atoms into suns

Don't you just hate it when your husband does a major upgrade and switches from Gentoo to Fedora, and you lose your .bashrc file (and all your aliases), the scroll wheel on the mouse now pulls up menus and acts as a middle-click (paste) instead of scrolling, Mozilla won't let you have your email or resize fonts, you can't print or access the CD drive or even the sound card, all your preferences for everything have gone away, and your husband falls asleep before you can complain?

Yeah, me too.

Fortunately, said husband is awesome and had almost all of it fixed before leaving for work the next day. The web stuff didn't get fixed until today.

not posted by Sarah 13 December 2004 0124 because the local copy of the webpage was gone, too.

Yay Red Sox

Why couldn't you have been good when I lived in Boston? I suppose I should be thankful for the fact that you won every game I went to see, except when you played the Twins, but since I'm from North Dakota, where everyone cheers for the Twins, that's okay. You taught me that seeing a baseball game live is far cooler than watching one on TV and that Fenway Park is the best place on the planet to watch a baseball game. And I never paid more than $14 to do it (nine years ago). Now, if you could explain to me why anyone would pay $14,000 for one baseball game, I'd appreciate it.

Politics

It's probably a good thing that I took a break from posting in the month before the election. I found myself getting very caught up in politics. This is a) something I've never done before -- I normally avoid politics because I find it pointless, obnoxious, and frustrating; b) maddening due to its inherent divisiveness; and c) specifically forbidden in the Baha'i Faith. The overriding theme in the Baha'i Faith is unity -- the recognition that God created us all equal -- and politics as practiced today is divisive and contentious and therefore against the teachings of the Faith. This doesn't mean we're supposed to ignore politics. We're expected to vote for the best candidate for the office, regardless of party.

I found it rather stunning just how divisive it got; even our food choices were politicized. (You want Heinz ketchup on those freedom fries?) I'm glad it's all over, and even more glad that there weren't challenges that would cause the result to be dragged out even longer than last time.

GIMP

See that picture in the previous post? I cropped that all by myself, using The GIMP. I'm quite proud of myself, since my previous attempts at using gimp have resulted in stupendously horrendous results. And lest you think I'm simply technically incompetent, I present my proudest geekly achievement: Learning LaTeX and vi simultaneously in roughly a 24-hour period in order to post Polymer Physics problem set solutions online. Gimp just hates me.

Where'd Everybody Go?

In the space of a few weeks, several of the blogs on my sidebar have shut down or disappeared.

John Wiegley has quit blogging since a high school student plagiarized one of his entries, which led to him being accused of plagiarizing her paper. I'm too annoyed to even comment.

Sina Mossayeb's blog has disappeared.

HijabMan is still around, but has put out the (mostly-)blank white facade while undergoing a major renovation.

And most surprising and troubling of all, Laura has put up a "Closed" sign. I really hope this is only temporary, since her blog has become one of my favorites (and I'm not just saying that because she linked to the big news in my last post). Some of her posts in the past month or two have really gotten me thinking, even keeping me up at night. She has a way of writing simple posts that act as Pop Rocks in my brain, causing flashes here and there, leading to little epiphanies... and big ones. If you're really done, Laura, I figure you have a really good reason, but know that you'll be missed. I hope you come back soon.

The Boulder Daily Camera had an excellent article in today's Faith section about the Baha'i community here. They sent a reporter and photographer to our devotional meeting last Sunday, and afterwards they interviewed Mr. Majidi, a member of the community who fled Iran under death sentence.

Mr. Majidi's story isn't all that uncommon. A large number of Iranian Baha'is have fled Iran (and other countries) to escape persecution. Often they've come to the US when they were well into adulthood or even old age. Many hardly speak any English, or if they do, they're often not entirely fluent and have thick accents that make them reluctant to talk to native speakers.

Mr. and Mrs. Majidi speak no English. Even though I see them regularly, all I can offer them is a kind look, an Allah'u'Abha, and an attempt to understand a little bit of who they are and why they're here, so far from Iran. Occasionally, if one of their family members is nearby to interpret, we can have a short, awkward conversation. I can't imagine how isolated they must feel.

And yet they come. They come to Feast, they come to devotions, they come to other gatherings. Mr. Majidi chants prayers with a hoarse and tired voice, in words that I don't understand. That's okay; I understand the beauty of them. Besides, it must be nice for him and his wife to understand the words of the prayers themselves now and then.

Of course, they're not the only Baha'is in the US with stories of escaping Iran because of their Faith.

I used to live in the Phoenix area, which has a large Iranian-American population. One woman I knew well came to the US in 1980 or 1981 (a year or two after the revolution) with her husband and one-year-old son. They'd intended to stay there even after the revolution but changed their minds after hearing about another one-year-old boy being decapitated -- simply because he was a Baha'i.

Baby martyrs. I can't imagine.

This same woman told me stories now and again of her life in Iran even before the revolution, in the relatively carefree times of the Shah's rule. In one story from when she was a girl, a number of Baha'is were gathered in someone's house when they smelled something burning. After a minute or two, they realized their front door was on fire; someone had tried to burn down the house -- or maybe it was just a warning.

Hearing these stories through broken English makes the effect even more surreal and jarring. After a couple of sentences that don't quite make sense to my ears I'll finally grasp that -- Oh! They're burning the house down!

While living in Arizona I also met a recent arrival. Shervin and his family had come to the US, knowing no English and having no family here, so he could get an education. Baha'is aren't even allowed to attend universities in Iran. Many are denied jobs.

A friend and I have talked about collecting the stories of these souls, first as sort of an audio history, then maybe as a book. The task is pretty daunting; there are tens of thousands (or more) of Baha'is who have fled Iran, and each of these people have stories that could fill an entire book on their own.

Tomorrow morning, at about 7am MDT, SpaceShipOne will be launched from the Mojave Spaceport in Mojave, CA. This is the first launch toward winning the Ansari X-Prize.

Burt Rutan is a bit of a hero of mine. The first I heard of him was when the Voyager, a plane he designed, flew nonstop around the world without refueling. That was in 1986; I was 12 years old. I learned more about his designs and was captivated. They looked nothing like planes were supposed to. They had weird things like canards and stubby wings with vertical tips and propellers on the tail. And, of course, they were made of polymer composites. Supposedly they were stronger than steel, but at that time I couldn't figure out how plastic could be stronger than metal.

Burt Rutan's aircraft designs are what got me interested in aviation as well as materials. I went to college intending to be an aerospace engineer. After I decided I didn't like physics, I ended up going into materials science and engineering instead. That wasn't out of blind idolization; it was because my interest in those areas had been brought to life, largely by this one man's designs.

Of course, there are many other teams vying for the X-Prize, but it doesn't really surprise me that Rutan and company are the most likely to win it. He's been an aerospace pioneer for decades now.

I'm also quite excited about this new era in aerospace. Already Richard Branson and Scaled Composites / Mojave Aerospace Ventures have announced a deal for five spacecraft. Flights available to the public are projected to start in 2007 (for those who can afford the $170k+).

(More info available on Slashdot and at boingboing.)

Of course, Scaled Composites / Mojave Aerospace Ventures aren't the only team in this game. With a number of companies already working on suborbital spacecraft and more, I think we're on the cusp of the barnstorming era of space travel.

I can't wait.