Why "the Green Flash"?

Anyone who knows anything about anything knows that the "green flash" has nothing to do with religion. It's an optical phenomenon that occurs in certain parts of the world (places like San Diego and Hawaii) at sunset (sometimes at sunrise, in places like South Carolina) when the light from the sun is refracted by the atmosphere. The "red" rays are absorbed into the disk of the sun, and the "blue" rays are scattered by the atmosphere. In between the red and the blue in the spectrum is green, and when the air is clear and clean, sometimes it is possible to see a distinct green rim above the sun as it sets (or rises) on the ocean (or on the prairie--you need a low, flat horizon). This usually lasts only for a second or so, hence the green flash. (Less common is the blue flash, and very rarely, a violet flash has been observed)

I first heard about the green flash in a college physics class (we were studying the properties of light), and I thought that sounded really cool. You can't see it in Washington State where I live--you have to be at a lower latitude. I have visited California, but I have never personally seen this phenomenon (although I have seen pictures of it). Now, I realize that pictures can be "doctored" and it could be a great hoax, but I have decided to trust what others have told me about it. I accept their authority on the subject and have no need to actually experience it for myself to believe that such a thing exists in reality.

We all believe some things we haven't directly experienced ourselves, taking their existence/truth "on faith," beliving the testimony of others. We can't experience everything ourselves, so if we refuse to take the short-cut of believing what we are told by others, we'll go though life ignorant. Sometimes we encounter hard evidence that something we had been told was false, and we have to revise our view of reality, but this doesn't happen so often that we decide that we can't ever trust anything we are told.

Blah, blah, blah! Well anyway, GREEN has always been my favorite color (it's like camping in the woods). As a kid, my favorite comicbook hero was Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), but not The Flash (I don't like red very much). As an adult leader in a Boy Scout troop, I adopted the Green Flash as a "camp name," drawing it from what I'd heard in physics class.

So I chose "the Green Flash" as my on-line persona just because I like the way it sounds, okay?