News is addictive for me.  Local, national, international, universal (hoping, hoping that any day now my subscription will arrive from the “The nuArae System Daily Post” … see: http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/08/26/new.planet/index.html).

Yes, I understand that news reporting is biased.  Some of the fun is separating the wheat from the chaff.  But there are often Flashes of Light that make me smile, and that’s what I crave.  Read on….

The news is, of course, often dark in nature.  I am not.  So I was completely enthralled last week with news video of Stephen Hawking’s zero-gravity flight.  He is one of my heroes.  Seeing the joy and wonder expressed in his face while experiencing weightlessness was powerful; this amazingly brilliant person trapped by ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) in a severely marginalized body had the grin of a 10-year old boy.  It took my breath away.  To most others, the thrill of a zero-gravity flight is just that – a thrill ride.  Good fun, but with no intrinsic value (research aside).  But it was so much more to Dr. Hawking.  It was unexpectedly touching freedom. 

(http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/04/26/hawking.flight.ap/index.html)

(http://clipaday.com/videos/stephen-hawking-does-rolls-in-zero-g)

And so becomes a Flash of Light.  Ultra-brilliant, in this instance.  Watch for them everywhere….