New Years' day . . . slow going, laid back day. Taking down the Christmas tree while watching vintage TV, and scouring the internet for facts and fictions.
Here is a fact: back in the 1950's, people (like Ford Motor Co.) were seriously developing nuclear powered cars. Nuclear was not as feared back then as it is today, and there was considerable hope that it would provide extremely efficient energy for the world "of the future".
The Ford Nucleon is a concept car developed by Ford in 1957 designed as a future nuclear-powered car, one of a handful of such designs during the 1950s and '60s. The concept was only demonstrated as a scale model. The design did not include an internal-combustion engine; rather, the vehicle was to be powered by a small nuclear reactor in the rear of the vehicle, based on the assumption that this would one day be possible by reducing sizes. The car was to use a steam engine powered by uranium fission similar to those found in nuclear submarines.
Kind of cool, I think.
"Up" ..... great little movie !
The place was jammed with people today
Rainy day, Deb's got a cold, I drove down to the Boston art museum to see an exhibit that ends tomorrow. All street meter parking is taken, lot#1 is full, garage is full, lot #2 is full but a museum guy is holding the gate up letting people jam in anywhere. I jammed in somewhere.
Inside entrance lines are long (I flashed my card, winked, nodded, nudged the guard as I slipped by). Coat room line is "what???" - I held onto my jacket and umbrella. Men's room is crowded. Cafteria, bookstore & cafe are full.
I go to the desk and ask ????? Turns out that the Bank of America is treating all Massachusetts employees to free art museum admission this weekend. Which explains all the families I see.
Anyway, I chilled, slipped into my Zen trance and went to the Pastel exhibit.
It was interesting. Pastel is a weird medium for art. It's kind of like chalk, I think. Takes magic processes to stick pastels onto whatever backing you use (canvas, paper, ...). Colors are very sensitive to light so "pastels are not exhibited very often" the sign said. The pictures look somewhat like drawings that have been colored in, kind of.
Susan Collins: Republican U.S. Senator
. . . . Collins said. "It is not a sign of weakness to figure out a middle ground. I think that both sides need to indicate a willingness to listen and to compromise."
I wish this lady would run for President. Level-headed, thinks for herself on every issue, ready to make middle-of-the-road compromise deals.
Two moons of Jupiter cruising by the Cassini space probe.
There is so much good stuff going on in the world that never makes it to the front pages of news media. This space stuff still makes me a little kid !
Draggin' my little red wagon..... Deb got rid of her cold by giving it to me. Got my meds lined up over there. Not a good day today. Kept my mind working by writing my procedure for doing some GIMP photo hankpanky. Now, I'll watch some old movies and drink green tea with ginger. So boring.
Some laughs
Not much going as I coughed & sneezed my way through this week. Getting better to the point that I skipped taking cold meds last 2 days.
Two months back I mashed my finger (did I?) and apparently broke the nail under the skin. Anyway I think that's what happened. It's been slowly working its way out. I *think* it's getting beter. Should have started a time-lapse video of it - I saw a cool one on the internet, and my nail is worse (more dramatic) than his was.
Art: "Vogue Girls #5 in Grayscale"
Two Pleasant Movies
I watched a few pleasant, inoffensive movies this week. I am boycotting violent crime, courtroom drama, ER dramas, burning buildings, hijacked school buses, basement torture chambers etc etc etc. I figure it's all a rehash of stuff I've seen a million times, so go for the pleasant stuff for a while.
An Unfinished Life (2005) : pretty good, very predictable, but of course you knew that going in. Very good acting (by everyone), directing and editing.
The Secret of Roan Inish (1994): Excellent, captivating, small drama. Simple Irish folk wrapped up in a not-so-simple mystical story. The lead character is a spunky, independent girl (13??) and that always wins me over, especially as she goes against the house rules of grumpy (but lovable) old grandpa and worrisome (but lovable) old grandma, and saves the day.
Glue
As my finger nail situation evolves, I am painting it with glue (ModPodge actually) to hold it together until it grows out. The idea of it ripping off (which it wants to do) is somewhat repelling and worrisome.
(I just took this picture with a 1950's vintage Nikon lens. The full-size picture is wicked sharp.)
Puttering about the house - Deb has her cold back again. Don't think we'll make the Boston car show tomorrow. Trying to get back into seriously making pictures, but this time of year is awful. Picking through ages of previous pictures and working on them to create something new.
Winter is getting to me.
I Have Travelled A Long Way
It flashed into my head to figure out exactly how far I have travelled in my lifetime, so I did the calculation: approximately 43,864,240,000 miles.
That includes 74 trips around the Sun plus 27,010 rotations about the Earths axis.
Had I travelled in a straight line, I would have left this solar system many decades ago !!
Ogunquit, Me (2014)
33 years ago . . .
. . . . I used up 3 of my 15 lifetime minutes of fame, by getting a sidebar article in the April 1986 issue of Byte magazine. Having nothing to do today (it is 5deg outside), I dug deep into the "dark web" and actually found someone who had all the issues of Byte scanned onto his website !!!
At the time, the technical portion of my brain was wrapped up in a numerical computing scheme called the 4th order Runge-Kutta method (RK-4 for short).
I doubt that my current brain could re-assimilate all this jazz.
Oh, God save the Queen - I just realized that I wrote the calculation in BASIC ! .... likely because my little IBM Jr PC did not have a Fortran compiler.
Must I Have an Opinion on *Everything* ?
I have no problems saying "I don't know" or even "I don't care". But everyone else seems to have a big problem with this - people feel obligated to have an opinion (informed or not, well thought or not) about every ####ing topic that the media throws at us - - School lunches in Minnesota. Gay bars in Paduka. Is Kim Jong-Un just China's puppet? Did Trump really say _______? Is ________ a closet Muslim?
Why must I have an opinion? More importantly, why must I spend hours educating myself on each topic to have an intelligent, informed opinion? When was the last time my opinion changed anything ??? Whenever did my skyrocketing blood pressure get the powers-that-rule to say "Jees, let's go with Dave's plan" ??? - NEVER!
So .... don't ask me any questions about anything. My answer will be "I don't know".
Don't ask me what the solutions are. My answer will be "These are not my problems. I would not have gotten into this mess in the first place. You should have asked me 'Dave, Is this a good idea?' before you plunged us into the abyss."
I learned something at the Worcester Art Museum today. The guy who invented the telegraph and Morse Code (Samuel Morse) was also a very accomplished painter, with"an attitude" - he put his own spin on the scenes that he painted. Below is his version of the Annunciation where the angel tells Mary that she is to be the mother of the earthly Son of God.
Look how radically this scene diverges from the classical paintings. The very young Mary is sitting up in bed, looking kind of "so .... like .... what? .... I'm pregnant?" dressed in a common middle eastern robe and blankets. The angel is just a bright column of light - no wings, no halo, no nothing.
Pretty gutsy interpretation of that legendary religious event.
A Typical Classic Version
Two "New" Pictures
Going through older files on disks and hard drive. Decided to convert some to B&W and see what I'd come up with. These two turned out well. One is from 2010 (the shrub in my back yard), the other from 2012 (Boston).
Is The Polar Vortex the End of the World?
No
A polar vortex is a low pressure area - a wide expanse of swirling cold air - that is parked in polar regions. During winter, the polar vortex at the North Pole expands, sending cold air southward. This happens fairly regularly and is often associated with outbreaks of cold temperatures in the United States.
The Ford Nucleon is a concept car developed by Ford in 1957 designed as a future nuclear-powered car, one of a handful of such designs during the 1950s and '60s. The concept was only demonstrated as a scale model. The design did not include an internal-combustion engine; rather, the vehicle was to be powered by a small nuclear reactor in the rear of the vehicle, based on the assumption that this would one day be possible by reducing sizes. The car was to use a steam engine powered by uranium fission similar to those found in nuclear submarines.
Not much going as I coughed & sneezed my way through this week. Getting better to the point that I skipped taking cold meds last 2 days.
It flashed into my head to figure out exactly how far I have travelled in my lifetime, so I did the calculation: approximately 43,864,240,000 miles.
I have no problems saying "I don't know" or even "I don't care". But everyone else seems to have a big problem with this - people feel obligated to have an opinion (informed or not, well thought or not) about every ####ing topic that the media throws at us - -
