宇宙
The theme of today's post is SPACE.
-I just learned that I'm all set to start at City College New York in the fall. I'll be taking classes in Mechanical Engineering- classes that will lay the foundations for more advanced study in astronautical technology, but will probably not be as interesting as the classes that will come later (I'm okay with this). I hope that all of my scheduling and everything works out; I want to take a lot of classes at once but it might be hard before I have the pre-reqs for them!
-I'm thinking of building a model rocket. Anyone here know about those?
-It appears that going into space and viewing the Earth from outside can cause spiritual epiphanies whose descriptions are very similar to transcendental experiences by Buddhist monks and other mystics. There's even neurological research being done into the possibility that this sort of experience changes the brain on some level. This is ridiculously cool! Read this for more information.
-I'm reading Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot right now, and it's very insightful. I think Cosmos was a little more engaging of a read, but I can't wait until the second half of this book when he starts talking about the human future in space. Oh, and in my (not) copious amounts of free time, I'm playing the space-sim Freelancer, whose name is funny because I am a freelancer, you see.
-I went to the annual meeting of New York's Amateur Astronomers Association tonight. It was my first time going to any AAA events, and it was really fun! I met a lot of very friendly and interesting fellow space nuts. The mean age there was probably something like 60 years old, and I think I was the youngest person in attendance, but it didn't matter much. Hopefully I'll be seeing several of these people again at various stargazing and space-related events in the future.
Oh, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, famous astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the AMNH was there, and I got to meet him! He was deep-voiced and friendly. I told him he was an inspiration to me and he told me to e-mail him and talk to him about space stuff. I shall do this. Maybe I'll even be able to get a summer job helping with research sometime...? I know not! But I know that I'm excited to have met him.
Okay, that's enough space stuff for now! But more will come in the future!
-I just learned that I'm all set to start at City College New York in the fall. I'll be taking classes in Mechanical Engineering- classes that will lay the foundations for more advanced study in astronautical technology, but will probably not be as interesting as the classes that will come later (I'm okay with this). I hope that all of my scheduling and everything works out; I want to take a lot of classes at once but it might be hard before I have the pre-reqs for them!
-I'm thinking of building a model rocket. Anyone here know about those?
-It appears that going into space and viewing the Earth from outside can cause spiritual epiphanies whose descriptions are very similar to transcendental experiences by Buddhist monks and other mystics. There's even neurological research being done into the possibility that this sort of experience changes the brain on some level. This is ridiculously cool! Read this for more information.
-I'm reading Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot right now, and it's very insightful. I think Cosmos was a little more engaging of a read, but I can't wait until the second half of this book when he starts talking about the human future in space. Oh, and in my (not) copious amounts of free time, I'm playing the space-sim Freelancer, whose name is funny because I am a freelancer, you see.
-I went to the annual meeting of New York's Amateur Astronomers Association tonight. It was my first time going to any AAA events, and it was really fun! I met a lot of very friendly and interesting fellow space nuts. The mean age there was probably something like 60 years old, and I think I was the youngest person in attendance, but it didn't matter much. Hopefully I'll be seeing several of these people again at various stargazing and space-related events in the future.
Oh, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, famous astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the AMNH was there, and I got to meet him! He was deep-voiced and friendly. I told him he was an inspiration to me and he told me to e-mail him and talk to him about space stuff. I shall do this. Maybe I'll even be able to get a summer job helping with research sometime...? I know not! But I know that I'm excited to have met him.
Okay, that's enough space stuff for now! But more will come in the future!