The leaves are changing. Fall is in the air. Pumkin Pie. Coffee. Leaves. Cool drafts of air. Eating with friends and family. Porters and stouts. Oh my.
Before I hit you with this wall of text, I’d like to preface it with a statement: this article was actually written for my Philosophy class but I thought it would make for great post material. I hope you enjoy.
Nestled within the book of Luke is the parable of the Prodigal Son; a tale of a man who finds himself adrift after indulging in his father’s inheritance. Wasteful spending and irresponsibility forced the young man to feed and clean swine for a living, the lowest of jobs for a Jewish man. After realizing his mistake the lost son returns home and his father welcomes him with open arms and a wondrous feast. I remember hearing this in Catholic Sunday school as a child; though at the time I was much more interested in goofing around rather than listening to the teacher. Despite my lack of engagement the story of the Prodigal Son still resonates with a powerful message.
Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son, 1662
I am not a devout follower of Catholicism; my interest in the sciences has raised many questions to which the Bible has not been able to answer directly. However the Bible is rich with stories that deserve attention regardless of their factual veracity. Over the past three years my time has been split between working in the small southern town of Anniston, Alabama and attending school in the urban metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia. After high school most kids wrestle with questions regarding their future and their life after teenage years and I was no different. I made the decision to pursue a degree of higher education at a technical institution in Atlanta studying engineering. Upon first arriving in the South I was bombarded with drastic changes in weather, culture, and attitude. The humidity seemed suffocating, the road system in Atlanta made little sense, and people had severely different outlooks on life than what I was used to. From the start I knew I wished to return home some day. Three years later I had become accustomed to the standards and way of thinking the South had offered (I even managed to integrate “ya’ll” into my vocabulary), but ultimately I was unhappy. I made the decision to return home.
Just as the Prodigal son, I returned home to open arms from friends and family and my return was celebrated. However in contrast to the Prodigal son, my return home was not out of a desire to be closer to God but to follow a path that would allow me to pursue my passions much more closely. Still I cannot help but compare similarities between my experiences and the story of the Prodigal son. The Prodigal son left home to live a different life but he soon realized the grass was not greener on the other side. Without experiencing firsthand the differences of life at home versus life elsewhere, the Prodigal son would not have the means to compare the two experiences. Had I not moved to the South I would have never realized how beautiful Albuquerque is.
“Well a poor boy took his father’s bread and started down the road,
started down the road.
Took all he had and started down the road. Going out in this world, where God only knows,
and that’ll be the way to get along.”
– The Rolling Stones (cover of Rev. Robert Wilkins’ “Prodigal Son”)
It takes courage to venture into an unknown world, especially if the destination reveals itself to be harsh, unrelenting, and difficult. While I am not making a claim that my choice to move to the South proved to be harsh, unrelenting, or difficult, I believe one does not have a true understanding of the varieties of life offered until it is lived firsthand. Pursuits of different experiences should be encouraged, and if the traveler decides to return home it is a wonderful thing that deserves a celebration. For “going out in this world, where God only knows” is the only way to get along.
- Jon
While using one of my favorite internet bookmarking tools, StumpleUpon, I came across the following video that is impressively well done.
Not only does the paragraph employ a very cool grammatical trick, but it also carries a great message about core values and how the world can change depending on how you view it.
- Jon
Hmm yeah…that’s it…strip down to your quarks…
That’s the kind of dirty talk I would expect men in white lab coats to make while they are tending to pages of printouts and graphs at the Large Hadron Collider just outside of Geneva. I can’t say I’d blame them though; the experiments they will be conducting 100 yards below the surface have the potential to unlock some big mysteries about the development of the universe as we know it.
The ATLAS general-purpose detector. You can't even fake stuff this cool. Source: CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC)@ gaurdian.co.uk
Unfortunately the LHC isn’t scheduled to be back online until sometime mid-November, so all enlightening discoveries will have to wait a few months. Even then, it could be several more years before scientists produce something worthy of a Nobel Prize. But if/when all the smart guys (and gals) over there eventually find what they are after, it will definitely be worth the wait. Why? Because they are after the Higgs boson, the theoretical particle that could be a key part in understanding how the universe developed mass. While I certainly would be excited to tell you everything that I learned about this particle from reading Wikipedia, I also feel like it would be a waste of time and effort, as you can just as easily click on the link I provided you. So instead I will write assuming that someone out there is interested enough in my opinions to read on.
A simulation of proton-on-proton action at 14 TeV producing the Higgs boson. Source: CERN
When you get right down to it, this is a fantastic opportunity to further our understanding of the universe. Mass is such a fundamental property that if we figure out where it comes from and how it is formed then that could lead to something just as world-shattering as Einstein’s General Relativity. Granted I might be romanticizing this a little as hundreds of new particles have been discovered since particle accelerators were invented. Yet it seems like rarely did any of them get enough publicity to make it farther than an article in a science magazine until now.
As always though, the media loves imagining terrible doomsday scenarios to help capture the public’s attention. With an artistic licence and technology this advanced it is pretty easy to come up with some outlandish ideas. I’m not saying that there isn’t danger in a collider this big, but I don’t think it is quite on the scale that Dan Brown imagines. The earth is bombarded quite often by particles with energies higher than 100 TeV, so smashing a few underground at 14 TeV is childsplay comparatively. Also these aren’t your neighborhood hoodlums playing with fireworks, these are some of the smartest people from all over the Earth. If there was a good chance of a catastrophic disaster then I’m sure they are more qualified to decide on the danger of the experiment than the average person.
Antimatter, the most expensive material known to man (I wonder if it really looks this cool). Source: Angels and Demons (film)
The questions that the Large Hadron Collider may answer will no doubt raise dozens of bigger questions, but by asking bigger questions we take another step towards a true understanding of everything.
- Jon
I recently came across a couple of articles about our daily lives that made me think quite a bit. The first, a Washington Post article, is written 
about what happens when you take one of the world’s greatest musicians with one of the world’s most expensive instruments and place him in a subway with no recognition whatsoever. An incredibly interesting experiment with slightly depressing results, I highly recommend this read:
Washington Post – Pearls Before Breakfast
The second article is along the same lines…written about the habits of people who tour the Louvre in France. So many amazing works of art that are worth millions of dollars each, yet rarely does anybody stop and take more than a minute to digest what they are seeing:
Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times
Both of these articles address the same issue – the fact that many people today are too busy with their everyday lives to stop and enjoy true beauty. Sure you can argue that beauty needs a certain frame or that beauty is in the eye of the beholder but the simple fact is most of us wouldn’t recognize true beauty if it hit us in the face. Well that needs somewhat of a correction…we would recognize it only if we were ready for it.
So why aren’t we ready for it at all times? Most of the time there is so much going on in life that we can’t even take the time to notice – the amount of information that we have to sift through daily is staggering. But so what if you’re two minutes late to a job that you dread? Taking the time to stop and enjoy the beauty of our surroundings is priceless. I know I can’t keep people from feeling a sense of urgency when they are on the way to work but I hope that eventually people will start to stop and appreciate the little things that make life here on Earth so amazing.
- Jon
Happy Birthday Kyle! Lake Powell is one beautiful place. At times, the sights rival those of the Grand Canyon. Beautiful. I highly recommend the Lake Powell andventure to anyone who is thinking about a lake trip with beautiful scenery.
Disclaimer: this article is a rant and is not aimed at any one individual. Take it seriously, but don’t take it personally.
Clearly Photoshopped.
For whatever reason, the ‘Birthers’ have been getting a lot of publicity lately. The whole movement, or whatever you want to call it, is based on the idea that Obama isn’t a born citizen to the United States and therefore ineligible to serve as President. Some theories are that he was born in Kenya instead of Honululu, or that because his mother was a citizen but his father wasn’t he doesn’t qualify for natural-born citizenship. I would just like to classify all these arguments as absurd and a complete waste of time.
To be honest, I’m more fascinated by the fact that so many people seem to be enamored with this theory of conspiracy against the American people. I have read about many other conspiracy theories including theories on the real cause behind 9/11 and theories about the faked moon landings, but for some reason this idea about Obama not being a natural-born citizen seems to be the most outrageous thing I’ve ever heard. At least the other theories entertained the idea of being plausible (entertain is the key word here). So why are so many people subscribing to this way of thinking? Radio personalities and even congress members have been accused of not believing in Obama’s legitimacy as a citizen. It was such an issue that a bill was proposed to ensure that no future President would have the opportunity to pull a fast one on us like Obama apparently did.
To me this whole ordeal is just an example of how far people are willing to go in order to deceive themselves. Please everyone, have some sense.
- Jon
Yet another beautiful day in Albuquerque! These big blue skies are hard to beat. It’s a bit warm, but nonetheless amazing.
As some of you might know, 40 years ago today the Apollo 11 crew returned from their mission to the moon. In my eyes, that mission was the single greatest achievement that has ever occurred. Humans have been looking up at the moon for thousands of years and forming religions and beliefs around it; some thought it to be a deity while others believed it had magical powers. No doubt about it, the moon has had an enormous influence on society. On July 20th, 1969 – just 63 years after humans learned how to fly – we as a species had achieved the impossible and put a man on the moon. 63 years! Can you imagine being one of the people that was fortunate enough to see both the invention of the airplane AND the first moonwalk?
It is amazing to me that 40 years ago we had the technology to defy gravity and reach the moon. Computers were enormous, clumsy, and slow by today’s standards. Most people have a phone that is exponentially more powerful than the computer equipment NASA sent to the moon. With that in mind one would think that 40 years worth of technological improvements would put the moon in our pocket…but alas, the program was deemed costly and unnecessary and enthusiasm for manned space exploration waned.
Maybe it’s the Internet’s fault…or maybe it was the post war economic prosperity coming to a close, I don’t know. But I do know that the people and the leaders of the time set their sites on an enormous goal and achieved it. I can only hope that I will be fortunate enough to experience such a rush of pride in humanity in my lifetime. Even with Capitol Hill concerning themselves over Obama’s Health Plan and huge bailout packages going out to bankrupt companies, I hope that our leaders have the guts to bring an emphasis back onto manned space exploration.
There are numerous sites on the internet that explain why money spent on research for manned space missions is beneficial to Earthbound operations as well, so I won’t delve into those. But just as I learned when I was young, we need to dream big. What better way than to reach for the stars?
You can find the above images and more at the Apollo 11 Image Gallery.
- Jon
As the summer comes to a close, it’s finally starting to hit me that I will be leaving the South for good. As much as I can’t wait to ditch NASCAR, camo hats, and hillbilly conversations, there is a lot about this place that I will miss. There are some things that I won’t be able to do while back in Albuquerque, and those are the things I will miss most. With that said I figured I’d link a few pictures to reminisce about what I’ve done with my life the past three years.
Overlooking Talladega National Forest
In Anniston, AL there isn’t a whole lot to do other than hunt and NASCAR. Even still, the race at Talladega Speedway only occurs twice a year, so that’s a lot of downtime. But it just so happens that Anniston is nestled right up against the Cheaha Mountains which are apart of the Talladega National Forest. The country is just simply beautiful. Cheaha Peak weighs in at roughly 2,400 ft., but makes up for the lack of elevation with lush, green, forests. There are about 6 great waterfalls within a few miles which make for a great stop to swim and cool off after a few hours of hiking in the summertime heat.
Cooling off at Cheaha Falls
Quite a stark contrast to little Anniston is the massive metropolitan area of Atlanta. The bums are aggressive, the traffic is awful, and the air is smoggy (sometimes). As long as I don’t have to worry about driving anywhere I usually don’t mind the hordes of people. However being in a big city definitely has its advantages. Possibly one of my most favorite experiences is being able to sneak up onto the buildings of Georgia Tech and look out over the entire city of Atlanta. You could see everything from up there – Midtown, Downtown, and Buckhead - it was definitely memorable. Not to mention it also taught me the art of using a credit card to unlock doors.
Image Credit: Drew Bowen
Image Credit: Drew Bowen
I certainly hope that I’m not leaving these places for good. I may spew an ample amount of whining, bitching, and ridiculing, but these places are quite fantastic in their own right. You just have to take the time to recognize their good qualities.
- Jon
