We are passing
through the autumnal equinox. Days are becoming noticeably shorter. School’s in.

The first Joshua Tree star party of the fall coincides with a long-planned, much anticipa

ted search for a home in a desert. Life is good.
I am looking in both Yucca Valley and Joshua Tree. Both have advantages.

This year is full of big changes. Lin and Tim are both on their own. Lin began her freshman year and Tim is working full-time and performing weekly somewhere in the SF area with his band. He has taken to the banjo and singing lead in his band with the same enthusiasm and virtuousity as when playing piano, tuba, clarinet, or, especially, guitar. Marcia - everyone’s favorite school nurse - has moved working at a middle school to high school.

Look for new photos in the galleries. Also note, the random gallery image continues to be, well . . . random.

New rss-generated content � current philosophy news, info on knowing what there is to look at in tonight’s sky � new book recs, new blog entries find their way into this site every day. So keep coming back. You never know who or what might show up, or when.

Friends, colleagues, family, students, let me hear from you! Right now there is no benefit to registering and logging-in. You can access all the pages in this site without logging in. The content in the media players you might come across is free and available for anyone to enjoy. But when I do begin offering original downloadable content, available only to registered visitors, no worries,registration will be free and painless. Your information will not be shared with anyone or anything (digital or analog). Planned downloadable content includes original sound and spoken word recordings, streaming video, flash movies and slide shows, software tutorials, astronomy how-to’s, original 3D-wallpapers, and podcasts.

The internet was exciting when it first entered our lives in the mid 90’s. But who knew it would come to dominate and penetrate our lives and culture so completely. I use this digital cyber workspace for fun, entertainment, blogging, and staying in touch with family, friends and collegues. I also maintain websites for two high schools and the university courses I teach. But those sites are work � interesting work, even fun work at times � but still, they are work. This site is not work. I hope you find something fun, useful, or interesting while you are here.

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The October edition of Astronomy magazine reports that many cosmologists now think that the Big Bang, our Big Bang, is but one in a very long sequence of Bangs. If true, this renders our universe but one in a continuously lengthening series. The age of these universes in aggregrate then totals to trillions, not billions, of years.

First the earth was demoted from center of the universe to mere satellite by the force of Nicolas Copernicus’ mathematical proofs and arguments in his De revolutionibus which eventually led his successors to abandon Ptolemy’s geocentric model for a heliocentric vision. But this loss of status of place once enjoyed by our planet was minor in comparison to our recently coming to understand that the Milky Way galaxy is not the only galaxy, but, instead, but one galaxy among billions and billions of others swirling and racing in about and, sometimes, through one another. Edwin Hubble’s long hours of watching and measuring the redshifts of receding galaxies led to this incontrovertible conclusion.

And now, after just getting used to not being the center of space, we seem on the verge of realizing that the universe itself is not The Universe nor is it the sole source or measure of time’s beginning and subseqent flow.

The article concludes that it is coming more and more to look like time and space are infinite, without beginning or end.

Thoughts to fall asleep by?

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