The moon tree
Wed Nov 07, 2007 16:42 EST (UTC -5)Sometimes the most ordinary things have remarkable secrets waiting to be told. Yesterday, I was reading the Gainesville Sun online when I came across this article.
Lake, Pioneer of UF Landscape, Dies at 81
Noel Lake, who was instrumental in designing the landscape of the University of Florida, died of natural causes early Sunday morning, according to his family.
Lake, 81, retired from UF in 1988 after serving as superintendent of grounds and a landscape architect at the university for 33 years. . . .
Lake's creations can be seen across UF's campus, as well as the U.S. He was the inventor of the "bike hitch," which are the ubiquitous U-shaped racks that cyclists use to lock up their bicycles.
Other signs of Lake's influence at UF can be found at the intersection of Museum Road and Gale Lemerand Drive, where a seemingly ordinary sycamore tree stands.
Since my dorm is located at that intersection, my curiosity was piqued.
The seeds of that tree actually flew to the moon on the Apollo 14 mission, and Lake was one of the few to procure a "moon tree."
After class yesterday, I made my way back to that intersection as always. I had turned to Wikipedia to find out what a sycamore actually looks like. (I'm from South Florida, where there are no deciduous forests like you have.) And there I saw it: a tree I had passed numerous times before, one that I would see whenever I was on the bus. I stopped for a moment to examine it from across the street. An ordinary tree.
I turned and saw that someone was behind me on the sidewalk, so I started walking again. And as I did so, I turned my eyes up to the endless blue sky.
My sister and I went to see Bill Nye (the Science Guy) speak yesterday. I'd been pumped about it for a while. I think it was actually the first celebrity speaking engagement (Bill Nye is a celebrity to me) at UF since the incident at the John Kerry forum in September. So then they announced that there would be a short Q&A session after Bill Nye's lecture, I was a little worried.
It turned out that there was nothing to worry about. Bill Nye gave a talk on sundials, space exploration, global climate change, and alternative energy sources, all in his usual humorous style. He seems to have taken up saying hip phrases like "crazy" (as an adjective), "Uh... chyah," and "Are you high?" And people went crazy for him. There were girls shouting, "I love you, Bill Nye!" In fact, so many people were there that they couldn't all fit in the theater. Some people had to watch him on a screen outside.
The questions and answer session was pretty uneventful, although I did learn some things. Bill Nye had a hard time hearing people ask questions in the microphones because the speakers weren't facing him. When someone asked about the technological singularity, he didn't seem to know about it. But I did find out that his favorite movie is Singin' in the Rain.
So Bill Nye was a big success here at UF. But I'm not so sure about the speaker who's coming in two weeks. When the guy in charge of booking speakers announced to the eagerly waiting Bill Nye fans that our friend Alberto Gonzales would be giving a talk, a wave of boos came from the audience. I booed. It felt so right. I don't plan on going to see him, but I wonder if anything crazy's going to happen when he comes.
Speaking of space, here's an article about microorganisms in space. The story begins with Laika, who became the first dog in space 50 years ago.
If you find yourself standing on a street corner in the city of Winslow, Arizona, when a woman driving a Ford pickup truck happens to decrease speed so she can ogle you, you might be in an Eagles song. Standin' on the Corner Park commemorates that city's namecheck in the song "Take It Easy."
Okay, don't say you haven't imagined the scene before. In your mind, what color is the truck?
Red? Same here. Even that web page agrees.
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1 comment
#1 by Luke: Wed Nov 07, 2007 18:37 EST (UTC -5)
The truck was blue or red in my mind, and eventually blue won out. Remember last year when we had the same question about a swimming pool full of gelatin?
Jordon, if you think something will happen when they invite a terrorist to speak at your school, go to witness! Remember when you said you couldn't really comment on what hoppen last time? Now you can!
I always get excited for the future when I read about panspermia and technological singularities and such. I get even more excited when I remember we have to put human progress on a logarithmic scale.
Logarithmic scales get me hot.