Sidetracked Charley

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world  the master calls a butterfly . - Richard Bach When it appeared, or I accepted, that we were going to be in this horrid shift in the paradigm for longer than was comfortable I just wanted to scream. No white knight was going to ride in and slay the dark lord and his minions.  There are games like Monopoly and Chess I came to loathe early on because the end was always so painfully long and torturous. Being burned at the stake has its appeal because it is said you lose consciousness when the fire gets to your knees and friends of the victim help out by bringing more firewood to the pyre. But we are living in the political model of the inquisition.  I could not turn away from the news because I figured I had the Watergate experience to do battle in this far worse situation. But I was going to have to figure out a way to survive it. The steps I took seemed so small at first. It began with watercolor note...

My friends, who have weathered the storm, have taken to calling my split with long time friend and neighbor as the divorce. In the beginning I protested. But, upon reflection, I can see what their reasoning is. But this blog is about life after divorce. Or as I would put it -- re-entering society. Never easy for an introvert, be it entering or re-entering. Life has gone on, as every divorcee discovers, without my participation. There is a lot of catching up to do. I am way behind on conclusions others have made about several other mutual friends. Maybe this stage of life is prone to having breakups with long term relationships. We could form our own support group. Since others have been on the same path I find the general population was already trained to not ask about the missing friend, who was previously attached at the hip. Well, mostly everyone. At a dinner with friends in Taos, owner of the restaurant where we dined, asked where our once mutual friend was. She didn't ...

Paradigm Shift by Skydancer Was looking at my blog stats and noticing that ones where I deal with art or science seem to be the most popular. Mind you my readership is not huge on Sidetracked Charley. My followers on this blog are less than a third of my followers on Creative Journey. I can only assume that more people are interested in my poetry and art and opinions on such than they are on the follies in my life. And so it should be. I do not pretend to be a reality show. But I digress. I was going to write about paradigm shift. One of my favorite scientific theories. Well, next to chaos theory. And I have become rather enamored of late with queuing theory, but those are other blogs for other days. Paradigm shift (or revolutionary science ) is the term used by Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) to describe a change in the basic assumptions, or paradigms , within the ruling theory of science . Since the 1960s, the term has als...

Nuclear Reactor Test Facility I admit I am on a bit of a science bent these days. I love science if I do not have to pass a final exam in it. I love the theories but hate all those Latin words. For decades I took the magazine Scientific American and so am probably armed with too much information and not enough real knowledge. A critical mass is the smallest amount of fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction in case you were wondering. But when I Googled critical mass this morning looking for an image and a definition I cam up with the international bicycle event, swarms of people during rush hour in Tokyo, and army ants dripping off a tree. And, of course, the mushroom cloud. All of which got me thinking of tipping points. A tipping point is the point at which an object is displaced from a state of stable equilibrium into a new equilibrium state qualitatively dissimilar from the first. All of which ties in with my blog on cascade failure and angle of r...