What Thales knew.

Probably a lot. When I was growing up my mother told me the story of Thales several times (why that is remains a mystery). Thales is famous for a rather inauspicious reason. He is the philosopher who, while meditating on the sky on a walk at night, became so deeply involved in his thoughts that he failed to notice a gaping hole at this feet. In he went, only to be mocked by a passing Thracian girl. From hence comes Heidegger's definition of philosophy: "philosophy is what Thracian slave girls laugh at."

In any event, when I was walking home the last couple nights a thought I'd had before recurred: when I look up, and I mean straight up, at the night sky, there's never a star directly above. Never a star above. Go ahead. Run out into the yard. Check it out.