Larry’s Pretty Good Journal

Large links about life at large:

Astronomers looking for Kuiper Belt Objects have announced the discovery of 12 more moons of Jupiter, bringing the total known to 79. (via)

Yet another study shows that open office plans decrease both face-to-face communication and productivity. (via)

Advice from a former CIA analyst on how to process current modern life.

---L.

Subject quote from Sanctuary as a Quaker Testimony, Jim Corbett.

A couple links from here and there:

Thor's Other Tools.

“Why are these animals a 16th century manuscript wearing jet packs?” Spoiler: not actually jetpacks. (via)

The success of liberal economic policies in Minnesota. (via)

---L.

Subject quote from Shasta (Carrie's Song), Vienna Teng .

The Kids Are Alright. Pull quote: "No." (via)

On the rise of protein drinks. Pull quote: "Most protein powders are thin in your mouth, yet clang with aggressive artificial sweetness and bewildering notes of metal, plastic, chalk, and the sickly perfume of a Bath & Body Works." (via)

The battleship solitaire puzzle you didn't know you needed. You're welcome. (via)

---L.

Subject quote from "By the Fire-Side," Robert Browning.

I am pretty sure that a sufficiently clever someone could find the thematic thread connecting these three links, but I haven't had enough coffee yet to manage even minimally clever. Feel free to take a whack at it yourselves:

From Why did Japan surrender?:

To us, then, Hiroshima was unique, and the move to atomic weaponry was a great leap, military and moral. But Hasegawa argues the change was incremental. “Once we had accepted strategic bombing as an acceptable weapon of war, the atomic bomb was a very small step,” he says. To Japan’s leaders, Hiroshima was yet another population center leveled, albeit in a novel way. If they didn’t surrender after [the firebombing of] Tokyo, they weren’t going to after Hiroshima.

tl,dr: There's good arguments that it was actually the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, cutting off the possibility of mediation by Moscow, that provoked capitulation. This is an important question as it implies nuclear weapons might not be as strong a deterrent as we assume. (via lost)

Pangea marked with today's countries. (via)

From this piece on the man, I come to this work in words of one beat, though the name is all bad words: Gödel's Second Incompleteness Theorem Explained. I am in awe.

---L.

Subject quote from "Billy in the Darbies," Herman Melville.

Appalled Graphic Designer Shows Girls’ Life Magazine What Their Cover Should Look Like. (via)

Carbon-capture technologies. (via)

The Straight Dope* on why we can’t harvest electricity from electric eels. (via)


* Yes, Cecil Adams is still on the job.

---L.

Subject quote from “The Steele Glass,” George Gascoigne.

Some links about people:

John McPhee finally let someone profile him, and it wasn't published in The New Yorker. (Has McPhee ever written about being a fire lookout? I don't think so, yet it feels like it'd be a natural subject for him.)

"Ten years as a lookout on a fire tower requires a particular aptitude for idleness."

That Awkward Moment When Your Twin Brother Is a U.S. Citizen at Birth, But You’re Not. (via)

---L.

Subject quote from "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d," Walt Whitman.

TBD is four years + one month old.

Achievements unlocked this last month: counting before seeking in hide-and-seek, connect-the-dots pictures, a recognizable written A, recognizing own $realname by spelling out the letters, appreciation of fractured fairy tales, and funhouse mirrors. TBD is trying to figure out how rhymes work, and asking us if a given pair of words rhyme, but this is not down solid yet. It is a harder leap than I remember. Also, they've started remembering dreams and reporting details surreal enough ("I dreamed I was a white car") that we believe they were not invented.

Three emotion-related bits:

1. TBD has learned that soldiers fight and kill, and while they are supposed to fight only other soldiers, they also know that people do not always do what they are supposed to. That there is an air base on the edge of town and half the aircraft overhead are fighting planes also became clear at the same time. Nonetheless, a visit to the local Air and Space Museum, which is slanted towards military craft, was greatly enjoyed -- especially the space exploration exhibits.

2. While shopping for a Mother's Day gift, TBD remembered without prompting Janni's one-time comment several weeks before that she likes challenging jigsaw puzzles, and insisted on getting the biggest one we could find: 2000 pieces. That is, on own initiative picked out something they themselves didn't want. They did, in the end, find that many pieces overwhelming, but have been helping gamefully with small, localized subsets. Sometimes. (Sometimes, they do one of their own puzzles next to the big one. Or just whine for attention.)

3. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day has been the bedtime reading nine nights in a row now.

In physical skills, we now all use full-size dinner plates because, gasp, TBD sometimes wants more than one thing on it at a time, even at the risk of them getting mixed. Also, I'm needing less and less to echo statements/questions to make sure I've understood them correctly -- or at least, for pronunciation: when the sentence gets tangled up or has antecedents missing, I still need to try a clear version, to make sure I'm responding to the right thing.

Which of course leads into talking, talking:

"Daddy, you be on a march."
"What's this march about?"
"Planets."
"Is this against planets or supporting them?"
"Support."
"A march for planets. Got it."
"Go."

$friend: "When I shoot ice, you get frozen."
TBD: "When I shoot webs, you get stuck."
(playing superheroes)

"Hey Siri, why do some people died?"
(this was TBD's first question for Siri; it was followed up with "Why do some rocket ships have a lot of astronauts?")

"Who is is Lunchbox Squarepants?"

"What are Scooby-Dooby snacks?"
(followed shortly by "What was the earliest dinosaur?")

"What comes before 1?"
(followed two days later by "What comes before 0?" -- and explaining negative numbers is HARD. First try using a number line didn't take -- will try again soon.)

"We are the dentasaurs!"

"I'm a superhero."
"Well it's time for the superhero to go to bed."
"But I have to save the day!"


Needless to say, the superhero had to save another day.

---L.

Subject quote from "Show Me," Mint Royale.

Three links:

Multiday lightning storms seen from space.

Timelapse of the Grand Canyon with clouds, as in filling it. (via)

The greening of Antarctica is happening. Now. (via all over)

---L.

Subject quote from Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov.

Poetry Monday:

Black Country Coal, 1868, Taylor Graham

This whole town’s built on under-tunneled ground
where coal pays wages. Here’s the collier’s door –-
it sinks so gently, you don’t hear a sound.

Beneath, they dig with pick; with sledge they pound
a way toward deeper-buried seams: black ore.
This whole town’s built on under-tunneled ground

where roofs that settle, day by day, astound.
The steeple’s lost another inch or more;
it sinks so gently, you don’t hear a sound.

Through passages by torchlight, ironbound,
the miners delve toward hell, or planet’s core.
This whole town’s built on under-tunneled ground

that can not hold. Though greening hills surround,
their roots can’t stay the tide, nor timbers shore
what sinks so gently, you don’t hear a sound –-

no word of outrage, just earth’s sigh profound
at what our tools have wrought and can’t restore.
The whole town’s built on under-tunneled ground
that sinks so gently, you don’t hear a sound.


Found in Villanelles ed. by Finch & Mali.

---L.

Subject quote from "Pollution," Tom Lehrer.

A Monday, a poem, a poetry Monday:


A Litany for Survival, Audre Lorde

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children's mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours;

For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother's milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive


---L.

Subject quote from "In the Wood of Finvara," Arthur Symons.