NaClhv

Theology, philosophy, science, math, and random other things
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

...is my favorite Christmas carol. It has been so since I heard Jewel's rendition of it on a random road trip, and I somehow understood all the lyrics in all the verses, through the music and the poetry to their meaning. The second and third verses hit me particularly hard in their novelty, as I hadn't heard them before. Here are the lyrics:

A record of the total solar eclipse on 2021-12-04, in Antarctica

Unfortunately, the best pictures I have of totality are poorly lit and out of focus, and of course we couldn't see the eclipse itself. This isn't what I wanted. It's not what I would have chosen. But it was still beautiful and magical in its own way, in its darkness and flaws. I've always held that reality, compared to any alternate possibility, has a goodness all its own - simply because it's real.

A record of the total solar eclipse on 2020-12-14

The covid pandemic added a new layer of difficulty to everything. Combined with the other challenges intrinsic to such an endeavor, I felt like everything was fighting me every step of the way. In fact, I initially conceptualized this trip as a sequence overcoming these difficulties: I was going to impose my will upon the world in the face of these challenges, and bring about my intended results. We'll see how that turned out.

A record of the total solar eclipse on 2019-07-02

I was at La Serena, Chile for the eclipse on 2019-07-02. Here are some pictures from the trip. This was the view from my room. The beach at La Serena is quite pretty. You see that cross-shaped structure in the distance, which juts out into the skyline? That's the Cruz del Tercer Milenio, in the […]

My facebook post on Easter 2019

This is a copy of my post on Facebook, which I put up on Easter. It is here as a fixed-link reference for people who don't frequent Facebook. The $20,000 offer is currently only open to people who are at least a friend-of-a-friend with me. But I do want all of my readers to know […]

My facebook post on Easter

This is a copy of my post on Facebook, which I put up on Easter. It is here as a fixed-link reference for my friends who don't frequent Facebook. The $10,000 offer is currently only open to my personal friends. But I do want all of my readers to know what's going on with my […]

A record of the total solar eclipse

These are some of the pictures I took during the eclipse trip. Venus, in the morning of Sunday, August 20th, the day before the total eclipse of the sun. This is unrelated to the eclipse, but the Morning Star is always a treat. Note how it's bright enough to be the only star in the sky […]

Questions and answers: my career change to data science

I've been working as a data scientist for some time now. This is a change for me. My background is in physics, and my previous work was mostly in education, teaching in the STEM fields. So this is an exciting period in my life. Career changes often are, and data science in particular is an […]

Questions and answers: my career change to data science (Part 2)

(continued from the previous post) 4) What are the best and worst parts of the job? My favorite part of the job is probably something that I've mentioned above - the idea that I'm sharpening my data interpretation skills, that my job is basically to think soundly about data. It's also great to see my […]

Questions and answers: my career change to data science (Part 1)

I've been working as a data scientist for some time now. My background is in physics, and my previous work was mostly in education, teaching in the STEM fields. This is an exciting period in my life. Career changes often are, and data science in particular has been called "the sexiest job of the 21st […]
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