The End of Knowledge

The title is a bit of a teaser.

For the past 50 years, I have immersed myself in matters astronomical. A voracious reader, I've pored through astronomy publications and periodicals, and drained the Internet of virtually every bit of information I can glean from it. I have about 30 years of visual and telescopic amateur astronomy, in addition. Hell, by grade seven I could talk the average person's ear off about stuff they wouldn't even have understood.

Where does that leave me? At this point, my base of general astronomical knowledge is as great as any amateur's. Ask me virtually anything about astronomy, or cosmology, or even astrophysics, and 99 percent of the time, I'll have an answer.

Let me be clear: I don't pretend to have the skills and knowledge of someone with a degree in astronomy; there are areas, such as orbital calculations, that I've not really touched on, more for lack of resources than for anything else. I haven't done calculations involving gravity (though I did deduce the rules for planetary velocity at about age 18).

Point is, to learn anything more about astronomy, I would just about have to enroll in a university. I'm running out of Internet resources; I scan the astronomy news sites daily. More and more, I find myself branching out into physics, particle physics, and quantum theory--there are plenty of resources out there, including lectures.

I watch television shows about astronomy, but generally the only new things I learn from them are minutiae (this morning, I learned that the first name of Mr. Penzias, who with Robert Wilson discovered cosmic background radiation in the 1960s, is Arnold.)

My best bet is to search university public resources, as some universities put their curriculum online. To that end, I've begun to take out my math and play with it again, so to speak. I finished high-school math a year early; and I keep my mind nimble; so it really shouldn't be a challenge.

That's it; just bitching/bragging on a beautiful spring morning.

My knee bursitis, by the way, now appears to be ebbing. Last night, my legs were merely stumps, not bloody stumps; and I'm looking forward to a day of good legs, as soon as I've done my priming walk of about 300 metres. Riding the bike actually seems to be helping; the trick is to go slow and build up gradually. My legs at this point do not have a lot of strength or stamina.

Be well,

-Bill

Nuts...

I've been battling knee problems for the last nine years or so.

It all started with a walking event in Kanata, late in 2011 or thereabouts. I remember bombing along in my usual fashion, but I also remember a grinding sensation in my knee. I remember that it began to get painful when I bent my left knee.

It got worse the following spring, when, literally, a knee-jerk reaction resulted in an impact injury to the same knee. Following that. I could no longer bend my left knee; and so I adopted a very distinctive stride, my right leg working properly, and my left knee stiff. It worked well that way for many years; but last year, things took a turn for the worse.

Beginning in December, I noticed that my knees were growing increasingly tender at night, particularly if I had walked the day before. The pain was persisting well into the day. A short walk would 'fix' my knees wonderfully--but I couldn't put together a walk of more than a kilometre, without it causing great pain the next day.

For years, I've largely dismissed my problems as "arthritis", and inevitable. I knew that at some point, I'd need to 'have my knees done'; a long, painful process. Now, push has come to shove, and I'm Taking Steps.

The first thing that I did was to look up my particular problem with my knee. I can step stiff-legged, or I can step a bit higher; but bending my knee at the angle required for walking causes it to lock up, as it were (the knee can only be straightened against great resistance, and at great pain). It sounds very much like a meniscal tear. That can usually be repaired by arthroscopic surgery, and the recovery period is short.

A sensation yesterday morning tipped me off to the possibility that the other problem is knee bursitis; a 'squeaking' sensation, similar to rubbing your fingers together when they're coated in chicken grease; a rapid-fire give-hold-give sensation.

Knee bursitis is treatable; one of the most important treatments is staying off the knees.

So, in order to facilitate this, yesterday I put my bicycle on the road. It's nothing much; a 1983 vintage ten-speed; it's so my style.

Now, I try to be responsible these days; so I carefully inspected the bike, made sure that the cables were tight; that the tires were in good shape; etc. I carefully tried the gear shifters and the pedals, all manually.

Now, picture the sequence as I get going: I mount the bike, quickly make sure that my right foot is nestled in the pedal trap, and start pedalling.

Problem: the chain itself is off of the rear sprocket, and whips around uselessly.

I fall off to the left, most spectacularly, in true old-man fashion. People stop. You okay, sir? Knowing glances--what was this old man doing, trying to ride a bike?

I managed to shrug off my embarrassment, set the chain onto the sprocket, and go for a nice ride.

I was mostly unhurt by the fall, by the way. I've sprained my left thumb.

So, for the next little while, it's no walking for me. And, as soon as the coast is clear, I'm going to see my doctor about my knee trouble.

Like a responsible older gentleman.

Blah.