The Moon is back, baby! - The Sat.Eve.Rvw.of The NYT

The biggest thing that ever happened on the Moon from my point of view happened some time ago – I was a lad – when Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and then others, walked upon it. Looking up at that thing in the sky – whew – made you forget the problems at your feet.

We as a culture aint goin back any time soon – unless the Chinese or Indians really surprise – and there is not much news about our nearby satellite of love.  So it is nice to pick up this week's Science Times, and find an nice little omnibus about recent Moon stuff.

Some of the science that is being done today around the moon is discussed. The story goes sideways at first with some guff about the Super Moo n-  rare instances when the orb appears 10 or so % larger (happened 3 times this year) – but then it gets to its work which is to show that lunar studies are really abuzz.

A lot of this is based on studies/research that considers the moon's origins. The consensus there is that these origins are cataclysmic. Ok, things one-third almost the size of the earth don't just happen.

We have data from the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Obiter which enforces the notion that the Moon is very hot and very cold. (Gratuitous sidenote 1: ever met a girl like that?)

This is something Neal Armstrong would have told you as well. He was there, dammit !

They get this notion cause recent measures taken in craters at the poles, ones that have not seen the solar light in billions of years, and which clock in at 30 degrees Celsius above Absolute Zero. (Gratuitous sidenote 2: Maybe you had a girl like that. I had one and she waited until it was 30 deg below Absolute Zero to breakup with  me .)

The theories are coalescing around the idea of a planet called Thea (in Greek mythology, the mother of the moon goddess) crashing into earth, bam, and then the residue thereof condensing into the Moon. It is called the impactor theory, and someone may chuckle many years hence reading this blog post and knowing better, but hello, future, this is-was the best we got going in 2014.

There is a lot more to be said, but I don’t get paid to write this stuff, and I think you would be very much more informed if you actually read the article…. The Moon Comes Around Again .. learn about the dark side, ionization estimates based on Apollo moon rocks (the size of aspirin) that seem to confirm the Impactor premise… the reason the moon is shaded so as to appear a face, and the gooey stuff that gives appearance to the moon's seas! – Jack Vaughan

Wait until the war is over - The Sat.Eve.Rvw.of The NYT

News has been called the first take of history. But what about when the first take does a double take? When the news guys regurgitate history? "A War Is Long Over But Many Still Seek To Learn Its Lessons" in Tuesday's Times (9-9-2014) does a bit of such regurgitation - discussing the 100th anniversary World War I and the general torpor that finds many thinking people today finding similarities between the global Risk game today and then.

Figuring in the story is Margaret MacMillan, author of "The War That Ended Peace". She comments that were now living in a much more complicated world than that of the predecessor Cold War period "with low-level conflicts that never seem to conclude and the sense of things ending somehow, of a great period of transition." Like Linus discussing the great pumpkin, this newsreader screams "THAT'S IT"

To me this feeling of conclusion, transition and sconflict is a big part of the essential concoction that  makes for news. McMillan says using history as a guide is not wise - but admits history is a sign. [?] There is a tendency to distort the past, she said. True but to me there is not much that comes closer to magical prediction round, then reading a few papers that directly preceded a seminal event. I know I've said before that part of the big Godsmack of 9/11 for me was the feeling that this horrific event neatly clarified many muddy threads of news stories that I read in the year, year or two, preceding.
The story ends with McMillan's prediction that we are in for troubled times. If I was a betting man… -Jack Vaughan

Note: One thing I was surprised to find out reading the story was that there was ''no consensus'' on the cause for World War I. [We do know that WWI was cause of World War II however. ]The story notes the popularity of the Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman And I  admit that my view of World War I cause is based on others' readings of the Guns of August.

Note: I remember years ago late night talk show host Jack Parr commenting in monologue on how his attention to the Times is often distracted by the brassiere ads that ran alongside the editorial copy. I recall as this fetching pic of actress of bra-clad Madeleine Bundy appears smoking adjacent to A War Is Long Over – a story about WWI and its meaning for contemporary global politics. . Adjacent to a crossword puzzle as well. Surrealism rains.

At Night at The Big Broadcast

The Big Psychedelic Broadcast - We went down to see the big boat off/the crowd called for [Reinaldo] to sing/I've got laryngitis he said, the fop/but [Kitty Carlyle] did her thing/she sang to the urchins she sang to the rich/ the boat ramp ganging way/[Alan Jones] he intones some beauteous Florentine balladry/ some get on the ship to sail the big sea to the chords of Gloria in the exalt sea.The ship the Collussus was powered by radio. In the hole a mighty dynamo. Starry was the machinery - Tesla-like the broadcast signal & great - Kitty looked upon "an ingenious channel for transforming heat from missive transmission" as described by the gushing Capt Engenue. "Scarcely humming but ever audible." thought Adams Ginsberg.  Aye, Captain. The wheel "one could almost pray to." (pictured: The Big Broadcast of 1938) 

Roots of EBS 90814

Fug You. by Ed Sanders P 300 -327 Described here are themes that relate to his musical view, as the 60s wind down. In the studio doing a whole LP side with a single flow without separations. The dread specter had a musical correlative in the form of the eerie theremins of the BeachBoy's Good Vibrations and Krysztof Komeda's Rosemary's Baby* The 60s winding down meant he was tired of public exorcisms, he was almost in Valerie (SCUM Manifesto) Solanas' cross hairs, and the poetry was to the amp in the largely humming feedback mix. The 60s winding down meant that quietude was forlorn and foreign. A change was going to come. Mainly, after a significant sojourn in the belly of the Tate-LaBianca murders, it was to expand on Investigative Poetry, but also it was to tinker with electronics for accompanying the bard. Thus the Electronic Bard System (EBS).

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*Mia Farrow beats Mo Tucker to market by a year.

I think about Sunnyland on every Sept 5 day

Happy 107th, Mule!