Amazement in Several Flavors

Well… about the above… there’s the literal and the metaphorical aspects to consider, eh? The literal:

Astronauts John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel have managed to remove a refrigerator-sized, mirror-packed instrument called COSTAR. It was installed in 1993 to correct Hubble's blurry vision, but is no longer needed because new instruments have the same corrections built in. They'll replace it with an instrument called the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), which is designed to detect the existence of filaments of dark matter that bind the galaxies and all visible matter together in a kind of invisible cosmic foam.

Then Grunsfeld will have to perform the most daunting task of the entire mission: He must repair the non-functioning Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), which was never designed to be repaired -- not on Earth and certainly not in space.

The spacewalker must extract 30 screws, remove a protective plate, and reach into the ACS with a specially designed tool that will clamp onto four sharp electrical circuit cards. He'll remove the cards -- being careful to keep his gloved hands away from any sharp edges -- and then install a new power source to the instrument.

Grunsfeld's task will be made all the more difficult by the awkward position of the instrument. He will not be able to face the screws head on, but rather from a 45-degree angle. A strut will partially block his vision.

Are you not amazed and mystified, Gentle Reader? I most certainly am. What an incredible age we live in!

Amazement of quite another sort, getting to the metaphorical aspect of the ‘toon:

Apparently President Obama models himself after "Star Trek" Capt. Jean Luc Piccard. They both want to travel through the universe with a personal empath to guide them.

[…]

Mr. Obama recently gave America a hint as to what he is looking for in a Supreme Court nominee. "I will seek somebody with a sharp and independent mind and a record of excellence and integrity. I will seek someone who understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives - whether they can make a living and care for their families; whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation. I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles, as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes."

[…]

Down this road of empathy lies a staircase of increasing evils: selective justice, favor seeking, outright prejudice and the meltdown of judicial impartiality and the respect for law.

If Mr. Obama succeeds, "We would have entered a strange new world, where everybody is equal but some are more equal than others," writes Thomas Sowell. "The very idea of the rule of law becomes meaningless when it is replaced by the empathies of judges."

There’s more… in a week-old op-ed from the Washington Times. I’m getting tired of saying it, but: elections have consequences. These sorts of consequences last two or more generations, though. (sigh)

―:☺:―

More strange weather. We’re on some sort of celestial yo-yo here on The High Plains of New Mexico when it comes to the weather of late. Here’s yesterday:

And now today:

It’s just NOT nice outside at the moment but I suppose things are better here than other places, where folks might be seriously considering ark construction. It’s been threatening rain all day here but nothing’s been delivered. I’m quite sure we could arrange a trade with any number of concerned farmers.

―:☺:―

Hockey… Damien Cox sez “The hockey’s been GOOD,” and I agree! Excerpts:

It was so close to perfect that it would have been greedy to ask for more.

How much better could the second round of the NHL playoffs have been? Not much, particularly with the overall quality of play so outstanding and with most games played at a blistering pace and ferocious level of competition.

To anyone who believes this league was better 10 years ago, or 30 years ago, well, go watch one of the games from those days, then compare it to what we saw between the Chicago Blackhawks and Vancouver Canucks, or between Anaheim and Detroit in what, at least in the short term, has replaced the Detroit-Colorado matchup as the best rivalry in the Western Conference.

Perfect, though? Not quite.

If you really want to be picky, you'd have to note that although the NHL came very, very close to having all four second-round series go the seven-game limit, it didn't quite happen. Chicago ended Vancouver's season in six contests, a game that felt in many ways like a do-or-die, seventh-game scenario, but wasn't.

The other three series did go to Game 7, which meant it was the first time in 23 years three of the conference semifinals went to seven games and the other lasted six.

[…]

The 27 second-round games, in general, showcased an excellent brand of the sport, albeit with some controversy and some borderline physicality, such as Walker's unnecessary fist to Ward's face and an ugly hit by Anaheim's Mike Brown early in that series that left Detroit's Jiri Hudler lying on the ice in a pool of blood.

But it's a high-speed sport that sometimes seems akin to watching a science project featuring electrons colliding in a high-speed chamber, and you can only get so much artistry in a sport moving that fast. Moreover, the heavy physical toll of the playoffs seems to be mounting, with every team that's eliminated reporting significant players who were competing with injuries that would have kept them out of regular-season play.

Mr. Cox is right. This year’s playoffs are among the VERY best in my hockey memory, which goes back nearly 25 years. What’s better is I’ve evolved from being a Red Wings fan to becoming a genuine hockey fan since I retired, which is mainly a function of my somewhat excessive “free” time. It takes a great deal of commitment… or borderline mental illness, depending on your POV… to watch every available game, every night. But that’s been me over the course of the last few weeks. And I’ve been handsomely rewarded with some of the best hockey I’ve ever seen.

The best is yet to come, of course. I love this time of year.