Vision; Oppenheimer

Another couple of days without rain. It's some kind of record, I'm sure. And the air is full of pollen and dust. No wonder, I keep having headaches.

I lost the glasses based on the last eye exam. So I've been using a pair based on the previous exam. I knew I should have another exam, but I never got around to it.

I'd forgotten about all the choices you have to make during the exam. "Is this one or this one clearer?" For the most part, I could see a difference, but there times when both seemed the same.

After the exam, the doctor said whatever glasses I had been using were based on a bad prescription. At which point, I explained about using an old pair. Now I realize I should most definitely have gone for an exam immediately after lossing the last pair.

I then took the prescription and walked next door to select the frames. Most of the frames were very narrow and made me think of Ben Franklin. I selected some that were larger but not oversized. The clerk then asked me about lens thickness, something I'd not thought of. Of course, the thinner the lens, the more expensive it was. My choice was one step up from the basic level of thickness. It now occurs to me that the card showing the options was designed to highlight the expensive ones. The base option appears at the bottom in a dull-looking box. The other and more expensive options are in bright, colorful boxes.

It will be next week before the glasses will be ready. And the doctor said it will take a week or so to adjust to them.

As I walked out the door, I felt slightly overwhelmed. Too many choices, I guess.

Nearing my car, I noticed a group of sparrows hopping around the tires. I always enjoy the presence of these wee creatures. So it made the morning slighly less vexing.

Oppenheimer's career was as operatic as a work by Wagner. Starting as a "junior theroretical physics professor," he almost overnight became the scientific director of the largest engineering project ever..." It was a project that began with "theoretical breakthroughs and ended with the all-too-real decimations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Yet, a decade later as he opposed the hydrogen bomb, he was viewed as a threat, and his security clearance was revoked.

As the project progressed, Oppenheimer began to recognize the horrific force that would be unleashed. When he viewed the explosion of the first atomic bomb, he is reported to have quoted Vishnu from the "Bhagavad Gita," - "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

PAX!