Latest Update: June 13, 1991 RAMBLING THOUGHTS by a cosmogonist, Number 8 John Horgan's article, a profile of the physicist, John A. Wheeler, starting on page 36 of _Scientific American_'s June 1991 issue makes a statement I find strange, to say the least. He says, writing of the discovery of the concept of black holes, "Such an object was first proposed by J. Robert Oppenheimer and Hartland S. Snyder in 1939 ... " But, but . . . Here is the quote from _Astronomy For The Love Of It_: Reverend John Mitchell, a British amateur astronomer, first postulated black holes in 1783. He carried on a correspondence with Newton, in which Newton agreed with Mitchell, who asked if it isn't possible that an extremely massive object might pull even light to it. Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace, the 18th century French mathematician, astronomer, and physicist, extended Mitchell's work. Karl Schwarzschild developed the modern theory of black holes. He published it in 1916, in the same issue of the physics journal that carried his obituary, written by Albert Einstein. If the mass of a sphere is compressed to the Schwarzschild radius, light can't escape from it. You can see why I don't agree with Horgan. I don't even note the 1939 event. +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ One of my nieces has a novel means of denigrating a German competitor to American car companies. She asks the value of driving a distant cookie. "How's that again, Uncle Don? A distant . . . cookie? . . .Oh! I get it! That's cute, Uncle Don." Thanks, Audrey. I didn't think you would have trouble with it. It could go into one of my joke files, but here's a good forum for it. "Hey, Don. don't understand it." Okay, Walter. Audrey will tell you. Go ahead, Audrey. "Gee, Walter. I'd think wouldn't have any trouble figuring that out. A distant cookie, see, is a FAR-FIG-NEWTON. Got it? Just say it fast." +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ About a month or so after our Land Rover Camper arrived in Brazil from the factory, a stranger knocked on our door. He had seen the Land Rover parked in front and was stopping and admiring it each time he passed. I don't remember if I said it was the only one in Brazil. He was driving a Brazilian-made Toyota Land Cruiser. Finding that I would rather fish than eat and that he and I were the only two sport fisherman (using artificial lures) that he knew of in all of the state of Sao Paulo, he invited me to caravan with him to his fishing camp on the Mato Grosso side of the Rio Paran . That river starts near Rio de Janeiro and while it flows westward, it is the border between the state of Minas Gerais and the state of Sao Paulo. Then it turns south and is the border between the states of Sao Paulo and Mato Grosso. Continuing south, the river changes its name to El Rio Plata (The Silver River.) and comes out between Argentina and Uruguay. We crossed that river there on the way home on a ferry. From the middle of the river you can't see land in either direction; the river being 200 miles wide at that point. I was delighted to take the Land Cruiser driver up on his offer. I could take off for a few days as, by then, I was doing independent research for the doctorate at the Universidade de Sao Paulo. The people who lived on the shores of the Paran  said that the fishing wasn't any good; nobody had caught any for the previous two weeks as the water was running too clear. Well, we were there for the dourado, the golden salmon, after which was named the southern constellation Doradus. We proceeded to rig our metal spoons and, in front of the amazed onlookers proceeded to catch the dourado. You should have seen their faces as we released several undersize fish, up to about 3-4 pounds each. We just kept the larger salmon . . . I was using 4-lb test line with my spinning gear. It was truly a challenge to catch a 15-lb salmon which climbs out of the river, stands on his tail on the water's surface and proceeds to shake his head (trying to shake the lure out). Having piranha scooting around your legs doesn't help your confidence. "Well, Uncle Don, I guess one fish story is as good as another fish story. Wait a second! No. No. Oh Lord. Don't tell me you are writing a book on fishing, too? I just couldn't stand that." If I tell all my fish stories here, there won't be any left for _Fishing For The Love Of It_, which, indeed, is in manuscript form, but not very far along. Another one that is just a title and a table of contents is, _Photography For The Love Of It_. For, _Copulation For The Love Of It_, I have the title, the table of contents, and the first chapter. I showed that chapter to an elementary teacher I met at a party at Shirley Schwartz' house. Shirley gets mentioned in an earlier RT. The elementary teacher said I should go ahead with the Copulation book and offer it to the market as a children's book. That first chapter's title is, "Whither The Noses?" For, _Proctology For The Love Of It_, I have the title, the contents, and one several page long appendix, with the title, "Ribald Essays by Practitioners." I might get talked into putting the Cop. and the Proc. tables of contents in one of these muses. "Oh, go ahead. Do it! They can't be any worse than some of the stuff Walter has been putting on my monitor." Gee, Audrey, when you put it that way . . . PROCTOLOGY FOR THE LOVE OF IT CONTENTS Vita: The Proctologist's Proctologist Preface: The Enjoyment Of Proctology Plates Chapter 1. Tools of the Trade 2. More Tools of the Trade 3. Trade Tools through History 4. Longer Tools and Anal Enjoyment 5. How to Lengthen Your Forefinger 6. AIDS, Herpes, and the Practitioner 7. Rectal Fun and the Smoker Appendices A The Modern Use of the Toenail in Rectal Surgery B Ribald Essays by Practitioners Glossary Bibliography Index And the other one: COPULATION FOR THE LOVE OF IT: A PRACTITIONER'S JOURNAL CONTENTS Vita: The Copulator's Copulator Preface: Reptilian Dreams Plates Chapter 1. Whither The Noses? 2. Should I Ask Her To Stop Chewing Her Cud? 3. What If He Sticks Me With His Horns? 4. Love With A Cloaca Or How Come I Uncle Don't Seem To Have Any External Sex Organs? 5. Did The Earth Move? Or Was That Just The Continent Drifting? 6. With That Big Tail In The Way, How Come There's So Many Little Apatosauri? 7. Will She Lay Multicolored Eggs? 8. Where Did All These Comets Come From? 9. How Come Our Eggshells Are So Thin? 10. Goodbye, World ... (This, of course, is a copulation manual for a Triceratops with a yen for an Apatosaurus, just as the great extinctions started.) Glossary Bibliography Index +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ INCREDIBLE STORY #1737: Chris had played chess in the annual Lydia Grunette Memorial Chess Tournament held in a hotel near LAX over the Memorial Day 3-day weekend. Lydia died about 3 years ago. She had been active in promoting chess and running chess tournaments out of her home for many years. Lydia had a mother-son relationship with Bobby Fischer. She went over to Iceland when Bobby was talking about pulling out of the World Champion Chess Match and talked some sense into him. That was against Mikhail Tal, who in 1988 played a simultaneous game (simul) against about 30 players in Anaheim. He was drawn by two players. One was Barry Bartle, an actor, mostly in commercials but also in a few Simon and Simon programs, and the like. Barry is the 1989 or 1990 (I forget which) United States Correspondence Chess Champion. The other player who drew in that simul with Tal is my wife, Chris. However, Chris had to pull out of the tournament Sunday as she was in a great deal of pain in her right eye. She's worn contact lenses since about 1964-5. She drove home from L.A. more or less just seeing out of her left eye and holding one hand on the right eye. She took out the contact and used antibiotic eye drops. The next morning I drove her to the FHP hospital's emergency room where another contact was found in the same eye. That one was the contact that I took apart the bathroom sink looking for about a year or so ago. The lab kept the contact, which Chris asked to have returned to her when they were through with it; they were running a culture from the lens. Today she gets a package from the lab. She called me up in wonderment that two lenses were returned to her! That means that she was wearing three contact lenses in her right eye. One of those lenses was tinted, the next clear, the other gray. How come she didn't know about them? Well there is some space around the eyeball that has enough space to hide a contact lens. During the length of time an extra contact was there, her eyes were examined by at least two opthomalogists, who found nothing wrong. Her recent lenses have been tinted. The tinted lens is the one she took out when she got home. The clear lens, as I said, was in her eye about a year. But that third lens was tinted gray. She wore gray lenses while we lived in Brazil. Therefore, the gray was in her eye at least 20-23 years. Now she's well supplied with contact lenses for her right eye. I think her method of contact use is a little odd anyway. Her current prescription--for her tinted lenses--have distant vision in her left eye and close (reading) vision in her right eye. If the inflammation had been in her left eye I would have had to drive to LAX to pick her up, getting her car back after we took care of the problem. The reason for those two differing lenses is to avoid having to wear bifocal contacts. I don't even know if such are made. She has worn that setup long enough now that whichever eye is in use is her master eye for that usage. My master eye is my left eye, under all circumstances except when that eye is closed. When I did my target shooting, from 1952 to 1965 when I broke my spine and couldn't get into the prone position, the rifle was set up for my being right handed, but I had to twist my body a bit so I could look through the either iron sights or telescopic sights with my left eye. My .22 caliber, 15 lb., Winchester 52C (heavy barrel) single-shot target rifle used a 50mm diameter B&L 6-24X zoom telescope for its sighting and a meat hook and a door knob for the offhand position. See . . . I can write jargon for other subjects than astronomy. "Don't think you can just end this file while I have a question or two sitting here, Uncle Don. Winning or drawing against somebody playing a simul isn't all that great a thing. Chris was playing against but 1/30 of that former world champion, right?" Wrong. She was playing against all his strength. I've played simuls just twice, though I've played against two players several times, winning all those games. I always considered a simul against two players was just a way for me to win two games at once. In the first, I played against my chess club at Roosevelt University, all except Paul Poschel, who played first board on our team and Casimer "Casey" Czerwin, who played second board. I played third board on that team and as the team had only five players, it didn't matter what fourth or fifth boards did as we three lost no games at all, taking the Midwest Intercollegiate Chess Championship away from the University of Chicago, who had it for 15 years. So I played the simul against our fourth and fifth board players and the rest of the club, winning all my games. I played about 15 games with Casey Czerwin, an Illinois master; all of those were draws. Our chess team that year was awarded college athletic letters. The other simul was at the Chicago Hobby Show at the Coliseum. I had my 10"f4 Newtonian reflector on display with other telescopes of the Chicago Astronomical Society members. After a couple of days I decided to look at other exhibits. So I hooked the large velvet rope around our exhibit and wandered over to the chess booth. A player I didn't know was playing in a 20-game simul. As he knocked off a player I asked if I could play. He said, "What's your name." I said Don Rosenfield. He said that, no, I couldn't play. I watched him beat the rest of his antagonists, after which he asked if I would take over the chess display and simul. Sure. Why not? The worst I could do would be to lose 20 games. "I don't know what chess has to do with astronomy but this situation is interesting, Uncle Don. How many games did you lose?" Audrey, Audrey, Audrey. For many years after high school there were few chess games I lost. All of those but one were to Paul Poschel; I had beaten him once and drawn him three times out of 20 games. Paul later drew Bobby Fischer in a tournament in northern Michigan. In that simul, I won 19 and drew the 20th. The other chess game I lost after high school was in 1954, the first game I played Chris--who had beaten everyone who ever played against her. After that one, she didn't beat me again for about ten years. The way you play a simul--this is in answer to your previous question, Audrey--is you stand on one side of a series of tables which are set up linearly or in a circle. You get white in all your games; that means you get to move first. If you are playing 20 games all the games are numbered. You go from board 1 to board 2 . . . to board 20 and then start over with board 1. As you get to each successive board, the player must make a move as you arrive. You then get to study the board--to make sure where you are in the game--and make your move. Then on to the next board, and so on. If the player isn't ready to move when you arrive, that player forfeits that game to you. However, that rarely happens in a simul. "But why didn't that simul player let you play against him?" His name was Walter Grumbacher, a professional chess player working for Drucke, a company that manufactures chess sets. He was in the top 50 players in the United States. Yet, just because Poschel had been talking about me in the various chess clubs and tournaments he played in, Walter didn't want to face me in that simul. After the Hobby Show closed for the evening I went to Walter's hotel and played him seven games to draws. There's one more entrant in the Walter story. That Hobby Show took place in 1953. In 1958 I was with Chris in Canada. I was working in a department store in Edmonton for two weeks. Overlapping my two week stint by one day, Walter worked there for 10 days. After marveling at the coincidence, we played seven games to draws. Poschel was--and is--a marvel. I've seen him play a dozen games in a simul while he was blindfolded. He won all those games, too. While I was courting her, Chris was bemused that I beat her while I was blind- folded. I think in that game I played a bishop sacrifice which gave her confidence now that she was ahead. However, the checkmate soon cooled that confidence. --by don rosenfield, asst. general sysop/cosmogonist/rifle team captain /fisherperson/simul player/champion muser All Rights Reserved