After the Fall

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I grew up with concrete driveways. That’s what happens when your father and your grandfather were professional masons. I hated those concrete driveways in the winter. All my friends had blacktop driveways. Blacktop driveways retain heat better. When the snow falls on blacktop driveways, it melts (at least at first), making shoveling easier. When it falls on concrete driveways, it doesn’t melt. Try shoveling that. I vowed my house would have an asphalt driveway.

Of course, in those freak lake effect events, the snow accumulates quickly. Especially when it’s cold. Even blacktop driveways can’t help you with the shoveling.

That’s not the only way blacktop driveways can disappoint you.

Asphalt – the material of which blacktop driveways consist – tends to be more flexible than Continue Reading “After the Fall”

The Daddy-Daughter Talk… About Gravity Waves

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Graphic Source: NASA.gov

Graphic Source: NASA.gov

On the morning of Thursday, February 11, 2016 at a press conference in Washington DC, an international team of scientists from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced the discovery of Gravity Waves. Long sought after, this phenomenon was first postulated by Albert Einstein more than a century ago in his seminal 1915 paper on the General Theory of Relativity. While the major media jumped on this “universe changing” story, the reports were not adequate to fully explain the concept of Gravity Waves and the implications of their discovery. Leave it, then, to the innocent questions of a young daughter to her wise father to explain The Facts of Life and Gravity Waves. What follows is the transcript of the actual conversation that occurred through Facebook messaging on Friday, February 12, 2016:

Daughter: [Friday 3:20pm] “Gravitational Waves Detected, Confirming Einstein’s Theory” (New York Times, February 12, 2016) “Scientists say they heard the faint chirp of two black holes colliding a billion light-years away, fulfilling Einstein’s general theory of relativity.” (nytimes.com, accessed February 12, 2016)… did you see this? A lot of my friends liked this story, but they don’t know what it means.
Daddy: That’s because it’s not something tangible. We can’t really “see” a physical “wave.” What we’re doing is detecting radio waves – i.e., sounds. This branch of astronomy, called “Radio Astronomy” has been around for a while (it took off in the 1960s when a couple of Bell Labs engineers accidentally discovered it wasn’t pigeon poop, but Continue Reading “The Daddy-Daughter Talk… About Gravity Waves”

The Snow Monster Returns: Buffalo Bills, Undefeated for the Decade!

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Bills_Game_Close_Up_300Should I stay home or should I go?

With red letter snow warnings, ominous travel advisories and a plethora of church service cancellations, the question wavered annoyingly in my own mind and unspoken on my worried wife’s barely wakened lips.

Should I stay or should I go?

The last game of the season. A meaningless game. Against a team that expects to bench most of its starting players. The beleaguered Buffalo Bills, banished for the past decade to the Siberia of no-playoffs, have done little to earn back the loyalty of staunch fans since the heresy of hiring Tom Donahoe. Why should any humble fan place their body in harm’s way, especially when the kind Gods of Time-Warner decided to sell-out the game (the only way they could then broadcast it to local viewers).

Should I stay or should I go?

Continue Reading “The Snow Monster Returns: Buffalo Bills, Undefeated for the Decade!”

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