SPECIMEN DAYS (MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM) AND LIGHT POLLUTION

 Then he understood that here, so far from the city proper, the smoke was dispersed, and the stars were visible. He nearly lost his balance, looking up. The stars sparked, brilliant and unsteady on a field of ebony. There were thousands of them.

He knew them, some of them, from the map in the schoolroom. There was the Great Horse. There was the Hunter. There, so faint he could not be sure, but there, he thought, were the Pleiades, a cluster of minor stars, the seven, a circle of phosphorescence

 

I think it´s not the most suitable moment for this post after the power outage of the other day, but let´s do it, let´s talk about light pollution. All of the astronomical observatories are in remote places far from the cities for this reason, just like some animals that need the night. Even some trees go wild with so much light. But, as it was said in the film “Amanece que no es poco” about americans, nightlights have also some good things.

About the power outage, I´ll post soon a poem called “Defeat of Bill Gates” by José Emilio Pacheco. Meanwhile, we have Camarón and his flinty rock

With rock of flint

I´ve made a candelabrum

For me to be able to illuminate

Because more light, I don´t want it

Because more light I don´t want it, I live in darkness

I´m following one to one the stars in heaven, among red and yellow

Under the black ribbon of a silence

In a night so cold

And dark like velvet

When I put her mop of black hair

As a mantilla

Her mouth crashed next to mine

giving me kisses

And she even cried with joy

ARMADILLO (WILLIAM BOYD) AND SERENDIPITY

Serendipity. From Serendip, a former name of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. A word coined by Horace Walpole, who had invented it based on a folktale, whose heroes were always making discoveries of things they were not in quest of. Ergo: serendipity, the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident

It´s really funny the origin of the term serendipity. With regards in Science, one of the most well-known serendipity discoveries is, of course, penicillin by Alexander Fleming. But there are more examples, like X-ray or radioactivity. Both were discovered by chance largely. But the action of serendipity can be noticed in other subjects, not only in Science. The famous sentence by Picasso “muses have to find you working” is a kind of adaptation of serendipity to arts.

THE BURGESS BOYS (ELIZABETH STROUT) AND THE ORGANIC METAPHOR

 Pam had already established her own interest in science and she saw society as one large organism working with its million, billion cells heaving itself alive. Criminality was a mutation that interested Pam, and she joined tentatively in these discussions.

 

This is a really nice idea and I think it deserves more credit and appreciation. The term organic metaphor was coined by Herbert Spencer who is considered a forefather of Darwin. Society as one large organism or society as an ecosystem are both pretty images. We can compare many things to a living organism: a novel as a living organism, or a family as a living organism, or a school,…

How lucky was Herbert Spencer, a wise man of Science and Philosophy, with the time he lived! I can imagine him, in the 19th century in England, with some money and prestige enjoying in the Royal Society with his mates.

GILEAD (MARILYNNE ROBINSON) AND THE TRAJECTORY OF MOON

 It was one day as I listened to baseball that it occurred to me how the moon actually moves, in a spiral, because while it orbits the earth it also follows the orbit of the earth around the sun. This is obvious, but the realization pleased me.

 

Well done, Marilynne, the text illustrates the relativity of movement perfectly. And it´s also interesting the satisfaction in understanding a phenomenon, the feeling of pieces that fit together. When Physics is getting more and more complicate and you can´t understand anything in a intuitive way, this feeling disappears.

To add a pretentious remark, I´d dare to say that the moon would trace an helix more than a spiral in its trajectory