The Whole Nine Yards

We bought this home in December 2021 in part because of the above-ground swimming pool. As it turned out, we bought a pig in a poke. The pool had holes in it and was not laid in correctly. We took it down and dug a new foundation. We started about ten weeks ago and it is a work in progress.

We thought that we could to the work ourselves, a little at time each night.

At first, I was reminded of Alice's Retaurant
with its shovels and rakes and implements of destruction.

Soon enough, however, I was thinking more of
The Bridge on the River Kwai.

We got help, hiring two neighborhood guys,
one in high school, the other in college.

Then we had the sand delivered for the new foundation.
The sand was a lot easier to transfer than the work
to bust the sod.

 I had the guys come back for about
90 minutes each and did the last eight hours myself.

The new pool has been delivered. We still have to set the foundation. I figure that setting up the pool will be easy until the last section needs to be tensioned and secured. We have tiles for the footings and barriers for the edging. Mostly, we have a will to succeed and helpful neighbors looking for work.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

CITIES 

EPIGENETICS

ALONGSIDE NIGHT TO RUN IN AUSTIN

BRINGING PHILOSOPHY TO ATHENS: ASPASIA OF MILETOS

Against Dark Skies

We do not have the same perceptions with light that we do with sound. You can close your eyes. You cannot close your ears. So, we have laws against noise. We do need a rational theory of law to address noisy light. But not all light is pollution, any more than all noise is bad. After all, most people enjoy the sound of children playing and most so-called “light pollution” is equally benign.

Moreover, you can see a lot from the city if you know where to look. I live in the city of Austin, one mile from South Park Meadows, a major shopping center. From my backyard, I can show you the Andromeda Galaxy. On hobbyist discussion boards, I have shared my views of binary stars. This is an endeavor that many hobbyists pursue, seeking out stars that look like single points to the naked eye, but which a modest telescope will reveal to be two or even four. 

 

We backyard astronomers know the book, Turn Left at Orion by Guy Consolmagno, SJ, Ph.D. He had a doctorate from Harvard and taught at MIT, but never knew the sky the way an amateur does until a friend showed him the stunning yellow-blue double star known as Albireo at the head of The Swan (or the Foot of the Cross). His friend did that with a small portable telescope from within the glare of New York City in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Turn Left at Orion was written for the urban or suburban hobbyist. 

 

Some dark skies can be found in North America

One of our local leaders is a sun-watcher. With a special telescope costing four times more than a nice hobbyist instrument and ten times more than an entry-level telescope, he views our Sun, the closest star, and a very average star. Viewing in broad daylight, he never worries about light pollution.

 

Astronomers also complain about “constellations” of artificial satellites, clusters and strings launched by private companies for communications, natural resource monitoring, economic research, and disaster response. When disaster strikes, we all want our cellphones to bring the responders to our exact locations by GPS. That convenience comes with a cost. 

 

Not so dark in China; dark skies in North Korea.

Apart from the hobby, serious astronomy has been carried out for 50 to 70 years with radio telescopes, or “dishes.” First investigated by amateurs just before World War II, radio telescopes receive wavelengths that are not blocked by light pollution (or rain). Today, radio astronomy continues to be a pursuit for some amateurs. It is a spin-off of ham radio. 

 

Other leading edge research in astronomy is performed from orbiting platforms such as the Hubble and Hipparcos satellites. As enthusiasts of space exploration, the backyard astronomers do not complain about the consequences of building giant rockets to carry giant telescopes into orbit. 

 

Dark skies in central South America.

It is true that amateur astronomers collaborate with professionals. One way is by reviewing the data in computerized “warehouses” of numbers and images. We have more data than university professors can analyze. So, they turn to amateurs. Those hobbyists work from the comfort of their homes, consuming electrical power, and other resources, that also create light pollution.

 

Amateurs also build their own remote-controlled observatories and monitor the views on high-definition video screens. Those installations are hundreds of miles from their homes where the amateurs enjoy the benefits of civilization. 

 

Even deeper into the wilderness, some impassioned hobbyists travel to the darkest skies at state and national parks for their star parties. There, many of the instruments are custom-built, huge, complex telescopes, some of which need their own trailers to be hauled to the campsite. At those events, deep sky stargazers pursue “faint fuzzies” the galaxies and nebulas at the limits of viewing. For them, the planet Jupiter is light pollution. At a dark sky site, with no other competition, our solar system’s largest planet is bright enough to cast shadows. In the large “light buckets” built to gather the faintest glows from the farthest objects, the glare of Jupiter washes out the sky. So, one astronomer’s target is another astronomer’s light pollution. The same is true of the Moon. Some hobbyists do study it. It is not a dead world. But generally speaking most suburban hobbyists consider the Moon to be light pollution. 

 

I am not insensitive to the problem. I believe that a correct political analysis begins with considerations of property rights. A couple of years ago, I wanted to arrange the loan of a large hobby telescope to a co-worker who recently moved into a rural area. Sadly, he declined the offer because his neighbor had just installed a security light, a mercury-vapor spotlight that illuminated her land, his, and much else. If the light waves were sound waves, she would be blasting rock ‘n’ roll at 2:00 AM. That is a problem that is easy to understand and any number of local ordinances (if not common sense and common courtesy) would put a stop to it. 

 

We all want clear dark skies full of beautiful bright stars. Backyard astronomers also want telescopes, which are mass-production manufactured items, mostly from China. Even custom-made hobbyist telescopes two feet in diameter costing near $10,000 are built from precision glassware made in China. Backyard astronomers here do not mind if China's skies are polluted. 

Dark skies in central Africa, but not the Nile Valley.

 

I admit that it was at the Austin Astronomical Society's dark sky site 80 miles away from Austin that I first saw the Milky Way from horizon to horizon. It was worth the drive. There is no shortage of dark sky for anyone willing to make an effort, invest resources, and put up with some minor inconveniences. That being so, absent the amenities of civilization, daily life 80 miles from a Level One trauma center could be precarious should you break your arm or have a heart attack. Like telescopes, modern hospitals are another product of our industrial economy. What formal logic calls the law of the excluded middle is commonly expressed as, “You cannot have your cake and eat it, too.”

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Seeing in the Dark: Your Front Row Seat to the Universe

Turn Left at Orion

Megacities

Anthropocene: A Bad Name for a Good Thing

Soldiers of Peace

The military teaches the way of peace, said Paul K. Chappell, because they praise in public and reprimand in private. I heard Paul K. Chappell interviewed on an KERA’s “Think” with Krys Boyd, on March 20, 2018. A West Point graduate, Chappell left the Army as a captain and now works for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. I bought two copies of his book, Soldiers of Peace, and gave one to the director of our state guard officer candidate school. I finished reading it this morning. Overall, it was easy to find much to disagree with but Chappell argues well for finding other solutions to our social problems.

Chappell repeats his claims, which begin (easily enough) with the observation that 200 years ago, slavery was accepted and women could neither vote nor own property. But here we are today. So, what about us now will seem short-sighted to people 200 years in the future? Chappell calls his program “peace literacy.” It is a path, a way of life, not a formula or a checklist. Peace literacy includes empathetic listening, respect, integrity, and selfless service. Peace literacy depends on knowing how to calm yourself so that you can calm others. All of this takes discipline.

Soldiers of Peace: How to Wield the Weapon 

of Nonviolence with Maximum Force 

by Paul K. Chappell, 

Prospecta Press, 2017; 272 pages; $16.  

Chappell denies moral relativism and epistemological subjectivism. He says that the truth exists and we can know it. He warns against romanticizing the past, and even against romanticizing nonviolence. He calls himself a realist, and differentiates that from the common “realism” that is only cynicism. It is not surprising that he repeatedly cites Socrates, Lao-tze, Gandhi, and King. I did find it curious that he echoed Ayn Rand (though Rand is not cited anywhere). Rand found the basis for morality in our mortality. She posited an indestructible robot and explained that it could have no values. Chappell makes exactly the same argument. Like Rand, Chappell points out that humans have no instinctive, automatic modes of survival. Oak trees and caterpillars, he says, have no need for mentors. We do. And he provides many. Among them are Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the heroes of the Iliad, and Lt. Gen. John Schofield, the superintendent of West Point.

I never learned anywhere else that one impetus for Rosa Parks to resist segregation on the city bus line was her experience with the integrated transports at Maxwell Air Force Base where she and her husband both worked. In fact, Chappell says (at least twice) that his mother yelled at him when he announced that he was leaving the military because nowhere else in her world could a mixed race (African-American/Asian) person be treated fairly.

Chappell also speaks well of the discipline of martial arts that teaches respect for one’s opponent as the path to avoiding conflict in the first place. Contrasting that, he notes that during World War I, in the mad charges from the trenches, cruel officers were sometimes shot in the back. In the military, everyone is armed and trained to kill, so the social formalities reinforce respect.

It is salient that the military succeeds by training. Chappell cites Julius Caesar who recorded that the Gauls, Celts, and Germans made fun of the small stature of the Romans—until the battle was engaged. And in the military, failures in the field are traced back to failures of training. Learning the literacy of peace requires deep and extensive training, of course. And Chappell and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation provide such classes (here) though he says nothing about them in this book. (His own website is here.)

Toward the close, Chappell says that the best use of the military would be for humanitarian aid and disaster relief. As killing the enemy still has not worked out very well, that seems hard to argue with.

Easier to take exception to are the very many glittering generalities, glib statements, easy oversights, and incomplete examinations that litter the book as Chappell wanders over the landscape of his personal life.

Just to take one point, the author asserts that women in ancient Athens were oppressed. It is the liberal, enlightened view. Women could not vote. They could not own property. Indeed, they were property. But so was everyone else. It is famous that the philosopher Diogenes was one of the very many who were captured on some voyage or on some road and were sold into slavery. Outside of your city, you had no protection. Even within the city, rights as we know them did not exist. Socrates is the most famous case in point, but not unique. On the other hand, Chappell at length cites Greek myths and Athenian dramas in which women were the driving force, the wise speaker, the effective agent. The god of war, Ares, was less powerful than Athena, the goddess of wisdom (and strategy). Beginning with the assumption that he seeks to prove, Chappell cannot reconcile that against the civil status of women.

A dozen other problems run through the book, repeated and restated, cast as assertions and reused as proofs.

In balance, Soldiers of Peace provides cogent reasons to re-examine our assumptions about war and peace. Chappell’s thesis includes the minor premise that nonviolence is not peace. Pacifism will not end war. Rage is an expression of pain, not of strength. Perhaps the most arguable and yet insightful assertion is that the threats to peace include disparities in wealth, rapid population growth in the cities, and climate change. Those threats were identified by the U.S. Army Sustainability Report (2009). “When the U.S. Army and the Occupy movement agree on something, I think we should pay attention.” 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Peace is More Powerful 

Armies Without Weapons

Shifting the Paradigm of Private Security 

Do You Know Your Military? 

Birds of a Feather

One picture is worth 1000 words.

Iranian president Hassan Rouhani asked Pope Francis 

to pray for him after Vatican talks.

Lest we forget ...

"We grew up together," said Gates, after Jobs's passing.
(Guardian UK from "Digital World" conference 2007.)

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
The Genius of Design
Is Physics a Science?
Fortune Cookie in Hex Code
Brian Krebs's "Spam Nation"