Jul 3, 2005
Scattershooting Fireworks . . . .
I missed the fireworks display at the local dirt track last night, It’s quite visible from a field just two houses north of mine, and I was home. For whatever reason I just listened to the booming from my house.
I loved firecrackers as a kid. And sparklers, and bottle rockets, and roman candles. Even those snake things that you lit and grew out of the ground like a small Hollywood special effect.
One New Years Eve, my teenage friends and I had a bottle rocket war, having armed ourselves with gross upon gross of bottle rockets and the odd firecracker or twenty. The trick was to light the fuse and then toss the bottle rocket just as it fired. Gunpowder fogged the air. My mother, who I am sure watched this with a mixture of amusement and horror, provided a pleasant interruption by picking up a bucket of fried chicken for us. I nearly made it though the whole evening without something blowing up in my hand.
It was glorious: possibly the best New Year’s Eve of my life. Certainly the last innocent one.
I started thinking about fireworks when I read an article just now on NASA’s plans for its own fireworks display. Tomorrow they will be crashing a probe into a comet.
It’s a sort of brute force science. The probe itself will have some instruments, but the craft that launched the probe will analyze the impact and the ejecta. More precisely, it will monitor the impact and the ejecta in various ways, and scientists will analyze the data from the monitoring.
I’m excited by the science. (All the more so because NASA’s science budget is being curtailed.) Yet, this one makes me queasy. It’s a violent encounter compared to Voyager or to the robots still tooling around on Mars. While the odds of there being life on that comet are extraordinarily small, I can’t help but thinking how we would feel if some curious aliens tossed a big rock into California just to see what would fly into the air.
This Fourth of July Eve has started damp, but it’s supposed to be dry tomorrow. That’s a good combination for fireworks. The city’s firework’s display is tomorrow night. Many will watch from around the park. Some will get in boats and party barges and park themselves at good vantage points on the lake. If I go down to the shore by my house, I can just make the display out.
Perhaps I will this time.
Have a good Fourth, and if you have kids or grandkids, may you strike the perfect balance between pyrotechnics, survival, and the joy of being a child.
I loved firecrackers as a kid. And sparklers, and bottle rockets, and roman candles. Even those snake things that you lit and grew out of the ground like a small Hollywood special effect.
One New Years Eve, my teenage friends and I had a bottle rocket war, having armed ourselves with gross upon gross of bottle rockets and the odd firecracker or twenty. The trick was to light the fuse and then toss the bottle rocket just as it fired. Gunpowder fogged the air. My mother, who I am sure watched this with a mixture of amusement and horror, provided a pleasant interruption by picking up a bucket of fried chicken for us. I nearly made it though the whole evening without something blowing up in my hand.
It was glorious: possibly the best New Year’s Eve of my life. Certainly the last innocent one.
I started thinking about fireworks when I read an article just now on NASA’s plans for its own fireworks display. Tomorrow they will be crashing a probe into a comet.
It’s a sort of brute force science. The probe itself will have some instruments, but the craft that launched the probe will analyze the impact and the ejecta. More precisely, it will monitor the impact and the ejecta in various ways, and scientists will analyze the data from the monitoring.
I’m excited by the science. (All the more so because NASA’s science budget is being curtailed.) Yet, this one makes me queasy. It’s a violent encounter compared to Voyager or to the robots still tooling around on Mars. While the odds of there being life on that comet are extraordinarily small, I can’t help but thinking how we would feel if some curious aliens tossed a big rock into California just to see what would fly into the air.
This Fourth of July Eve has started damp, but it’s supposed to be dry tomorrow. That’s a good combination for fireworks. The city’s firework’s display is tomorrow night. Many will watch from around the park. Some will get in boats and party barges and park themselves at good vantage points on the lake. If I go down to the shore by my house, I can just make the display out.
Perhaps I will this time.
Have a good Fourth, and if you have kids or grandkids, may you strike the perfect balance between pyrotechnics, survival, and the joy of being a child.