July 8, 2015montanatude

Matters of Time

A quick post on the subject of time.

Time passes in weird ways. For instance, it’s been three months since my last post. That seems impossible. But it’s also been three months since I started on this medication that puts me in Zombieland – so there’s that.

On the other hand, if enough time passes then the inevitable… well, I guess it evits.

I think I am the 8th Cousin, 3 times removed, to…

Kevin-Bacon

I am nearly certain (say, 80%) that his 8th Great-Grandmother Elizabeth Blossom FitzRandolph was also my 10th Great-Grandmother. The questiony part concerns a girl who SHOULD be Elizabeth’s granddaughter – Anna Bloomfield. I can’t seem to find definitive proof that her parents were Ezekiel and Hope (FitzRandolph) Bloomfield. But I think they were – and, whoever she was, Anna married my 7th great-grandfather Asa Hubbell in Woodbridge, New Jersey in 1747.

So even if the Blossom thing doesn’t end up being true, I am definitely a real Hubbell. I can console myself with the fact that I am the 7th Cousin, 4 times removed, to the famous astronomer Edwin Hubble. AND – by extension – 8th Cousin, 3 times removed, to…

This illustration shows the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in orbit above the Earth as it looked before the Second Servicing Mission in 1997. The Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS) can be seen (marked in yellow) in Hubble's instrument bay at the back of the observatory. During the Second Servicing Mission the two first generation instruments, FOS and the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS), were replaced by the second generation instruments, NICMOS (Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer) and STIS (Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph). A dedicated team effort to understand and correct systematic effects in observations from FOS has now been concluded and the results are released on 11 September 2001. A four-person team based at the Space Telescope-European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF) in Garching, Germany, has carried out this re-calibration with support from scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute and the Goddard Space Flight Center. ST-ECF's 'Instrument Physical Modelling Group' has expended ten man-years of effort in understanding the intricate details of the instrument and in developing a novel physical model of its operation. This has allowed them to develop routines to correct for unwanted instrumental and environmental effects in the measurements of stars and galaxies.

And finally – back to the Time thing – there’s the concept of timing. Bad Timing – like, diving into writing a blog post before the coffee has truly kicked in. (C’mon… what was I thinking?)  And Good Timing – as in, say, realizing in researching the guy that this day, July 8, is Kevin Bacon’s birthday.

a-time-to-dance-footloose-kevin-bacon-lets-dance

Sad Update: I’m down from my former 80% certainty level to well under 50%. There just isn’t any evidence to prove that one single Fitzrandolph relationship linking myself and Mr. B here. 

Still, it was a fun post.

Final Update, Sep 2024: Nine-plus years since I posted this piece, and it seems the inevitable has truly evited. For real. Kevin Bacon is my 9th Cousin, 3 times removed – but not through the FitzRandolphs or Bloomfields. The link actually comes from another Massachusetts line: the Hinckleys! The down-side: We are both cousins to John Hinckley, the guy who shot Reagan. So, there’s that.

Leave a comment