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summer sizzle my nizzle

sorry for dropping the blog for half a year, but i guess i didn't have much to say. da bush must have gotten that backwards. for the most part, i've been chugging along with this solar job, and trying to keep things light enough as the summer onslaught of calls continues. check out this billboard, and how it's being powered:


now that's what i'm talkin about. at least in california, solar has clearly gone mainstream. fossil fuels will inevitably become fossilized in our memory, and then we can have all our billboards lit by solar. the future looks bright.

in these busy days, julia and i have still managed to see some interesting sights in this magical land of entrapment. tent rocks are truly astounding, which we visited when julia's mom june was visiting. these rocks sure look rather...oh, never mind.




Then there is the VLA Very Large Array, the giant set of satellites out in the middle of central nowhere New Mexico. Government operated, it is charge with exploring the workings of the universe. The film Contact with Jodie Foster was indeed filmed here. And of course the visitor center claims that the "real" operation of the VLA has nothing to do with finding other life in the universe. Yeah right.


The VLA's several dozen satellites are HUGE, as you can see. They are mounted on several miles of rail so that they can be moved around to maximize optical resolution. And by arranging them in the peace sign Y formation, the effective circle that they form (the three end points of the "Y" forming the edge of the circle) resolves radio wave information as well as a satellite the size of that circle (several miles in diameter) would. Quite the technology.

Billions of dollars invested in these projects, thousands of scientists at work, millions of people adding computer power to the search...have we really not found life out there, or have ordinary citizens like you and me just not been let in on the secret?

Given that the universe is practically infinite in time and space, I think that there is lots of other life out there. To think that we are the only life in such a vast realm seems rather self-centered to me. But of course, our culture would know nothing about that.