Goertz Thoughts

 I love maps. I think that I always have.  Here are some of my favorites. Birdseye maps like this one of Austin used to be popular in the late 1800s. The Gallery of Maps in the Vatican Museums is one of my favorite spots. And of course, Middle Earth But the maps that you are used to (like the ones on Google), those are relatively new inventions. When I was growing up, everyone used to have huge road atlases in the trunks of their cars for road trips. Maybe some of you still have them, but I removed mine almost 20 years ago. Major cities had zoomed in insets to show local roads. You would have to plan out trips ahead of time and hope that there wasn't bad traffic. If there was, you could pull over, get the atlas out of your trunk, and plan a new route. I remember doing this in Tennessee once when moving Mrs. Goertz's sister down to Texas for college. A step up from atlases was GPS devices (they weren't always in phones). GPS was originally developed for military purposes a...

I'm planning to start a series regarding things about how much the world has changed. It has changed so quickly that some of you might not even be aware of how things used to work. First up, home phones. They are not like cellphones at all. Not even like this old one. These were cool though. Indestructible. And you could play Snake. Now, I'm too young to remember  party lines  where multiple homes shared the same telephone line, but my home growing up had only one line for multiple phones (this was the most common situation). We had a phone in the kitchen, living room (this rotary phone is now part of the Savio theater prop collection), and my parents' bedroom. What this means is a call coming into the house would ring on all three phones. Two people might pick up the phone at the same time. Not only that, it meant that you had no guarantee of privacy, as someone could in theory be listening in from another room. Not ideal if you have a girlfriend and are trying to have a p...

This post is written in part to fulfill my promise to Maya that I would watch Treasure Planet  before she graduated. It was either this or Dead Poet's Society. I thought I had seen this movie before, but it must have been too long ago because a lot of it seemed unfamiliar (not too unfamiliar as I've read Treasure Island , seen the live action Disney movie, and Muppet Treasure Island ). Here are a few things that I thought about it: It's very artistic. The mix of traditional and CGI is well done (not as jarring as Fox's Titan AE  from two years previous) This movie is fantasy, not science fiction. So, I'm not going to say "Space doesn't work that way!" except for one comment. Solar sails don't work that way! Solar sailing  is a fascinating process, but it relies on the pressure of photons. It leads to very slow acceleration over a long period of time. The surface area of the sails needs to be much bigger than that depicted. Every species seems uniqu...

You're familiar with the trolley problem, right?   (Here's a different take from The Good Place .  Trigger warning: copious fake blood) Here's a variation that came up in astronomy class the other day. It didn't start off as a traditional trolley problem. We were discussing government spending. We're pretty sure that a dinosaur killing sized asteroid is not currently heading towards us due to projects such as ATLAS . We could be even more sure if more money was given to build telescopes. However, any funds given to telescopes is less given to other causes (say for example orphans). Both protecting the Earth from asteroids and helping children are good things. We cannot fully solve either problem no matter how much money we throw at them. So, in this case the question comes down to how much is too much?  To keep it simple, let's pretend these are the only two funding issues. If we miss seeing a massive asteroid in time, it could  kill everyone on Earth. On the ot...

I'm sure you've seen Encanto . It was really big 3(ish) years ago. I remember because the current seniors were freshmen and wouldn't stop singing We Don't Talk about Bruno  (watch this cool video about how the song works). I know this post seems a little late to the game, but I just finished watching Brooklyn 99  and how crazy is it that Stefanie Beatriz is the voice of Mirabel and Rosa ? Anyway, one of the things that feels most unfair about the movie is that Mirabel doesn't get a gift. Here's my take: Mirabel does have a gift. Extreme empathy. She can literally enter people's minds! Let's take a look at this. Really watch Mirabel in these songs: Talking with Luisa Talking with Pepa and Felix Talking with Abuela This is more than just normal song and dance fantasy numbers from musicals. She is entering into her family's thoughts and memories. She's an active participant in some of the scenes in their heads. This explains a whole lot: No one not...

 Back to posting with a relatively simple one. Students, you may or may not know this, but the board games that are in the Commons are from my collection *. My hope is that someday everyone will put down their cellphones and pick up a game instead. I really enjoy board games (although I don't play them as often as I would like). I'm not talking chess and checkers. I'm not even talking Monopoly and Scrabble. While those are technically board games, the genre has come a long way in the past few decades. Here's a few of my favorites (I'll use the term "board game" loosely, as some of these don't actually use a board). (Settlers of**) Catan If you're familiar with modern board games, you probably know this one. It first came out in 1995 and its popularity really exploded. Collect resources Build towns, cities, and roads. Each has different point values. First player to 10 points wins. It's a very good entry point due to the straightforward rules. T...