Old Is New
This one is a blast and helps me remember the past!
Blasts From the Past
Today is all about references to old posts I liked (and you might also). They only made the cut if I had some inspirational update. This post is BEST-VIEWED on the web rather than email or the app. All of these posts have inspired some news in my Google Newsfeed. I’m glad I tend to click on space exploration and the like rather than the latest indictments. Makes for a better newsfeed.
I Miss Tennis
This has been a very difficult summer for me. I love to play tennis and I am blessed with a wonderful circle of friends who enjoy the game also. I have been contending with a health problem related to my feet and my Type-2 diabetes. This is certainly the least amount of tennis I have played in years. I am confident I finally have a good diagnosis and action plan to get back on the court. I cannot wait.
Scaffolds
I read recently the early forays into FAKE MEAT are struggling. Not surprising to me. I continue to be an “opportunarian” {my word} but will try almost anything. This old post was about an amazing and fast-advancing branch of science. This was inspired by this funny application of scaffolds. If you believe the world could use an easier-to-eat burrito or gyro, this is for you!
Ornaments
As a result of my post “Keep Calm & Carrion” I am receiving some unsolicited recommendations for planning my demise. One more absurd than another. I was inspired to think of this old post by another ridiculous option for managing your final disposition. If you want to know your options, the link has 23 novel methods on offer. One of these, in particular, reminded me of a friend who is a talented writer and a retired high school English teacher. He recently wrote a screenplay. I was lucky enough to be a proofreader. It is a magical tale. Becoming an ornament seems as good a use as any for pelletized me. For fans of the movie “The Interview”, perhaps Kim Jong Un would consider becoming a firework?
Get Off My Lawn
For movie buffs who enjoyed the movie “Gran Torino”, Clint Eastwood exhorts his Hmong neighbors to “Get off my lawn”. The screenplay was written by Nick Schenk from Minneapolis. It was inspired by the Hmong community of immigrants who call St. Paul, MN home. The story was set near the St. Paul Ford plant. The movie moved the story to the Detroit area. Many of us can get territorial over “our perceived property”. I enjoyed writing “An Iberian Play Date”. It is kind of a story about encroaching on other’s property. We are a weird species who made up private property, build fences, install invisible fences and even sit on chairs watching our video doorbell feeds. For all the obsession about controlling our illusory property, we sure get miffed when other creatures do the same. My post about killer whales was about the evolution and learning of the apex predator of the sea, Orcinus orca. Ever since the post, I get steady updates from Google News. There was a recent high-profile yacht and sailboat race off the coast of Gibraltar. Apparently, the race organizers did not secure rights to the course. They seemed shocked when some neighbors yelled “get off my lawn”.
If You Blink, You’ll Miss It
We are born with perfectly serviceable, everyday eyes. Cover your eyes with a blindfold (or notice when your vision begins to decline). Your perception of the world takes a major hit. Some of my favorite explorations are the world at its smallest and largest scales. Our eyes take care of the in-between. Novel experiments that explore the extremes of scale reveal our world in unexpected ways. The recent movie Oppenheimer was a tour-de-force. The timing circuitry to coordinate the implosion of a bomb is small fractions of a second. We take this for granted nowadays with the Uber performance of our phone cameras. The absolute state-of-the-art commercial camera flash can produce light in a 1/80,000-of-a-second pulse! Each time we try to understand nature better we need better instruments. One of my favorite books I’ve read in a while is “The Perfectionists”. It was a simple story. It described how each time we figured out how to make stuff more accurately, a whole new world of products and discoveries came into view! I wrote a post about making stuff smaller and smaller and named it “5 Nanometers”. It’s from the early days but quite good. I am sure if a few of you peek, it might even get a comment or two!!!
A whole new world of discovery awaits because there has been a basic science breakthrough in massively improving a flash. This breakthrough is not new but it is new to me! The promise is to be able to capture what is happening over 1 billionth of a second!!! That’s 1/1,000,000,000. A whole new world awaits. A beam of light travels about eight inches in that time. Many uncovered mysteries to come! These BASIC SCIENCE breakthroughs beget a wave of new discoveries.
The Poll & Music
Sometimes old is new.
I love the killer whale post! Underrated.
The Golden Oldies! I'd missed "Scaffolds," and went back to read it. Good post! And it led me to another, "Cool Living Stuff," that I'm saving for later on today. Thank you for filling our heads with fun (potentially useful!) facts.