Our Willingness To Discipline

One of the widest gaps in human experience is the gap between what we say we want to be and our willingness to discipline ourselves to get there.

-- Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878 - 1969), American Baptist and Presbyterian minister, Living Under Tension : Sermons on Christianity Today (1941)

Makes Up In Height

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

-- Robert Frost (1874 - 1963), American poet, winner of four Pulitzer Prizes, Title of poem (1942)

A Steady Rhythm

I have an epic, not a dramatic nature.  My disposition and my desires call for peace to spin my thread, for a steady rhythm in life and art.

-- Thomas Mann (1875 - 1955), German novelist and short story writer, 1929 Nobel laureate in Literature, Nobel Banquet Speech (10 December 1929)

Even Hotter

The results from the Copernicus Climate Change Service show the planet's average temperature on July 21 was 17.09 degrees Celsius (62.76 degrees Fahrenheit) -- breaking a record set only last year.  The historic day comes on the heels of 13 straight months of unprecedented temperatures and the hottest year scientists have ever seen.

"We are in truly uncharted territory," Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement. "And as the climate keeps warming, we are bound to see records being broken in future months and years."

-- Sarah Kaplan, Sunday was the hottest day ever recorded on Earth, scientists say, in The Washington Post 23 July 2024

[When I clicked through to the data, I noted that the next day (Monday) was even hotter, at 17.15 degrees Celsius]

Explain It

Hell, if I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn't have been worth the Nobel prize.

-- Richard Feynman (1918 - 1988), American physicist, statement (c. 1965), quoted in "An irreverent best-seller by Nobel laureate Richard Feynman gives nerds a good name", People Magazine (22 July 1985)

I Discovered Something

This summer I have discovered something totally useless.

-- Peter Ware Higgs FRS FRSE (29 May 1929 - 8 April 2024), British theoretical physicist and emeritus professor at the University of Edinburgh, writing to a colleague about his proposal for a particle at the origin of mass (1964), as quoted in The Hunt for the Higgs Boson, Science Scotland, issue no. 3

Eclipse Day 2024

Today I joined millions of others to pause in the middle of the day to observe the solar eclipse.  Totality could be found just 75 miles from my home, but with my 2017 experience of both totality and the insane traffic that accompanied it, I opted to enjoy today's eclipse standing in the driveway of my house.

We had about 98% totality here.  At the start of the event the temperature was in the low 70s, and the sun provided plenty of warmth.  The light in the sky changed noticeably with a little over 30 minutes to go, and continued to diminish with an eerie dimming that didn't quite match the clear sky and sun.  The loss of the sun's warmth was even more dramatic.

My daughter and I watched the eclipse through our eclipse glasses, and cast images of the sun onto various surfaces using a small hole through a 3x5 card.  The experience stirred memories of watching a partial solar eclipse during my elementary school years.  At that time, as I recall, we didn't have eclipse glasses and instead used several layers of 35mm film negatives that had been overexposed and were therefore completely dark.

Do Anything

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

-- Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), Irish dramatist, essayist, novelist, and poet, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) Chapter 19

Laws Of Motion

Laws of Motion, I: Every body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon.

Laws of Motion, II: The alteration of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed.

Laws of Motion, III: To every action there is always opposed an equal and opposite reaction: or the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.

-- Sir Isaac Newton (1643 - 1727), English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a "natural philosopher"), Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)

A Convert's Enthusiasm

A convert's enthusiasm for his new religion is greater than that of a person who is born into it.

-- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869 - 30 January 1948), Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist, in his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Part I, Chapter 17, Experiments in Dietetics, vol. I, p. 144

Clean And Healthful

Today, for the first time in US history, a court ruled on the merits of a case that the government violated the constitutional rights of children through laws and actions that promote fossil fuels, ignore climate change, and disproportionately imperil young people.  This is a huge win for Montana, for youth, for democracy, and for our climate.  More rulings like this will certainly come.

-- Julia Olson, chief legal counsel and executive director of Our Children’s Trust, which brought the case, after District Court Judge Kathy Seeley ruled that a provision in the Montana Environmental Policy Act has harmed the state’s environment and the young plaintiffs by preventing Montana from considering the climate impacts of energy projects, violating a clause in the state constitution that guarantees citizens the right to a "clean and healthful environment", CNN.com

Deep Springs Of Life

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.

-- Samuel Ullman (1840 - 1924), American businessman, poet, and humanitarian, Youth (1918)

It Worked

It worked!

-- Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904 - 1967), American physicist and scientific director of the Manhattan Project, exclamation after the Trinity atomic bomb test (16 July 1945), according to his brother Frank Oppenheimer in the documentary The Day After Trinity

Retire To

Don't simply retire from something; have something to retire to.

-- Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878 - 1969), American Baptist and Presbyterian minister, as quoted in Wisdom for Our Time (1961) by James Nelson

My Nature

It's my nature to go around in high spirits most of the time and then to collapse.

-- Margaret Sullavan (1909 - 1960), American stage and film actress, Haywire (1977) by Brooke Hayward, Jonathan Cape Ltd., p. 215

Fast Or Slow

In martial arts, speed is not the true Way.  As far as speed is concerned, the question of fast or slow in anything derives from failure to harmonize with the rhythm. ...

The performance of an expert seems relaxed but does not leave any gaps.  The actions of trained people do not seem rushed.  The principle of the Way can be known from these illustrations.

-- Miyamoto Musashi (c. 1584 - 1645), famous Japanese swordsman, believed to have been one of the most skilled swordsmen in history, The Book of Five Rings (1644), Wind p. 86

RIP InSight

My power's really low, so this may be the last image I can send.  Don't worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene.  If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will -- but I'll be signing off here soon.  Thanks for staying with me.

-- NASA's InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport) lander, which has been conducting scientific explorations on the Martian surface for nearly four years, 11 December 2022

Inertial Confinement

This result is a major breakthrough in fusion science.  The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory uses the largest laser in the world to compress heavy hydrogen to conditions similar to those in the centre of the sun.  The lasers enter the ends of a centimetre-scale cylinder, hitting its inner walls, making them glow x-ray hot.  These x-rays then heat a sphere at the centre that contains the nuclear fuel.  The outside of the sphere vaporises and becomes a plasma, that rushes off the surface, creating an imploding "spherical rocket" which in a few billionths of a second reaches velocities of order 400 kilometres per second.  The subsequent "crunch" at the centre is tailored in a specific way to make a hot spark in the middle, and the density of the compressed "fuel" surrounding the spark is so great that the nuclear fusion reaction takes place in about a tenth of a billionth of a second -- faster than the tiny hot sphere can fly apart.  It is thus confined by its own inertia, and thus this method of fusion is called inertial confinement fusion.

-- Professor Justin Wark, Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford and Director of the Oxford Centre for High Energy Density Science, in comments about recent advances in nuclear fusion at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 12 December 2022

The Drop

The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something.  The strongest, by dispensing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything.  The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock.  The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar, and leaves no trace behind.

-- Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881), Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher, The life of Friedrich Schiller: Comprehending an examination of his works (1825)

A Milestone

On 15 November 2022, the world's population is projected to reach 8 billion people, a milestone in human development.  This unprecedented growth is due to the gradual increase in human lifespan owing to improvements in public health, nutrition, personal hygiene and medicine.  It is also the result of high and persistent levels of fertility in some countries.

While it took the global population 12 years to grow from 7 to 8 billion, it will take approximately 15 years -- until 2037 -- for it to reach 9 billion, a sign that the overall growth rate of the global population is slowing.

-- Statement by the United Nations on their "Day of Eight Billion" web page