Irritation as Muse: Not the first Volume
I'm irritated. Seriously irritated. Like cactus spine or porcupine quill under my skin irritated.
I understand about stupidity. I really do. Some people are just stupid, and really can't help that. I have several friends that just plain give everything they have and come up a little short in the IQ department.
What I don't understand is willful ignorance. I mean really.
Source Milky Way, Pennsylvania, USA, Northern Hemisphere
I read around 50 posts every day. Many of them are friends and colleagues whose opinions and posts I love. Some are 'fresh meat'. I just really love finding a great new author to follow along with.
I have certain categories that I am attracted to. Motorcycles, dogs, travel are just sucker bets to get me to read. I really like astronomy and engineering geeks, too. Great photography and music and art absolutely boggle me.
Source Milky Way, Moab, Utah, US, Northern Hemisphere
So it was with a certain amount of amusement that I read a post the other day from a young person that took a trip to New Zealand. According to his post, one of the main reasons he took said trip was to be able to view the Milky Way which is not available in the Northern Hemisphere.
I laughed in real time, imagining Forest Gump saying stupid is as stupid does.
A week into it, I haven't forgotten. In fact, it's like a cactus spine that has to pus up before you can dig it out from under your skin.
I look at the Milky Way most nights. I am in the Northern Hemisphere. Ergo the dimwit is wrong.
I live in a bit of a light puddle and so seeing the Milky Way (especially on nights with a gibbous moon) can be problematic but even on the full moon I can at least see the outline. All I have to do to catch the full glory is travel 10 miles east or north to full darkness. It's spectacular.
He obviously presumed since he'd never noticed the Milky Way until he spent a night in a tent in New Zealand that he couldn't see it in Europe. He'd just never looked in the right place at the right time. AND DIDN'T DO ONE IOTA OF RESEARCH for his post. That's ignorance. Plain and simple.
So how about this? Don't be that guy. If you aren't certain either don't say it or look it up. It would have taken him 15 seconds to see Northern Hemisphere photos of the Milky Way and no more that 10 minutes to find out where he made his mistake.
Source
Milky Way with Aurora Borealis, Alaska, USA, Northern Hemisphere.
In the dimwit's defense I know this to be absolute fact: It's not the stuff I don't know that bites me on the ass. It's the stuff I do know that is wrong that really hurts.
I have some specialty tools for picking a cactus spine out from under my skin. A magnifying glass, a scalpel sharp knife and a couple of probes that I have sharpened on a hook sharpener until they are quite small. All in all, it's a hell of a lot easier to just trust google for information when there is the slightest doubt.
Thanks for listening to my rant.
The words are all mine, the photographs are properly sourced
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Have I ever told you that I can see Alaska from my front porch? It took me three seconds on Google to find that it was really said as “They’re our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska”
Sometimes you are colored stupid and not even of your own accord. Poor Ms. Palin.
I admire the fact that your internal Rolodex goes through that many posts on a daily basis and have the knowledge and the ability to be able to spot these things. To be honest, you are pretty quick to point out that you don't know everything, but, honestly, I haven't found one subject that will back up that claim.
And thanks for the rant! I learned something new today. Rants help generate more thinking sometimes. Happy Sunday!
Yeah. Ms Palin said some stupid stuff. But not everything she said was. Like that quote. Did she say more stupid stuff than Bush? Probably not.
I really dislike when lazy is the reason for mistakes.
Oh, dear! I wasn't comparing by any means!!! Ms. Palin did her share of stupid, but she did no worse than the rest of the unnamed people. :)
Un-be-lievable! Wow, this is so sad, our youth are not being educated! Now I make my own share of errors on a daily basis, but the make a statement like that, no wonderful its eating at you like a spine from a cactus @bigtom13. You live in a beautiful area, there is nothing like your night skies :) Especially when you don't have the light pollution! We love looking at the stars in the sky and have taught our girls all about it from a young age.
Yeah. Our night skies are spectacular. My friend Erv and I camped at Painted Rock for the summer solstice a few years ago. It was hot and not another soul in the campground so we didn't even put tents up. Just on our sleeping pads on the ground.
Shortly after we'd gone to bed Erv said "May be a storm coming." Within 15 minutes we knew it was actually the Milky Way rising. Spectacular hardly covers it. Had I not wanted to be at full tilt an hour before sun up I'd have watched the 'spectacle' longer. A recliner and some popcorn would have been perfect!
I Have a saying for people who do stupid things I tend to think of them as Oxygen theifs wasting good oxygen on a brain that clearly doe snot need it, and could be used by brains in better gear, or I may say if they had one more brain cell it would be lonely :)
Sure we all make silly mistakes at times, but at least as you say do some research first before saying something like that
Now in New Zealand, there are lots of remote places where people camp where there is no light pollution from manmade light and you can get amazing views of the Milky Way, but there are also many spots for that on this side of the world
Most of Arizona is outside the light pool. Surprisingly, much of California, too. Some of my best pictures of the milky way are from South East California. Tucson and Flagstaff have both taken on light initiatives to prevent as much leakage as possible for their local observatories (Kitt Peak and Lowell). Pretty impressive!
I couldn't find my best Milky Way photos. I'm not sure where I put them :) But I have one from the rim of Hells Canyon, Idaho that I really like.
Thats One thing I haven’t done yet got shots of the Milky Way, but it is on my to do list, I will look for some good locations when I retire and have more time for it ;)
Thats great those areas have taken steps to prevent light leakage
Over Chaco Canyon, NM
That is seriously beautiful. From one of those places where the sirens sing to me.
And this is how fake news starts. People be duuuuuhmb!
Yep. Just repeat something stupid enough and some people will actually believe it.
This is sad and funny at the same time I guess :') How desperate people are to create 'amazing' content (that gets rewarded)? Instead they could've written about how they woke up that morning and fantasized about seeing the Milky Way because they never had - and it would have been a perfectly personal story that's worth a read :-)
People...
It was really a quite a well written post that was probably worthy of some reward if not for the stupidity part. It it were "I never knew what I was missing having never seen the Milky Way" I'd have been all over it.
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Wow, that is pretty sad. It is also impressive that the person has the disposable income to just take a trip like that. I'd love to get a chance to see the Northern lights again, but I am not whipping out my credit card and flying off to Norway! I am part of a group that tracks the Aurora along the Norther edge of Michigan and they post some pretty impressive pictures of the Milky Way when the lady isn't dancing.