Telescopes and Terrapins

I got the bus home the other day and it stopped briefly outside an "antique" shop in the window of which was a wooden telescope and tripod. I was going to stop by yesterday to have a closer look but there were road works which made the whole area a mess. Everyone here seems to think that I already have a telescope and have been asking me what I think of the planetary lineup. I don't think that any telescope would be able to get two of the planets involved in one view so the question is really irrelevant. Having said that, the naked eye arrangement is quite spectacular and if you think about it for a few seconds, you get a real idea of the arrangement of the plaqnets in their orbits; you can almost see the white orbital paths in your mind to give you a 3d view. My dad had a 50x mag terrestrial telescope - probably still has it - which he occasionally (too occasionally) set up with a clamp on the window sill so we could look at the moon. We never looked at anything other than the moon; I don't know why. I once "borrowed" the telescope and set it up in the school chemistry lab pointing out in a random direction. We located a Motorway service station which must have been at least 10 miles away and could see the lorry drivers in the canteen and a tractor in the field beyond. I seem to remember it being quite spooky to see all these people at such a distance. Its almost as spooky as seeing live messages on the PC or Blogs which have just been updated. I know that anyone growing up now will find all these distant communications as normal but will they get the sense of size in the world that we have? I try to tell myself that I can understand the distances in the Solar system in my head but get beyond that and the distance is just too vast to comprehend. I try imagining a cube of space which is 10x bigger on a side than the cube I am imagining but that only works so far. Even the zoom out from the Earth which was at the beginning of "Contact", fails because the zoom speed seems too consistent when in reality you would be accelerating at an enourmous rate (it was still jaw-dropping though).

Why Terrapins? Nigel who works here, comes from Chester and I incorrectly guessed that a Native of Chester is a "Chelonian" when it is in fact a "Cestrian". I have just found out that the unfortunate name for a Native of Nottingham is a "Snot". I had to ask my Dad that but afterwards while searching for the fact I learned that "Snot" is what they call men in Estonia who's first child is a girl. The world is full of these strange links most of which can only become evident because the internet puts all this information within easy reach.