Category: Etc

Free of labels, which is also a good rule for living

Silent Revolution

PROPOSAL: EVERYONE-BE-QUIET DAY. The Idea: Ann fretting about leafblowers disturbing the local birds, and me wondering what the world would sound like were all the machines to be turned off for a while… The Action: On January 1, 2010, between…

There’s WATER on ‘ing MARS.

“We have water,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. “We’ve seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks…

Natural Machines

A number of years ago, I got into a cocktail-party argument (or its boho-pomo equivalent, since we were in San Francisco in the 1980s) with someone who decried the “unnaturalness” of spaceflight. Her thesis, IIRC, was that humans were somehow…

“I Seen It Too!”

WAITING FOR THE GRATEFUL DEAD with Sputnik at the Shoreline, c. 1989ish, one of us began the following conversation: “For example, that guy over there with the ‘I Climbed Lassen’ T-shirt.” “Yeah.” “Well, he obviously wants everyone to think that…

In the spirit…

… of its content, this might have been posted 12/28/6, the day I wrote and sent it to my coworkers. But it wasn’t: Friends, If you can imagine a universe-sized sponge made of galaxies surrounding bubble-like voids, congratulations: you’re hip…

Focus: Israel

As the situation in Israel continues to develop, many are turning to the “local papers” for better coverage than that offered by CNN or (grf) the BBC. The following offer in-depth reportage and up-to-the-minute English-language breaking news:– Haaretz (left-leaning)– Arutz…

37 Years Ago Today

“But the Eagle has landed; tell your children whenTime won’t drive us down to dust again.”— Leslie Fish, Hope Eyrie One of the most embarrassing things which ever happened to me was falling asleep for the 90 or so seconds…