Kids these days

Curse you, the internet, for your abhorrent mangling of the words "epic" and "fail." The Iliad is epic. Typical residents of the internet fail to appreciate the beauty of literate conversation.

Typography issues

A pet peeve of mine is when a zero and the letter "O" are unintentionally interchanged in text (usually noticeable by the width and eccentricity of the glyph). The most common transgression is for people to write "H20," presumably because having a numeral nearby makes people's brains translate the "oh" sound ("O" for "Oxygen") into the number that is often read as "oh." Of course, I've seen in signs and other text where the converse has taken place.

I grant that I'm occasionally guilty of mistakenly hitting the wrong key (since "0" and "O" are adjacent on the keyboard), but I usually notice and correct it immediately...

Not very nice

I got a letter in the mail from a company I had never heard of that began,

Dear Seth Johnson,

“Congratulations, this letter constitutes our formal offer to you for a position with our company, Proto-Power Corporation.”

Yes, this could be the opening line of your offer letter after you interview and are accepted for a position with Proto-Power Corporation.

So apparently using quotation marks gives a person the license to say whatever they want, as long as he states after the fact that it was a hypothetical situation.

"Go away and never talk to me again! Also, I killed your puppy."

Yes, that could be a blog post here if I hated you, and if I killed your puppy.

Light pollution

Another issue that's been bugging me recently is the relatively great amount of light pollution that such a small town as College Station produces.

What is light pollution?

Light pollution occurs when an outdoor light shines not just at the ground but also into the air. An example would be the glowing spherical lights on a pole; roughly half of the light it emits goes straight up in the air.

What is wrong with light pollution?

Mainly two things.

1. It's a waste of energy. If the light pointed up were reflected down, that would increase the intensity of the light on the ground by roughly a factor of two; or, they could turn the power usage down to half and still get about the same brightness on the ground as the original lamp configuration.
2. It destroys the night sky. I'm not familiar with the exact numbers, but the magnitude of the stars that are visible in the sky drops dramatically. The weekend before last, I went to Enchanted Rock (a state park, plenty of distance away from bright cities), and when I took a look at the sky after it was dark, I was absolutely stunned by the sky (it had been a while since I had last been camping or far away from cities with a clear sky). At A&M, on the other hand, you look up on a clear night and you'll see a few stars and planets; on a cloudy day, you'll see a pink glow. From several miles away from the campus, you will still see a pink glow over where the lights are. This is not good.
   

What can I do to make light pollution go away?

Probably nothing. You could try petitioning the different people in charge, but sadly, chances favor their not caring. If they were to pay attention, you would tell them to modify their lamps so that they didn't shine straight up in the sky.

End of poorly assembled rant.