A speculative mind

The newly discovered comet Neowise has been in the sky recently. Our state has been blessed with good weather, so everyone who wants to can see it. Well, everyone except for those of us who live on the coast. We get clouds every night. But Friday night it looked like we might get a break. There were high, wispy clouds but we thought it might be possible. My wife and I went outside just after sunset and walked around the block. Too much light. We walked around it again. Too much light. We walked around again. I got my binoculars out and scanned the northwest sky. All total, we were out there about 45 minutes, but we found nothing. My wife went to bed and about 15 minutes later I tried again. Now it was certainly  dark enough. I could see the Big Dipper (one of the landmarks for finding the comet) but only faintly. This close to the ocean, there is always a haze that rises up from the west. The dipper was barely peaking out through the haze and that did not bode well for the ...

Why is it that some artistic endeavors survive the test of time better than others? If you have been on this Earth for more than thirty years, this is probably something that you have experienced first-hand. Music, movies, or TV shows that seemed great when you were a kid, make you cringe now. You can’t blame it all on the fact that the show or music was aimed at a young audience and you are an adult now. No, some of it just didn’t age well. Sometimes it can be blamed on changing cultural sensibilities. James Bond’s quasi-raping of Pussy Galore doesn’t go over as well today as it did in 1965. In fact, the early James Bond films had a lot of moments like that. I truly do cringe when I see that now, and I know I didn’t the first time I saw it. The later James Bond films still objectified women, but at least the rapeyness was gone. Similarly, minority stereotypes are a tough sell to today’s audience, like dumbed down black servants that were played for comic relief in 1940’s m...

Inevitably, whenever I tell anyone I write a blog they always ask me what the focus of my blog is. I scrunch my eyes and mumble that my blog doesn’t really have a focus. It is eclectic. Yes, it is. One week I may write about science fiction. The next week it may be Biology. The next week it may be about writing. Another week may be about art, and on and on. I haven’t exhausted the variety of topics yet. It truly is a mixed bag. I write about whatever I feel like writing about for that week. There is a down side to that. It is not the best way to build a following for my blog. Many bloggers write to a single focus. There are food bloggers, travel bloggers, style bloggers, book bloggers etc. These bloggers often have a dedicated following of people who are interested in that topic and subscribe to one or more of the blogs that speak to that topic. Why order a combination pizza if you are only interested in the pepperoni? That being said, I am not planning on changing. I have ...