moon traveller herald

  If I wrote about a dear pet on Facebook would you think me a doofus. What about a departed TV? Well, here goes: Good bye trusty and transformational Trinitron Sony TV.The Cadillac of the analog CRT era. What a unique approach you took to presenting pixels! Not passed til the eyepadde. Good bye Trinitron Sony TV the family once prayed for when the flower vase had fallen, driven by the wind, and slurped the TV with water, to short the printed circuit board. How we rejoiced when it dried and worked again. Apologies for crashing into it, and knocking it to the floor – sssqisshhhhhhhhhhhhh- in the night, when I wondered about cause I thought I smelled smoke. This time, the TV not to dry and revive. You showed usIraq, Norman Mailer, Pee Wee, the new Pope, the first Black president. Good bye Trinitron. I salute you on your journey to recycle. 2012

 Alpha Tracks Of Radium1912 https://www.cloudylabs.fr   Reading Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics [U Cal Press;1996] by Ruth Lewin Sime.  The noble reason to read the book would be to learn the story of a woman and a Jew [secular] who accomplished great science but who was overlooked by the patriarchal and antisemitic societies of the time.   But reading it in fact because I'd like to learn something about the interaction and interdependence of experiment and theory in science. Yet, addressing the sexism and racism in her life and times is clearly i nescapable.   The life of Lise Meitner is the choice because her work was intricate to the discovery of nuclear fission and the Atomic bomb. I knew bits of her story and wanted to know more. An    In Our Times Podcast provided special impetus. That's the context for the summer research undertaking.-JV   The story of the  nuclear bomb has been told by some very capable historians and p...

Sunnyland Slim got his name from the train. Jim has featured him on his Al Compas site many times. The train ran on the Frisco Line. It would go ever so fast. Going by, it would set papers and soda bottles to flying. And it would kill people and mules and destroy their wagons if they were stuck on the tracks. They wrote about it. The Sunnyland Train. The song comes to me, when I see that Purple T.

HISTORY             SPACE RACE               BLUES POETRY   Firstly reading Susan Sontag.  Going back down these old roads now – I find myself somewhere between Col Smythe-Smythe cleaning his skeet shooter or Saul Steinberg hand drawing memorialization holy cards of Italian Futurists, Fascists, architecture and Clouds with Holes. How this here ramble got to over 2,000 words I will never know. Have a great Summer! -JV Science-fiction and action serials often provide us with the specimen "Techno Villain," or Villano tecnológico.  I don't recall this figure being called out in the cannon criticism of the late Susan Sontag, but the idea set me to ruminating. Nemo is the classic template, said by some to be based on Odysseus. Today, barons of technology walk the corridors of power, or fall down the stairs of the Corrid...