I watched the NOVA special today on the New Horizons spacecraft that the world is all abuzz about because it’s starting its mission on taking hi-res photos of the entire surface of Pluto and its moons. It was pretty dope.
I used to watch NOVA all the time as a kid, actually. I loved science. It’s odd to me, actually, that I did, considering I never really did well in my science classes, and I actually had horrible science classes (with a couple notable exceptions) for all of middle and high school. An example: my 7th grade class made my science teacher quit teaching. True story. We were that bad. Mr. Pinkerton. I geuinely felt for the guy. Another example: my 10th grade science teacher was fired for sexual harassment…or at least that’s what the story was. I’m not sure if that was actually true, but it was true he was fired.
The joys of public education, amiright?
NOVA was about as pure enjoyment as I ever got out of science, educationally-speaking. I remember “rediscovering” it about 8 years or so ago now, and feeling immediately reconnected with this world of REAL miracles and imagination. I mean, what these people did over at Jon Hopkins and NASA with New Horizons is nothing short of miraculous. A NINE YEAR journey, literally MILLIONS of miles, and the photographs…
The PHOTOS, guys!
It took photos of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune…and now photos of Pluto, which until now we had NO IDEA what it looked like. I mean…there’s an actual man-made object in orbit around Pluto right now. Just think about that. Let it sink in. We sent something in orbit around Pluto, another planet (well, *dwarf* planet), and it’s sending back PHOTOS to us right now. It’s mind-bogglingly cool if you really stop to think about it.
Today was a struggle, unfortunately. I wasn’t actually feeling very good, I was afraid I was getting sick for a while there…but I felt better as the day went on and I drank a lot of water and took a nap at one point. I think the Ho was right and it was just a change in the weather/allergies…whatever it was, it zapped me pretty good. I ended up making up all that lost time, however, which felt good. Even got my writing hour done. Where I fell short was when I had to attend to apartment issues.
Yup. As hard as I tried to only have my off days dealing with apartment stuff, it spilled over into today on two accounts. A repair, and a trp into the office. Ugh. Whatever. I’m about an hour and a half “behind.” Hoping to make it up tomorrow.
And with that, I’m out. See y’all tomorrow!