Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Sun dreams

A friend of mine recently told me that I should blog about solar energy, because the Rebbe was very for it. I told him that I really didn't know anything about solar energy, and anyway, there's so much the Rebbe wanted us to work on, why spend time on this one issue? He responded that ignorance is no excuse, and my second reason was little better, so I decided to ponder the subject and let the spirits guide my fingers.
There's this big ball up in the sky that has some massive fusion going on. It's called "The Sun". According to the Rambam, it, along with everything else in the universe, circles planet Earth. How to explain this to your average non-fundamentalist? The first option is Einstein's special theory of relativity, which says that when two things are flying around each other it's impossible to ever know which one is going around. So according to dear old (currently dead) Albert, the sun could very well be flying merrily around the earth. The models to make all the other planets happy, not to mention gravity, are a bit sketchy, but still possible.
Taking this theory further would be the notion that everything is the way science currently envisions it, but that a look on the outside would confirm that indeed earth was the center, pegged, as it were, in the middle of a vast box (or ball, if you're so inclined), so that while the earth would appear to be traveling around the sun in actuality the opposite would be occurring. Since neither of these positions are, by definition, provable, they are also not unprovable, and therefore you may as well believe in them as in any other crackpot ideas.
Moving onto how the sun can help us. As I've blogged about several times before, I'm a huge fan of the sun and the light it provides billions of humans, almost every day, free of charge. One of the problems is harnessing that light to work for you and me. Since I know close to nothing about this particular horse race, I won't offer any particular solutions, but I will say (write) that I'm all for anything that breaks our dependency on foreign oil (President George W. Bush paid me to say {write} that).
Truth is, I'm a big believer in A. Laissez Faire economics, and B. Hashgacha Pratis, Divine Providence. the first resulted in the Great Depression, while the second resulted in basically everything else. Yeah, let the market decide, and if it can't make up its mind then why should I get involved?
For our last little ramble about the sun (that was a rather pedestrian double entendre), I'd like to point out that nuclear energy, however it's pronounced, is also quite fun. Same goes for disturbing moose habitat in ANWR and building lots of dirty coal power plants in developing nations like Biafra, Rhodesia, and the Republic of Texas.
And that friends, is all the news that isn't (much like Biafra).

5 comments:

e said...

What is a pedestrian double entendre?

e said...

subscribing

Just like a guy said...

A pedestrian double entendre is a double entendre that is quite boring, not exciting in any sense of the word. Look it up on Wikipedia for more info.

Anonymous said...

What are the two possible meanings of "little ramble about the sun"?

Just like a guy said...

A. Discoursing about the sun
B. Walking around on the sun