Mountain Views News, Pasadena Edition [Sierra Madre] Saturday, September 30, 2017

Mountain Views-News Saturday, September 30, 2017 11THE WORLD AROUND US 
MAPPING BLACK HOLE COLLISIONS GIVES ASTRONOMERS A NEW GUIDE 
Mountain Views-News Saturday, September 30, 2017 11THE WORLD AROUND US 
MAPPING BLACK HOLE COLLISIONS GIVES ASTRONOMERS A NEW GUIDE 
Rochester Institute of Technology researchers helpedand will appear in Physics Review Letters.
pinpoint the precise location of a gravitational waveThe addition of the third observatory has widenedsignal—and the black hole merger that produced it—the window on the universe, said RIT professor Carlosdetected by gravitational wave observatories in theLousto. “We now can pinpoint where those blackUnited States and in Europe.holes collided in the universe with 10 times higher

For the first time, the LIGO and the French-precision than we had with only two detectors,” LoustoItalian Virgo were used to triangulate the positionsaid. “Astronomers can look more accurately towardin the universe where the binary black hole mergerthis direction in sky with conventional telescopes tooccurred 1.8 billion years ago. The black holes are 25see if there is an electromagnetic counterpart to suchand 31 times the mass of the Sun before the collision cosmic collisions.” 
and 53 times the Sun mass after, when a merged blackJohn Whelan, RIT associate professor and thehole formed. principal investigator of RIT’s LIGO group, said, “Our

The signal was detected on Aug. 14 by the LIGOVirgo colleagues, who have been collaborating on thedetectors in Louisiana and Washington and theanalysis since our first joint initial detector runs 10Virgo detector near Pisa, Italy. The findings wereyears ago, have now joined the advanced detectorannounced today in a news conference in Turin, Italy, network. We now have, for the first time, three 


CHRISTOPHER Nyerges 
ON SOCRATIC DIALOGUE 

[Nyerges is the author of 16Socratic Dialogue from this man. I got up and left.

books, founder of School His demonstration with me was the opposite of

of Self-Reliance, and an Socratic Dialogue. To be fair, this had been billed 

outdoor field guide. He canas a “lecture,” not a demonstration or practicum of

be reached at Box 41834, Socratic Dialogue.

Eagle Rock, CA 90041, or atIn my classes, I have tried in my limited way to

www.schoolofSelf-Reliance. employ Socratic Dialogue. When I am asked a 

com.]question, I am inclined to ask the student, “What

I am not an academic authority on “Socraticdo you think is the answer?” Sometimes I get 
Dialogue,” but I believe that I have a good generalblanks, or, “I don’t know; that’s why I’m in this 
sense of it. When reading Plato’s account of the lifeclass.” But occasionally a student will try to answerof Socrates, and the events leading up to his trial,their own question, and then we go on from there,
we get a good sense of how Socrates interactedstep by step, working together to draw from thewith others. student the answers – or bits of answers—that were 

Socrates would ask a series of questions, andalready there inside. (And for the record, I may oreach subsequent question was based on themay not know the answer, but that’s not the point.)
answer to the previous one. It was a true dialogue,A man who once attended my classes mentionedwhere Socrates listened carefully, and respondedme in his book called “Emergency.” It was anappropriately. Socrates said that he was tryingexcellent book about his quest to learn aboutto get to the “truth,” the “truth” that others claimsurvival in the broadest context. In his book he 
to have found. His questions attempted to draw-described my teaching method, suggesting thatout from the other person the knowledge or factsI didn’t want to give answers to students but justthat were presumably available within that other wanted to lord over them that I knew it all! He 
person. That is, Socrates was doing sometimesdidn’t quite get what I was doing, unfortunately.
called educing – the root of the word “education.” Things didn’t go so well for Socrates either.
This suggests that all knowing can be acquired byEven though Socrates changed the life of histhinking, and careful research.lead student, Plato, and the millions of “followers” 

I’ve had at least a few teachers who were skilled who read about Socrates through Plato, thosein educing, constantly engaging in a give and take,leaders and priests who brushed up too closelywhere eventually a full picture emerges about awith Socrates felt that he was somehow exposingsubject.or disrespecting them. These “leaders” of ancient 

In the beginning of undergoing this process, IGreece trumped up some charges that Socratesfelt silly and frustrated when I was asked to drawwas “corrupting the youth of Athens,” and put thethese answers from within. But by attempting to bephilosopher on trial. Socrates lost, of course, wasa part of the dialogue, rather than simply listeningimprisoned, and fulfilled the death sentence byto a teacher, I learned that I knew a lot more than drinking the prescribed hemlock tea.
I realized. In time, I realized that I began to thinkI’m still a big fan of Socratic Dialogue, notmore clearly and systematically about things.because of how it turned out with Socrates, but 
I learned that there were ways to know if I onlybecause it is a method that can open us up to ourapplied my mind to a given subject with research,own inner mind, and allow us to experience trueapplication, and concentration.education. 

I once went to lecture at a renown metaphysicalPublic schools are too large with too manycenter. The topic was Socratic Dialogue. The students per teacher, and too controlled, to dolecturer was clearly in love with himself and theSocratic Dialogue. Public schools tend to fill 
sound of his words, which is not necessarily a badthe students minds with facts that they mustthing. I raised my hand to ask a pertinent questionmemorize. 
and he shushed me. “No, I’m composing,” he said,Anyone today who comes through the “schooland then went on with his monologue.system” as a clear-thinking, creative individual

I sat there thinking about this for a few minutes,does so in spite of the school system, not becauseand realized that I would learn nothing about the of it. 

YOUR AD COULD BE HERE! 
Call Patricial @ 626-818-2698 
Today! 
advanced gravitational wave detectors observing and Gravitation, and Yosef Zlochower, RIT associate 
together.” professor, which solved Albert Einstein’s strong field

Richard O’Shaughnessy, RIT assistant professor,equations. The group was one of the first to simulateadds that, “with Virgo, we can now reliably point toa black hole on a supercomputer. Their “movingwhere a gravitational wave signal came from. Wepuncture approach” has been adopted by other 
can tell astronomers when and where to point theirresearch groups and helped lay the foundation fortelescopes.” gravitational wave astronomy.

Scientists will gain a deeper understanding of“Our supercomputer simulations of black-holeastrophysical phenomena by combining gravitationalcollisions continue to be crucial to determine the 
wave astronomy with traditional methods using theastrophysical parameters of those extreme objects andelectromagnetic spectrum.theey provide important information for modeling

“Precision pointing makes multimessengertheir history, from the death of their progenitor starsastronomy possible,” O’Shaughnessy said.to their final merger into a larger black hole,” Lousto

The current study cites 2005 breakthrough researchsaid. 
by Lousto, Manuela Campanelli, RIT professor andYou can contact Bob Eklund at: b.eklund@ 
director of the Center for Computational Relativity MtnViewsNews.com. 


OUT TO PASTOR 

A Weekly Religion Column by Rev. James Snyder 

NORMAL ISN’T ALL IT’S CRACKED UP TO BE 

“Well,” the Gracious Mistress personalities and so I have to compete with myself. I amof the Parsonage sighed ratherjust a normal person with normal appetites and normaldeeply, “now that the hurricane isexpectations of life.
over I guess we can all get back toI never gave it so much thought before, but perhaps the

normal.” When she said “normal,” she looked at me and reason my wife has this thing about “normal,” is that shegave me one of “those looks.” does not know if she really married a normal person. II am very much confused when it comes to this idea ofwould like to sit her down and explain to her that I amnormal. What in the world is normal? as normal as I am ever going to be. But, you know theOften when we go out somewhere she says, “Please tryoutcome of that kind of a thing.
to act normal tonight.” My aspirations in life are to be normal and to beFor me, normal is just the way I act. Furthermore, I amaccepted as a normal person. I never want to pretend to benot acting.something that I am not.

I have never given the subject of normal much thought.I took a trip to Ecuador once and discovered that theyI just assumed that is what I was, was normal and let itcertainly are not normal in my definition of normal. Forgo at that. If I would pose such a question to my wife, Iexample, all of the children spoke Spanish, even the littleam sure I would catch a rather lengthy definition of whatchildren that could not read. To them that was normal, but 
normal is. I can be sure her definition would in no wayto me that was rather confusing. How normal is that?
harmonize with my definition.Normal means I speak English.

I do not know if I am normal according to her, but I amThat brings me to the point that being normal maynormal according to me. I just will not let this get out.be different for other people. I do not know, but perhapsPerhaps this is one of the great problems in our societywhen those Spanish-speaking children heard me speakingtoday. Nobody knows what normal really is. If I wouldEnglish they laughed and thought I was abnormal. Imeet normal on the street downtown, I am not sure I can hear them speaking now, I just cannot understandwould recognize it. In addition, normal probably wouldwhat they are saying but I am sure it is something like,
not recognize me.“Why doesn’t he speak Spanish like the rest of us normal

For example, what is a normal lunch for a normalpeople?”
person?I guess getting back to normal is doing the things that

I believe a normal lunch would be the lunch that I you once did. I am all for that. I like to do the normalwould have on any given day. I am not outstanding inthings which makes me happy and being happy is ratheranything. I do not have gifts, personality or anything ofnormal for me. 
that nature. I am just normal when it comes to everythingI do remember a time that I was determined not to be 
about me. normal. I wasn’t going to dress the way I used to dress

Could it be that normal is what a person defines it toand I wasn’t going to act the way I used to act and I wasn’tbe? going to eat what I used to eat.

Just the other day I walked into my favorite restaurant,I had it all worked out in my head, but it was sosat down at my normal table and when the waitress came,confusing that I did not know what I was doing and so II told her, “I’ll have my normal lunch.” had to get back to the normal me. I am not sure I should

I have been going to this restaurant for a long time, sosay this, but, I really like the normal me. I like me when Ithe waitress did not have to ask me what I meant. She knew am doing what I normally do. To do otherwise would bethat normal for me was what I usually got for lunch. Onerather abnormal and who likes an abnormal person?
time I decided to go in and order something different, butI often wonder if this is what Jesus had in mind when 
I just did not have the strength to do that. When she camehe said, “Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted,
to my table I blurted out, “I’ll have the normal.” and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the

There is nothing wrong with normal. It is usuallykingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3).
something we have done before and so we are comfortableWhat is more normal than a little child? 
with it. Personally, I do not want to be anything moreDr. James L. Snyder is pastor of the Family of Godthan normal. What advantage would that be for me to beFellowship, 1471 Pine Road, Ocala, FL 34472. He lives withabnormal? Moreover, what is the definition of abnormal? his wife in Silver Springs Shores. Call him at 352-687-4240I am comfortable being my normal self. I am not or e-mail jamessnyder2@att.net. The church web site iscompeting with anybody. I am not a person with multi-www.whatafellowship.com. 


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