The top photo is the view this morning out one of our glass doors. Only a light snow. Cities are mostly ugly, yet a few years ago we passed the point where most of our species lives in them and in thirty more years that percentage is expected to rise to 70%. As I have observed before cities look best through veils of distance, fog, night or snow which briefly cover the blemishes.
We still have not seen the sun for more than eight days. This month is the third cloudiest on record in Chicago, but will also be the second warmest, averaging almost 6ºF/3ºC above normal. That is still for those of you wise enough to live in places with decent climates an atrociously cold mid-30s F.
I have never made new year’s resolutions, but I did enter the year with two goals: to at least once do 100 push-ups and to have GANNET in Hilton Head before year’s end. A few of you have written to ask if I do my age in push-ups all at once. The answer is yes and that number is followed by at least my age in crunches, 60 knee-bends, at least 40 more push-ups, 40 more crunches, 40 knee-bends, at least 40 more push-ups, at least 40 more knee-bends, at least 100 side leg raises each leg, and at least 150 more knee-bends. The ‘at least’ is because as I have noted I now randomly increase the numbers. Usually I do a few more push-ups than my age in the first set. The most I had previously done was 90, but two days ago I was feeling strong and as they say in cricket, I hit a century. I don’t know when or if I will do 100 again. That leaves the Hilton Head condo, two of whose virtues are that it is not in a city and the view out the glass doors is beautiful.
The second photo was taken by the Hubble telescope in, I think, 2016. Each of those dots of light is a galaxy. If you goggle ‘How many galaxies are there in the universe’ the top answer is likely to be 100 billion. This along with an enormous amount of other information online, including that drinking bleach is a preventative for the coronavirus, is wrong. The Hubble telescope has revealed that the number is likely more than two trillion. If the average galaxy has one hundred billion stars as does our Milky Way, the number of stars in the universe is 1 septillion—that is 1 followed by 24 zeroes—in the American numbering system/1 quadrillion in the European system. (Why can’t we get together on these things?)
All of these numbers are beyond my comprehension, as is that the estimated diameter of the universe is 93 billion light years, and puts my 100 push-ups in perspective.
I quote myself. Why not? Others do.
To Nicholas Copernicus
nick,
you did us no kindness
when you proved we are not the center of the universe
easier to believe our lives had meaning then
harder now
still
it is better
to know
the truth
