It's What You Think It Is

another interpretation                                                                 J.V. Mallow

How much do we influence what we see and experience, and how much does that influence our theories? Dr. Robert Lanza, who has done pioneering work in cloning and stem cell research, believes that we cannot come up with a "theory of everything" without taking human consciousness into account. In this, he is in accord with other thinkers, including University of Oxford mathematician and physicist Sir Roger Penrose. Lanza cites the famous double-slit experiment in which a particle behaves either like a single solid or a wave depending on whether it's being observed, and concludes, “Not a single particle out there exists with properties until it is observed.” Taking the concept further (and into the realm of the surreal), he posits that one explanation for our existence could be that it is we who create the parameters that make our life on Earth possible (story, video): http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1647773-prominent-scientist-says-consciousness-is-key-to-a-theory-of-everything/

A Little Polonium With Your Tea?

Litvinenko                                                                                                         Alistair Fuller/AP

Investigators are pretty sure they now have the answer to how Russian former spy Alexander Litvinenko was killed in 2006. For months, everyone was flummoxed. He had entered a hospital in London complaining of severe pain after having had tea at a hotel. He showed all the signs of radiation poisoning, but Geiger counter tests came up negative. Then, a scientist who had worked on Britain's atom bomb program years ago, overheard colleagues discussing the results of his blood and urine tests, which showed an almost imperceptible spike in the trace. He recognized that spike as a characteristic of polonium-210. "Polonium is deadly—100%," says Professor Ian Shipsey. "If it's ingested in the body it destroys cells." It is also hard to detect, as it emits alpha, as opposed to gamma radiation, which is what Geiger counters recognize. Litvinenko died the day polonium-210 was confirmed as the source of his illness. Chillingly fascinating, yes ~ but the story doesn't end there (story, video): http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33678717

Land Before Time

Doggerland recreated                                                                       National Geographic Channel

Like ashes the low cliffs crumble,

    The banks drop down into dust, 

The heights of the hills are made humble,
    As a reed's is the strength of their trust;
As a city's that armies environ,
    The strength of their stay is of sand:
But the grasp of the sea is as iron,

            Laid hard on the land. 

So writes the English poet and novelist Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) in By the North Sea. Could he have imagined what we now know, that the North Sea was once Doggerland, a bucolic and beautiful strip that connected the United Kingdom with the European mainland? Rife, apparently, with marshes, rivers, and lakes, Doggerland was a hunting and fishing paradise for the hunter-gatherers of the region. All that ended, however, with the end of the last ice age. Water from the melting glaciers slowly drowned the land, whose inhabitants, it is surmised, had already traveled to higher ground. The final insult was a mega-tsunami caused by a terrific undersea landslide: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22730301-000-travel-back-in-time-to-a-paradise-lost-under-the-north-sea/
   Swinburne's poem about the North Sea is long but evocative. There is a reason he was, in his time, considered by many to be the successor to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Robert Browning: http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/northsea.html

Art Ads Up

screen shot

What artist couldn't use a little good P.R., and what freeway motorist couldn't use a little gorgeous scenery every once in a while? (OK, so I'm not talking California, but Massachusetts freeways, which are mostly pretty enough already, but whatever ... ) Artist Brian Kane created a win-win with his temporary installation of beautiful photographs of nature on a rented digital billboard. The images change with the day and time of day, so commuters always have something to look forward to. Hey, come do that in L.A.! (story, photos, video): http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2015/07/brian-kanes-unvertisement-billboards/

Cuban Evolution

Elián at Union of Young Communists meeting, 2010                                                                   AP

Things change, and while the Cuba of the pre-revolution 1950s is no more, neither is that of the 1990s or early 2000s. "Since assuming power from his brother Fidel in 2006, Raul Castro has gently edged Cuba towards a more market-based economy. The partial liberalization of private enterprise, home ownership and foreign direct investment are all suggestive of an economy in transition," according to this article. But with U.S. companies salivating over the possibilities and the Carnival cruise line having just gotten U.S. permission to stop there, the question is how Cuba will manage this new phase of its economic evolution (story, videos): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/otaviano-canuto/not-your-granmas-cuba-a-n_b_7836372.html
   Remember Elián González, the little Cuban boy who landed in Florida after the boat carrying him, his mother, and others broke down? Elián's mother died, but he was rescued and taken to live with relatives in Miami, starting a tug of war between them and the boy's father back in Cuba. Eventually, he was sent back, and now, 15 years later, he's commenting on the turn in U.S.-Cuba relations. "The establishment of relations at the embassy level is a measure of the Cuban revolution throughout history," he said. "While they [Washington] continue to criticize our model ... it has been recognized they have a failed policy": http://yhoo.it/1Ms62lO

Mrs. Livingstone, I Presume?

the Livingstones

Behind every great man, etc., etc. This is the story of Mary Livingstone (née Moffat; 1821-1862), wife of the famed Scottish medical missionary and explorer Dr. David Livingstone. Mary married him when she was 24 and had six children, one of whom died in infancy. She accompanied her husband on some of his expeditions, crossing the Kalahari Desert twice and enduring all kinds of hardships. On one such foray, she suffered a stroke. Mary died in Africa, of malaria. By all accounts, she and her husband were extremely close and shared goals, adventures, and convictions. Yet, while he lies in Westminster Abbey, Mary is in a simple grave in Chupanga, Mozambique, that is not quite so easy to find: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33639154

Deal or No Deal?

It's a great, transformative deal and will save the world from certain destruction. It's the worst thing that has ever happened to the world and will lead directly to our certain annihilation. There's no denying that the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran is a major step, but in which direction? Whom to believe? This is one of the most objective and informative examinations of the issue I could find, and its points echo those of other analyses. The conclusion seems to be that both sides have legitimate points but that, in the end, it is a risk worth taking: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21657803-nuclear-deal-iran-better-alternativeswar-or-no-deal-all-hiyatollah
   Digging down a little deeper into politics and international relations, we will always find the major corporations and the money trail. This commentary touches on that reality. It came from a site by a group called "EA Worldview," whose editor (and the writer of this piece), Scott Lucas, according to the site, is a professional journalist and professor of International Politics at the University of Birmingham and was also once adjunct professor at Tehran University and a member of the Executive Board of the Center for American Studies and Research at American University Beirut: http://eaworldview.com/2015/07/iran-analysis-nuclear-deal-understanding-a-victory-that-comes-with-costs/
   Anyone who wonders "what we get out of it" or who is skeptical of money being a driving force here might want to read this: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/20/western-businesses-eye-iran-after-un-backs-nuclear-deal and http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/us-offers-billions-in-arms-to-ease-mideast-anxiety-over-iran-deal/ar-AAcJHOX?srcref=rss

Good Hair Days

Nasir Sobhani gives Chris a cut and a shave                                                               Sarah Matray

There's a guy in Australia who's paying it forward in a big way. A former drug addict, he's now an apprentice barber who gives free haircuts to the homeless in his hometown of Melbourne. What's more, he does it on his one day off a week. "A homeless person doesn't get the respect and attention needed," he says. "So letting them know that they are worthy of human interaction is actually the main purpose here." And a good makeover doesn't hurt, either (story, video, lots of photos, inc. before-and-afters!): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3150773/The-Streets-Barber-Meet-recovering-drug-addict-spends-day-work-cutting-hair-homeless.html

The Women Behind the Mockingbird

Tay Hohoff and friend

I once had the opportunity to speak with the editor of one of my all-time favorite children's books. It is, IMHO, a truly beautiful book, and it always brings me to tears. So imagine my surprise when the woman sighed and said that the manuscript that had first come across her desk only barely resembled the book I so love, and that it had taken two years of back-and-forth with the author and hard work on her part to get it into its final shape. It seems that the road to Harper Lee's opus was very similar. The editor of that classic was Tay Hohoff, and according to this article, it was she who guided the process that turned the narrator from a 26-year-old Jean Louise into the younger Scout, Atticus from, by all accounts, a bitter, racist man into the patient father and lawyer with the quiet courage to do the right thing, and Go Set a Watchman into To Kill a Mockingbird: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/books/the-invisible-hand-behind-harper-lees-to-kill-a-mockingbird.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-middle-span-region&region=c-column-middle-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-middle-span-region
   Clarissa Atkinson was an assistant at J.P. Lippincott, which published Mockingbird, at the time of Lee and Hohoff and recalls those years in a blog. "Miss Hohoff not only stood up to the important suits in the office," she writes; "she had her own suits, some of them pin-striped. It’s not difficult for me to believe that her influence on Lee and on Mockingbird was substantial – more than that, if she was indeed responsible for the decision to tell the story we know in the voice of the nine-year old narrator": https://oldestvocation.wordpress.com/2015/02/05/mockingbird-years/

Brave New Postcapitalist World

"As with the end of feudalism 500 years ago, capitalism’s replacement by postcapitalism will be accelerated by external shocks and shaped by the emergence of a new kind of human being. And it has started," writes English journalist and author Paul Mason. It's powered by, he says, three profound societal shifts. Information technology, according to Mason, "has reduced the need for work, blurred the edges between work and free time and loosened the relationship between work and wages. ... Second, information is corroding the market’s ability to form prices correctly. That is because markets are based on scarcity while information is abundant." And last, "we’re seeing the spontaneous rise of collaborative production: goods, services and organisations are appearing that no longer respond to the dictates of the market and the managerial hierarchy." As for "the emergence of a new kind of human being," while I, admittedly, am judging by only a limited and very specific population, I can vouch for their existence ~ and for their integrity and sincerity (story, video): http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun?CMP=ema_565

TED Talk

The old dictum is that one should never talk religion or politics in polite company, but I've been finding lately that fewer and fewer actually believe or follow that rule. Which I, personally, find refreshing. I mean, unless you're a farmer or a sailor, how interesting is tomorrow's weather after the first couple of comments? Yes, there are still those who get overly agitated by such topics or refuse to consider any opinion other than their own, and then it's better to change the subject ~ fast. But how do you do that and still engage in meaningful conversation (assuming that you can't sneak away)? Here's a little compendium of TED Talks that, together, answer that question (story, videos): http://blog.ted.com/9-ted-talks-to-inspire-smart-conversation/

Books of Ages

Atwood, left, with Paterson in the Norwegian forest                                        Bjørvika Utviklingay

In a misty Norwegian forest last summer, a Scottish artist named Katie Paterson oversaw the birth of an ambitious 100-year project, Future Library. It began with the cutting down of trees, but fear not. Those trees will be used to build the library that will house the result of the project, and 1,000 new trees were planted in their place. For the next century, one author will submit a book manuscript each year (Margaret Atwood had the honor of being the first, to be followed, this year, by David Mitchell) that will eventually be printed on pages made from those 1,000 trees (story, video, link to audio version): http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-16/you-cant-read-these-books-your-great-great-grandchildren-can

Time and Money

In some areas near my home, it now costs $2 to park for one hour. Almost everywhere, meter hours have lengthened from the traditional 9 a.m.-5 p.m. to 7 a.m.-8 p.m. or even 9 p.m. ~ or even, in some places, 24/7. There are also now electronic meters, with one per every so many spaces. With these, not only does one not get to take advantage of any time that might be left over from the previous car (or one's own car, for that matter), but one must find the machine, pay when the shortest option is often longer than one needs, and run back to the car to place the receipt on the dash. And it all started with lawyer (figures, don't it?) and publisher Carlton C. Magee (1872-1946) of Oklahoma City, who was smart enough to patent his innovation and charge cities for every one: http://mentalfloss.com/article/66050/worlds-first-parking-meter

The Polaroid Project

4/28/79                                                             Jamie Livingston

This story resembles in many ways that of Finding Vivian Maier (http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2014/12/finding-talent-and-mystery.html) in that we follow, here in a 2008 Mental Floss article, the circuitous route by which a writer/blogger, Chris Higgins, discovers the identity of the man who took the photos posted on what was then an anonymous website. In a time long before Instagram or Facebook or even blogs, a college student named Jamie Livingston (1956-1997) started taking a Polaroid picture a day, images from his life. Unlike Maier's photographs, these are not particularly artistic or interesting in and of themselves, though they do get much better over time, perhaps as he becomes more invested in this as a long-term project. What makes each compelling is its role in the totality and in the chronicle of the last 18 years of a man's life (story, link to photos website, updates): http://mentalfloss.com/article/18692/he-took-polaroid-every-day-until-day-he-died

A Robotic Reception

"you rannng?"                                                                                                      IB Times ~ Japan

Japan has long been a leader in robotics, so it comes as no surprise that a hotel with mostly robotic staff has opened as part of an amusement park there. Beyond its obvious status as a tourist attraction, the Henn Na Hotel (the name means "Weird Hotel" but is also a play on words, as "hen" is part of the Japanese word for "change") is an attempt at lowering the cost of a hotel stay in a country known for high prices. Guests are greeted by a robot (a young woman for the Japanese, a dinosaur for the English-speakers, and what does that insinuate?!?), surrender their bags to a mechanical arm or automated cart, and gain entry to their room by facial recognition instead of card or key. There are still a few things, like security, that require the human touch, however. Another? "[Robots] still can't make beds," admits Hideo Sawada, who runs the hotel (story, video): http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/16/japans-robot-hotel-a-dinosaur-at-reception-a-machine-for-room-service

Just Because: 'The Swerve'

I came upon this book by Stephen Greenblatt just the other day, in a little canvas-covered A-frame at 7,800 feet up in the High Sierra. It was raining as we hiked the 11.5 miles in to Bearpaw Meadow, and it continued to rain that evening and the next afternoon. But the tent cabins were dry (if not warm ... ), as were the primitive kitchen and common room, with its covered porch overlooking the Western Divide. Perfect reading weather. We have been there before, and one of the first things I do on arriving is check out the camp library ~ three shelves of donated books, guestbooks, and guides to the local flora and fauna. Skipping the preface (and as the version I held didn't include the first pages of photographs), I didn't realize until I hit the first footnote that the book was about a person who actually existed. (Yes, I admit it: I'd never heard of Poggio Bracciolini.)  Of course, works of history being what they are, it's difficult if not impossible for an author to be completely objective and accurate even about generalities because, really, we weren't there (and even if we had been ...). Indeed, one review I read calls Swerve a polemic. Another states that it places too much blame on the Roman Catholic Church and too much importance on the works of Lucretius. Most, however, have nothing but praise for the book whose subtitle is How the World Became Modern.

CHAPTER ONE 

___________________

THE BOOK HUNTER 

IN THE WINTER OF 1417, Poggio Bracciolini rode through the wooded hills and valleys of southern Germany toward his distant destination, a monastery reputed to have a cache of old manuscripts. As must have been immediately apparent to the villagers looking out at him from the doors of their huts, the man was a stranger. Slight of build and clean-shaven, he would probably have been modestly dressed in a well-made but simple tunic and cloak. That he was not country-bred was clear, and yet he did not resemble any of the city and court dwellers whom the locals would have been accustomed to glimpse from time to time. Unarmed and unprotected by a clanging suit of armor, he was certainly not a Teutonic knight—one stout blow from a raw-boned yokel's club would have easily felled him. Though he did not seem to be poor, he had none of the familiar signs of wealth and status: he was not

And Now We Know

xkcd (of course!)

We came, we saw, we concocted ...

What's Motivating Mrs. Mugabe?

President Robert and Grace Mugabe

Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, is 91 years old. This makes him the oldest leader in the world. It also, especially in light of the fates of neighbors Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, makes his 49-year-old wife more than a bit concerned about her own future. Her rise from village chicken-seller to first lady suggest that Grace Mugabe has both ambition and moxie. Her nicknames, ranging from "Lady of the Revelation" to "Gucci Grace," suggest that she is a complex character. And her latest moves have people suggesting that she may be eying her husband's job. So who, exactly, is Grace Mugabe? This is a fascinating profile of her, her husband, and the country: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/15/dont-mess-with-grace-mugabe-she-could-be-next-president-zimbabwe

Memories of Naked Men

Chris Osbum

You might have noticed that more than a couple of my posts have had to do with memory and the loss thereof, and there's a good reason for that. As the author of this article notes, "Ask anyone over the age of 40 what worries them most about growing older and the answer that comes back is almost always the fear of losing your memory." So the findings of this study about the best way to keep that from happening were nothing short of heartening ~ and yes, they have something to do with the title of this post: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33505017

The Unknown, Known

lymphatic vessel in blue, immune cells in red                  University of Virginia

You'd think, with all the studies and scans and experiments, we'd know everything there was to know about the brain, physically anyway. But no! This finding is amazing and could have profound effects on how we think of and treat neurological diseases ~ and it necessitates an updating of our anatomy books. A new technique allowing researchers to look at the entire meninges (or covering of the brain) showed that there are lymphatic vessels in the brain, something that had not been known. Immune cells move though the lymphatic system to fight infection and disease throughout the body, and now we know that they reach the brain, too (story, link to audio version): http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-04/scientists-have-discovered-missing-link-between-brain-and-immune-system

Talking to Humans

screen shot from humansofnewyork.com

I've posted a bit over the years about Brandon Stanton and his Humans of New York (HONY) website and books (http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2013/11/humans-book.html, http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2014/08/more-humans.html) because they're just that superb (and p.s., the comments that follow his posts are equally profound and inspiring). Stanton and Dave Isay, founder of the app StoryCorps, are featured in a TED article on interviewing and storytelling. "I’ve learned there is nothing people won’t tell you if you ask in a compassionate and legitimately interested way,” he says: http://ideas.ted.com/the-art-of-storytelling-according-to-the-founders-of-storycorps-and-humans-of-new-york/

That Other July Revolution

So, the Fourth of July has come and gone, and now it's time to remember another significant revolution, one that was inspired at least in part by ours. The July 14, 1789, storming of the Bastille prison in Paris to release the seven inmates held there at the time marked the beginning of the French Revolution. (In France, the day is known as le quatorze juillet ~ the Fourteenth of July ~ or la fête nationale ~ the national celebration.) A little over a month later, King Louis XVI (1754-1792), who was later executed, signed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, which outlined the rights of all citizens regardless of their social position. The day became an official holiday in 1880 and, like our Fourth of July, is celebrated with parades and fireworks (website, including a link to live coverage of the fireworks): http://bastille-day.com/

   Interestingly, there is also a second quatorze juillet that is sometimes referenced on that date (http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2013/07/which-quatorze-juillet.html), and it has more to do with peace than with conflict.

   Of course, the most famous novel about this period of French history has to be Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, and should you decide to tackle it (all 300-plus pages in the paperback edition) but don't have a copy on you, go to http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/98.

Writing on the Wall

Mobstr

Oh, those Brits! Even their graffiti artists possess that rather dry sense of humor that we on this side have come to know and appreciate, as witness this exchange between one and those who would try to erase the signs of his presence (story, mostly in photos): http://qz.com/446188/a-game-of-one-upmanship-between-a-graffiti-artist-and-the-city-of-london-in-photos/

Just Because: 'Dune'

Dune is considered by many to be the best science fiction novel ever written. True or not, the fact is that this book written 50 years ago continues to have a huge cult following. It also continues to have relevance ~ maybe especially now, in dry California, in a time of world instability and change. Even I, who is admittedly not a fan of the genre, enjoyed it (when reading it together with my son many years ago) enough to consider re-reading it, something I rarely do. Our dog at the time, officially named Eddy, became to me, forever after, Muad'Dib.
   The story of the man who wrote this book, Frank Herbert (1920-1986) ~ and how he came to write it ~ is as interesting as the book itself. He was, as one might imagine, a Renaissance man. (He once described himself as a "technopeasant.") And, as happens often with the brainchildren of free- and forward-thinkers, his novel was not an immediate success. It was rejected by almost two dozen publishers before it finally found a home, with a publisher of hobby and trade magazines (story, video): http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/03/dune-50-years-on-science-fiction-novel-world?CMP=ema_565

Book One

DUNE

    A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To begin your study of the life of Muad'Dib, then, take care that you first place him in his time: born in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. and take the most special care that you locate Muad'Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis. Do not be deceived by the fact that he was born on Caladan and lived his first fifteen years there. Arrakis, the planet known as Dune, is forever his place.

—from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

   In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul.
   It was a warm night at Castle Caladan, and the ancient pile of stone that had served the Atreides family as home for twenty-six generations bore that cooled-sweat feeling it acquired before a change in the weather.
   The old woman was let in by the side door down the vaulted passage by Paul's room and she was allowed a moment to peer in at him where he lay in his bed.
   By the half-light of a suspensor lamp, dimmed and hanging hear the floor, the awakened boy could see a bulky female shape at his door, standing one step ahead of his mother. The old woman was a witch shadow—hair like matted spiderwebs, hooded 'round darkness of features, eyes like glittering jewels.
   "Is he not small for his age, Jessica?" the old woman asked. Her voice wheezed and twanged like an untuned baliset.
   Paul's mother answered in her soft contralto: "The Atreides are known to start late getting their growth, Your Reverence."
   "So I've heard, so I've heard," wheezed the old woman. "Yet he's already fifteen."
   "Yes, Your Reverence."
   "He's awake and listening to us," said the old woman. "Sly little rascal." She chuckled. "But royalty has need of slyness. And if he's really the Kwisatz Haderach ... well. ... "
   Within the shadows of his bed, Paul held his eyes open to mere slits. Two bird-bright ovals—the eyes of the old woman—seemed to expand and glow as they stared into his.

The Brain Germane

Patricia Marx

OK, I'll admit this is not "interesting" as much as it is amusing. So sue me. (No, really, don't.) The thing is, probably anyone younger than a certain age won't particularly enjoy this little treatise. For everyone else, it's (very) dark humor ~ kind of scary, but I figure, if we have the brain cells to understand and laugh at it, things can't be all that bad for us yet. And the part about the number of years of education predicting how quick the downhill slide is once it starts? I'm just thankful I was so prescient in deciding to stop after my master's. And now, I'll finally open up the puzzle book a friend gave me for my last birthday ~ if I can remember where I put it. (She said it was because she knows I like this kind of thing ... ): http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0705-marx-brain-exercises-20150705-story.html

Such a Curious Dream

It was 150 years ago this week that Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was published. We all know of and have probably seen at least some of the seemingly limitless movies (animated and not), musicals, various editions, and merchandise (remember Tom Petty's video for "Don't Come Around Here No More"?: https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=tom+petty+alice+in+wonderland&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-001). It's also pretty much common knowledge that Carroll (né Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), a mathematically gifted but shy young man with a stammer and delicate health, wrote his classic and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass, for one Alice Liddell, the daughter of the dean of Christ Church College, Oxford, where Carroll was sub-librarian: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/150702-alice-in-wonderland-lewis-carroll-books/
   As with so many books, especially children's books, like Winnie-the-Pooh, for example, a great part of the success is due to superior illustrations, and when we think of Alice, we usually visualize her as she was originally drawn. Alice was illustrated by John Tenniel, whose drawings on paper were carved into woodblocks that were then made into electrotype, or metal, copies. The color plates in the 1911 edition were by Harry G. Theaker (Macmillan website with history, piece by Alice's great-granddaughter, great factoids, timeline, video): http://aliceinwonderland150.com/
   The poems we know best, Jabberwocky and The Walrus and the Carpenter, are both from Looking Glass. That book ends with another poem, with which we're less familiar but that is, while not as whimsical, lovely in its own right:

A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July—

Football Players and Fire Fighters

Raymond Avenue, back in the day

Looking for something appropriate for the Fourth, I was perusing some iconic photographs representing our country, both the good and the bad over the decades, when I came across an essay I wrote my freshman year of college, probably in answer to some assignment. It occurred to me that what I had written all those years ago is as much a nod to "grass-roots America" as some of the photos (not, of course, that I'm in any way comparing the quality). It is also, as much as anything, a snapshot (if you will) of a place in time ~ of a place and time ~ and an unwitting account of change and the vagaries of generational tastes and mores.

   If you were to make a right turn at the Juliet Theatre, the one featuring Cops and Robbers and announcing the coming of the sensational Jesus Christ, Superstar, and walk past a few small stores, including Gladmore, "Your Clothes' Best Friend" ("What one little Indian can do, dry cleaning can undo"), and Rose Marie's Boutique, and if you were very, very hungry indeed, you would stop under the sign indicating the humble home of the College Drug and Luncheonette, at 48 Raymond Ave.
   We have all been told that it's not right to judge a thing by its exterior. If you remembered this, you would walk past the various cardboard posters in the window proclaiming Sealtest ice cream to be the best, the piece of gray cardboard on which someone had scribbled with a failing pen "Sorry, No Bare Feet," and the two or three athletic awards on display, to open the frail screen door. You wonder vaguely whether it will fall off as its hinges squeak irritatingly. Straight ahead of you, taped onto the cigarette machine only a few steps away, is a friendly reminder from the local AMEN (Americans Mobilized to End Narcotic Abuse) chapter.

   There are not many people sitting at the wood, high-backed booths, but there are three or four old men at the bar skimming the Sports section of the Daily News. Two waitresses hover over them. One is very young, the other is older and tired-looking. You walk over to the juke box, which doesn't seem very well used. It contains hits by such groups as The Four Seasons, Percy Faith and Orchestra, Spanky and Our Gang, and Morton Gould and Orchestra. Over each booth is a framed, yellowing cartoon signed "Gary." One of them depicts a young woman, presumably from the nearby Vassar College, facing a muscular young man with a crew cut and a letter on his bulky sweater. The printed caption reads, "But I thought you were coming tomorrow." There are also many posed pictures of football players. They are autographed and dedicated in flowing, illegible script.

   Johnny Klein has owned the College Drug and Luncheonette, better known to its employees as "The Drug," since July of 1947, two years after he moved to Poughkeepsie. "My wife is the real boss," he jokes as he slaps a grilled cheese sandwich together. Hanging over the opening of his shirt pocket is a piece of plastic on which are clipped two Bic pens. The piece of plastic has something written on it,

Smelling Like a Rose

Rose Garden, Exposition Park                                    KW

A couple of weeks ago, a friend and I found ourselves strolling through the Rose Garden of L.A.'s Exposition Park. The garden was established in 1927 with the planting of 15,000 bushes. There are more than that now, of every color and hue one imagines roses to bear. What most of them don't have, however, is a scent. It's disconcerting, really. We must have bent over dozens of them, and of those, only a couple gave off any kind of rose-like aroma. As one might expect, this is largely the result of our breeding them for color and shape. Something had to give, and it was the smell. Well, scientists have figured out how they might breed that smell back, and it has to do with a little enzyme that goes by the romantic name RhNUDX1: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-discover-why-some-roses-smell-sweeter-than-others--and-how-to-improve-the-scent-10362519.html?icn=puff-12

It's an Idea

This year's Aspen Ideas Festival (June 28-July 4) is almost over, but you can still hear and watch some of the talks. No one can accuse the presenters of shying away from the hard topics ~ this year's theme is "Smart Solutions to the World's Toughest Challenges." There were sessions on North Korea, impact investing, urban innovators, Greece, race and policing, the environment, the Middle East, the aging brain, terrorism, mindfulness, prison reform, data ethics, nanotechnology, religious racism, coding, the Constitution, empathy, the politics of inequality, the fourth world, functional robotics, and the universe. For example. The speakers were too many for me to even attempt a representative list (website): http://www.aspenideas.org/
   As the festival is co-hosted by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic, the magazine is carrying reports from the field: http://www.theatlantic.com/special-report/ideas-2015/

Private Photos, Public Picture

"Time-Lapse Mining from Internet Photos"               photo credit: Nadav Tobias

We all know by now that what we do in Vegas ~ or anywhere else ~ rarely stays in Vegas ~ or anywhere else. Take vacation pictures. Google and University of Washington researchers have created a program that combines photos of the same places into time-lapse videos. They used shots uploaded to public sites, sorted them by place tags and time stamps, removed the people, and manipulated them so that they show more or less the same perspective. The result tracks, for example, a glacier as it retreats or a skyscraper as it's built. Scientists elsewhere are using more or less the same technology to examine human behavior (story, video): https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/culture-beaker/your-photos-reveal-more-where-you-went-vacation

In the Time of Humans

According to an email I received, there will be an interesting-sounding website joining the www pantheon on July 8, just in time for the 26th anniversary of World Population Day on July 11. "This interactive site," the email reads, "will explore how key historical milestones affected the global population, demographic trends and projections." It is being created by Population Connection, a group whose former name, Zero Population Growth, better described its bent. If, however, the site is objective and factual, which one hopes it will be, it could be a fascinating overview of life in the time of humans: http://worldpopulationhistory.org/
   Can't wait until the 8th? Here are a couple of sites that have brief summaries of humankind's greatest hits. There have been three major population explosions, and all came at very obvious and understandable times ~ the beginning of agriculture and settled communities; the Industrial Revolution; and the advent of health care improvement (diet, sanitation, medicine) (story, video): http://worldpopulationreview.com/continents/world-population/ and (story, link to interactive map): http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/global-population-growth.html

Kitty Cops

hard at work                                                                                                               screen shot

Homeless cats. Nuisance rats. Put them together, as the Los Angeles Flower Market has done, and everyone's happy (except the rats). The Working Cats program places shelter cats in locations that could use their services, including businesses, schools, and warehouses. So far, they've matched up about 500 cats with close to 50 places. Often, these felines are not the friendliest and, for that reason, are hard to place in private homes. After "working" around people, like at the Flower Market, many become used to humans and end up being adopted. "It's not anything new," says Melya Kaplan, executive director of Voice for the Animals, who came up with the idea in 1999. "People used to have barn cats or church cats to keep out rodents. We just brought [it] to the city, and it seems to be really working": http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-adv-cats-for-hire-20150627-story.html
   Here's the group's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=28&v=2UtX-SOD3VI

The Female Arts

one of oldest cave paintings. El Castillo Cave, Spain Pedro Saura/AFP/Getty Images

The title of this article ("Early Humans Became More Feminine, Which Led to the Birth of Culture") drew me in immediately, as this correlation is something I've thought and wondered about for a long time. In particular and bringing it to the present tense, it seems to me that many of the countries whose laws make it more difficult for creativity to bloom are the same as those where punishment for unsanctioned behavior is the harshest and, (not) coincidentally, where women are subjugated and seen, basically, as non-citizens with few, if any, rights or voice. Conversely, it seems to me, those where women have attained some level of acceptance and respect and, even, elected positions in government, are those in which the arts are more revered and dissent and "otherness" are more tolerated. This observation seems to apply even to organized groups or areas within countries. Now comes a study that finds a correlation between lower levels of testosterone in early humans and the beginning of agriculture and cooperation. According to the article, the study concludes that "this may have proved an evolutionary advantage for early human societies, as it would have fostered wider-ranging social networks, closer cooperation between unrelated individuals, a wider choice of mates, and reduced chances of inbreeding." (This is one of the reasons I'm so concerned about women feeling they need to be more competitive and aggressive/assertive in the name of equality, instead of men feeling the need to be less so, but that's another story): http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/06/22/early-humans-feminine-culture/#.VZG21OezfeR

It's About Time

Get ready to have your mind bent. It seems that what happens to an atom in the present can change its past. As if the bit about photons changing as a result of the mere fact of being observed wasn't weird enough. According to the article, a team of physicists at the Australian National University "showed that if you offer a speeding helium atom two possible paths, the route it takes appears to be retroactively determined by the act of measuring the atom at the end of its journey." No one is quite sure what all this means yet. "If you ask 10 people, you'll get 11 opinions," says Radu Ionicioiu, of Bucharest’s Horia Hulubei National Institute for Physics and Nuclear Engineering: https://cosmosmagazine.com/physical-sciences/time-travel-and-single-atom

A Day Twice As Nice

There's Pi Day, of course, on March 14, or 3.14. It's notable date, celebrating as it does a most reputable and essential cipher. Since 2010, though, it's had a competitor for your devotion ~ Tau Day, or 6.28, aka 2 Pi Day (http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-joy-of-628.html). What argument could possibly be made for Tau Day, you might ask. Well, allow educator and physicist Michael Hartl to elucidate: "Since the circle constant is important, it’s important to get it right," he writes in his Tau Manifesto, "and we have seen in this manifesto that the right number is τ. Although π is of great historical importance, the mathematical significance of π is that it is one-half τ." And, yes, the day is gaining its adherents and, consequently, recommended ways of celebrating in style: http://www.scientificcomputing.com/blogs/2015/06/are-you-tau-ist-pi-day-under-attack

On Second Thought

It's only the 26th time this has happened since 1972, and it may be the last, so enjoy the leap second while you can (which would be at the end of the last minute of June 30). The extra second is being tacked on to correct a slight error made back in the 1960s. John Lowe, of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, explains: "The rate we chose for the atomic clock is slightly wrong. We could have done a little better." Indeed. Why on Earth would anyone calculate a second as being 9,192,631,770 oscillations instead of 9,192,631,950 oscillations? Well, we may be paying for it now. Some are predicting computer-related issues, along the lines of the Y2K scare: http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-leap-second-20150110-story.html
   It's all so simple! Scientists use Very Long Baseline Interferometry, employing geometry ~ and quasars as reference points ~ to determine how Earth's radio telescopes are moving relative to one another and over time. And that's how they figure out exactly how long a day is and why we need that extra second every once in a while. It's also not so simple. There are lots of factors, including earthquakes, volcanoes, and oceanic tides, that impact how we roll. “In the short term, leap seconds are not as predictable as everyone would like,” says geophysicist Chopo Ma, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (story, video): http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-explains-why-june-30-will-get-extra-second

Alone in a Crowd

Billy Idol was nothing if not prescient when he sang "if I had the chance I'd ask the world to dance/and I'll be dancing with myself." Enter, about a year or so ago, the silent disco, in which revelers wear headphones or earbuds they can tune to whichever of several DJs they want to listen and dance to. As one might expect, this leads to everyone dancing to the beat of his or her own drummer, as it were, and pretty much dancing on his/her own. Then again, it also allows everyone to customize, to a certain extent, and gives the DJs fairly instant feedback as they note who's bopping to the tune they're playing. So, you decide ~ individualization or isolation? momentary fad or long-term trend?: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/style/silent-discos-let-you-dance-to-your-own-beat.html?hpw&rref=fashion&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

Talk of Ages

Age ~ and, more particularly, aging ~ seems to be the obsession du jour today (see post immediately below this one), but really, it's only because these articles and Census Bureau figures appeared recently. The fact that this country is getting grayer (OK, silver or platinum) pretty quickly is not news; we've been hearing this for years. But here's the interesting part: not all areas are doing so equally. The maps in this article show, for example, that the grayest counties seem to be in rural areas, mostly in the center of the country, while those with the fastest rise in older residents tend to be in the left half. One county in Nevada, population about 800, has seen the percentage of its residents over age 65 rise from 20 percent in 2010 to almost 30 percent in 2014. Other maps show where there are the fewest and the most working-age residents per capita and where more than 27.3 percent of the population is younger than 19: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/some-parts-of-america-are-aging-much-faster-than-others/
   According to the latest report from the Census Bureau, millennials (those born between 1982 and 2000) now make up one-quarter of the population, and 44.2 percent of them belong to a minority race or ethnic group. Another interesting statistic is that, while most states are graying (led by Maine), North Dakota, Montana, Iowa, Hawaii, and Wyoming showed a decline in median age from July 1, 2013, to July 1, 2014. Utah is the state with the lowest median age (30.5): http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-113.html
   

Long Time Growing

Posidonia oceanic

It's all relative, right? So here are a few facts about old age and long lives that might make some of us feel just a bit better about where we stand on our own timeline. from wisegeek.com:

The oldest living thing in the world is thought to be an ancient seagrass known as Posidonia oceanic that was estimated to be approximately 200,000 years old when it was discovered in the Mediterranean Ocean, from Spain to Cyprus in 2012. Scientists believe that the seagrass is able to live so long because it is asexual. It can reproduce on its own and essentially clone itself as needed. Over time, as Posidonia oceanic expands by growing more branches. Each individual patch of the seagrass weighs about 6,000 tons and takes up about 10 miles (16 km) over the Mediterranean Ocean.
The second oldest living thing is the world is a 43,000-year-old Tasmanian shrub, Lomatia tasmanica.

More about the oldest living things on Earth:

• A French woman named Jeanne Calment is considered the person who lived the longest in documented history, and was 122 when she died in 1997.

Itching for Summer

A little public-service post here. About mosquitoes. I've been noticing more of them around lately than I remember in previous years (at least, I think that's what's been biting me whenever I'm outside in the evening), and that brings up an old dilemma ~ bug or drug? Most of the conventional repellents are chemical-laden, and many of their ingredients are not so good for us. But they work. Over the last few years, more "natural" repellents have hit the market, but not all of them work as well. Here's a list of essential oils whose scent mosquitoes apparently don't like and that work at least as well as the DEET-based formulas: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/top-5-natural-mosquito-repellents-that-really-work.html

Body of Art

"Microbial Me," by Mellissa Fisher

We are the world, yes, and each of us is also a world unto ourselves ~ a total microbiome that's home to a trillion organisms, give or take. While every individual has certain of these organisms in common with certain other individuals, each microbiome is as unique as a fingerprint. A U.K. exhibit called "Invisible You" illustrates these facts and others with the works of 11 artists. These include a sound piece, sculptures, textiles ~ and photos from a Brooklyn-based artist of what grows in a petri dish when one swabs people's belly buttons: http://mentalfloss.com/article/65297/artists-reveal-bacterial-beauty-human-microbiome

The Boy Who Went Fission

screen shot

Taylor Wilson, now of Reno, Nevada, built an actual nuclear fusion reactor in his garage when he was 14. That was seven years ago. He also won $50,000 at a science festival for his invention that can find nuclear material in cargo containers. And he's not even close to running out of ideas. Like how to make cancer treatments more effective, and how to lower the price of energy with fission. “My life has been this series of events that I didn’t see coming," he says. "It’s both exciting and daunting to know you’re going to be constantly trying to one-up yourself. People can have their opinions about what I should do next, but my biggest pressure is internal": http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/20/taylor-wilson-nuclear-teen-genius-science-interview?CMP=ema_565#comment-54209719

Come See About Them

Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

They are the Supremes, the justices of the highest court in the land, and the judgments they hand down, for better or worse, are almost always the final say on any issue. As justices, they are unbiased and base their verdicts on the guiding principles of the Constitution ~ or that's the idea, anyway. In reality, it seems that impartiality is not that easy to come by and one's political beliefs often sway one's decisions. You can probably name most of them, but what do you know about them, their backgrounds, and their political leanings?: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33103973