Checkout the Stars
Sunday November 18, 2012
I walk to the train on workdays. As the days grow shorter, this happens before sunrise. Even with the change to regular non-daylight time, I arrive at the station half an hour before sunrise.
As soon as I leave the house, unless the sky is overcast, I see Venus in the east and Jupiter in the west. The rest of the stars stand out, Orion being the boldest.
Often on the walk, I can hear trains signal at the crossing in Rondout, 2.5 miles to the west. On rare mornings, I can hear revilie from the Great Lakes Naval Training Center three miles to the north of us. And the two expressways to our west are far enough away that sounds from there are a distant river.
The other morning, I stood on the train platform looking west with the hood of my parka down. I could see many of the stars and Jupiter. I remembered a trip out west (Souix County North Dakota) when the full moon and mars were easily visible through the front window, and as the evening wore on, the moon shifted position relative to Mars. Without sophisticated instruments, I imagined the difficulty of tracking the planets, and how even our notion of time is interlaced with astronomy. And how fortunate we are to have such nightime visibility living this close to Chicago.
I then remembered hearing of the blackout in New York several years ago. How, likely for the first time, many living in that city were able to see the Milky Way. This awesome sight was not that uncommon in rural Montana, but is difficult to see even with the good visibilty we have here.
One can't help but wonder what the impact of not seeing the night sky has on civilization. In ancient times, stories would be told about arrangement of stars apparently close together.
But in the city, we seem to spend more time on Facebook, don't we? It is good to stay in touch with the family. But sometimes the extra announcements can be kind of annoying. People liking stores, passing around advertisements.
Many of the technical people I know complain about Facebook and refuse to join it because it is not run the way that they would. Personally I find it a good place to stay in touch with family and friends. But their complaints do hit on something that is interesting. There are many things that they don't like about how it is run, such as privacy features, advertisements, unexpected postings on their behalf. They think that Facebook should listen to the opinions of the users as they are the most important part of the equation.
What is likely to be missed in this discussion is that to Facebook, we are the product. I don't mean this in a cynical way, but it is the advertisers that Facebook is listening to, and doing its part to bring the attention of the users to the advertisements.
So my advice is to stay in touch with family and friends however you can, be it Facebook or Instagram.
But don't forget to check out the stars now and again.