2007-Jun 26Tuesday

无题

2007年6月26日23:36　 一图胜千言　评论/Comment.

京报网报道：昨天下午4时左右机场高速回京方向5车连环追尾。据在场司机介绍，由于第一辆汽车在躲闪一只小狗时紧急踩刹车造成后面汽车连环碰撞，5车司机都比较冷静在现场等待交警处理。一位司机不顾汽车受损，在路边给那只受伤的小狗喂水。

　　赶着上床睡觉，想了半天没想到一个好的题目，于是给了一个“万能”题目，正文具体含义各位还是自行体会比较好。

　　这位司机是可敬的。简单的行动，远胜于某些所谓的美文里矫揉造作的辞藻。

　　仅此一句，也足够了。

　　看起来，好人还是不少的。

2007-Jun 25Monday

Stories about Halley’s Comet’s visit in 1910

2007年6月25日13:33　 English island　一条评论哦 || 1 Comment

Some of the other ideas about Halley’s Comet publicized in 1910 were fully as odd as the Koreshans’ talk of “the breaking in of zones of cruosic energy generated at the colure”. Jean B.Marchand refused to accept that the comet which appeared that spring was Halley’s Comet — the real one, he maintained, would not arrive until September. Edwin F.Nulty argued that comets’ tails consisted of sunlight focused and concentrated by the head, which acted as a lens and that consequently, a path of fiery destruction would be traced across Earth wherever the focal point went as the comet passed between Earth and Sun.

The comet provided a final impetus for some people to go mad and for others to commit suicide. A sheep rancher in California tried to crucify himself and was badly injured. A Hungarian landowner named Adam Toma did commit suicide, saying he preferred death by his own hand “to being kiled by a star.” But the story that a cult in Oklahoma was stopped just short of sacrificing a virgin to the comet was apparently made up and appeared only in some Eastern U.S. newspapers.

… One of the most famous items of 1910 Halley lore was the sale of “comet pills” guaranteed to protect people from the deadly effects of the tail’s gases. Much has been said about this racket, but where was it actually practiced? Barnard in 1914 mentioned that such pills had been manufactured and sold among blacks in the south. The pills were reputed to come from Haiti. But the idea must have been picked up by other swindlers. Ruth Freitag mentions one seller of comet pills who was arrested in Texas but, because no one seemed to care about his misdeeds, was let go. In Chicago, people without comet pills or gas masks stopped up the cracks around their doors and windows with rags and newspapers while the Earth was supposed to be passing through the comet’s tail.

– COMET OF THE CENTURY, P.183-184.

2007-Jun 24Sunday

Stories related to Comet Swift-Tuttle

2007年6月24日17:25　 English island　评论/Comment.

On the night of July 15 of that year (1862), Lewis Swift, an amateur astronomer in Marathon, New York, was out with his telescope looking for Comet Schmidt, a fairly bright new comet he had read about in the newspaper. Soon he found a fuzzy patch of light in the north sky which he took to be the comet, fainter han expected. But three nights later, Horace Tuttle, at Harvard Observatory, saw the same object and realized it was not Comet Schmidt.  After Tuttle annouced the discovery, Swift hastened to make his claim, which, fortunately for him, was accepted.

Your first reaction might be to think poor Tuttle unfairly got second billing in this comet’s name.

Horace Tuttle had already discovered several comets and would discover at least one more very important one - Comet Tempel-Tuttle, the parent of the Leonid meteor showers and storms. But Tuttle, after what some called heroic service in the Civil War, was dismissed from the Navy years later, when it was discovered that he had embezzled a small cial success, Horace Tuttle’s fate was to die in 1923 with only $70 to his name and to be buried in an unmarked grave.

2007-Jun 23Saturday

Story of Leslie Peltier

2007年6月23日17:30　 English island　一条评论哦 || 1 Comment

…Lwaliw Peltier of Delphos, Ohio, an unassuming farmer who was “the world’s greatest non-professional astronomer”. Earlier in this century, Peltier discovered a dozen comets and made 132,000 variable-star observations. He earned $18 by picking 900 quarts of strawberries in order to buy his first telescope, “the strawberry spyglass”.

– P.129, Comet of the century, Fred Schaaf,  Copernicus, Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.

2007-Jun 23Saturday

Some interesting facts of Japanese comet hunters

2007年6月23日17:26　 English island　评论/Comment.

… Great Kaouru Ikeya, who took a factory job at the age of 14 to help support his family but eventually saved enough money to build his own inexpensive telescope. He searched the pre-dawn skies before work for 335 hours over 109 nights in more than a year before finding his first comet. His co-workers were so proud of him that they put together a gift of $300 to help him continue his comet hunting. …Ikeya proceeded to discover another comet the next year (1964) and then, in 1965, one of the great comets of the century — the sungrazer Ikeya-Seki. In 1966, Ikeya found a rather dim comet and then, at the end of 1967, another comet that also ended up being called Ikeya-Seki. In 1965, Ikeya had found the great comet just 15 minutes before Tsutomu Seki; in 1967, he beat Seki by no more than 5 minutes!

The many Japanese amateurs’ skll and intensity is demonstrated by the events of October 5, 1975. That night, three of them independently discovered Comet Mori-Sato-Fujikawa within 70 minutes of each other. Later that night, five of them independently discovered Comet Suzuki-Saigusa-Mori within half an hour of each other. Hiroaki Mori is the only person ever to have discovered two comets visually in one night.

– P.127, Comet of the century, Fred Schaaf,  Copernicus, Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.

2007-Jun 23Saturday

Stories about Charles Messier

2007年6月23日17:14　 "十年少"仙丹, English island　评论/Comment.

The sport of visual hunting got started after the first predicted return of Halley’s Comet. Charles Messier thought he was the first person to recover the comet in January 1759, but he then learned that a German farmer, Johann Georg Palitzsch, had beaten him by almost a month. This disappointment must surely have been a factor in inspiring Messier to start hunting for comets in the 1760s. At first, he had the field to himself, but his countrymen Jacques Montaigne and Pierre Mechain soon became his rivals. Messiers’s fierce competitiveness is suggested by a famous story. Shortly after Messier’s wife died, he heard that Montaigne had found a new comet. A friend, seeing Messier wracked with grief and thinking he was upset over his wife’s death, said “I am sorry.” Messier allegedly replied, “Alas! Montaigne has robbed me of my comet!” — and then, trying to recover, “Poor woman.”

– P.123-124, Comet of the century, Fred Schaaf,  Copernicus, Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.

2007-Jun 22Friday

入团申请书

2007年6月22日22:27　 泉志咨文　评论/Comment.

尊敬的团组织：
　　本人，中山大学环境科学与工程学院大气科学系大气科学专业2006级学生叶泉志志愿参加中国共产主义青年团。希望团组织能予以批准，让我能更好地为祖国的建设贡献自己的一份力量。
此致，
　　　敬礼
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　叶泉志
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　x年x月x日

2007-Jun 20Wednesday

MPD计划和它的新进展

2007年6月20日23:22　 学而时习, 鸡毛蒜皮　评论/Comment.

　　MPD计划是我在进行的一个雄心勃勃的、具有国际先进水平的大计划，将动用我的全部编程功底来做一个大程序。呵呵—— 那具体是什么哈？总之涉及天体轨道计算一类，具体内容暂时保密……

　　今天利用午饭时间仔细思考了一下，花了大约一堂课时间导出了指定条件下Ω和ω值的算式，使得那个有9个变量的微分方程变成了只有7个变量…… 其中好像有5个是指定值的？那明天的任务就是考完英语以后导出剩下两个变量了。

　　为了完成这第一个步骤，还要研究Dr.Jedicke等的论文，到时候再来涂两把……

2007-Jun 19Tuesday

康乐园黑鸟诗

2007年6月19日23:20　 吟诗作赋, 椰子笔谈　评论/Comment.

中大的老校区的小礼堂的南面的有一大片青草，
还有校徽有校训还有一只康乐园的黑鸟。
它在草地上跳啊，跳啊，跳，
却不是挑逗一只熟睡的黑猫。

是什么让鸟儿如此翘首，
我顺着它望去，看见一山、一水、一钟楼。
原来是闪光的校徽，引起了鸟儿的趣味，
它继续向它跳去，头也不回。

我笑了，突然想起了什么，
原来一年多前，我也曾是只鸟儿，
向着山水钟楼校徽，跳，跳，跳……
眨眨眼睛，黑鸟飞走了，而我还在这儿。
呵呵……

2007-Jun 19Tuesday

图书馆黑狗诗

2007年6月19日23:20　 吟诗作赋, 椰子笔谈　评论/Comment.

适往康乐园，流连图书馆。
采书行亩间，直至白日偏。
整包正欲走，忽见大黑狗。
黑狗坐门前，正襟色威严。
神甚大将军，气魄上九天。
莫非知书籍，进步之阶梯？
我便敬礼之，黑狗摇尾答。
顾我实浅陋，不曾闻此狗。
笑笑复笑笑，且顾且之走。
此事实有趣，记之以自娱。