Pussy Riot

“During the San Francisco Forty Niners victory celebration, a guy threw a lit flare on the hood of my car and yelled, ‘Niners!’”     -Bobcat Goldthwait

    As it turns out, despite all evidence to the contrary - lack of firearm ownership, little interest in shoulder punching, complete ignorance as to whether or not that thing has a Hemi, and an irrational fear of horses -  I’m a man. And being so, I’ve spent hours upon hours in the company of men.  I’ve experience what it’s like to be with them in both public and private venues.  I’ve have had friends, family, and co-workers who are men, and continue to be.  So I’ve been on the inside.  I’ve seen how men behave when they believe they are surrounded by those of a like mind, and those who believe that what happens in locker rooms stays in locker rooms.  And I’ve heard how they talk.

    First off, there are the words that are uttered at these times.  Words like bitch, pussy, and Niners.  As to the secret handshake, that will remain a secret.  

    Niners is a harmless and familiar nom de plume of the aforementioned, in the above quote, football team. It’s primarily used as a shortcut in place of the horrendously cumbersome and time consuming “Forty Niners.”

    As for bitch, as a young man making my way in a confusing world, I was amazed to find it is not only used as a term of insult, but also as a simple gender identification technique, and for the middle of the back seat of a car.  For instance, when a gentleman is among a group of his peers and wants to express his feelings for a woman who he feels is acting particularly unpleasant or “bossy” he will refer to her as a bitch.  As an example, “That bitch of a boss wouldn’t let me leave work early even though she knew the Niners game was starting soon.”  But later in life I discovered that a woman can earn the title bitch, in some men’s eyes,  just by existing in those men’s field of view, as in, “There were some fine looking bitches on the beach this morning.”  These women have not only not treated a man with what he or anyone else sees as “bitchy” behavior but in fact have not interacted with him at all.  They simply were unfortunate enough to need labeling by a man who was far too manly to use terms like girls or women.  Of course for these gentlemen the word ladies doesn’t even enter into the picture.  Finally when subjected to sitting between two manlier men in the back seat of a car, you’re riding bitch.  I don’t know if it’s because you are acting bossy or because you look fine on the beach, so I’ll have to get back to you on that one.

    So now it’s down to pussy.  I rarely used this word, most likely because I never heard my dad say it.  And by rarely I mean I don’t.  But recently an actual nominee for President of the United States, the one in America, was seen and heard making use of this word on a video from 10 years ago.  I’ve heard men use it as an insult to another man, “You’re afraid of horses?  What a pussy,” as a designation for acquiring sexual intimacy with a woman, “Gonna’ go get some pussy tonight,” and for describing a cat.  Actually I’ve never, ever heard anyone refer to a cat as a pussy unless he was trying out a poorly developed double entendre.

    Pretty much all the words and how they are used that I’ve put in the blog today can fit in the the deplorable basket that is locker room talk. So when someone says that something they said that has upset someone else is just locker room talk, can we disagree on that?  Oh yes.

    That brings us to what was said in the video years ago, by a man who wants us to select him to represent 300 million of us as President of the United States.  He wasn’t besmirching someone’s manliness, he wasn’t speaking of accomplishing sexual congress (although there was hope in his heart), and he certainly wasn’t talking about cats.  He was using a fourth definition of the word, to describe a woman’s genitalia. I’ve heard that fourth definition during “locker room” events too, but not in the way this man used it.  He basically said, as you all know, how delighted he is to be able to use his celebrity, his wealth, and his power to commit sexual assault on women without consequence.  That’s not locker room talk, that’s more like admission of guilt.  Again, if I were in a room with a bunch of other guys and one said, "Hey, you know what's fun?  Grabbing women you've just met by the short hairs and kissing her with you fancy Tic-Tac breath." I'm pretty sure I or someone else would suggest that he's heading the right direction for a night in jail and a court date. 

    Men can be vulgar.  Men can be clueless about their words. Men can do stupid and dangerous things when trying to impress their contemporaries; see the flare on the car quote.  Men can also be kind and caring, and goofy and stupid and heroic and strong and the list goes on.

    But this man that I at first considered to be both a lousy, unqualified presidential candidate and a lousy person, and later when he mocked the physical disability of a journalist considered to simply be a pig, has given me pause on what I should call him now.  Since he has bragged about what at the very least is a misdemeanor that is just a few steps from a felony I guess I have only one choice left.  Criminal.

Are The Stars Out Tonight?

              

                  So I was reading about this star named KIC8462852.  It sits out there some 454 parsecs from our cool blue home.  A parsec, which is a unit of distance and not a measurement of time regardless what my sister’s boyfriend Harrison Ford says, is around 3.25 light years.  So that puts this star 1,476 light years away.  That means that if you had planned to arrive at KIC8462852 today, and could travel at the speed of light, you would have had to leave Earth in 540 A.D.  But don’t wait up for news that Romans have arrived at KIC8462852, because it seems that Emperor Justinian didn’t invest in their space program back then but preferred instead to spend Rome’s treasury waging war on the Ostrogoths.  I guess it paid off; the Ostrogoths lost.

                Even though we won’t be visiting KIC8462852 any time soon it stills holds interest.  You see KIC8462852, also known as Tabby’s Star – named after a Yale researcher - has been getting dimmer.

So what’s the big deal Mark?  Nothing last forever.  Eventually all stars will get dimmer until the just fade away right? 

Right, sure, maybe.  But KIC8462852 dims and then brightens back up.

But Mark, isn’t this dimming and then brightening back up the behavior that observers use to determine that a star has planets orbiting it?  A planet goes by and the star dims, then the planet moves on and the star’s light returns to normal?

Yes, but most stars dim less than 1% when that happens.  Tabby’s Star dims 20%, and there is no pattern to the dimming as there would be when an object passed between it and us in an orbit. 

Okay, but maybe it’s something besides a planet.  Could there be something else that would cause this behavior?

There is speculation.  Maybe a huge cloud of space junk/dust.  It floats by and really, really dims the star, and then moves on.  Or perhaps it’s something some scientist call comet swarms, breaking apart (and you thought bees were bad).  But infrared observations show there is no cloud of dust and a reexamination of the data suggests that comet swarms were far too unlikely. 

Okay, so what is causing Tabby’s Star to fade and return?

Another idea began to orbit those who were studying this star; mega-structures.

Wow, that’s amazing!  Wait…what’s a mega-structure?

A mega-structure is something that is very, very large and is built by someone.  I mean really huge.  They are suggesting that someone has built or is building something the size of the orbit of say Earth.  Maybe these folks out there by KIC8462852 really like the star but found that there are no planets orbiting it that fit their definition of supporting life.  So they build one, or a ring in the orbit of where they want one, or a sphere around KIC8462852 the size of that orbit, shutting it in.

Is that what is happening?

Probably not.  At one point SETI, the people looking for extraterrestrial life, pointed their ears at Tabby’s Star and listened for “deliberately produced radio signals.”  They say they found none.

But what does a “deliberately produced radio signal” from an alien species sound like?  Especially from someone who could build a building the size of Earth’s orbit? 

They really look for patterns and found none.  If we’ve missed it we can only hope that they’re not asking how the Ostroghths are doing.

So now what?

Tabby’s Star is acting strangely and no one has a good explanation as to why.  But that’s okay.  Scientists know they won’t solve every mystery and they seem all right with that.  They know they are using tools invented by someone else while standing on the shoulders of those who came before them, and I believe they hope that someday, someone will figure out what Tabby’s Star is doing while standing on theirs.

KIC8462852 is in a group of stars somewhere behind the Northern Cross.  Unfortunately it can’t be seen with the naked eye so those scientist will be our eyes.  By the way, who wouldn’t go to a concert if the bands were named Naked Eye, Comet Swarm, and The Ostrogoths?

Sometimes I wonder why we’re allowed to view things that are impossible for us to ever have; like twinkling stars or Jennifer Lopez.  But I’ve come to the conclusion that we are disallowed nothing.  The fading and glowing stars are put there to make us look up.  To force us to imagine…well to imagine pretty much anything, including mega-structures.

Someday, if we don’t quit trying, we’ll visit KIC8462852 and see in person if there is a giant ring built around it, if comet swarms exist, or if the star has long ago simply died out. In the meantime enjoy the view, vicariously of course.