In the News – Page 19

I Am Curious… Rock

August 21, 2012 by John 2 Comments

As you probably know, the Mars rover Curiosity includes, among its impressive onboard chemical-analysis instruments, a powerful laser. The idea is to focus in on small pebbles here and there on the Red Planet’s surface; from a distance of a few meters, the laser can zap a spot on a pebble very briefly, but strongly enough that it heats up, emitting gases and tiny particles whose chemical spectra can then be analyzed.

The JPL/NASA team announced early this past weekend that they’d singled out the first target for testing, a tiny little pyramid of basalt at first simply numbered N165… and, shortly, renamed Coronation. The scheduled moment of zapping was Sunday.

Of course, as with any public event, this one brought the Internet wags out in force. Of particular interest at the moment is the Twitter feed of a user named N165 aka Coronation. The first few tweets went up on Saturday (read from the bottom up):

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Miracles of Confusion

August 17, 2012 by John 3 Comments

[Image: a grainy photograph of a couple of volcanoes someplace. (Maybe another
planet.) Or are they? See the note at the foot of this post for more information.]

From whiskey river:

Dharma

The way the dog trots out the front door
every morning
without a hat or an umbrella,
without any money
or the keys to her doghouse
never fails to fill the saucer of my heart
with milky admiration.

Who provides a finer example
of a life without encumbrance —
Thoreau in his curtainless hut
with a single plate, a single spoon?
Gandhi with his staff and his holy diapers?

Off she goes into the material world
with nothing but her brown coat
and her modest blue collar,
following only her wet nose,
the twin portals of her steady breathing,
followed only by the plume of her tail.

If only she did not shove the cat aside
every morning
and eat all his food
what a model of self-containment she
would be,
what a paragon of earthly detachment.
If only she were not so eager
for a rub behind the ears,
so acrobatic in her welcomes,
if only I were not her god.

(Billy Collins [source])

…and:

Tour

Near a shrine in Japan he’d swept the path
and then placed camellia blossoms there.

Or — we had no way of knowing — he’d swept the path
between fallen camellias.

(Carol Snow [source])

[Read more…]

A Chocolate Break Thursday

August 9, 2012 by John 4 Comments

…in lieu of a Midweek Music Break, and to compensate (sorta) for a postponed whiskey river Friday.

My brother alerted me to this news from the other day, from Estes Park, Colorado. Although the key video is probably playing at numerous spots around the Web, I think this is the best — notable for the enthusiasm not only of its creative, persistent main subject, but also of the reporter:

The Missus and I will be out of town for a couple days. I’m hoping to post the whiskey river thing Saturday; in the meantime, do yourself a favor and dream of chocolate. (Also fur.)

Curiosity’s “Seven Minutes of Terror”: Best Explanation

August 6, 2012 by John 2 Comments

This video has been out for awhile, but I still find it entertaining. It’s a bunch of NASA folks explaining all the things that have to happen exactly right in order to get the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), a/k/a Curiosity, safely from space to the Martian surface. It’s way more complicated than the landings of earlier rovers: this one is the size of a small car, weighs about a thousand pounds, and is (per the device’s full name) chock-full of chemical-analysis and other testing instruments.

One of the cooler items on board: a rock-blasting laser. It can focus in on a rock several meters away, and vaporize it — filming the dust, which will tell it [something or other] about the material the rock was made of.

(On the other hand, I have a little science-fiction scenario in my head: say there are two single-celled organisms remaining on Mars, on the whole planet, following eons of extinction. Say these two have just successfully mated, and reproduced single-celled organism #3. The happy family is all excited, of course, and starts to plan for the future of their species on, oh no!, on exactly the wrong pebble…)

As you probably know by now, the landing seems to have gone off without a hitch. So, so cool.

Update, 2012-08-08: Just saw this cartoon in the e-newsletter for The Funny Times, which pointed out that both Gabby Douglas and Curiosity stuck their landings.

In the Large Dark and the Long Light

July 27, 2012 by John Leave a Comment

From whiskey river:

It’s true that someone will always say that good and evil don’t exist: that is a person who has never had any dealings with real evil. Good is far less convincing than evil, but it’s because their chemical structures are different.

Like gold, good is never found in a pure state in nature: it therefore doesn’t seem impressive. It has the unfortunate tendency not to act; it prefers, passively, to be seen.

(Amélie Nothomb, Les Catilinaires)

…and:

In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world’s rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.

(Annie Dillard [source])

…and:

People are frightened of themselves. It’s like Freud saying that the best thing is to have no sensation at all, as if we’re supposed to live painlessly and unconsciously in the world. I have a much different view. The ancients are right: the dear old human experience is a singular, difficult, shadowed, brilliant experience that does not resolve into being comfortable in the world. The valley of the shadow is part of that, and you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege.

(Marilynne Robinson [source])

…and:

Let Me Make This Perfectly Clear

Let me make this perfectly clear.
I have never written anything because it is a Poem.
This is a mistake you always make about me,
A dangerous mistake. I promise you
I am not writing this because it is a Poem.

You suspect this is a posture or an act
I am sorry to tell you it is not an act.

You actually think I care if this
Poem gets off the ground or not. Well
I don’t care if this poem gets off the ground or not
And neither should you.
All I have ever cared about
And all you should ever care about
Is what happens when you lift your eyes from this page.

Do not think for one minute it is the Poem that matters.
It is not the Poem that matters.
You can shove the Poem.
What matters is what is out there in the large dark
and in the long light,
Breathing.

(Gwendolyn MacEwen [source])

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Your Fiction-Always-Pales-Before-Reality Moment of the Day

July 10, 2012 by John 7 Comments

How many nuclear weapons have exploded on Earth?

Just the two, you say?

Oh, right. Duh: we’ve got to include all those notorious “test shots” back in the Cold War days. So maybe, umm… a hundred? A couple-three hundred, tops. Right?

Hahahaha.

This video comes courtesy of Dr. Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy blog, which yesterday marked — “celebrated” being absolutely the wrong word — the fiftieth anniversary of a spectacular/ghastly (take your pick) test: a 1.4-megaton explosion in space. (And not, like, way out past the moon or anything: a relatively mere 240 miles up.)

The video’s title, “1945-1998,” indicates its scope. For the first three explosions, the “clock” at the top right moves slowly. The global view zooms to the specific location, and there’s a little ping with each one. But then the pace picks up. A beep every second marks a month of calendar time, and the tone which accompanies a given explosion’s “marker” (as well as its size) seems to vary with the explosion’s yield*: those pings for the smaller, something more like oboe toots for the big shots. Running tallies in the top and bottom margins indicate how many explosions took place under the ægis of specific countries.

The video is the work of artist Isao Hashimoto; a few more details available here.

_____________________

* The Wired (UK) article which seems to have first publicized the video says that the pings/toots are synced with the country which fired the explosion, but I didn’t get this. To me, the countries seemed to be indicated just by the colors of the circular blurs for the various explosions. But, y’know, this is probably the sort of argument over detail that civilized people often throw up to distract themselves from uncomfortably room-sized elephants.

All Too Knowing

July 6, 2012 by John 4 Comments

[Image: “Roller Coaster Tycoon Conspiracy” (click to see punchline; original here)]

From whiskey river:

Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying yes begins things. Saying yes is how things grow. Saying yes leads to knowledge.

(Stephen Colbert, playing it straight for once [source])

…and:

We may ask, “What is wisdom?” It is our life itself. We not only have that wisdom, we are constantly using it. When we are cold, we put on more clothing. When hungry, we eat. When sad, we cry. Being happy, we laugh. That’s wisdom. The seasons change, the stars shine in the sky, it’s all wisdom. Regardless of whether we realize it or not, we are always in the middle of the Way. We are nothing but the Way itself.

(Taizan Maezumi [source])

…and:

What Is There Beyond Knowing?

What is there beyond knowing that keeps
calling to me? I can’t

turn in any direction
but it’s there. I don’t mean

the leaves’ grip and shine or even the thrush’s
silk song, but the far-off

fires, for example,
of the stars, heaven’s slowly turning

theater of light, or the wind
playful with its breath;

or time that’s always rushing forward,
or standing still

in the same — what shall I say —
moment.

What I know
I could put into a pack

as if it were bread and cheese, and carry it
on one shoulder,

important and honorable, but so small!
While everything else continues, unexplained

and unexplainable. How wonderful it is
to follow a thought quietly

to its logical end.
I have done this a few times.

But mostly I just stand in the dark field,
in the middle of the world, breathing

in and out. Life so far doesn’t have any other name
but breath and light, wind and rain.

If there’s a temple, I haven’t found it yet.
I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass
and the weeds.

(Mary Oliver [source])

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Midweek Music Break: The Eyes of War, the Marches of John Philip Sousa

July 4, 2012 by John 8 Comments

[Image: the Jersey Joes, on parade (somewhere) in the 1940s-50s. Twenty years ago, I’d have said this was too blurry or grainy. Now, I think it’s just about perfect.]

You could hear them for a full minute before they came into sight. A couple of blocks away, still, the horns sounded a little tinny; the drums were a muted, basso sort of approaching rumble. As they got nearer, each breath of the brass grew both fuller and more pointed, and you could hear not just the rattle of the snare drums’ skins but the slight ticky-ticky-tick of the sticks against the chrome or stainless-steel rims…

…and then they were there, suddenly.

You’d read (so you thought) all about The War, and you’d seen the movies and TV shows about it. You knew what they looked like in their service garb back then — ten, fifteen, twenty years before: rumpled khaki or olive uniforms, the helmets dirty dinged and battered and maybe camouflage-netted or even bullet-holed, the boots like something you’d see on a dirt farmer’s feet, their hands grimy, their chins unshaven, maybe a smear of grease or mud or something worse (the photos were all black-and-white) across a cheek or forehead, their eyes the eyes of men who’d never stop wincing at the sound of a backfire. You could trace a direct line to their old uniforms from the uniforms of the Revolutionary War marchers in that Spirit of ’76 painting.

And you’d seen them as they looked since then, too, still in uniforms perhaps (but with the logos of gasoline retailers, grocery-store chains, public utilities and bus companies swapped in for the medals and insigniae of rank), still with the smear of grease across a corner of their faces, weekend Budweisers clenched in the hands which once gripped rifles, wrenches, binoculars, and maps.

All of which made their transformation on this muggy South Jersey July morning remarkable: crisp black cotton uniforms; brilliant black boots with white laces; white helmet liners; white gloves; clean and clean-shaven faces; and a distant look in their eyes… These uniforms had nothing to do with the Spirit of ’76 guys’ clothes, but these eyes came straight from those faces.

And always, always with the music, pounding, rattling the windows of the stores as they passed, vibrating through the soles of your feet, and making it impossible to remain seated on the curb.

—

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Potpourri, June 18 (2012 ed.)

June 18, 2012 by John 1 Comment

[What I saw on Google’s home page today. (Almost certainly, YOU did NOT.) You rock, Google.]

On this day in history: The US declared war on Great Britain in 1812, initiating the War of 1812. So glad we got that out of our system, finally. (Well, declaring war on them, anyway. We’re still working on being satisfied with everybody else — although by now it feels absurd to add, “Give us time.”)

Speaking of the (more-or-less) British: Also, Canadian actress Linda Thorson was born on this day, in 1947. Thorson’s biggest career splash (well, so far) was her role as Tara King on the British light-action TV series The Avengers. (That’s her over there at the right, hamming it up with series co-star Patrick Macnee (who played John Steed).) Tara King replaced the outgoing Emma Peel (Diana Rigg). Mentioning (or remembering) Emma Peel still induces heart flutters among men of a certain age, but, alas for Ms. Thorson, mentioning (or remembering) Tara King has relatively no effect among that audience. Not her fault, I think. Those were very tough leather boots to fill.

The problem, honestly, was rooted in the character, not the actress. Audiences had been teased for years by the playfully flirtatious yet respectful on-screen relationship between her predecessor and Steed. In Tara King, the series producers opted for a sexy-cute character, nothing at all like Mrs. Peel’s sexy-dangerous. (And Patrick Macnee had obviously been given the message, too: Don’t just waggle your charming eyebrows and smirk your charming smirk. Hit on her, man!) Mrs. Peel had seemed like a step forward for women as action heroes; Tara King seemed to have wandered onto the set from the typing pool on a 1950s-era sitcom. [Read more…]

Natural Wonder

June 1, 2012 by John 4 Comments

[Obviously, this displays the global distribution of…
something. But what? See the note at the foot of this post.]

From whiskey river:

The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvelous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural.

(Joseph Conrad)

…and:

The Kingdom

At times
the heart
stands back
and looks at the body,
looks at the mind,
as a lion
quietly looks
at the not-quite-itself,
not-quite-another,
moving of shadows and grass.

Wary, but with interest,
considers its kingdom.

Then seeing
all that will be,
heart once again enters —
enters hunger, enters sorrow,
enters finally losing it all.
To know, if nothing else,
what it once owned.

(Jane Hirshfield)

[Read more…]