Eleanor Arnason's Blog, page 77

NASA APOD

It was a quiet day on the Sun. The above image shows, however, that even during off days the Sun's surface is a busy place. Shown in ultraviolet light, the relatively cool dark regions have temperatures of thousands of degrees Celsius. Large sunspot group AR 9169 from the last solar cycle is visible as the bright area near the horizon. The bright glowing gas flowing around the sunspots has a temperature of over one million degrees Celsius. The reason for the high temperatures is unknown but thought to be related to the rapidly changing magnetic field loops that channel solar plasma. Large sunspot group AR 9169 moved across the Sun during 2000 September and decayed in a few weeks.

Today

It's a really poor idea for me to stay inside and brood over politics. I'm a lot happier when I get out and do things. Yesterday, I went to the bank and library, then down to the Mississippi, which is over flood stage. The path beside the river is partially flooded and closed. The road along the river is also closed. I didn't see any water on the road, but Patrick said it was flooded farther down. Water was lapping at the Harriet Island Park pavilion across the river and at the Rose Island boat house, and there is water under the trees in the park.

It was a bright day with a blue sky, clear except for high, wispy clouds. People do what they do usually do when there's a flood that is not immediately dangerous. They stood on the bank and looked at the water moving past. A friend told me later the river is running at the speed of the Niagara River when it reaches the big falls. It looks smooth and brown, but it's dangerous.

I stopped in a coffee shop for a scone and coffee, then went home.

Today I went out to another coffee shop to meet two friends. In theory we meet to write, but there is also chatting about agents and editors and story ideas and life. A nice way to spend an afternoon. It's another bright day. Tomorrow will be rain and possibly snow. I have more errands planned, so I get out and move around and think about myself, rather than the world's problems.

Friday will be more writing, this time by myself.

NASA APOD

Big, beautiful NGC 5584 is more that 50,000 light-years across and lies 72 million light-years away toward the constellation Virgo. The winding spiral arms of this gorgeous island universe are loaded with luminous young star clusters and dark dust lanes. Still, for earthbound astronomers NGC 5584 is not just another pretty face-on spiral galaxy. Home to some 250 Cepheid variable stars and a recent Type Ia supernova explosion, key objects for astronomical distance determinations, NGC 5584 is one of 8 galaxies used in a new study that includes additional Hubble Space Telescope observations to improve the measurement of Hubble's Constant - the expansion rate of the Universe. The results of the study lend weight to the theory that dark energy really is responsible for accelerating the expansion of the Universe, restricting models that try to explain the observed acceleration without the mysterious dark energy. In this sharp Hubble image of NGC 5548, many of the small reddish smudges are distant background galaxies.

On the Right Wing

I have decided my posts on Why People Are Angry are too long, too full of common wisdom and possibly wrong. I'm blending the experiences of too many different groups, and I'm not sure the resulting narrative is true or relevent.

Here, from the SPLC Report, is the South Poverty Law Center's explanation for why the crazy and dangerous right is growing. (If you don't know, the Southern Poverty Law Center is the go-to organization for information on hate groups. They track them nationwide.) The SPLC says:

Several factors fueled the growth (of hate groups): resentment over the changing racial demographics of the country, frustration over the lagging economy, and the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and other demonizing propaganda aimed at minorities and the government.

This is short and clear. I'll go with it.

NASA! Mars!

The largest canyon in the Solar System cuts a wide swath across the face of Mars. Named Valles Marineris, the grand valley extends over 3,000 kilometers long, spans as much as 600 kilometers across, and delves as much as 8 kilometers deep. By comparison, the Earth's Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA is 800 kilometers long, 30 kilometers across, and 1.8 kilometers deep. The origin of the Valles Marineris remains unknown, although a leading hypothesis holds that it started as a crack billions of years ago as the planet cooled. Several geologic processes have been identified in the canyon. The above mosaic was created from over 100 images of Mars taken by Viking Orbiters in the 1

Anti Cuts Demonstration in London

This is from The Guardian, a photo of the union organized, anti-government-cuts demonstration in London. I don't like posting photos that are copyrighted, but this one is so lovely. Look at those bright colors, like something out of Bollywood.[image error]

Detective Stories

I have been reading P.D. James, which has led me to think about detective stories. I would put her into the category of cozy mysteries. These are stories in which a crime in committed in a community that is pleasant and comfortable, cozy. The detective uncovers the criminal and reestablishes a moral norm. Ultimately, this is a conservative art form, about putting things back the way they were.

The tradition that derives from Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett is far different. The society itself is corrupt, and the moral norm is provided by the detective. Per a famous quote from Raymond Chandler:

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor.

The detectives in these stories are like muckrakers. The point is not to restore society, but to expose it, and -- if possible -- change it.

The classic example of this kind of story Hammett's Red Harvest, in which the hero more or less blows apart a crooked town. This is not a conservative art form.

My favorite contemporary writer of tough guy detective stories is the Mexican novelist Paco Ignacio Taibo II, who is overtly leftist and funny as heck. In one of his books, An Easy Thing, the mystery is: who killed the Mexican Revolution, and what really happened to Zapata? An amazing novel. All of his books are worth reading.

In many tough guy detective stories society remains corrupt, and many of the bad guys survive, though there is usually some justice. Think of the movie Chinatown, which is a very dark version of a tough guy detective mystery, or The Maltese Falcon, either the book by Dashiell Hammett or the movie. The Falcon has more hope and more justice. I find Hammett's dark vision of contemporary society bracing. Polanski gives me the creeps.

I'm not sure where to put writers such as Tony Hillerman, who is describing life on Navajo reservations and the social problems faced by the Navajo in a largely white world. Life on the Rez is certainly not cozy. But it also isn't corrupt in the way that Chandler's LA is corrupt. Rather, it is damaged; and the problem is -- how can a new moral norm be created? How can the Navajo live well and honorably in the modern world?

Meanness

I missed one thing in the posts below: the meanness and vindictiveness of many contemporary conservatives. They clearly enjoy attacking vulnerable people. I don't think this is anger. This is something else, more difficult to understand.

The dictionary definition of meanness is:

1. The state of being inferior in quality, character, or value; commonness.
2. The quality or state of being selfish or stingy.
3. A spiteful or malicious act.

The dictionary defintion of vindictive is:

1. Disposed to seek revenge; revengeful.
2. Marked by or resulting from a desire to hurt; spiteful.

Maybe if I think about these more I will understand the Tea Party.

What follows is...

an attempt to think about the right wing in the US. I am amazed by the Tea Party and conservative Republicans. They seem incomprehensibly mean and selfish and also utterly clueless about how a modern society runs. We need infrastructure and public health and education, or the country will crumble and collapse like the 35-W bridge. What is so hard about realizing that you have to invest? And what is so hard about realizing that it's expensive to neglect and deprive people? If you don't pay for hospitals and schools, then you will pay for prisons and security guards and mercenary soldiers.

If you impoverish Americans, who will buy the nation's goods and services? Since WWII the economy has depended on a large working class affluent enough to buy cars, appliances, houses, vacations, college educations... Increasingly the economy depends on luxury goods, but there are not enough rich people to sustain the kind of economy we have now. You can go for a while on consumer debt and cheap goods from China. But this will come to a stop, and has largely come to a stop. Then what? A third world economy? But third world economies are dependent on exporting raw materials and goods to the industrialized world, and the US is the largest consumer market in the world, described until recently as the engine of the world economy. Who is going to replace it, and buy what it exports, if it can find anything to export, except food?

Anyway, I am puzzled by the anger and meanness and cluelessness of the country's right wing. So I decided to write about anger. It's pretty obvious stuff, me thinkng out loud.

Note on the Following Essay

I didn't talk -- in the posts below this -- about who the tea partiers are. I don't know, though I have read that they are better educated and better off financially than most Americans. So maybe they are the true middle class, rather than the working class.

It's always hard to talk about class in the US, because everyone between the seriously rich and the genuinely poor is called middle class. This includes the blue collar, white collar, pink collar and technical working classes, small businesspeople, the self-employed and the upper middle class professionals -- doctors, lawyers and so on -- who serve the rich directly and do pretty well off them. This is a broad span, and it isn't clear to what extent all these folk share interests.

My hunch, which is only a hunch, is that the Tea Party appeals mostly to small businesspeople and to white collar workers, who may be employees, but see themselves as management or professional. A bad economy threatens them, as does outsourcing, which has moved from manufacturing to service and professional jobs. The upper middle class professionals are safer, but also allied with the rich, and -- like the rich -- often seem to feel little identity with the rest of the American society and to resent contributing toward the common good.