We Are Here: The Pale Blue Dot

This all revolves around a photograph taken by a small spacecraft a little over 20 years ago.  Carl Sagan thought for a while it’d be a good idea to have the spacecraft turn around and snap a photo of the Earth.  Fearing damage to the spacecraft the controllers were reluctant.  It was February 14, 1990 and Voyager I had completed all of its primary mission objectives.  Now was the time to have Voyager turn around and snap a photo.  If they had waited much longer the Earth would be too distant to even register.

So here we are.  We are given this photo.

The Pale Blue Dot. As taken by Voyager I some 4 billion miles from Earth. February 14, 1990.

It sure doesn’t look like much.  To us, it is everything.  Now, I could go on about this and that regarding the photo.  The thing is, it’s already been done.  In fact, so well done, that to redo or try and out do it would be folly.  Now to read what is said about the photograph is one thing but hearing the voice of Carl Sagan means a little more.  It was his idea, so his words and voice are fitting.

The original audio was from an audio-book I do believe.  Some crafty people have done things with it in videos.  This one is probably the best I’ve found.  It really is moving. (Yes, yes, I posted this video on Facebook a while back, I know.)  So have a look now.

We are here: The Pale Blue Dot

Here is the text:

Consider again, that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

A picture is worth a thousand words, they say;  That one is worth everything we’ve ever known.

Three weeks of confusion

We finally seemed to have gotten a proper and accurate diagnosis of what was ailing our youngest. After weeks of random “illness” we became quite concerned. When a child throws up you almost instantly think of an infection, usually viral. That’s how it all started but it seemed suspicious even then.

He appeared to have a fever one evening, the became ill. He slept the night with no incident, which was odd. He awoke, had a bottle and became ill again. Afterwards he proceeded to run around the house like a madman. This child wasn’t “sick” so off to daycare he went.

The week went by without incident, until Friday.

The daycare calls around late morning and he is vomiting. By the time I got to him he’d done it again and while picking him up he became ill yet again. This went on for hours. I believe I counted at least 10 times that he got sick to his stomach. He looked bad, lethargic and just laid on the bed, not moving, except to get sick.

If you’re a parent and you’ve experienced the feeling of helplessness when your child is ill, it’s an experience like none other. We hurt when they hurt.

I was angry at whatever was causing this. All I could do was shake my fist in the air and curse. It didn’t help my son though. I finally took him into the pediatrician late that afternoon. I had a towel with me at all times but amazingly enough he did not become ill in our visit.

They poked and prodded him but were dumbfounded, as was I. They said he had slight fever but the whole time he felt somewhat cool to the touch. He didn’t feel feverish though he sort of acted it. Usually a sign of viral infection in children are the “fun” diapers. His only symptoms were vomiting and lethargy with sporadic (days apart) bad diapers. That should have keyed us in but I’ll get to that. I left with the loose diagnosis of it being a virus but no one was sure. That wasn’t a good feeling.

Yes, I know, talking about vomit and poo aren’t exactly glamorous but it’s been a long ordeal and I am going to blog about it!

He seemed to recover from that Friday ordeal and we went nearly another week without incident. Then early this past Saturday it all started up again. Uncontrollable vomiting, lethargy, etc. He exhibited the same exact symptoms as the previous Friday. This was no virus but what was it?

We took him in to the doc again and they agreed, finally. Though instead of ordering some tests to confirm anything we still felt left in the dark. Dammit I want some tests run! The whole weekend he acted weird.

Sunday afternoon he became ill again… (Happy Mother’s Day!)

Then Monday evening he became ill, yet again….

Finally Tuesday morning he was ill and we decided it was time for a second opinion. We called up our old pediatrician that the oldest went to (he is now 6, the youngest is nearly 2, btw). They said to bring him in, no question about it, something wasn’t right. I was at work and anxiously awaited an answer.

They ran a few tests which came back with nothing unusual. Then they ordered the X-Ray and at last, we may have found the answer. Our kid was constipated.

Whoa, whoa… say what? I got the call from my wife and I was actually shocked. How could it be so simple? Then the symptoms all made sense. The doctor listened to everything and indeed everything pointed to that.

Why the throwing up? There was no room in him! It wasn’t a complete blockage which explained why it seemed to come and go but it was enough to be prolonged. More was going in than coming out, that’s the bottom line. So now we have him on a few things to help move things along and we’re going to watch his diet more closely.

He seems to have improved over the past two days though we’re still watching him. I’m just glad the initial diagnosis was something simple.

We now end our poo broadcast.