Not So Common Misconceptions

It's the time of year when Catholics (some of them, any ways) practice Lent, that is to give up something you love to have every day for what is it, a week? I'm not Catholic, but I practice something similar: it's called Spent, and it's almost all year long. It mostly involves spending money, sometimes balanced by making money, and losing both by spending my time doing nothing important. I don't really love those things, so maybe I worship at the wrong altar?

So I wrote about some of my own misconceptions from childhood, revealing a natural curiosity for the world I found myself in. Now I'm an adult and I'm still curious, although my search for answers has been stifled by a quest for money and a place to call my own. I've been succeeding lately, so now I actually have a little more time to go exploring again. These traits are probably common amongst us all and children should be curious because they know so little. Another trait I noticed about my self is how I enjoy sharing what I've learned. Even at an early age I was so eager to share my knowledge of "potential black holes that travel through space devouring solar systems, even light itself" and how one day our sun will probably explode in a super nova...but not for billions of years. I always paused at that part. That was third grade.

Whether or not you become jaded by learning too much about something you shouldn't get involved in depends on how much discipline you have. There is a side effect in learning where you may become a know it all, which is likely an indication that you don't know enough! That was me in third grade, all my excitement about space was met with disinterested faces, which I responded to with disgust since my classmates didn't feel interested in cool shit like outer space.

At some point I stopped being so unique and became interested in things that were more popular, a common theme that dominated High School. Almost everyone has an opinion on politics, education, and "ooh" freedom of speech. Hot topics no doubt, but a lack of experience or education on these subjects leads to many popular misconceptions.

I don't like to be jaded, so I won't talk about those common misconceptions. Plus, there are articles (done with real research and junk) that aid in deconstructing the most common myths. Instead, I'd rather get back into the subjects I'm more interested in, that aren't commonly discussed but still come up randomly, which is part of why I'm willing to call myself an expert. I am an expert of random crap!

Let's delve into my favorite and oldest subject: space! The sun is made of fire...is inaccurate. The sun is indeed a hot ball of blazing material, in fact it's so hot this stuff enters an uncommon terrestrial state of matter known as plasma. In space, however, plasma is the most common state, evidenced by all those stars at night. The sun is mostly elements of hydrogen and helium, with many other elements divided into much smaller proportions, reacting at very high temperatures. Hydrogen is the lightest of all elements, and also the most common. It's also very flammable. Being so abundant, it is also the longest lasting element to remain as a plasma, so stars continue to shine for billions of years before they burn out.

Plasma is what happens when a gas like Hydrogen, or the air inside the path of a lightning strike, is heated to a star like temperature of 10,000 degrees Farenheit or higher (lower temperatures don't exclude the existence of plasma, this is just my example). Lightning overcomes the insulation of air at a temperature five times higher than the surface of the sun (in most cases, some lightning can reach 25 times this temperature) when it strikes in the form of plasma.

A quick definition of plasma is a gas heated so much it only leaves electrons and other charged particles behind, behaving the way we expect electricity to instead of gas.

So fire is a reaction of the elements at lower temperatures, in the states we are familiar with on Earth-solid, liquid and gas, but plasma continues this reaction at much higher temperatures where matter behaves differently. I like to think of the sun as a big ball of "electric fire that is also lightning on fire" even though that earns me funny looks.

Dark matter...isn't dark, or anything we know of at all. It's a mathematical component to the problem of how much total mass should be in the universe. Our best calculations of known matter leave a large portion missing from the equation, so we plug in "dark matter" to see how much we are missing. Trouble is it isn't matter at all, or we'd be able to detect it somehow, especially when the missing amount is a quarter dark "mass", and three quarters dark "energy". I think this label is misleading, and so is the calculation, because we presume to be looking for matter and energy, only in a state that we haven't recognized yet. From there we could go into theoretical stuff, but I'll pretend it's "dark paragraphs" that cannot be detected yet.

God is a white man with a white beard...or so imagined the painter Michelangelo. Now I know I've set after uncommon misconceptions, with the intent of replacing them with facts, but sometimes just pointing them out when I don't have a fact to replace it with must do. My real goal is to encourage critical thinking, although these words make me cringe because I sound like an assignment heading from a text book.

I'm not suggesting that what Michelangelo painted wasn't a personal vision of God, or that he was wrong for doing so. There is a trap, however, that I notice many people fall into when arguing over the existence of God. Some people truly take offense to the idea that God is a man, a white man at that (with a ZZ Top beard), and will argue that this is clear evidence that God is a figment of our imagination. Trouble is, it is correct that we do imagine God in a fashion that suits us. However, that alone does not disprove God, it only reveals we have a creative imagination.

So it doesn't offend me, some people prefer to imagine God as a woman, some prefer God be an angry bolt of lightning, hellfire and brimstone. Whatever, this process reveals more about ourselves and our relationship with God and the present culture than it reveals the image of God. Hmm, God creates people in His own image who imagine God via their own creations? Difference being our creations don't come to life and imagine their own creations, of course.

And my current image of God? I like the "Father" metaphor, especially in the older original context, where the father was leader of the household, provider, and protector. That's how I commonly imagine God's characteristics, although the idea of a white man in a white cloak is silly to me. I cite these descriptions from the Bible, I try not to imagine God being contained in one image or word (including the word "God", it's another invention of ours that references a power beyond our own). What's important for me to remember is that however I imagine God to be like, my thoughts cannot influence God, and that my thoughts and intentions are always known to God even when I don't know them myself.

Lightning rods attract lightning...is false. Nothing attracts lightning, it is an exchange of powerfully charged opposite electrons. These charges always try and seek each other, regardless of what they are contained in. One way to remember this is to understand that lightning, and electricity in general, follows a path of least resistance. The critical point is how the path of least resistance is impossible to predict, even the lightning doesn't know where it will meet an opposite charge whether in the clouds or on the ground. Air itself resists lightning because it's an insulator, although this resistance is what allows lightning to reach such incredible charges.

The term lightning rod can be used in a misleading way. For example, Charlie Sheen has become a "lightning rod" of media attention, and gets people talking about controversy. Here, a lightning rod is someone who "attracts" attention. In this case the key is in the idea of attraction. This isn't how or why lightning rods work. If they did, why in the hell would any body want to install a lightning rod on their roof? This would also suggest that lightning rods could collect all strikes, thus saving everyone and everything from ever being struck, and we could potentially transform all that plasma energy into workable electricity.

The real purpose is to possibly save your home from being struck, directly discharging an immense current around and into any conductive surfaces. A danger from lightning to your home is from the large currents blowing out wiring, sparking fires from electric wires or appliances, and electrocution from being in contact with conductive surfaces inside the home. I've seen photos where pieces of drywall were blown out from the wires inside the wall, leaving large burn patterns around electrical outlets. Most of the electricity gets discharged into the ground, still, a direct strike on the home leaves this much damage or worse. A lightning rod therefore helps conduct the massive current along a copper wire that is deeply rooted into the ground, leading the energy safely into the earth and sparing the home.

All said, lightning is unpredictable, but it is more likely to hit things that are tall, pointy on top, and isolated.

Lightning begins as a charge seeking an opposite charge (in a cloud or on the ground) moving at speeds we cannot see. Slow motion cameras show us the process which takes less than one second. Stepped leaders fall to the earth like fingers, getting close enough to attract opposite and invisible charges from objects on the ground (like trees, antennas, people, and lightning rods). When these two make contact, the charge returns from the ground up to the cloud, filling each "channel" created by the leaders, in a flash we see as lightning bolts.

If a stepped leader gets close enough to your house, an opposite charge may connect at some point on your roof. Since a lightning rod is taller, pointier, and isolated on the tallest part of your roof, lightning is more likely to follow this path of least resistance, into the copper wire and into the ground instead of the wires to your computer, telephone, and microwave.

So let's try that phrase again, correctly. If Charlie Sheen is a lightning rod (with Tiger Blood) of attention, we are saying that he increases the odds of getting attention himself thereby diverting attention away from the people who installed him on their roof. Hmm, that just doesn't work at all.

Did you also know that lightning is not as big as it appears? Average bolts of lightning are a silver dollar in diameter, it's just so damn bright that the bolt appears much larger.

Bold coffee has more caffeine...is false. Boldness of coffee refers to the duration the beans were roasted for, to give them a darker or richer and full flavor. The level of caffeine isn't affected by this.

Modern airplanes fly themselves...yeah right, that's a scary idea. Usually this refers to the technology involved in autopilot systems. These are advanced machines indeed, but they require input and programming from the pilot before and during all phases of flight to be safe and efficient. Sure, an autopilot will fly a plane straight and level---into the side of a mountain. The pilot is still required to know the flight plan, maintain course, and most of all communicate with Air Traffic Control. Autopilots still aren't designed to handle the unexpected, and can create disasters themselves if the pilot doesn't intervene.

Autopilot is most efficient at maintaining altitudes, air speeds, course settings, and keeping the pilot from having a lot of work to do with his hands during the busiest portions of aviation. Takeoff and landing procedures are simplified as well, but all of this depends on correct inputs from the pilot. It would be more accurate to say that airplanes fly themselves the way the pilot tells them to.

Guys think about sex every...3 to 5 minutes...or more often as I've heard before. I don't know about other guys but I don't think about it that frequently. This might be too much information, but I only think about it several times a day on average, in intervals of hours on average. So yeah, that seems a lot for one thought, but we all have our proclivities. Maybe other guys do think about it this much? Perhaps I'm spending too many hours thinking about plasma and fire lightning bolts.

Ron Paul cannot win...is a broad claim that appeals to apathy in voters. This one counts as a not so common, because even though it has to do with politics and the general election from 2008, I feel the argument that we shouldn't vote for this candidate because he "cannot win" is so effective that nobody talks about it. Did Ron Paul win the Presidential Election in 2008? Nope, so case closed? NO!

My problem with this is its circular logic: don't vote for Ron Paul, why? He cannot win. Why? Because HE CANNOT WIN! Is there some clause in the Constitution that declares "One day a guy named Ron Paul will be born in the USA, he is forbidden from becoming President (even though he maintains a 10 year seat in the Senate and is admired by his constituents)", or was he not born in the USA? At least offer a reason along with that statement, then we can think critically about his qualifications.

Nope, those who display this "argument" offer no other reason. It's a disgusting ploy to minimize the candidate and ignore his ideas, and encourages the belief that we must vote for one popular candidate versus another popular candidate, regardless of whether or not we believe they are genuine and suitable leaders.

I regret my vote in 2008 because I voted based on a belief one was the "lesser of two evils". I completely ignored Ron Paul and fell totally for the argument of apathy. It's true, Ron Paul cannot win if we don't vote for him because we don't think he will win. Stupid.

Since I discovered Ron Paul again this year, I find I agree with everything he proposes. He appears to be a superb economist and his speeches are quietly charismatic and moving. His response time during the debates was sharp, on point, and honest. He put those other putzes to shame, yet we were discouraged from supporting him.

Actual arguments that have been raised to challenge him are that he is too radical, that if his plans were put into effect the country might collapse, and our national security would suffer. I won't list his ideas here, just to say that Paul is a defender of the Constitution and his ideas are within the bounds of the Constitution. I believe today our government has dismissed the Constitution in a trend that has steadily increased for forty years, so anybody who challenges that trend is a threat to the power of the government.

I don't know any better way to end this entry than with that rant right there.