Eleanor Arnason's Blog, page 90

Astronomy Photo of the Day

Could life once have survived on Mars? Today, neither animal nor plant life from Earth could survive for very long on Mars because at least one key ingredient -- liquid water -- is essentially absent on the red planet's rusty surface. Although evidence from the martian rovers indicates that long ago Mars might once have had liquid water on its surface, that water might also have been too acidic for familiar life forms to thrive. Recently, however, a newly detailed analysis of an unusual...

On to Ordinary Events...

Yesterday was the farmers market and a visit with a friend. I also cleared out the magazine racks, which get full quickly, due to catalogs and New Scientist. Today will be packing manuscripts to be sent to the Northern Illinois science fiction archive and filing and then a trip to a coffee house to write. The weather is bright and hot.

Paul Krugman is Depressed Today

This is from his blog at the New York Times:

I'm finding it hard to read about politics these days. I still don't think people in the administration understand the magnitude of the catastrophe their excessive caution has created. I keep waiting for Obama to do something, something, to shake things up; but it never seems to happen.

Here's what I wrote in February 2009... It's pretty rich that now the usual suspects are accusing me of having shared the administration's optimism. But that's a...

An Essay by Grace Lee Boggs in Common Dreams

I won't be marching with Jesse Jackson in the March called by the UAW and the NAACP to commemorate the August 28, 1963 March on Washington.

That's not only because at 95 my marching days are over.

As early as 1963, Malcolm X called the "I have a Dream" March a "Farce on Washington" because John Lewis had been forced to delete from his speech any references to Revolution and Power by the MOW's "Big 6" organizers: A. Philip Randolph, Dr. King/SCLC, Roy Wilkins/ NAACP, James Farmer/CORE, Whitney Y...

Update

I have not been productive since the great Carpeting Event: reshelving plus a little house cleaning, but not much more. I had filing to do and writing to finish. I'm not sure what this about. An end-of-summer malaise?

I think I will go to the local coffee shop and write, though not on the projects I ought to finish. On a new story, which may not turn out to be a keeper, but which keeps nagging.

And plan my week. I often plan work instead of doing it. Alas!

Astronomy Photo of the Day

What's the matter with this cluster of galaxies? To find out what forms matter takes in the Abell 1689 cluster requires not only deep images from telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope, but detailed computer modeling as well. To start, almost every fuzzy yellow patch in the above image is an entire galaxy. A close inspection, however, shows that many background galaxies are strangely magnified and distorted into long curving arcs by the gravitational lens deflections of the cluster...

Astronomy Photo of the Day

Is this one galaxy or two? This question came to light in 1950 when astronomer Art Hoag chanced upon this unusual extragalactic object. On the outside is a ring dominated by bright blue stars, while near the center lies a ball of much redder stars that are likely much older. Between the two is a gap that appears almost completely dark. How Hoag's Object formed remains unknown, although similar objects have now been identified and collectively labeled as a form of ring galaxy. Genesis...

Thursday, August 19

I went to the bank and the library, then to a coffee house to read. I got comfort books at the library, nice stories about nice people. The plan for the rest of the day is reading, some filing and some cleaning.

I walked along the rvier for a while and saw two two boats, the Prosperity out of the Port of St. Louis and the J.W. Hershey out of Jeffersonville, Indiana. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me, so I have no photos.

Review

"Mammoths" and Tomb got an awesome review in Strange Horizons. It's one of those reviews one dreams of, where the reviewer really gets what one has tried to do. I can point to it and say, "You want to know what these stories are about? Read this."

http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2010/08/mammoths_of_the.shtml

Taken all in all, this has been a good day. I wasted yesterday and felt bad about it. Today I exercised, then met with Lyda Morehouse and her six-year-old son to write. Mason gave m...

Cooperative Venture

This is the tow boat Cooperative Venture out of St. Louis, MO, docked at Lambert's Landing in St. Paul.