Conservation of Luck

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At the start of the game show Jeopardy, Alex Trebek often wishes the contestants “good luck to all three of you”. Which got me thinking…

Isn’t good luck for one contestant bad luck for the others? If one is lucky enough to get a category they’re familiar with, isn’t that bad luck for the others?

This leads to the supposition that “the total amount of luck in a closed system remains constant”, similar to the idea of conservation of energy. A corollary might be that the total amount of luck in a closed system is zero.

Of course, we have to be careful about the boundaries of our “closed system”. If all three contestants have bad luck and win very little money, isn’t that lucky for the person who has to pay out the prize money?

I might feel incredibly lucky that I dodged that bread truck and didn’t get run over, but isn’t that stroke of good luck offset by the bad luck for the undertaker, and the guy who makes his living fixing dents in bread trucks?

Owl on the loose

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Today I attended a session on nature photography at the Lake Conestee Nature Park, a neat restored natural place on the Reedy River right in the Big City (in my out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere opinion) Greenville, SC Metro area. The session was put on by professional nature photographers Ben Keys and Clay Bolt. The session was both entertaining and useful. I’ve got some more things to try with my camera now.

A couple of the attendees are wildlife rehabilitaters. After all the photography, we were honored to be present while they released a barred owl that had been rescued after getting his head stuck in a chain-link fence. Click on the picture to get to some more pictures of the event.

Upcoming activities

With emphasis on “active”.

TakeFlight5k

The Greenville Downtown Airport (KGMU) is building an aviation-themed community park where people can come watch the airplanes, with a playground for kids, etc… In order to raise money to continue the construction, they’re holding a 5k run/walk on 25-May-2013:
http://book-events.com/takeflight5k/
http://www.greenvilledowntownairport.com/RunOnTheRunway.html
The keynote feature is that the run will be on the airport itself, including a runway. I’m planning to participate, if only so I can run down the runway flapping my wing…er… arms.

I kinda like the sneaker-wearing airplane logo.

Flight of the Dove

No, I’m not talking about backyard birds, for once. Flight of the Dove is upstate South Carolina’s premier (IMHO) organized bicycle ride. The routes are great, support is great, No restroom lines at the start/finish (at the Presbyterian College stadium in Clinton, SC), and lunch is included. And on top of all that, the ride supports a great cause: Hospice of Laurens County. Mark your calendars: 24-Aug-2013.

http://www.bikelaurenscounty.com/flight-of-the-dove.html
http://www.hospiceoflaurenscounty.com/Flightofthedove.html

Ride for Raptors

As long as I’m here, I’ll also mention another ride I like to do, Ride for Raptors. This one is in the fall (no date set yet for 2013), leaves out of Pendleton, SC, and wanders through the hills of Pickens County. This one supports the Carolina Raptor Center. More later…

http://www.ride4raptors.org/home.htm
http://www.carolinaraptorcenter.org/

NIghttime solar radiation readings

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I noticed that my solar radiation readings seem to behave oddly. After sunset, when you’d expect the reading to go down to zero, it’d actually rise up to around 100 w/m2 and pretty much stay there through the night, sometimes dropping back to zero for periods of time. You can see that here.

After a perhaps-unnecessarily protracted Email discussion with Davis and a phone call, a replacement sensor was procured.

I installed it Saturday morning (it was starting to rain and snow, so we didn’t miss accounting for much solar radiation), and it seems to be working properly now.

Landing traffic

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I wasn’t sure how good this picture really was since I had to fiddle with the exposure after the fact, but a friend said it was one of my best yet. So, captured last week, here it is (as usual, click on the picture for the expanded version):


Good day to see the lakes

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It was a near-perfect day to fly. We caught this picture of Lake Jocassee (click on the picture for full-res):

Lick Creek splits up into a bunch of little streams and pools as it gets to Lake Rabon. Usually you can’t see any of this because of the trees, but today, as we approached that area, the sun suddenly reflected off all the streams and made them show up like a CT scan. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the camera in my hand (I had a handful of airplane instead), and we weren’t entirely successful in setting that shot up again:

We have a plan and will try this again on the next sunny day we get to fly.