Warning!
Personal Rant incoming
The year was ZyXEL.
Don't worry, I just memorize years different, and 128Kbps for high-speed Web browsing was state of the art, and because it was just that, it left a state of the art hole in the pocket at around 400 Deutsch Mark back then.
V.42bis compression, and most of all, you can send an e-mail while talking on the phone, or cruise the Web while sending a fax, and simultaneous Internet access at 64Kbps by two users from a single ISDN line.
I was the proud owner of a ZyXEL Terminal Adapter.
With that speed now, of ya go and onto NASA servers....
(Credit: NASA; ESA; G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch, University of California, Santa Cruz; R. Bouwens, Leiden University; and the HUDF09 Team)
What you see here are 5,500
galaxies!
The universe is 13.7 billion years old, and the XDF (extreme deep field) reveals galaxies that span back 13.2 billion years in time. Most of the galaxies in the XDF are seen when they were young, small, and growing, often violently as they collided and merged together. The early universe was a time of dramatic birth for galaxies containing brilliant blue stars extraordinarily brighter than our sun. The light from those past events is just arriving at Earth now, and so the XDF is a "time tunnel into the distant past." The faintest galaxies are one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see
It is next to impossible to explain what this view triggered for thoughts and emotions, but deep inside, I knew for certain, my life would never be the same again.
I was convinced that the more people see that picture, the more the world will change for good, now that WE ALL KNOW!
Of course, nothing changed because of that, not a yota, not a sausage, nothing! War did not end, insane plundering of resources did not end, poverty did not end, racism and nationalism did not end. That indeed pushed me into a personal crisis of some kind.
If THAT did not have the potential to bring change for good, what could possibly trigger it at all?
I never felt more alone, the world around me had that strange invisible wall, I felt like a stranger on this planet with all the ignorant human beings unwilling to open their eyes, unwilling to learn form history and truly acknowledge what is really out there.
What you see here are 5.500 out of 2 Trillion Galaxies. Eat that stupid!
I fled into music and science, Hawking, Zappa and Scriabin felt like the only friends left on the planet. My world had changed, it was the event of loosing illusions. I started to smoke too much of the good stuff, couldn't give a flying bull anymore, subconsequently a depressive episode followed. I still functioned in daily life, but deep down something was in turmoil.
That was many years ago. The views I have ever since, they did not change. What changed was my view on fellow human beings, and as we arrived in the age of narcissism, I can not but smile at them. Most of them never heard about it, clearly a failure of our education system, and
not by their own choice!
Plato's cave, the effect of education and the lack of it.
My Ladylove ia a science teacher (Gemany), hence I hear a lot of background noise, and what I hear is not good news, not at all.
Climate change effects on Greenland?
They consider to sell the meltwater! You couldn't make it up!
Ah well....excuse the rant, now back into my DBX.
o7