Weird things I think about
For as long as I can remember, I've always wondered about odd things. For instance, I was probably about nine or ten when I was stuck wondering why we cry when scared or sad. I used to read Highlights magazine, so I wrote to the science editor to ask this question. Even at that young age, I knew that when people don't know the answer to a question, or assume the kid couldn't possibly mean to ask what s/he just asked, they would answer with what they thought was the question, so I specifically wrote that I already knew how we cried and proceeded to explain it, and said that I understood that our eyes would tear up if there were an irritant. Despite me clarifying that I really did mean to ask WHY we cry as a response to an emotion such as fear, anger, or sadness, they responded to me as if I had asked how we cry. (*eyeroll*) Anyway, I've never really found a great theory on this. I think the closest one had something to do with our flight or fight response and that tearing up started as a logical physical response to an emotional trigger but now no longer serves a useful purpose.
I sent e-mail to Verizon asking them why they didn't offer a service like my mom has. When you dial her number, whether you have caller ID blocked or unblocked, you get a recorded message that says that number doesn't accept solicitations and to remove the number from the list. Just to actually get the phone to ring, you have to manually press "1."
I want this service.
What Verizon currently offers is Call Intercept, which only intercepts calls that don't show up on Caller ID. I still get numerous calls from solicitors (that's another rant for a different day). As I said, I sent them e-mail asking them why they didn't offer the service my mom has and I specifically stated that I already knew about Caller Intercept and I explicitly said I wanted a service that intercepted ALL calls, not just blocked calls. What was Verizon's response? You guessed it, they gave me the canned response saying that they do offer this service and it's called Call Intercept, and it intercepts blocked numbers. *deep breath* I realize that a lot of people these folks deal with are stupid, but when I go out of my way to state that I know exactly what I'm asking and tell them what I'm NOT asking for, why is it so hard for them to believe that and if they don't have what I want to just simply state "we don't have that service but if we get enough requests for something like this we'll work on implimenting it."
Anyway, so that was a tangent in a way. Sure, it was something weird that I thought about and I bothered to ask what I *thought* were experts (like I did when I was a kid with regard to Highlights magazine), but yeah, I think about even weirder stuff.
I ordered some calendars--I love calendars--three rat, one mouse, two hubble telescope pictures. One of the rat and astronomy one for work, the rest for various rooms in the house. So I'm looking at the Hubble pictures thinking wow, what gorgeous pictures. I love this stuff. In comes weird question number one.
---- In some of the pictures, in one corner there's a stairstep type crop. What the heck was in that corner that couldn't stay in public view? Here's an example*:
And this is not the only picture I've seen like this. I keep wondering, was it because it was blurry? Scratched lens? Finger over the lens (harhar)? A spaceship? Some other deep dark secret that we can't let the Russians see?
Here's another one:
Here's a picture of the first time I saw it several years ago when the Hubble pictures first were published:
The first time I saw it, I thought maybe it was editing purposes so the magazine could put text up in that corner then they changed their mind and put text someplace else. But no, no text up there, and so I assume that since the picture looks like this at the Hubble site, that it was the Hubble folks that did this.
---- OK, so here's my next weird question. Sometimes I'll see in the description that the image is a false-color image**.
I want to know why they feel the need to color images before releasing to the public. Do they think we won't think they are pretty enough on their own?
---- For my last question, and I admit it's the weirdest one--the sort that keeps me awake five minutes longer than usual on nights I think about it--I want to know how they can get a picture of the Milky Way galaxy if we're in it. To get pictures of the earth, they have to take the pictures from some location in orbit around earth, either a satellite or space shuttle or something like that. If I'm inside my house, I can't take a picture of the entire outside of my house. In fact, I can't get a picture of the entire outside of my house without being some distance away from my house. So, by this logic, wouldn't the camera need to be some distance away from the galaxy in order to image it?
I guess I can come up with a reasonable answer for this one. They take pictures from all directions from our vantage point and then plot it out. I still wonder though, how accurate that is. I can do the same by sticking my arm out the windows of my house and paste it all together, but I don't know if I'd get as accurate a picture than if I'd just taken it from a nice hill down the street.
OK, that's all the weird questions--for now--that I'm willing to post publicly.
* All images found at http://hubblesite.org
** on the last picture I posted, it is a true color image, and the site states: "This picture is a true color image made from separate exposures taken in blue, green, and far-red light with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. It required 48 orbits around the Earth (more than one day of exposure time) to make the observation. The green and red exposures were taken in June 1994; the blue exposures, as well as 15 orbits of the redshifted hydrogen line, were taken in June 1995. Compared to the best ground-based observing sites, the sky seen from Hubble's orbit is 2.5 to 15 times darker, and the resolution of this image is about 10 times better. The faintest objects visible in this image are 2 billion times fainter than what the unaided eye can see from a dark location on Earth.
I sent e-mail to Verizon asking them why they didn't offer a service like my mom has. When you dial her number, whether you have caller ID blocked or unblocked, you get a recorded message that says that number doesn't accept solicitations and to remove the number from the list. Just to actually get the phone to ring, you have to manually press "1."
I want this service.
What Verizon currently offers is Call Intercept, which only intercepts calls that don't show up on Caller ID. I still get numerous calls from solicitors (that's another rant for a different day). As I said, I sent them e-mail asking them why they didn't offer the service my mom has and I specifically stated that I already knew about Caller Intercept and I explicitly said I wanted a service that intercepted ALL calls, not just blocked calls. What was Verizon's response? You guessed it, they gave me the canned response saying that they do offer this service and it's called Call Intercept, and it intercepts blocked numbers. *deep breath* I realize that a lot of people these folks deal with are stupid, but when I go out of my way to state that I know exactly what I'm asking and tell them what I'm NOT asking for, why is it so hard for them to believe that and if they don't have what I want to just simply state "we don't have that service but if we get enough requests for something like this we'll work on implimenting it."
Anyway, so that was a tangent in a way. Sure, it was something weird that I thought about and I bothered to ask what I *thought* were experts (like I did when I was a kid with regard to Highlights magazine), but yeah, I think about even weirder stuff.
I ordered some calendars--I love calendars--three rat, one mouse, two hubble telescope pictures. One of the rat and astronomy one for work, the rest for various rooms in the house. So I'm looking at the Hubble pictures thinking wow, what gorgeous pictures. I love this stuff. In comes weird question number one.
---- In some of the pictures, in one corner there's a stairstep type crop. What the heck was in that corner that couldn't stay in public view? Here's an example*:
And this is not the only picture I've seen like this. I keep wondering, was it because it was blurry? Scratched lens? Finger over the lens (harhar)? A spaceship? Some other deep dark secret that we can't let the Russians see?
Here's another one:
Here's a picture of the first time I saw it several years ago when the Hubble pictures first were published:
The first time I saw it, I thought maybe it was editing purposes so the magazine could put text up in that corner then they changed their mind and put text someplace else. But no, no text up there, and so I assume that since the picture looks like this at the Hubble site, that it was the Hubble folks that did this.
---- OK, so here's my next weird question. Sometimes I'll see in the description that the image is a false-color image**.
I want to know why they feel the need to color images before releasing to the public. Do they think we won't think they are pretty enough on their own?
---- For my last question, and I admit it's the weirdest one--the sort that keeps me awake five minutes longer than usual on nights I think about it--I want to know how they can get a picture of the Milky Way galaxy if we're in it. To get pictures of the earth, they have to take the pictures from some location in orbit around earth, either a satellite or space shuttle or something like that. If I'm inside my house, I can't take a picture of the entire outside of my house. In fact, I can't get a picture of the entire outside of my house without being some distance away from my house. So, by this logic, wouldn't the camera need to be some distance away from the galaxy in order to image it?
I guess I can come up with a reasonable answer for this one. They take pictures from all directions from our vantage point and then plot it out. I still wonder though, how accurate that is. I can do the same by sticking my arm out the windows of my house and paste it all together, but I don't know if I'd get as accurate a picture than if I'd just taken it from a nice hill down the street.
OK, that's all the weird questions--for now--that I'm willing to post publicly.
* All images found at http://hubblesite.org
** on the last picture I posted, it is a true color image, and the site states: "This picture is a true color image made from separate exposures taken in blue, green, and far-red light with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. It required 48 orbits around the Earth (more than one day of exposure time) to make the observation. The green and red exposures were taken in June 1994; the blue exposures, as well as 15 orbits of the redshifted hydrogen line, were taken in June 1995. Compared to the best ground-based observing sites, the sky seen from Hubble's orbit is 2.5 to 15 times darker, and the resolution of this image is about 10 times better. The faintest objects visible in this image are 2 billion times fainter than what the unaided eye can see from a dark location on Earth.