“(T)he kingdom of Kabul, without Kandahar, was like a head without a nose, or a fort without any gate.” –Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan, 1900 Continue reading
For B.
There is a small garden outside my window which I can see as I write this. An isolated plant sticks up out of the flat, cleared soil, and it does not have flowers right now. I know that plants have roots that are at least as extensive as the parts I can see. Half of a plant is buried in dirt, the other half is buried in air.
Kill your television
If, today, you extirpate all televisions from your home, you will effectively add, on average, ten years to your life. There is no funny business to this, the calculation is simple. Continue reading
On time, part three: the physics of becoming
Most, if not all, accepted systems of measurement take time to be a fundamental quantity. Time, however, has been something difficult to define. Why do we take it to be a fundamental quantity? There is no reason why it must be done this way. If we order our physics on a somewhat different scheme, then some simple dimensional analysis makes time much easier to understand. Continue reading
On time, part two: hope
We all know that oil and water do not mix. The reason they do not mix is that the water molecule is polar– it has a lopsided electrical charge– and the oil molecule is not. Polar molecules have a positively charged end and a negatively charged end, and they can form various bonds that exploit positive/ negative attraction. Water is a strongly polar molecule, which leads to its myriad exceptional physical properties. Water molecules self-organize according to polarity, creating surface tension, six-sided snowflakes, and a frozen form that is less dense than the liquid form. The strong polar forces in water are also able to tear apart molecules such as salt, which is why water can dissolve so many substances. Continue reading
On time, part one: two speeches
The granite of Mt. Rushmore gives in to the forces of erosion at a rate of one inch every 10,000 years. In human terms, that amounts to no erosion at all; 10,000 years ago, our species was just discovering agriculture (http://alamanach.com/untitled/). Rock that hard could not have been easy to carve. Still, erode it does; Mt. Rushmore, like everything, is forever in a process of becoming something else.
Something to be afraid of
In the rural areas just outside Bangkok, most folks keep one or more dogs. Dogs are useful in guarding property out here away from the protection of the city. On a walk yesterday through one of these rural areas, I accidentally wandered onto someone else’s land, and was confronted by her three snarling rotweilers. Out here, rotweilers have been known to kill their owners, never mind what they do to trespassers. Continue reading
InTeRchANgeABlE pArTs
Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, and he then went on to try to sell rifles to the Army. His rifles were special…
The land of the brave
After the United States bought the Louisiana Territory from France, Thomas Jefferson sent explorers to find their way across. The main purpose of the Lewis and Clark expedition was to find a navigable water route across the continent that would facilitate commerce.
There is no navigable water route across the continent. A meandering line runs the length of North America, and no water crosses it. We call this line the Continental Divide. Continue reading
The dispensation of suffering
There are things in life we do not get to choose. We can choose our response to a given situation, but fate has a major hand in deciding what situations we will encounter in the first place. I say this because I have recently rearranged my thinking on an old idea.
(Note: this is not a cheerful post. It’s not for children, either.)
