November 2011
Friday Unrelated Information
1. The Armistice ending WWI was signed 93 years ago today; today we tell veterans “thank you” and then go shop pre-holiday sales. I liked this poem from W.S. Merwin, which I assume is satirical:
When the War is Over
When the war is over
We will be proud of course the air will be
Good for breathing at last
The water will have been improved the salmon
And the silence of heaven will migrate more perfectly
The dead will think the living are worth it we will know
Who we are
And we will all enlist again
2. And one more Carl Sagan-inspired post to finish the week: I found this clip looking for the one I posted on Wednesday, and it’s a pretty great 29 seconds.
Well Done, Science Writers
Last night I was able to catch the second episode of the latest NOVA series, The Fabric of the Cosmos. (Have you figured out by now that if you put “cosmos” in the title of something, there’s a 99.9% chance I will like it?)
I am as average a layperson as it gets when it comes to science, so I had to admire how the show’s team explained concepts such as the past, present, and future all existing at once, or why time appears to only flow in one direction, in the simplest way possible.
Check it out–the last two epsiodes are on the next two Wednesdays, and you can get caught up on the first two online. (And I dare you not to think of Dr. Who while the show talks about the nature of time. Sorry, physicists.)
I Declare It Carl Sagan Day
Happy birthday to Carl Sagan today! To celebrate Carl Sagan Day, you could watch the introduction to the Cosmos series, which is still the most popular science program ever produced for television*:
Or you could read this from Ann Druyan, which is simultaneously heartbreaking and joyful:
Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again…But the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is…We knew we were beneficiaries of chance. That pure chance could be so generous and so kind; that we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, “in the vastness of space and the immensity of time”; that we could be together for twenty years; that is something which sustains me…That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.
Happy birthday, Carl. I like to picture you somewhere in that “ship of the imagination” from Cosmos.
*You’ve all heard that a sequel to Cosmos is in the works for 2013, right? Ann Druyan is helping to write/produce and Neil DeGrasse Tyson will host. I can’t wait.
Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again…But the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is…We knew we were beneficiaries of chance. That pure chance could be so generous and so kind; that we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, “in the vastness of space and the immensity of time”; that we could be together for twenty years; that is something which sustains me…That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.
Tuesday Project Roundup: Another Active Copy
I am on a roll with my knit dress knockoffs. First there was the “mustard active dress,” and now I give you the “turquoise fleece active dress”:
This one is a loose interpretation of this dress (in boring gray, for $90):
As you can see, the pockets and front seams are similar, but instead of figuring out how to draft a hood I just added a cowl neck like before. My starting pattern was the same one I used for the “orange sack dress” in September, and I used an organic sweatshirt fleece that is warm and soft and pretty much feels like pajamas.
The active dress: For when you can’t wear yoga pants.
"It Is Clean"
That’s why T.E. Lawrence reportedly liked the desert; I could add, “It is indifferent.” And this weekend, it was also cold:
Fortunately, Mom and I were prepared with winter gear.
Also fortunately, we escaped the enormous mesa-top lizards this sign showed us: 
Lizards not to scale? Or do they come as big as bighorn sheep now?
Friday Unrelated Information
1. I don’t know why someone didn’t think of this earlier, but it is brilliant: Anthroparodie, photos from the Anthropologie catalog with new (awesome) captions.
2. And another parody: If you’ve read any Cormac McCarthy, you’ll get a kick out of Yelping with Cormac, reviews of local places as if they were written by him. From the “review” of Taco Bell:
The man asked could God make a taco so terrible even He could not eat it. The priest considered this and said no this was not possible and to think so was a sin. The man was silent for some time. Then he said that he had eaten such a taco and that it tasted of bootblack and horsefeed. That if this taco was under God’s dominion then surely all other great evils must be as well. And then the man took the halfeaten and greaseblackened taco from his coatpocket and thrust it at the priest like a broken sword. Eat it, he said. Eat it or be damned.
To The Desert
I’m headed to the desert by Moab soon to make my inner hippie happy and get some perspective. Here’s Paul Bowles‘ feelings about it (even though his desert was the Sahara):
Here, in this wholly mineral landscape lighted by stars like flares, even memory disappears; nothing is left but your own breathing and the sound of your heart beating…Once [someone] has been under the spell of the vast, luminous, silent country, no other place is quite strong enough for him, no other surroundings can provide the supremely satisfying sensation of existing in the midst of something that is absolute. He will go back, whatever the cost in comfort or money, for the absolute has no price.
"Science: What’s It Up To?"
Have you been trying to ignore the gearing up of the presidential race, too? From what I’ve been unable to ignore, it seems every potential candidate so far is trying to win by being anti-science–anti-vaccine, anti-evolution, anti-global warming, etc. Thank god for satire:
“Luxurious palace of science”–I love it. Found via one of my favorite science blogs.