The Sodium Lamp Mystery

Hi blog,

I apologize for not saying hello to you yesterday. I dislike deviating from our scheduled dates, but I had an extremely busy and exhausting day and by the time I had settled in for the day it was far too late to get anything done. So again, my apologies blog, I'll try to keep that from happening again. 

It's been a tough few days for me. I've been making decent progress on my book (although it has slowed a bit), but I'm in the worst part of my story. It's the most painful to write. Every paragraph grips my chest like a starving anaconda around its next meal, the anxiety floods into my system and threatens to paralyze me and send me spiraling down into endless oblivion. I seem to have some morbid fascination with pushing myself harder and harder to see where my wall is, at what point I'll simple cave in and implode in spectacular fashion. I haven't reached it yet thankfully, but I know I have to finish this section sooner rather than later, because the longer I take to muddle through it, the more risk I'm putting myself at for some kind of breakdown or relapse. And yet I'm having trouble getting up the courage to write, I keep finding ways to subconsciously sabotage myself and get distracted so I wind up not writing. This allows me to avoid the immediate damage from stress and anxiety, but I still feel the looming pressure to finish the book weighing down on me, and I can't allow myself to get mired just because my chest is tight and my stomach twisted up in a series of knots so complex not even Houdini could escape from them. March on writer, tell your tale. I'll let you know how it goes blog, I have a meeting with Nick on Thursday so hopefully I'll have gotten a bit more writing done by then.

And now, space! In case you didn't know, the TV show "Cosmos" (originally hosted by the eminent astronomer Carl Sagan) has been rebooted! It's on Fox on Sundays at 9 pm (in case you wanted to watch).  It's now being hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson (another astronomer) who once met Sagan when he was young. The show talks about our world, the universe, life, science, all that good stuff. The first episode was sort of a basic run-down of science and our place in the universe, giving Earth's "cosmic address" so to speak. Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, Local Group (the small group of galaxy immediately around the Milky Way), the Virgo Supercluster (a much larger group of galaxies that the Milky Way is a part of), and finally, the Universe (and maybe the Multiverse after that, but I shan't get into that). For me, it's rudimentary stuff, I know most of it because I'm a massive space nerd (and a nerd in general to be fair), but I'm still very much looking forward to it. The show mostly targets a younger audience (the somewhat cheesy animation belies that fact), but I think the idea of trying to interest this generation's children and teenagers into finding science cool is a very noble one indeed. It's something that we have kind of fallen away from in recent years, knowledge is not "cool." But think of what might happen if we can get people to become interested in science again. One of those kids might become the next Einstein or Sagan, adding a tremendous insight into some aspect of our lives that will change everything around us for the better. Knowledge is power is a phrase that has stuck with us for so long because it is the absolute truth. Try to learn more, soak up the information around you, because we live in a fascinating world that we're only just starting to understand.

And in trying to understand the world, we come to a mystery so vast and enigmatic, that the government has tried to keep the truth a secret for the better part of a century. The mystery? How sodium lamps work. Sodium lamps are most commonly used as street lamps, and have a very strange quality to apparently suck the color out of everything nearby, leaving the world a Twilight Zone gray devoid of a rainbow of color until you step out from under their influence. The government would have you believe that the reason for this has to do with the type of light being emitted, but it's just a lie to cover up the truth. You want to know what sodium lamps REALLY are? They're containers holding...sodium leeches! "What's a sodium leech?" I hear you asking me. A quick search of the internet turns up nothing, because the government is hiding them! These strange creatures live in a glass case filled with a saline solution (hence the name "sodium leech") and live off of certain wavelengths of light, specifically those given off by color! All of this light is "sucked" up into the container held high off the ground, where the leech absorbs it and radiates the extra energy as the harsh orange-yellow glow that you see from the sodium lamp. Sodium leeches are nocturnal, and direct light kills them, so they are kept housed and protected by special glass that keeps out bright lights while still allowing them to absorb the colored wavelengths they need and to release their glow to allow them to light our streets. So the next time you drive past a sodium light, remember...there's a weird little creature glowing in there, say hello and thank you.

Because I failed to write in you yesterday, all of my posts for this week will be shifted by one day. Expect Thursday and Saturday postings. That is all for today.

Your gut-wrenched, anxious, but still in charge somewhat benevolent overlord, Andrew