My husband came home last night all excited. He had read an article in the Guardian that Gravitational Waves had been discovered. This is, apparently, the last unproved idea from Einstein.

What are gravitational waves you ask? The Globe and Mail had a good analogy. Below is a their explanation from the article:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/einsteins-gravitational-waves-detected-in-scientific-milestone/article28713410/

Ripples in space

The key to understanding gravitational waves is to forget the idea that gravity is an invisible force of attraction between two massive objects. Instead, picture the space around those objects as curved in a way that causes them to move together.

The curvature of space cannot be seen, but its effects are obvious. Think of a bowling ball sitting on a trampoline. The weight of the bowling ball deforms the stretchy trampoline surface, creating a dip. Put a second bowling ball on the trampoline and the two balls naturally roll toward each other until they touch, forming a bigger dip. Click! That’s gravity in action, with the trampoline representing space.

The gravational wave came from two black holes colliding. Black holes can’t be seen because space curves so badly around them that light can’t escape and if it can’t escape we can’t see it but now it can be heard (it is a wave!).  Their collision which took place 1.3 BILLION years ago was detected. Like a stone in a pond, the wave propagated through space and across time to reach two, not just one but two, listening posts.

“Hmmm,” you say, “but what exactly does that mean to me?”

Good question and I don’t know what it really MEANS. I barely understand it. But as the article says this is as big a deal as when Galileo turned his telescope to the heavens for the first time. Look where we are now and we wouldn’t be there without that craving to understand what is around, above and below us. So I am really excited about where this will lead us – into the unknown and speculative fiction which has been talking about harnessing the power of black holes for years will be all over this.

I ski. My family skis. Consequently, we love winter. It has been depressing until this week when finally, finally! the snow has come. There was a little just before Christmas, but not enough to withstand the warm spell and rain. RAIN – what an awful weather event. Rain in winter is like a cold snap in July. Barely faced with equanimity. But I digress. It has finally cooled off, the snow has fallen and there is hope that my husband and I can get out on our snowboards. Yes, I know I said we ski, but since we live in southern Ontario, skiing is pretty boring.  When we travel more than two hours north of the city we ski (snobs that we are) but when we want fun on the slopes close to home we pull out the snowboards.  The weekend is looking good. Saturday will be a little warm, 0 c, but Sunday appears to be more seasonal at -6 c.

Quoting temperature is all well and good but the problem is that you have to figure out not only what clothing to wear but also what your body is used to. I really like it when the temperature slowly drops through the fall and into winter. You get used to cooler and cooler temperature, adding a scarf here, a sweater there until you have the perfect combination of clothing for the outside temperature. When the temperature goes up too much the body immediately re-acclimatises itself to the warmer temperature and forgets all about the cold and you’re back to square one.

Except that square one is significantly cooler than before.  No easing into the temperature. Nope, the body has betrayed you and it shivers away at 5 c, where before the warm snap it would have been happy at that temperature. Now, the problem is you end up either under dressing or over dressing.  I hate sweating inside a heavy coat and NOT being able to take it off because then all that sweat will freeze!  Undoing it, removing hats, mitts, scarves, just won’t work if the coat is too heavy. Wait, I hate being under dressed. Huddled into the coat, head pulled down like a turtle to keep as much of the warmth in as possible, shoulders sore and stiff from hunching, back sore and stiff from shivering. Hands thrust into pockets, arms tight against the body. All the muscles locked down, but still you shiver. Jaw clamped tight to keep from chattering.  The core has to be kept warm, and the body knows that. You try to relax, to drop your shoulders, ease your jaw but that doesn’t last. The body wrests control from your mind and everything curls in towards the core to keep it warm.

Both are pretty bad, but freezing is worse so, paranoid about being cold, which ruins a day of skiing or boarding, I end up taking everything with me. The car looks like a clothing sale table. Sweaters, scarves, mitts, gloves, even another pair (lighter?, heavier?), of long underwear. Thank goodness for cars. If I had to put all my choices into a bag, I’d never be able to carry it! Then I get there, get out of the car and generally go with what I though was right initially, leaving behind all the extra stuff. I guess, those additions were my security blanket.

But then, as is often quoted in our family, there is no bad weather, only bad clothing choices.

In March, I got terribly excited because I got new users, and then more new users, and then a veritable flood of new users. Looking at the email addresses, I noticed they all had the same email format, xxxxxxyyyy.yahoo. Much as I would love to have that many new readers, it is highly unlikely that they would all have discovered me at the same time. So, my conclusion, which may be erroneous, is that I was spammed. Solution, use a captcha.  Result, no new users, sigh.

The next thing I noticed is the comments I received. Most of them had an url attached to them which seemed suspect to me. I did a little research and it looks like some might be spam comments which were not caught by my Aksimet. Strangely, they all were generated in March but had to do with a post I wrote in November. Go figure. Solution, read each comment and if it appeared to not have anything to do with the post, trash it. Some may have gotten through but who am I to ignore comments which are postive?

So, if any of you commented and it didn’t show up, I am sorry. The rule of thumb now is that it has to have something to do with the post, which I think is reasonable.

Why would anyone try to spam a blog? It is rude to advertise your blog or website by spamming the comments section and adding your url to the comment, understandable in a grasping sort of way although still rude, but why register fake users to a blog? It just fills up the user list for no good reason. I suppose it is the same as spraying graffiti on walls. It doesn’t say much about someone who seeks power in petty annoyances anonymously. I feel sorry for them but wish they would go away.