browbeat me into going to the reunion, and they did, all of them; they browbeat me and browbeat me, until I said, “What can I say to stop this browbeating?” And it was, “Tell us you’re coming to the reunion.” So here I am, ready to go. The reunion starts in 50 minutes. I have to open my senior class yearbook (yeah, I still have it) and spend a few minutes looking at faces and names. It’s a given that I won’t recognize anyone’s face. I’d feel bad if I didn’t remember their names, either.

But I’ll go and make the best of it. There may be something interesting I can blog about afterward. It will probably involve me dropping a plate of food into my lap or spilling a glass of rum and Coke down the front of my shirt. Oy.

Not So Fast, Summer

It’s a pleasant day in central Virginia. At 3 PM the temperature is 76°F (24.4°C) and the humidity is low: only 34%. I have a front window open and a back door open, and the gentle breeze feels good. I’m feeling expansive, which can only mean, dear readers, that the time has come once again for me to impart some of my fantastic wisdom into your puny brains. No, wait. That isn’t right. I meant to say, it’s time to impart some of my puny wisdom into your vast intellects. Nah. That doesn’t sound right either. Let’s just get on with it.

Today is the last official day of summer for 2014 for the northern hemisphere (last day of winter for the southern hemisphere). In the northern hemisphere, the autumnal equinox will occur today (Monday) at 10:29 PM EDT (Eastern Daylight Time). Alternately, I could say the equinox will occur on Tuesday, September 23, at 02:29 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). Yes, folks, it will be both Monday and Tuesday at the same time – just not in the same place.

What is an equinox, anyway? It is a point in the earth’s orbit around the sun at which every place on the earth experiences equal parts daytime and nighttime. This happens twice for each trip around the sun. It happens in March and again in September. The date and time of the equinox is calculated by astronomers, and in their calculations they assume the earth is a perfect sphere. But it isn’t. It’s slightly bigger at the equator than at the poles. And different places on the earth’s surface are at different elevations above sea level. These factors mean that the autumnal equinox will occur at slightly different times for different places. (If you live exactly on the equator, then you’ll receive exactly 12 hours of daylight every day of the year.)

So, of course, I began to question when the autumnal equinox will occur for my city. For the answer, I went to the U.S. Naval Observatory website. It has a handy calculator for determining time of day for sunrise and sunset almost anywhere on the earth. The calculator produced a calendar for 2014, and a quick review of September showed that the 25th had 12 hours and 2 minutes of daylight in my city (more day than night), while the 26th had 11 hours and 59 minutes of daylight (less day than night). Clearly, the local equinox must occur sometime during one of those days: either the 25th or the 26th.

For you, dear readers, tomorrow may be the first day of fall. For me, tomorrow – and the day after – will belong to summer. I will await them, watermelon martini in hand, refusing to acknowledge the waning of the light.

Playing the Spacedrum

The hang (pronounced “hung”) is a percussion instrument made by PANArt in Bern, Switzerland. The Spacedrum is a brand of handpan made by the French company Metal Sounds. In this video, Yuki Koshimoto plays the Spacedrum. Yuki has a channel on YouTube where you can listen to more of her music.

If you liked listening to the Spacedrum, here’s a longer tune. In this video, the camera follows Hang Massive duo Danny Cudd and Markus Johansson. The music is played on two hanghang (plural of hang). The song is OMAT ODAT (acronym for One Moment At a Time, One Day At a Time) from their CD As It Is.

The Farmer’s Will

My amigo CyberDave sent me this puzzler:

This is what they call HORSE SENSE:
A farmer died leaving his 17 horses to his three sons.
When his sons opened up the Will it read:
My eldest son should get 1/2 (half) of total horses;
My middle son should be given 1/3rd (one-third) of the total horses;
My youngest son should be given 1/9th (one-ninth) of the total horses.
As it's impossible to divide 17 into half or 17 by 3 or 17 by 9,
the three sons started to fight with each other.
So, they decided to go to a farmer friend who they considered quite smart,
to see if he could work it out for them.
The farmer friend read the Will patiently, after giving due thought,
he brought one of his own horses over and added it to the 17.
That increased the total to 18 horses.
Now, he divided the horses according to their fathers Will.
Half of 18 = 9. So he gave the eldest son 9 horses.
1/3rd of 18 = 6. So he gave the middle son 6 horses.
1/9th of 18 = 2. So he gave the youngest son 2 horses.
Now add up how many horses they have:
Eldest son  9
Middle son  6
Youngest son  2
TOTAL IS 17
Now this leaves one horse over, so the farmer friend takes his horse back to his farm.
Problem Solved!

I’m sure the intended reaction is “Huh?” But it’s pretty easy to explain this puzzler.

There are two problems with the Will. First, this distribution leads to fractional horses. And second, the fractions (1/2, 1/3, 1/9) do not add up to One. Even if you could do the division, there would be left-over horse.

Let’s restate the fractions using their lowest common denominator (54). According to the Will, the oldest son receives 27/54 (half) of the horses; the middle son receives 18/54 (a third) of the horses; the youngest son receives 6/54 (a ninth) of the horses. These add up to 51/54, leaving 3/54 of the horses not going to anyone. How much is 3/54 of 17 horses? It is 0.944444444 - in other words, just about one horse.

Let’s compare what the sons “should” have received from the Will versus what they actually did receive.

	Should have received	Actually received
Oldest	8.5	9
Middle	5.66666666666 …	6
Youngest	1.88888888888 …	2
Total	16.0555555555 …	17

The part about the other farmer bringing his horse over and then taking it back is just a smokescreen. It covers up the fact that all the numbers have to be rounded up to get to 17.

If you still don’t see the trickery, let’s suppose we aren’t distributing 17 horses but rather 17 dollars.

Then, the oldest son gets $8.50, the middle son gets $5.67, and the youngest gets $1.89, and everyone is happy. Of course, these amounts add up to $16.06 and not $17, but the Will doesn’t say the sons are to receive 17 of anything. The Will says only that each son will receive a certain fraction of 17. The additional (and unstated in the Will) constraint that we impose on the distribution is that the amounts have to be whole numbers because we don’t want to chop up a horse. By choosing to round the numbers up, the sons altogether receive almost one more horse than they were left by the Will. As we’re talking about horses, that rounding up seems logical (and humane).

Laniakea

If you read the news, and I’m sure you do, you doubtless have read about Laniakea. But in case you missed that particular news item, let me briefly recap. Laniakea is a Hawaiian word that is roughly translated as “spacious heaven,” and it is the new name for the local supercluster.

Now you may ask, what is the local supercluster? Or for that matter, what is a supercluster, local or otherwise?

My explanation starts with the sun. Our sun is a member of the Milky Way Galaxy, along with about 100 to 400 billion other suns. (We call them stars, of course, and our sun is a star.) The sun travels through space, but it doesn’t travel alone. We have all the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy traveling with us.

Just as stars form groups called galaxies, galaxies form groups, too. Our Milky Way is a member of a group of galaxies we call the Local Group, which includes all the galaxies within 5 million light years of the Milky Way. In addition to the Milky Way and its satellite galaxies (yes, there are small galaxies that orbit the Milky Way), the Local Group includes the Andromeda Galaxy and its satellite galaxies, the Triangulum Galaxy, and dozens of other galaxies. The Local Group contains more than 54 galaxies. The exact number of galaxies is not certain, as from time to time a new one is found.

The Local Group is part of a larger collection of galaxies called the Virgo Cluster, which contains at least 1300 galaxies and possibly as many as 2000 galaxies. As large as it is, the Virgo Cluster is only one galaxy cluster in a much larger group called the Virgo Supercluster. The Virgo Supercluster is, or was, our local supercluster and was thought to be 110 million light years in diameter.

Now a team of astronomers have published a new way of defining galaxies and they tell us that the Milky Way Galaxy is a part of a new supercluster called the Laniakea Supercluster. They tell us that Laniakea is about 520 million light years in diameter. (Furthermore, Laniakea seems to be gravitationally bound to an even larger assembly of galaxies called the Shapley Concentration, but that’s another story.)

These are awfully big distances and therefore difficult to grasp. To put all this vast scale into a more understandable perspective, I want to shrink the Milky Way Galaxy down to the size of our sun. To do the calculations I am going to use scientific notation. Scientific notation is a way of expressing numbers by using powers of 10. For instance, 100 is written 1.0e+2, 1000 is written 1.0e+3, 5,000,000 is written 5.0e+6. Fractions have a negative exponent: 0.01 is written 1.0e-2, 0.001 is written 1.0e-3, 0.000005 is written 5.0e-6. And so on.

The Milky Way’s diameter is estimated to be 100,000 to 120,000 LY (light years). Let us choose to use the average which is 110,000 LY or 1.1e+5 LY. Using the metric system, the Milky Way’s diameter in meters is 1.1e+5 LY x 9.46e+15 meters/LY = 1.04e+21 meters. (If we weren’t using scientific notation we would have to write down the distance using this number: 1,040,000,000,000,000,000,000 and you can see how awkward that becomes.)

Our sun has a diameter of 1,391,684 kilometers (1.392e+9 meters). Therefore the ratio of the sun's diameter to the Milky Way's diameter is (1.392e+9)/(1.04e+21) = 1.338e-12. Just by looking at that number we know that the sun’s diameter is about a millionth of a millionth (a trillionth) of the diameter of its parent galaxy. If Laniakea were shrunk so that the Milky Way Galaxy was the size of our sun, the sun would be shrunk by the same factor, so we can calculate its new diameter:

Sun’s new diameter = 1.392e+9 meters x 1.338e-12 = 1.86e-3 meters = 1.86 millimeters

A US dime is 1.35 millimeters thick. If the Milky Way Galaxy was the size of our sun, our sun would then have a diameter slightly more than the thickness of a dime. We can perform a similar calculation on our home planet, which has an average diameter of 12,742 km – slightly more at the equator, slightly less at the poles.

Earth’s new diameter =  1.2742e+7 x 1.338e-12 = 1.705e-5 meters = 17 microns

The diameter of a strand of human hair can range from from 17 to 181 microns. So Earth’s new diameter would be the same as the finest (meaning thinnest) human hair.

I’ve already stated that the Laniakea Supercluster has a diameter of about 520 million light years. If it were shrunk so that our Milky Way Galaxy was the size of our sun, how big would Laniakea then be? First, let’s convert its length from light years to meters.

Laniakea’s diameter = 5.2e+8 LY x 9.46e+15 meters/LY = 4.9192e+24 meters

Laniakea’s new diameter =4.9192e+24 x 1.338e-12 = 6.5818896e+12 meters

How big is this? How can we visualize it? The planet Saturn is 9.537 times as far from the sun as is planet Earth, which amounts to 1.427e+12 meters. The diameter of its orbit around the sun would be twice that, or 2.854e+12 meters. The diameter of the newly shrunken Laniakea Supercluster would be more than twice the current (non-shrunken) diameter of Saturn’s orbit around the sun.

So here’s the summation:

If we shrink space so that Laniakea has a diameter twice as large as Saturn’s orbit about the sun, then our Milky Way galaxy will have the diameter of the sun, the sun’s diameter will be about the thickness of a dime, and the Earth’s diameter will equal the thinnest human hair. And if you are a human who is 6 feet (1.83 meters) tall, how tall would you be in our shrunken supercluster? You’d be 2.45e-12 meters tall. What else is that small? Not much. In fact, it would take a thousand of you, lined up head to toe, to equal the length of the smallest virus humans have studied. Our local supercluster is a pretty big thing, compared to us humans, compared to our home planet, compared to our home star, and even compared to our home galaxy. And the part of the Universe we can observe holds at least a million superclusters.

Naked Photos

I read today that a lot of celebrity nude photos have been stolen from Apple’s iCloud service and then uploaded to a website, somewhere. These include photos of Rihanna, Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, and Hope Solo. Jackpot!

No, no, no! What I meant to say was, “For shame!” To steal someone’s private, naked photos and make them public; how low can you go? I have just two things to say about this situation: one, it’s a disgrace, and two, exactly where can these photos be found?

It makes me wonder, just how safe are my own naked photos? Should I worry about shadowy people on the Internet downloading naked photos of moi?  Even now, sweaty people I don’t even know might be gleefully ogling my naked body.

Just kidding! There are no naked pictures of VirtualWayne on the Internet or anywhere else. If there were, and if people downloaded them and saw them, they would immediately want to claw their eyeballs out in an attempt to un-see them. But it would be in vain. There are some images you just can’t get out of your head. Like that bad automobile accident I saw on the way to the beach, or that cattle car derailment my parents dragged me to when I was six just so they could take pictures, a naked VirtualWayne photograph is one of those things that – well, let’s just say it ain’t pretty and leave it there.

Now please excuse me; I have to go and see how many people have downloaded my latest sex tape. You know – the one I made with what’s-her-name – the actress who was in that movie that was so popular. What was its name? Oh yeah, “Naked Porn.”

I’m kidding! I have no sex tapes. But I do predict this blog post will get a lot of views. After all, it uses the word “naked” eleven times including in the title, plus the words “sex tape” and “porn.” That’s got to get it ranked pretty high by all the search engines. Think of the number of people on the Internet searching for naked photos right now, and think how many of them are going to end up here at my blog! And now think of the disappointment! It’s going to be massive. Serves ‘em right for looking for naked photos to begin with. To all of them I say, “Made you look!”