Magazine Posts

If birds can fly
in their life's pursuit,
why then can't I?
My argument is moot.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Does this strange dark ball look somehow familiar? If so, that might be because it is our Sun. In the featured image from 2012, a detailed solar view was captured originally in a very specific color of red light, then rendered in black and white, and then color inverted. Once complete, the resulting image was added to a starfield, then also color inverted. Visible in the image of the Sun are long light filaments, dark active regions, prominences peeking around the edge, and a moving carpet of hot gas. The surface of our Sun can be a busy place, in particular during Solar Maximum, the time when its surface magnetic field is wound up the most. Besides an active Sun being so picturesque, the plasma expelled can also become picturesque when it impacts the Earth's magnetosphere and creates auroras. Compute it Yourself: Browse 2,900+ codes in the Astrophysics Source Code Library

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Last May 16 the Moon slid through Earth's shadow, completely immersed in the planet's dark umbra for about 1 hour and 25 minutes during a total lunar eclipse. In this composited timelapse view, the partial and total phases of the eclipse were captured as the Moon tracked above the horizon from Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. There it shared a cold and starry south polar night with a surging display of the aurora australis and central Milky Way. In the foreground are the BICEP (right) and South Pole telescopes at the southernmost station's Dark Sector Laboratory. But while polar skies can be spectacular, you won't want to go to the South Pole to view the total lunar eclipse coming up on November 8. Instead, that eclipse can be seen from locations in Asia, Australia, the Pacific, the Americas and Northern Europe. It will be your last chance to watch a total lunar eclipse until 2025.

Photo by Aman Chokshi

Author's note: Although I normally attempt to write a humorous story - after all this IS a humor website - every now and then I choose to write something serious, from the heart. This is one of those situations. - TEJ
This is the 100% true story of my wife's and my adoption stories. Our two daughters, now all grown up, joined our family roughly one year apart, when we traveled to China on two separate occasions to adopt. Read about the powerful experience that I never could have imagined would have happened to me, and which changed my life forever, in a profoundly positive way - twice.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The Mars InSight lander returned its first image from the Red Planet's flat, equatorial Elysium Planitia after a successful touchdown on November 26, 2018. The history making mission to explore the martian Interior using Seismic investigations, geodesy, and heat transport has been operating for over 1,400 martian days or sols. In that time the InSight mission has detected more than 1,300 marsquakes and recorded data from Mars-shaking meteoroid impacts, observing how the seismic waves travel to provide a glimpse inside Mars. Analyzing the archive of data collected is expected to yield discoveries for decades. But InSight's final operational sol is likely not far off. The reason is evident in this selfie recorded earlier this year showing its deck and large, 2-meter-wide solar panels covered with dust. Kicked up by martian winds the dust continues to accumulate and drastically reduce the power that can be generated by InSight's solar panels.

Against the wind,
a song by Bob Segar.
Dealing with changes
as we mature.
In many ways, I feel
I am going "Against
the Wind" as I travail
the battle of dealing
with my wife's Dementia
Alzheimer disease.
Once a beautiful person,
with quick wit, personality
and very intelligent.
She now has difficulty in
conversations, as she attempts
to communicate with me.
No short-term memory.
Long term memory, for
the most part is not there.
She does not know the
name of any articles, from
cup to remote. Does not
know where the bathroom is,
let alone what to do. Yet,
she will tell me how much
she loves me and how she
needs to be near me, all
of the time.
What a lonely existence it
must be where she is, today.
She calls me her husband,
Daddy or her man, but does
not know my name.
I'm ok with that as the love
she professes is soothing to me.
I have been living with her
in a Memory Care facility
and am about to move out,
so, I can get some sleep.
What will that do to her?
I don't know but I know
I need sleep if I am to be
with her.

Desolation, reigned supreme,
rainfall missing,
parched earth became,
an inhospitable desert.
Nothing was seen
of human life.
Animals, vegetation gone,
evil was the rage.
Dante's Inferno,
turn the page.

Halloween,
Goblins will
be seen,
all around
and between.
Little ones
dressed to
the nines.
Oh what
a night,
from joyful
to fright.
Trick or Treat?

Will you love me tomorrow,
as you did yesterday?
Should I keep moving,
or simply go away?

Why has God let you
leave me alone this way?
It is hard for me to believe
this is God's way.

Stop!
She yelled.
I worry about her,
every day.
This morning she asked
me to leave.
Well, asking isn't correct,
she told me to "Get out!"
"You don't belong here,
anymore."
She didn't recall any of
that dramatic moment,
later in the morning.
Bizarre behavior on a
cyclical basis seems
to be where this ride
is going.
Time for me to get a
separate unit, so I
can get some sleep.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The small, northern constellation Triangulum harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, M33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the Triangulum Galaxy. M33 is over 50,000 light-years in diameter, third largest in the Local Group of galaxies after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), and our own Milky Way. About 3 million light-years from the Milky Way, M33 is itself thought to be a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy and astronomers in these two galaxies would likely have spectacular views of each other's grand spiral star systems. As for the view from the Milky Way, this sharp image combines data from telescopes on and around planet Earth to show off M33's blue star clusters and pinkish star forming regions along the galaxy's loosely wound spiral arms. In fact, the cavernous NGC 604 is the brightest star forming region, seen here at about the 1 o'clock position from the galaxy center. Like M31, M33's population of well-measured variable stars have helped make this nearby spiral a cosmic yardstick for establishing the distance scale of the Universe.

Photo by Robert Gendler