Opening Doors

Sincerity and good humor will earn you passage through most doors; a big crowbar will work on the rest.

--Mitchell Hegman

Sitting in the Sun

Warmed by mid-morning light, my arms and my face feel new.  And when I close my eyes, I can imagine something miraculous coming from this day.  Maybe the horses will gallop alongside my truck as I pass by their pasture on my drive into town.  Maybe, somewhere, every passenger will emerge alive from the dark and scattered wreckage of a crashed plane.

Under this sun, on this day, anything is possible.

--Mitchell Hegman 

A photo of the sun—through fog—taken from my front yard

Nuclear Arms Don’t Kill People, People Pushing Buttons Do

For a very long time so-called “gun advocates” in America adopted the phrase “Guns don’t kill people, people do.”  That phrase was pointed at the idea that banning firearms was silly and ineffective because the availability of firearms was not the problem—the problem was with people. Make that, a few undeserving criminal people.

Defining those people?  Well, we never quite got that far.

And controlling access to firearms in your own home—that is a personal matter, correct? 

I got to thinking about that phrase, “guns don’t kill people,” in light of the renewed action by some to initiate “gun control” following a spate of mass murders committed with assault weapons.  What if we, as a nation adopted that phrase more broadly?

We shall go with this: “Nuclear arms don’t kill people, people pushing buttons do.”

By default, every nation should then have the right to nuclear arms.  If things get a little messy with that, we can sort out the details later. Everyone has the right to self-defense.  This is a particularly interesting thought given the present negotiations over nuclear capability with Iran and the wobbling threats from Kim Jong Un of North Korea.

Should forms of control be placed ahead of the right to nuclear arms?  Is this an infringement of rights?  Do rights of self-defense exist only in America?

Background checks anyone?

And my new favorite bumper-sticker: “Guns don’t kill people.  People with mustaches kill people.”

--Mitchell Hegman

Apology

While brushing my teeth yesterday morning, I thought about a day, many years ago, when I had to apologize to my wife.  I could not recall details of what happened—the exact infraction requiring me to apologize.  But I recalled my apology: “Honey,” I said, “I was only doing what you told me to do instead of what you meant.”

We both ended up laughing like crazy.

--Mitchell Hegman

City Killers are Small

The “city killers” are small.  They are not big and easily seen, like a tiger in the jungle.  They are more like bullets.   And that is why they are killers.  We do not detect them until they are hurtling at us with no way for us to avoid calamity. 

On February 15, 2013 a city killer exploded over Russia.  That one, the Chelyabinsk meteor, was the most well-documented meteor event in history.   The Chelyabinsk meteor was also—by far—the largest such event since the 1908 meteor explosion over Tunguska, Russia, which knocked down something near 80 million trees in a remote forest.   A plethora of video recordings emerged immediately following the Chelyabinsk event.  And, frankly, that meteor scared the hell out of everyone, including scientists at NASA and a host of others standing at the small end of telescopes watching the firmament.

Those in the know have been anxiously watching another class of asteroids called “world enders.”  The city killers frighten these observers.

Collaborating from various places around the world, astrophysicists have located and tracked something like 95 percent of the world ender asteroids flung all around us.  The world enders are more than a half-mile in size and large enough to be found at a distance.  Once found, they are monitored.  A world ender could, at a minimum, lead to mass extinction.  Some credit a world ender with the mass extinction of dinosaurs.   But the smaller asteroids—those less than a half-mile-wide (the city killers)—are unnamed and untracked.

The city killer that entered the atmosphere on February 15, 2013 was estimated at about 50 feet wide (about the size of a bus) and weighed about 10,000 tons.  It streaked into our atmosphere at 40,000 miles-per-hour before exploding in the air 10 to 15 miles above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk.  The explosion was estimated to be 20-30 times more powerful than that of the atomic bombs detonated aver Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Windows were blasted out of many buildings in the area near the blast.  At least one building experienced a partial collapse.   About 1,500 people were injured by flying objects propelled by the shock wave following the blast.     

Interestingly, the same day that the Chelyabinsk asteroid (turned meteor by entering the atmosphere) exploded over Russia, a much larger city killer passed us by in a near-miss.  That Asteroid, travelling at about half the speed of the one that entered our atmosphere (but still faster than a bullet) was about half the size of a football field and weighed about 130,000 tons.  The asteroid crossed between Earth and the orbital shell where our satellites are placed in the space above us.  The asteroid zipped past Earth 5000 miles closer to us than our own satellites.  That asteroid, by the way, was a chance discovery made by amateur astronomers.

Maybe we could nudge one of the world enders off-track at a distance with a nuclear warhead launched from our planet and thus live to drink another glass of Scotch.   But the city killers are small and difficult to detect.  Some of us might want to keep some Scotch close at hand in the event of a bright flash of light in the sky.    

--Mitchell Hegman

A FEW CLIPS FROM RUSSIA:  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBvotWfR3j4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq02C_3FvFo

Frost from the Darkness

I captured the photograph I have posted today a couple of months ago along the roadside near my house.  Before posting, I radically altered the midtones and slightly adjusted the contrast.  I wanted the grass to seem as if emerging from darkness.  I also like the strong patterns created by the arched stems.

--Mitchell Hegman

They Sing

Sometimes, my life is so quiet, I can hear my crystal wineglasses sing for just an instant when they are struck by the rush of air as I open my cupboard.

--Mitchell Hegman