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History of Planet Theory

by leekierdorf

Plato

Plato wrote of five elements in 360 BC in which he associated each of the four classical elements (earth, air, water, and fire) with a regular solid.
Earth was associated with the cube, air with the octahedron, water with the icosahedron, and fire with the tetrahedron. Of the fifth Platonic solid, the dodecahedron, Plato obscurely remarked, “…the god used [it] for arranging the constellations”

Aristotle

Aristotle added a fifth element, aither.

(aether in Latin, “ether” in English) eather way, he said that the heavens were made of this element. But what did he know?

Copernicus

Copernicus in 1500 claimed the planets had the sun at the center of their orbit.

He said that the Earth rotates daily on its axis.

Kepler

Kepler,in 1600, proposed a lot of nonsense about the six planets. He described their orbits as perfect circles. When stunned by the possibility of elliptical orbits, he quit and went into banking.

No, he wrote an incomprehensible conjecture in his paper ‘On the six-cornered snowflake’.

His friend Thomas Harriot was more practical and delved into cannon ball stacking. Somehow, this led to atomic theory.

The Telescope

A telescope was a 1608 patent submitted to the government in the Netherlands by Middelburg spectacle maker Hans Lipperhey.
It was primarily to spy on his girlfriend who he thought was cheating on him.

Galileo

Galileo wasted no time in building his own telescope in 1609, patent or no patent.
He started to make much better observations and recording them. Recorded observations are much better than ones you just toss out at the local pub.

Jupiter has moons.

He observed Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, which proved that celestial bodies can orbit a planet other than Earth.

The Phases of Venus

He discovered that Venus goes through phases like the Moon, proving it orbits the Sun rather than Earth.

The Moon is not Smooth

The Moon is covered in rough terrain, mountains, and deep craters. And that there is no actual “man in the moon.”

Galileo is Arrested

Championing heliocentrism (the idea that the Earth revolves around the sun), did not help him ward off the Inquisition of his day. He spent his final years under house arrest which didn’t matter much as he had a telescope and a window. He sent out for notebooks and occasional wine. The Vatican did issue a formal apology that cleared him of wrongdoing in 1992.

Isaac Newton

In 1668, Isaac Newton
built an even better telescope. He did a lot of other stuff, too.

The Atom

It was thought, for centuries, that the atom was the smallest thing. In fact, the word atom means ‘smallest thing around’.

In about 1780, Lavoisier showed that water could be broken down to oxygen and hydrogen. And those two could not be broken down further.

It’s elemental, he proclaimed. His broken down theory was a hit. But when he said oxygen was part of combustion, it was too much.

The phlogiston theory comes from the ancient word phlogistón which means ‘burning like house on fire.’ The theory was first proposed as serious in the late 1600s by J J Becher and written down by Georg Ernst Stahl a bit later. (The ‘e’ is intentionally left off ‘Georg’ which was a sore point with him all his life.)

With Lavoisier throwing cold water on that theory, as it were, it set Becher and Stahl rolling over in their graves.

Unfortunately, during the French Revolution, Lavoisier was charged with various crimes and guillotined. The French government did apologize several years later.

His wife lived on and wrote a bunch of stuff he said. Included was “They’re gonna do what?” when they told him what was coming.

With atomic theory on a roll and two elements identified, the French Revolution over, the element table was easy to remember until it exceeded 24 elements.

Amedeo Avogadro created the word “molecule” in 1811. He stated that:

The smallest particles of gases are not simple atoms, but are made up of a certain number of these atoms united by attraction to form a single molecule.

Actually, that is a cleaned up version derived from those who penetrated his thick accent.

It took, in 1833, the French chemist Marc Antoine Auguste Gaudin to make something sensible of the hash stew Avogadro had made of his own hypothesis.

He cleared up things saying water was H2O
And that two given samples of a gas, of the same volume and at the same temperature and pressure, contain the same number of molecules. Like anyone could count them and prove him wrong.

Meanwhile, better known, André-Marie Ampère published the same law with similar conclusions.

The hypothesis was then referred to as Ampère’s hypothesis. Later, called Avogadro–Ampère thesis or Ampère–Avogadro hypothesis and sometimes even Amped-up Avocados hypothesis.

You’d think Ampere could let it go with friends like Alessandro Volta of Italy, Georg Ohm of Germany, James Watt of Scotland and Michael Faraday of England. Streets are named after Ampère, and a mountain on the moon, an asteroid and an electric ferry in Norway.

Longing

by leekierdorf

She stood on the beach and watched the sun sink into the sea. She was glad the sunset was so beautiful because she had seen so many.

But the sea was empty. There was no boat like the one that had sailed off last year.  That special boat. The one that took him away.

He had promised to return. Was she a fool to believe him? She didn’t feel like one. She felt that their bond was strong enough to bring him back.

She remember first seeing him. He was so different. Different clothes, different manners. She would just watch him. And then he met with the chief.

He was interested coconuts and wanted the people to collect and dry the insides of them. But the chief said he could not make the people do this unless they wanted to do it.

That’s why he stayed. He looked for a way to get our people to help him. He learned some of our language. She remembered the day he became happy that he had found a way.

He had told her that he had to leave to find a way to pay the people for their work. He had an idea.

She wondered what it was. Her people, the men, would sail away and return with large stones from a faraway island. Some died on the way. They would return proudly with large stones they had cut from the rocks and place them in front of their huts.

Did it have something to do with that? Then he was brave to do it. But she didn’t care about the valuable stones. She only wanted him.

He had told her that if he succeeded, he would return and build a great house on the island where they would live.

But for now, she watched the sun slowly sink into the sea each night.

Based on the true story of Irish-American captain David Dean O’Keefe who brought large rai stones (limestone discs) to the island of Yap in the late 19th century to trade with the natives for copra.

Doctor Fury

by leekierdorf

“I need a new place to work.”

“What about the house on Bleak Hill?”

“It does have the right ambience.”

“It’s for sale. But they say it’s haunted.”

“Does that lower the price?”

“Yes, quite a bit.”

“I’ll need a loan.”

“The bank will want to know what you’re working on.”

“Oh, this and that.”

“Explosives? Viruses??”

“No, no, nothing like that. Transplants.”

“What kind?”

“All kinds. Human to animal. Animal to human. Human to human.”

“Animal to animal?”

“There’s no market for that.”

“We’ll call it “medical innovations.”

“Can we see the property?”

“No realtor will go there now. Too many bad experiences.”

“Like what?”

“Bats flying around – strange noises – ghosts in the hallways.”

“That’s nothing. The last place had all that and more.”

“Until you blew it up.”

“No more explosives, I said. I’m done with all that.”

“You know, your scars are starting to fade.”

“People like me have nine lives.”

“Well, you’ve used up six by my count.”

“Is there a road we can get a truck up? Or a hearse?”

“A hearse?”

“For transporting patients who need new parts.”

“Have you ever considered normal science?”

“That’s for wimps! I’m the cutting edge of science!”

“We’re banned from Florida. I think they passed a special law.”

“That was just bad wiring.”

“That’s not what the Fire Marshall said…”

“I work miracles! What about that saber-tooth tiger I resurrected?”

“They hunted it for three weeks.”

“But they never found out we did it.”

“We?”

“I consider you my trusted assistant, Igor.”

“Don’t call me that!”

“A nickname, that’s all.”

“Okay, I’ll get this typed up and run it by the bank”

“If they don’t come around, threaten their family.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Okay, tell them they might meet with an accident.”

“I’m sorry I broke you out of the asylum.”

“They didn’t understand.”

“They wanted to hang you. You were being evaluated for trial.”

“That’s all in the past …”

“Okay, we’ll talk next week.”

Iceland Escape

by leekierdorf

I heard some friends of mine were going to Iceland. I had been sitting in a comfy chair for too long. I managed to reach out to push a button that booked a flight.

My action caused me some difficulty amid great adventure. You must bring a large amount of money with you. I did not.

I found a reasonably priced place to stay. The breakfast was $15 for all you could eat. My friend found me there. He, too, was trying to save money. He rented a car and slept in it.

He wanted to go around the island nation while I decided to stay in town. When he returned, we went to a couple places close by.

There was a waterfall and a geiser. There is a tourist place with hot blue water that we visited called the Blue Lagoon.

The water was blue but the cost was high. We saw rocks that filled a field close by. I could believe they were thrown from the nearby volcano. More later.

My friend was going back to the USA and I went to the airport with him. I thought I would try to return early. My return flight was two days off. My ticket would not allow change! Since I had little money, I ended up sleeping at the airport for two nights.

I found a place close by that offered hot tub soaking. Taking the bus, I found it cheap to enter. The outdoor pools are of different temperatures. The experience is what I remember of Iceland. Families would come and enjoy the hot water in large warm pools with bubbling jets around you.

In the morning, older men would meet and talk in a smaller tub. I spent hours there during the two days in limbo. One afternoon, a cold rain came down. Sitting in hot water with cold rain coming down on my head was a unique experience.

As you can see, I had good and bad experiences. I spent a lot of time walking around the city. You left the ocean behind and walked for blocks only to arrive at the ocean. The capital is on a peninsula.

After returning to the US. I saw a story about Iceland. The very city I walked about in was rocked by earthquakes that opened cracks in the streets. The volcano near the resort pushed out lava that covered the road we had driven on. The expensive Blue Lagoon was closed after an alert about the volcano that sent tourists running.

Iceland is tapping into geothermal energy to produce electricity. The steam spins a turbine. One of these was damaged by the lave flow. They have a more ambitious plan to use underground magma to produce energy.

Iceland counts the Vikings as their ancestors. An exciting land with interesting history.

More Volcanoes

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Natuna Island’s Slow Loris

by leekierdorf

Sunda slow loris, refers to the Sunda Islands, is a strepsirrhine primate. Yeah, that’s right, strepsirrhine. The word ‘Loris’ is derived from the old Dutch ‘Loeris’ which means clown!

It is commonly known as malu-malu, meaning “shy” in Indonesian. I see you, little loris! It is sometimes called kuskus, because local people do not distinguish between the slow loris and cuscus, a group of Australasian possums. They say, “Possum, loris, who cares?” In Thailand, it is called ling lom, which translates as “wind monkey”. Wind monkey? Really?

When Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire defined the genus Nycticebus, he made the Sunda slow loris the type species. But, later, British zoologist Oldfield Thomas, said the type specimen should be the Bengal slow loris, damn it. Further confusion resulted when Boddaert’s Tardigradus coucang was routinely mistaken for Carl Linnaeus’ Lemur tardigradus. An easy mistake in poor light. The fact was that Lemur tardigradus was actually a slender loris. Mammalogist Witmer Stone finally cleared things up by getting the slender loris off its strict diet.

The Sunda slow loris has dark rings around its large eyes and a white nose with a whitish strip that extends to the forehead. The dark eye rings may be from looking out for predators all night.

One major distinguishing feature between all loris species is locomotion: the Sunda slow loris moves slowly through trees using all four limbs, quadrupedally, as it were, typically, with three limbs holding on to a branch. You can’t be too careful in the trees, you know. They have a special network of capillaries in their hands and feet which helps them cling to branches for hours, without their digits going numb. Pretty cool, huh?

They sometimes feed on molluscs, like the giant snail which moves even slower than the slow loris. During estrus, females make whistle calls when in visual contact with a male. They will sometimes also call out, “Hey, Big Boy, over here.”

The Natuna Island slow loris is an arboreal and nocturnal primate, resting by day in the forks of trees. They sleep in a ball in the branches but are known to spoon with others at night.

We now leave the slow loris as the sun sets off Big Natuna Island.

Alien Speaks Up

by leekierdorf

I want to correct a few things. We are tall and thin. We tried projecting ourselves but it came out like we are shorter than you. We’re not. We come from a planet with less gravity, so we are thin and tall. Stately, even. Anyway, we don’t like your gravity and don’t like to walk around on your planet. The atmosphere dries out our skin, too. That’s why we stay in our ships.

We’re not supposed to contact you but, of course, some of us have to bend the rules. There was some kidnapping and probing but it was not authorized. Sorry. There were reprimands and demotions.

Yes, we can make ships that fly real fast but that’s about it for advanced technology. We can’t really share it with you because you don’t have the right materials on your planet to duplicate it. And you go fast enough, really.

We just observe. That’s all we are allowed to do. It’s pretty boring, really. You know what really got us going? Paper towels. We never thought of it! We have a statue of your Guy in the Flannel Shirt on our planet now. And Wet Wipes are standard issue now. Another gem. Chip clips. I could go on. We want to pay you back but we got nothing. Cures for diseases? We forgot them a long time ago. We had something like cancer but we got rid of it with DNA manipulation. That opened a sack of worms, let me inform you. Was it worth it? We got bones that can snap like a pencil now.

This is not an official communication. I just wanted to get a few things off my thorax.

Another thing, did you make English hard just to annoy us? I’m assigned to English language. Thanks a sockfull! It is an enormous headache. The spelling! I won’t go into that. And finish your dam sayings! We puzzled over: “you can lead a horse to water” forever until we found out there was more to it. I mean, what the dickens?

Whenever it gets on me, I think “paper towels, paper towels, paper towels”.

And we don’t like your food. Ever hear aliens stole our food! Won’t happen. Except for popping boba. And we can’t duplicate it either!

We brought back swearing and sarcasm to our planet. They asked us what good is it? It makes you feel good when you’re assigned to a stupid planet for a really long time said Xthyg. Oops, demotion time. Like I care, he retorted.

Well, I’m saying too much. A river in Derche,
Blyg

Alaska Adventure

by leekierdorf

Some may ask where Alaska is found. It’s above Canada and close to Russia. I know, that seems a strange place to put it. But it was part of Russia and we took it when they weren’t looking. Anchorage is in the south. It was still light at 11 PM in August and it was light again at 5 AM. Daylight in Michigan was 6:30 to 8:30 when I left. In June, it’s light for almost 22 hours.

A friend of mine was in Alaska. He’s from Michigan. too. We headed north for Fairbanks the next morning. We passed Denali (formerly Mt. McKinley) without seeing it for the fog. To get near it, you have to enter the surrounding park.It takes quite a while to get near it.

There was no shortage of mountains to look at on our trip as the fog cleared. We saw glaciers and old volcanoes as well. The scenery is actually breathtaking at times, especially when you round a turn at high speed! I couldn’t drive because I would have gone too slow but my friend charged ahead on the roadway.

There is a thing that happens there with the road caused by the permafrost melting in the summer. The road ripples in some places, so you go up and down in a short series of waves. Momentary seasickness is the result.

Alaskans are fierce freedom lovers and take offence at signs they don’t like. They show this by shooting the signs. Many signs have bullet holes like the ones below. The moose one was just asking for it, though.

We saw moose and mountain goats as we went along. Your eyes get exhausted seeing so much beauty. After checking in to a great bed and breakfast, we drove out to a hot springs spot. They also had a little ice museum you could be guided through.

Be awestruck by the glorious sculptures in the Aurora Ice Museum – open year round. We will then enjoy a guided tour through the Aurora Ice Museum which was built with over 1.000 tons of ice and snow and kept year round at a temperature of 25F (-7C)

                                We were not awestruck.

There was a large ice statue of a naked lady that was inspiring. And an ice bar with a few ice stools where you could buy an expensive ice martini in a take-home ice martini cup. How you would keep it cold while taking it home was beyond me. They offered a tiny room where you could stay overnight for an outrageous price paid in cold cash.

The outdoor mineral water hot spring was great. It is crowded in the winter but there were not that many people when we went. But then there were no northern lights to be seen as you bobbed in the warm water. As in Norway, I was informed that the northern lights are closed in the summer. Sigh.

We cruised back to Fairbanks to our amazing hostel. It had an indoor garden that you passed going to your room. We went out to eat but found the best places crowded with over an hour wait and ended up at a sushi bar. We didn’t care. We were in the middle of Alaska!

I was really tired at 11 and turned on the air-conditioner over my bed and fell dead asleep. The temperature setting was low and I tried to adjust it during the night to no avail. I managed to turn the fan down and burrowed under the covers. My friend asked at a sumptuous breakfast in the dining room, why I didn’t turn the light on. Had I known you were awake, I would have, I said. We were drinking hot coffee (in Alaska) so it didn’t matter a bit.

We took a different route back to Anchorage and I was on my own since my friend had someone coming in to go on a fishing expedition somewhere. Again, the scenery was fantastic all eight hours of our trip back. I busied myself in Anchorage going to various places like a coffee shop or beer brewery. The brewery had enormous tanks with an ambitious business plan.

The population is so low in the city that you feel like everyone left town for some reason. The people in the shops are glad to see you. They chat with you and explain everything because they haven’t seen anyone for an hour or so. The barista brought the device for a pour-over to my table and created a wonderful coffee I thought was the best I’d ever had. Of course, I was in Alaska!

This Mother moose gave birth to twin babies only weeks earlier.

I met people whose family had been homesteaders and whose grandfather had carved out some acres down a dirt road years ago. It was now parkland all around but he was grandfathered in so to speak. The woman said she hated to have to shoot bears that insisted the land was still theirs. She had a pistol on her hip at the time.

Alaska

by leekierdorf

Alaska is our 51st or 52nd state. I’m not sure which. It was taken from the Russians when they weren’t looking in 1492. Anyway, you can’t get there from here. Well, that’s not quite true.

My friend Joe wanted to drive there. He looked at the map and saw Canada inbetween. He called this Canada place and asked if he could go through it. They said yes. Now he should have got this in writing because when he tried to go through this Canada place, the border guard said no. It turns out Canada has given these guys the last word on this. Joe complained that he was told something different when he called Canada on the phone. Tough tomatoes said the guard in his splendid uniform. You and Canada are not to be.

 

It was sad but true. Joe had this master plan to drive through Canada with a SUV he bought and sell it in Alaska. Now he was stuck in Seattle Wash with this large, black machine. Did he give up? No.

 

He checked and found that a barge could take the vehicle but not him to Alaska. He paid a steep price for this and flew to Alaska to await his machine. It arrived and off he went to explore The Land Up Under as Alaska is called by the natives. He went to Homer. He went to Fairbanks. He drove up and down the state. The sun stayed up all night as it was summer. The night lasts just two hours in June. That is not enough time to see the Northern Lights or the Aroarra Boringalice, as the natives call them. He did not see them.

 

His friend, me, heard of his adventures in the Canada Wilderbeast. He was inspired and aghast. Rather, he was aghast and then inspired. If Joe can’t do it, so can’t I, he said. So, he avoided Canada, The Land Inbetween, and flew to Alaska. He also traversed the Lost Continent of Alaska. From Fairbanks to Anchorage on dogsled and kayak. Filled with both vim and vigor, he returned to his native state of Inertia or Michigan as the natives call it.

 

Several things were learned by he. If an Alaskan does not like a sign, he will shoot that sign with a gun. The population is low so it seems like most everybody left town for the weekend or something. The Northern Lights are closed in the summer and only open in the Winter! The nerve, I say.

 

There are several types of bears in Alaska. There are the ones that may eat you and the other ones. I was unable to distinguish between the two myself and learned the best thing to do is to play dead. If the bear is a light brown color and slobbering a lot, it really doesn’t matter what you do. You can call it names, slap it on the nose, spray a spray that should drive it away. It really doesn’t matter. I did not encounter one of these so you are reading this account now.

 

One more thing, sometimes the bear also plays dead next to you and waits a few hours to see if you return to life. This can ruin your nerves. Some visitors to Alaska have been reported to have a continued look of surprise and fear etched in their visage, forever marking them as one who faced a grizzly bear and lived to tattle the tale.

 

My friend Joe did not sell his car as hoped. He left it there. But a friend brought it back to him in the land of Michigan. He is talking of going to Canada as soon as they agree to let him in.

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Minot Stave Church

by leekierdorf

This is a replica of a Gol Stave Church that is located in Bygdoy Park in Oslo, Norway. The original was built around 1250 and was moved to Olso about 100 years ago. The project began in October, 1999 and the church was opened on October, 2001.

This building is 60-feet tall and 45-feet wide is a memorial to the immigrants who came from Scandinavia to make new homes in North America. Inside the church, the corner posts are accentuated, and heavier and more richly decorated than the other structural elements.

The posts “represent the four gospels whose teachings are the supporting foundation of all Christianity” The beams upon which the columns rest “signify God’s apostles, the foundation of all Christianity.” The floor boards represent “the humble men who bow in honour; and the more they are exposed to the trampling feet of the congregation, the more support they provide.” The roof surface which protects the church from snow and inclement weather “represents the men whose prayers protect us from temptation.”

All quoted from a sermon given in the thirteenth century.

The church was put together without nails like a puzzle. It is a place where weddings and funerals are often held. A yearly festival called Norsk Høstfest is held annually in the fall in North Dakota in Minot. This festival has been held for over 40 years and has become North America’s largest Scandinavian festival with tens of thousands attending.