8// February 18, 2010
The Universe and Other Small Things By Ralph Winrich Special to Second Supper Ever wonder where you came from? No, not mom and dad — I mean the very atoms that make up every part of you and your environment. While this might not be the thought you wake up to every morning, it bears looking into. The fact is you are recycled stuff; every atom in your body was once somewhere else. You may be carrying around atoms that once were part of Attila the Hun or Julius Caesar or anyone else that lived a thousand or so years ago. But where did those atoms come from? At one time they were inside a star and at some time they have been in the vast cold emptiness of space. So how does this work? How do the stars make atoms? Making atoms takes a lot of energy. Nature makes energy in two ways: one is by splitting or tearing apart — this is called fission, it’s how an a bomb works; the other is putting things together — this is called fusion and it's how the stars work. You get more
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COLUMNS energy by putting matter together than you do taking it apart (now there’s a romantic thought). Atoms of the different elements are put together inside stars in a process known to physicists as nuclear fusion; it’s the alchemy of the stars. Under tremendous heat and pressure, for example, our sun converts hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, into helium. We're talking about numbers here only a physicist could understand. This is not something you can do in your oven. In this process a little something is left over, and that is the form of energy that heats us each day. If it stopped there, you wouldn’t be reading this. After all, hydrogen and helium don’t make much in the scheme of things, except a gas that someday might make a great fuel for cars and a gas that makes people talk funny. However, if you remember the periodic table you had to study in Chemistry (yah right, I slept in that week), you know there are many more elements beyond helium. To make these elements you need bigger and hotter stars than our sun. The bigger, hotter stars burn the helium, too, after a while, and in that process make other elements, such as Na (sodium), which helps your blood, up to a point. Next comes magnesium, good for all sorts of things — like helping cells reproduce. Bigger stars work their way up that periodic table you might have missed until they reach iron. In this process of making elements, the star requires more energy, which it gets by burning the previous element — sort of like a sacrifice play in baseball. But in the all-star game here, iron doesn’t quite play fair (yes, we’ve all known elements like that). Iron requires more energy than the star can give. In the process of burning the element before iron just to satisfy iron's needs, the star loses so much mass that it gives up and implodes. The end result is so much energy that all the other elements now appear. These are the elements that make up your body, the ring you wear and so much more In this explosive process, elements are cast into space to some day seed other places and, after considerable time plus recycling, make up the face you see in the mirror each morning. Alas, it appears that your lucky stars are the unlucky ones.
The Advice Goddess By Amy Alkon amy.alkon@secondsupper.com
The newborn ultimatum
My wife has gone baby crazy. She's demanding I get her pregnant — between screaming "You're a horrible person," "I know why your ex cheated on you," and "You're a cold and heartless machine." We have been married for eight months. Last year, she had a miscarriage. She's always been difficult, but things have gotten really bad. A counselor we're seeing deemed her a "loose cannon." He said we should get our relationship healthy, then consider having a baby, and set up rules for us that my wife ignores. Last time I reminded her we agreed to wait on the baby, she called me "pure evil," and for the third time, threw her engagement and wedding rings at me and said to sell them. She says if we don't have a child right away, she'll hold me responsible. Obviously, the dynamic here isn't good, but the real problem is she can be amazingly sweet and giving. These extremes really scare me, for our future as a couple and as possible parents. — Shell-Shocked Should you bring a child into the world with a raging psycho who can occasionally be nice? Um...well...sure...assuming you've already struck out with all the crack-addicted prostitutes. ("Aww, look, little feller's got his daddy's eyes and his mommy's Hep C.") While other guys' wives spend long hours reading self-help books, yours apparently favors how-to guides to totalitarianism ("The 7 Habits of Highly Effective
Despots"?). Now, it is possible some of her behavior traces to some postpartum-type upset; maybe hormones running wild after her miscarriage. Then again, you made it clear in our e-mail exchange that she was rather witchy prepartum. Sure, it's tough for a woman who sees her eggs on the reduced-for-quick-sale rack. But, clearly, there's something radically wrong here — something that begs for more intervention from a mental health professional than a set of rules. Regarding her ticking clock (with the loose cannon attachment), there are a lot of things you can call a woman who goes off on you like she does, but let's hope the last thing anybody'll be calling her is "Mommy." As for what she calls you, we all get embarrassed by the little names our partners give us when emotion takes over; you know, Booboo, Sweetiepants, Pookie, or, in your case, Pure Evil, and Cold and Heartless Machine. You've spent so long with an exploding woman — an emotional blackmailer who tries to hell-state you into meeting her demands — that the nasty life has become normal life. In fact, the way you put it (from your hotel room in Stockholm syndrome), the real problem is that she's "amazingly sweet and giving" — when she isn't nearly putting your eye out with her rings. You need to recognize her behavior for what it is — domestic violence that can lead to more serious violence, should she run out of expensive jewelry to bean you with and reach for something a little heavier. It's fine by me if you want to hang around looking for the good in some woman while she bends silverware with her screams, but you and your wife aren't just two people making each other miserable. One of you is desperately trying to make a third person. You need to do everything in your power to see that your as-yetunborn child remains unborn. While I'm not usually one to explicitly advise people to end relationships, in your case, let me make this perfectly plain: Get out before she straps you down, hooks up the vacuum cleaner, and takes your sperm. Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon, at AdviceAmy@aol.com or Second Supper, 614 Main St., La Crosse, WI 54601. (c) 2010, Amy Alkon, all rights reserved.
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