Does anyone know where I can buy a Cone of Silence?
I thought it might be a good way to safely have a friend over. (Amazon apparently doesn’t carry them.)
Category Archives: Life
Bounded in Nut Shells
One of my favorite fiction quotes is Hamlet saying, “I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space.” (He goes on to add, “were it not that I have bad dreams,” which, if you know the story, was a definite problem for him.) The quote has a special poignancy these days now that we’re all bounded up in our own nut shells (and trying to avoid going nuts).
There have been some unexpected upsides and down sides. Air pollution is down (an upside); reports of domestic abuse are up (a downside). Streets are cleaner, city rats are starving. Bears and wolves are roaming freely in national parks while we cower in our caves.
What changes will stick with us? How different will our future be than we might have expected (assuming we survive this)?
Colored Chalk Wishes
Yesterday I mentioned that someone had used colored chalk to leave some happy thoughts written on the asphalt pathway that winds through one of the local parks. Those simple signs, because of their content and because of the positive spirit behind them, really put a big grin on my face.
When I walk, I try to take a different path every day, only repeating when I’ve exhausted all possibilities. But yesterday I decided that today I’d retrace my steps and take pictures of those signs.
Without further ado, colored chalk wishes to help us smile:
Wow to the Wow
Wow. April First, but it’s no joke how much — and how quickly — life changed. March 2020 changed the world. Now we’ll see if we survive it.
Spirits seem high around here. On my morning walk, in the park I saw that someone had used colored chalk to write good thoughts on the asphalt path: “Stay Positive!” “Nature!” “Yay! Vit. D.” “Family Time” “Exercise!” (Maybe others will join in. I think I have some colored chalk…)
It’s hard to top the real-life wows, but I do have a few interesting items that might at least offer something of a distraction.
Cooled Lava Hellscape
Fissure #8.
Wow, for the third time this month (third time in a week) I’ve realized the day calls for a post I hadn’t planned. The first time was when the MLB delayed the baseball season. The second time — the very next day — was Pi Day and Albert Einstein’s birthday.
This time it’s the equinox (and a friend’s birthday; shout out!). For those of us in the northern hemisphere it’s the spring (vernal) equinox, and that’s my favorite of the four annual solar node points (two equinoxes; two solstices). It means we have a whole half a year of light ahead.
So I just had to post something.
Big Yawn!
They say you’re supposed to let sleeping dogs lie. Personally, I’ve always thought a sleeping dog was pretty honest — I’m not exactly even sure how anyone could lie in their sleep. Tell fibs in your dreams? (Some old sayings just don’t make any sense.) I don’t think we should let anyone get away with lying, sleeping or otherwise (especially Presidents).
I do think there is something extra sweet about a sleeping dog. Maybe it’s a matter of the trust they’re showing — how they feel safe with you. Next to you, they can relax and fall into a deep snoring sleep. Dogs can have concerns about being left home alone, and if they are in your lap they know right where you are.
In any case, from the terminally cute file…
Recrudescent
One of the older notes on my idea board is a tiny Post-It™ with just a single word written on it: recrudescence. Wiktionary defines it as: “The condition or state being recrudescent; the condition of something (often undesirable) breaking out again or re-emerging after temporary abatement or suppression.”
It is primarily a medical term referring to a disease reoccurring; the second Wiktionary definition is: “The acute recurrence of a disease, or its symptoms, after a period of improvement.”
But when I encountered the word several years ago, it struck me as a very good word for this “post-factual” era: the Dark Ages rises again.
Plane Reality
One bit of blogging advice is to pick a single topic and focus on that. The idea is to attract and keep those interested in the topic. I tried that with my first blog, a baseball blog, and I have a separate blog for computer programming. (For the record, neither attracted anyone, so maybe it’s me. 😮 )
This blog does have a central topic — “Stuff That Really Interests Me” — but my tastes are pretty eclectic. Math theory, 3D modeling, and basic physics fascinate me, but so does baseball, beer, and Hawaiian volcanoes. (Not to mention the Mandelbrot and science fiction, both very dear to my heart.)
Right now I’m into commercial aviation.
Washer/Dryer Woes
Appearing soon at my place!
Monday is laundry day — a rare bit of regularity in my retired life. Faithful readers (all three of you) will recall I had a bit of electrical excitement last fall. (That’s been fine ever since, and I’m happy to have the new smoke detectors. I had no idea they are only good for about ten years. Their tiny radioactive source wears out eventually.)
I’ve known for months I needed a new clothes washer and a new clothes dryer. For one thing, they came with the place, so they’re at least 16 years old. More to the point, the dryer was taking two hours to get clothes completely dry, and the agitator in the washing machine was broken — it only worked with extremely light loads.
Yesterday, it died a definite death.
2020 Vision
So. 2020. The start of a new decade. That’s just a bit surreal for me. I can remember wondering if 1984 would turn out anything like the novel. The future did turn out a bit like Orwell’s vision — it just took until 2016 or so to get there. It isn’t so much that Big Brother is watching (although, that too), but how our government corrupts and perverts facts and truth.
Good fiction is insightful about the human condition; good science fiction is insightful about our future. Over time, as advertised, the prescient film Idiocracy goes from SF comedy to anthropological documentary. Many others went from fiction to fact. (Fortunately, at least so far, The Terminator has not.)
Suffice to say, this year will seem surreal in more ways than one.
Popular Posts
Jump into the Stream
Caveat Lector
My Programming Blog
Posts pertaining to programming!
-
Click for supplement page to the diagrams in Tina's book.
You must be logged in to post a comment.