Tangents

Upper Rubber Boot prompt 18: spokesman

My copy of Jim Ottaviani's Suspended in Language is on loan to a friend, so you get this instead:



Sir Mark Oliphant, in Ann Mozley Moyal's Portraits in Science:

I was a member of a group that was led by Niels Bohr, after the test in Alamogordo, that was very much against the use of this new weapon on civilian cities. Niels Bohr, who was our spokesman -- which was a pity in some ways, because his English wasn't good and [laughs] his wife told me his Danish was almost as bad -- but he became our spokesman and was very very good and persistent in his approach.



Related:

Wikipedia's Pauli effect entry, which links to my sonnet about same

A Particular Truth--1941 - on Bohr and Heisenberg

At Teaching Resources, which obtained it via Moving Poems, which features Nic Sebastian's take as well: Othniel Smith's video remix of "Playing Duets with Heisenberg's Ghost"

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It's a wonderful world, y'all. A bloke in Cardiff, Othniel Smith, found Nic Sebastian's reading of "Playing Duets with Heisenberg's Ghost" at the Poetry Storehouse and was moved to make a videopoem of it:

"Playing Duets with Heisenberg’s Ghost" by Peg Duthie from OTHNIEL SMITH on Vimeo.

(Amplifying the pleasure: hearing about the video not only from Nic but from Rachel, whose d'var Torah on wrestling with angels has me thinking about how "face" and "facet" are only one letter apart; Sarah Sloat's poems at the Storehouse, which I will want to spend more time with later; and the cheap but nonetheless distinct thrill of seeing that if one Googles "Heisenberg's ghost" or "Heisenberg duets," the above video shows up first. [insert joke about Schrodingerian search results...])

In other news, the BYM's biking bestie brought breakfast to our house yesterday and (in celebration) I showed her all the spent enoxaparin syringes I'd collected in the box another friend had sent chocolates in. (Long story short: the BYM underwent surgery twice last month, which [among other things] necessitated thirty-nine anticoagulant shots, which neither he nor I ever got used to administering; the process was just as awful on day 39 as it was on day 1, especially since he had no padding on him to begin with and has since lost 10-15 pounds.) I mentioned that I had a couple of art projects in mind; the BYM furrowed his brow and made a squinchy face at me, but the bestie's face lit up, and she said, "If you don't end up doing something with them, I will." Have I said lately how much my friends delight me? :-)

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Nic Sebastian has created a recording of Playing Duets with Heisenberg's Ghost and uploaded it to The Poetry Storehouse. Squee!



The first buds on the Christmas cactus in our library room have appeared. The plant is from one of my mother's plants, which I split into three smaller plants this year. I haven't had much luck with small cuttings/breakings (I did get some to root this summer, but then rain or critters got the better of them), but the three big chunks from the mama plant (so to speak) seem to be doing fine.



The first fall frost of the year will hit us any day now, so Saturday's chores included harvesting the last of the Kentucky Colonel mint:



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I visited Beale Street three times on my recent trip to Memphis. The first was in broad daylight, around 3 pm on a Thursday afternoon. There was already music blaring, and a drunken boor bellowed "Where ya from?" at me from his sidewalk seat (and then laughed with his friends as if he had said something funny). But there was also the pleasure of winter sunshine on old walls...



...and watching an artist with her paints:



[I'll post about the other two visits some other time. In the meantime, say hi to the Hugs Bison. :-) ]

[Also, I am 8/8 in predicting the WTA quarterfinalists at Indian Wells. I'm going to revel in this moment, since the only sure thing about my ATP bracket is that it's going to be trashed one way or another after tonight.]

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/7781.html.