Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

In May of last year (<-- By frogs and fishes! That is fun/weird to type), Yinon M. Bar-On, Rob Phillips, and Ron Milo published a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America on a census of all life on Earth, by surveying and estimating how much carbon is where, on the planet, by weight.

Vox.com published a stunning visual chart of what this all means, )here.

That's cool, and wondrous, and exciting (and sobering), and all...

But then-- in December, The Deep Carbon Observatory published its own report on a survey of carbon deep within the Earth's crust -- and came to the conclusion that all the bacterial biomass carbon from that earlier report? Is only 30% of the total bacteria on Earth.... And there are bacteria surviving so close to the Earth's core that ambient temperatures are above 100 C -- but water is still liquid, there, because the pressure is so high.

---

Okay, so 70-80% of stars in our galaxy are M dwarf stars, which are rather violent when young, and this video (closed captioned) explains why that might end up making the planets ultimately uninhabitable.

But M dwarf stars are extremely long-lived, and once their violent youth is past, they become very stable (I'll put a video about the life cycle of stars at the end of this post).

And if the majority of microbial life actually starts out deep beneath the surface of planets, then (my inner plot bunnies are whispering) perhaps it could survive its home star's violence, and gradually migrate to the surface once it's calmed down ... And, as I always like to remind myself, life has a way to change a planet to make it more comfortable to life.

Or maybe they won't migrate to the surface, but they still might form comparatively complex life. Here's a neat video from Kurzgesagt (also closed captioned) that explores the possibility of subsurface life that exists on planets that don't even have any stars:

(The main thing that annoys me about Kurzgesagt videos, is that they keep judging quality of life and intelligence by current, human normativity: use of metal-based technology, fire, etc.. Also, they assume that advancement as a civilization must depend on expanding our territory, and colonizing other worlds, and also in getting as close to individual immortality as possible. ... none of which are things I agree should be taken as givens)

Anyway, here's that video on the life cycle of low-mass stars, and there's a suggestion how the Earth, itself, might become a rogue planet, 6 billion years or so, from now, when our Sun burns through its hydrogen and loses mass -- which decreases the gravity that holds planets in their orbits (also closed captioned):

(For what it's worth: I'm not really all disturbed by the thought of humanity going extinct, or even of my own personal death, as long as neither comes prematurely, due to foolish decisions -- like denying climate change -- or causes avoidable pain to others)

I've written about this before. Here's a comment I wrote on the subject, three years ago:

( I kind of liked the day when I was a kid, but... )

One good thing about the holiday, though, is it gives comic strip writers, who have to produce 365 mini-stories a year, a writing prompt, and cartoonist Dana Simpson (of "Phoebe and her Unicorn") has risen to the challenge quite well, addressing both the weirdness and potential sweetness of the holiday.

Here's the weirdness I remember so well -- it's, oddly, both comforting and disturbing that the exact same traditions I took part in forty-two years ago can still be a "timely" subject for humor: "Phoebe and Her Unicorn" 2 February, 2016. Though, to be honest here, the really great thing about V-Day for a kid of single digit age, is that you can spend hours playing with paper, scissors, and glue, and get praised for it, instead of groused at for making a mess.

And here's the sweet side. Consider this one a Valentine to my circles: "Pheobe and her Unicorn," 4 February, 2016

*I still believe that the "valentine" heart is one of the best graphic design symbols our human species has come up with -- it's a shape that's been found carved into cave rocks from over 30,000 years ago. ... 'Course, there's a hypothesis that it was not associated with the central organ of our circulatory system, back then.

In ascending order of length, behind cuts (with commentary):

First, the song which opens this video is one of the best encapsulations of Epicurean philosophy I've come across, since I discovered what Epicurean philosophy is.

( A long note on the video's format (which, if you're not familiar with the channel, seems really weird) )

( We're all gonna DIE (so have a good time, and be nice to each other) -- 'Vlogbrothers channel' 3:19) )

What I find so inspiring about Epicurus is that, after accepting as given that:

1. the Cosmos is made of invisible atoms,
   
2. we're all gonna die when our atoms eventually disperse, and:
   
3. Death = Nonexistence

He then came to the conclusion that the meaning of life is Happiness, and that Happiness = Wisdom + Friendship. I mean -- for example -- Nietzsche read Epicurean philosophy, accepted the first three givens, but then decided he wanted to end up in a very different place. Well, I know which road I'd rather travel.

Second:
( 'Simon Says' by Theresa Davis ('Button Poetry' channel 4:00) )

A poem about educators who use their power to abuse students, but it ends with a positive tone. She uses "the F-word" a few times, but it's as an exclamation of emphasis and/or surprise, rather than anger.

Third:
( The Worst-Designed Thing You've Never Noticed | Roman Mars | TED Talk (18:18) )

About what makes a good flag, and how so many city and regional flags are so bad. It's part educational presentation, part stand-up sit-down comedy. I've watched this 6 times in the last couple of days, and I still laugh out loud at all the vexillological punchlines.

It's also got me thinking of the challenge of designing a Disability Pride flag that goes beyond the blue stick-figure wheelchair person. That very well may be a separate post, soon.

Hey, gang!!

Give yourselves an-end-of-the-year prezzie! For the astonishingly low price of a prompt, dialecticdreamer will write a 500-word story for you. And that's not all! If you signal boost, she'll add an extra 100 words for each place the boost lands. Full details of this incredible offer can be found here: Magpie Monday for December, 2015 (the last of the year).

Sometimes being in a wheelchair has a side benefit, if there's a hill, or a ramp anywhere in sight, you've got a toy under your butt!

From here:http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-toy.html

1: How long do you think it'll be before this recent picture of Pluto (7-7-2015) gets turned into memes, macros, and icons everywhere?

{... give me an hour, maybe, at least for here? ;-)}

2: On this week's Radiolab (Wednesday), there was an interview with two men who are both completely blind (Audio -- sorry there's no transcript).

The man whose blindness developed gradually decided that to be fully present and connected to the world, he had to break himself of the habit of "Visualizing" anything, and to conceptualize the world entirely using his other four senses. Because to do otherwise would mean clinging to his memory of a world that doesn't exist anymore.

The man who lost his sight in a single, devastating, moment insisted that to retain your full humanity, you have to imagine a visual world, even if you have to work at it, because humans are visual creatures, full stop.

Yeah. You can probably guess which side of the argument I side with; I'd be more sympathetic to the second man, if he hadn't insisted what was true for him was true for 6,999,999,999 other people.

Anyway, it occurred to me afterward that, compared to blind people, we sighties really live in a 2-D world (well, 3-D, but that's only if you include "Time"). Compared to the actual space around us, the surfaces of our retinas are really, really, flat. After all, that's the only reason we can get away with trompe-loeil at all.

3. The weather is brain-meltingly hot and humid, here. So this item will only be two sentences long.

4. Doctor Who Series 9 will start September 19th! Permission to Squee? I still don't have any headphones or speakers, so I don't know how the official trailer sounds.

But:

Does it seem like Capaldi's hair is channeling the spirit of Doctor Four? Or is that just me? ;-)

5. Speaking of dates in the calender being closer than they appear, I don't think I'll be able to meet my self-imposed date for getting Monsters' Legacy: Disability, Culture and Identity self-published. I mean, maybe I could. But only if I worked a lot faster than I seem to be able to at the moment (*points to #3*), and only if I skipped getting the prose portions beta-read. And I don't want to skip that. *sigh*

1: So, the other day, I was listening to a Radiolab episode about memory and forgetting. One host mentioned that recent neuroscience shows that each time we remember something, we're actually recreating it, rather than retrieving it, like something from a filing cabinet. And we change it slightly, so that memories we draw on frequently will diverge the most from so-called "actual fact" (he didn't use the phrase "so-called" -- that's mine). The other host said something like: "Gee, how depressing!"

I, dear Readers, disagree. Which pair of shoes would mean more to you? Is it the pair that you bought for a snazzy party, because they looked good, but you only wore once because they were uncomfortable, and they now sit pristine and shiny in their shoebox at the back of your closet? Or is it the pair that's scuffed, molded perfectly to your feet, and are now on their thirty-seventh set of laces because you've worn them everywhere?

Yeah. I see no reason why our memories should be any different.

2: Make-a-Flake, the virtual online paper snowflake maker, is still a thing that exists (for friends in the southern hemisphere, where it's winter, and friends in the northern hemisphere who are daydreaming of snow).

3: This video, from PBS Digital Studios, makes a very strong case for colonizing Venus instead of Mars.

4 (This one's about spiders, and has close-up pictures of them): Speaking of our extreme bias in favor of solid surfaces, I heard a report of this on the radio, this morning: Oceangoing Spiders Can use their Legs to Windsurf Across the Water.

Can you say: "Whee!"? ... I knew you could.

5: This one's gonna be the shortest, and therefore probably the most enigmatic, because I'm tired of typing, now.

Most discussions of Time refer to it as a "non-spatial dimension."

That bugs me.

We tend to think of our units of time as analogous to our units of distance: seconds to inches, minutes to feet, years to miles, etc. (excuse the American units). But what if they're actually analogous to degrees latitude and longitude? Wouldn't that help explain how gravity can bend space, and "speed up" and "slow down" time?

I wanted to draw a monster with a bird-like beak, facing the viewer. But I couldn't get a handle on what a beak looks like, head-on. So I did an image search, and found this.

Clearly, the caption for this is: "Whut?"

And yes, btw, I think I've got the idea for how to draw a cartoon beak head-on.

"Chosen Day"

[quote]
What I love about Christmas is what it teaches me.

It teaches me that we, all of us, can take an ordinary day - just an ordinary day - and imbue it with meaning. We can create traditions around it, and we can celebrate it, and we can treat it as the most special, the most wonderful, the most exciting day of the year. We can choose to make something ordinary something special - just because we choose to. Some give this day a meaning from religious tradition, even though know one knows the precise day of the birth of Jesus - this day was chosen to be that day. Chosen. Selected. Some give this day meaning from a secular point of view as a day of family and a day when the hearts of children are uppermost in our minds. But no matter how it is seen, when I look out my window I see a grey day, with the sun giving little light and little warmth. It would be a day, any other time of year, that would be drab, featureless.

This teaches me that we have the power, collectively, to determine something special, something to be celebrated, just because we want to - and because we want to we call will it into being.
[unquote]

Here is a link to the whole piece.

Listened to:
From WNYC's "RadioLab" -- A a segment from a show from December last. The first five and a half minutes or so of this 33 minute segment is about the joy of a man at the end of a three-month solo trek across Antarctica. And then, from then on, it's the story of a Holocaust survivor who tried to invent a new communication system that he hoped would end all war... That, it itself, would have been fascinating. I was not expecting it to end up revolving around children with cerebral palsy living in an institutional home/school/hospital in the 1970's in Ontario, Canada... but it did (Content note-- it ends on a fairly tragic, ironic note):

Mr. Bliss

For something completely different, also from "RadioLab": Liev Schreiber reads Italo Calvino's The Distance of the Moon; written in Italian in 1965, and translated into English in 1968... i.e., before we landed there...
(Content note-- one of the main characters is written as Deaf for metaphorical/symbolic reasons as a sort of Magic!wild-man/Innocent-Primitive)

Read:
Found by way of "Rolling around in my head": Reclaiming memory: Searching for Great-Aunt Sarah (Content note: institutional life and death in the early 20th century)

From "Rolling around in my head" Directly: The Better Way (content note: neither tragic nor ironic-- includes a crying baby)

Watched:
And a child shall lead them -- going-on-eleven year-old Stephanie leads a blue-grass band of adult white men... You can tell she's the leader in this particular set, because she sets the tempo for their playing, and signals the final chorus of the first song with a straight-leg kick (a standard signal in folk music):


(Content note-- precocious kid on stage and occasional out-of-focus camera).

This moved me not so much for the cuteness factor, but the aplomb and grace of one so young in front of an audience -- maybe that's her "un-cuteness"?