Tertiary Rainbow

36 years ago, my father-in-law needed to undergo a risky operation. The whole family was really worried about it. It was raining that afternoon where we lived when he was scheduled for the surgery and I saw a rainbow in the sky. I ran inside to get my camera, but it had faded before I could get a picture. However, high up in the sky, was an upside-down rainbow and I snapped a picture of it. We took the rainbow "smile" to be a good omen. I don't know if it mattered or not, but my father-in-law came through his surgery with flying colors.

About nine years ago, I came across an article that showed the first verified picture of a tertiary rainbow. The article said that they were extremely rare and, since then, only a couple of more have been recorded. It took me several hours of digging through shoe-boxes full of photos, but I finally found it. It's a color print from a 35mm negative (which I haven't found yet), taken with a Canon Epoca camera*. The photo shown below has been scanned at 300 dpi:

I uploaded this to EarthSky, since they seem to be interested in rainbows, but it didn't get accepted. I'm not sure what to do with it, so I thought I would post it here.

[Added] I've tweaked the brightness and contrast a bit to bring out the colors a bit more:

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*Epoca Camera - This was a bit of an oddball camera that was the best 35mm point-and-shoot I ever owned. If it hadn't died on me, I would still be using it today.

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Ode to Drivel II

(posted on the Internet, June 9, 1996)

One man's drivel is

Another man's gold.

And nothing can change this,

Or so we've been told.

A matter of perception;

A distinction of taste.

It's all self-deception,

And, oh, such a waste.

A rotting cancer spreads across

This once great land of ours.

The net result is such a loss,

While we waste away the hours.

Drivel here and drivel there ...

It's everywhere, you see.

In the paper and "Vanity Fair,"

But mostly on TeeVee.

Rationalize, if you will,

Another "Cheers" rerun.

No matter if it's only swill,

You like it `cause it's fun.

All work and no play

Makes Al a dull man.

But no work and all play

Was never in the plan.

Drivel drains our productivity

And with it all our wealth.

For a nation to be truly free

It's a matter of national health.

Every year we buy this stuff

Made in some foreign country.

And every year we sell our stuff

So our country can make more money.

For the last twenty years

We've bought more than we've sold.

And now our account's in arrears ...

Almost six trillion dollars we're told.

"Where's this money coming from?"

You might wonder in alarm.

From you, of course, you ignorant bum,

You've gone and bought the farm.

It used to be, not so long ago,

When everyone worked so hard,

We had a positive cash flow,

And a home and car and yard.

But the steady drain of capital

Is beginning to have its effect.

As people have less money overall ...

What else would you expect?

We're going broke together, you see,

While our leaders continue this madness.

Too many people on Federal Charity

And not enough to offset the rest.

Each and every week contains

One hundred and sixty eight hours.

Fifty six to rest our brains,

And forty to make the dollars.

Thirty hours of the residue

For eating and ablution;

Thirty hours from seventy-two

Leaves forty-two for a solution.

Forty-two hours each week,

Which could be so productive,

And yet it is the drivel we seek

Because it's so seductive.

So immerse yourself in drivel,

If that is what you desire,

Your brain will atrophy and shrivel ...

To yourself you are a liar.

It takes a conscious effort

To clean the chaff from wheat.

But if you are a thinking sort,

This will be an easy feat.

Not everything is relative,

There is an absolute.

And to the mind superlative

The proof of this is moot.

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The Blind Men and the Elephant

[This is my own retelling of a story that I first read as a child]

A long time ago, along the side of a dusty road in India, sat six blind beggars. They would wait patiently until they heard someone approaching and then they would lift up their bowls with their pleas for alms. One day, they heard something different coming along. In addition to hearing the thudding steps of some great beast, they could feel the ground shake slightly beneath them.

"Who goes there?" asked one of the beggars.

"I am Paji," came the answer.

"What is that great beast that we can hear breathing before us?" asked another.

"That is an elephant," replied Paji. "I am its mahout."

"An elephant?" asked the first blind man.

"Yes," he answered. "I am taking it to its new owner."

"We've never heard of an elephant before," said the second beggar. "As you can see, we are all blind. Would you mind if we came forward and ran our hands over this elephant?"

"Yes," added another. "That way we can better understand what this creature is truly like."

"Not at all," smiled Paji. "He's about three steps in front of you."

The six beggars carefully placed their bowls behind them and stood up. Holding out their arms, they slowly approached the elephant.

The first blind man encountered the trunk of the elephant. As it squirmed in his grasp, he thought to himself, "It feels like a snake! An elephant is just like a snake!"

The second blind man found the tusk of the elephant and ran his hands down its smoothness. At the tip, he tested the point and pricked his thumb. "It's just like a spear!" he thought. "An elephant is like a spear!"

The third blind man reached out and grabbed the ear of the elephant. As it waved to-and-fro, he felt the breeze from it and thought, "This elephant is like a giant leaf or fan!"

The fourth beggar touched the side of the elephant. As he ran his hands up and down and left and right he could easily tell that it was like a wall.

The fifth blind man reached the hind leg of the elephant. As he ran his hands up and down the leg and then placed his arms around it, he thought, "This is just like a tree! An elephant is nothing more than a tree!"

The last of the beggars touched the tail and grasped it firmly in his hands. Feeling along its length, he knew that it was simply a rope. "An elephant is like a rope!" he grinned, knowingly.

They thanked the man and carefully retreated, feeling for their bowls. After a bit, they were once more rearranged along the side of the road and began to discuss the marvelous beast that each of them had just felt.

"It was like a snake!" said the first.

"No, it wasn't!" exclaimed the second. "It was like a spear, I tell you!"

The third laughed, "You're both wrong. It was a giant leaf-like fan!"

"The three of you are daft from the sun," disagreed the fourth. "I reached out in every direction and it was the same. No, an elephant is big and flat like a wall."

The fifth shook his head, "You need to stay away from the soma. That elephant was like a tree trunk. I put my arms halfway around it."

"You're all wrong," insisted the sixth. "It was a rope. How could you mistake a rope for a tree or a wall?"

Until their dying days, the six beggars argued over what an elephant looked like. Each of them had "seen" for themselves what it was like. Each of them knew that they were right and that the other five were clearly wrong.

If you want to believe that an elephant is a tree, you'll find people who agree with you and will go into great detail describing the tree. You'll also find a lot of people who keep insisting that it's a snake. Or a wall. But you don't believe them because you already want it to be like a tree. You don't really want to know a fact, you want your opinion to be the fact instead. That is because we are not rational animals, but animals that can rationalize.

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