Eleanor Arnason's Blog, page 98

Courtesy of NASA -- Something Really Unusual

How was the unusual Red Rectangle nebula created? At the nebula's center is an aging binary star system that surely powers the nebula but does not, as yet, explain its colors. The unusual shape of the Red Rectangle is likely due to a thick dust torus which pinches the otherwise spherical outflow into tip-touching cone shapes. Because we view the torus edge-on, the boundary edges of the cone shapes seem to form an X. The distinct rungs suggest the outflow occurs in fits and starts. The...

Kiluea Eruption Courtesy of the USGS

This is from November, 2009. I am posting it because I feel like it, even though it isn't an Icelandic eruption. There is more to life -- and volcanology -- than Iceland.

Today

A slow, gray day. I went to the Farmers Market and bought spinach, radishes, green onions and two loaves of bread. Cleaned the radishes. They are not sharp enough for my taste. None the less, they go pretty well with garlic-basil-tomato hummus. Changed the sheets on my bed. Began a wash. Surfed the Internet.

That's it. Since I still think of Monday through Friday as the work week, I will get back to looking for work and writing tomorrow.

From Franklin Spinney in Counterpunch

...According to the Jerusalem Post, the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army, just threatened to sink any Turkish warship carrying (Turkish Prime Minister) Erdogan, if it was escorting another flotilla of aid ships trying to break the blockade of Gaza. The threat is serious, because it was made on Israeli Army Radio, an outlet for policy pronouncements intended to lather up the Israeli citizens for battle.

...An Israeli attack on Turkey would be also an attack on the NATO Alliance. Under ...

Seymour Helps Us Look for Work

This is our stuffed sheep Seymour looking at the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits job board online. You can see the cell phone next to him. Seymour is using every resource he has in the hopes of getting us back to work.

Weekend

In spite of a year without work, I still think of the Saturday and Sunday as time off: the weekend. Today was gray with on-and-off rain. Patrick and I went to HarMar. It's an old, down-on-its-luck mall, which still has some good stores. We drank coffee in the Barnes and Noble and I bought Nnedi Okorafor's new novel. Then we looked at shoes at Schuler's, a fine, family-owned shoe store. I bought a pair of socks. After that was Staples for paper, printer ink and paperclips. If I am going to get...

Today

I went to the bank and the library, then sat in a coffee house and read workshop manuscripts. (Kelly and Sean: I am done with you submissions.) After that I walked by the river, seeing two robins bathing in a fountain, a great blue heron, two young men sculling, a man and his child fishing and the Andrew Cannava, a tow boat out of Jeffersonville, Indiana.

The day is overcast and humid. The air smelled of summer and the river. Now I am home with the air on. I am thinking about a nap.

Guest of Honor Speech

This is the ending of Mary Anne Mohanraj's guest of honor speech at Wiscon this year:

The world is in terrible danger. You have been chosen, you are needed, you are each and every one of you the only one who can save it, if you will just be brave enough. And it will be hard. But heroism isn't about not being afraid. It is about being afraid, and doing the work anyway. Fighting for what you know is right. And I promise you this -- for every time you stand up for the cause you believe in, every ...

Farmers Market

Asparagus. Lettuce. Spinach. Rhubarb. Red and white spring onions. New potatoes. House finches singing in the trees. Fresh bread. Handmade soap. Honey. Radishes. Sunlight. Organically raised rainbow trout. Fresh dill. Napa cabbage. Strawberries. More asparagus. More sunlight.

Astronomy Photo of the Day

It may look like some sort of cute alien robot, but it was created here on Earth, launched to the Moon in 1970, and now reflects laser light in a scientifically useful way. On November 17, 1970 the Soviet Luna 17 spacecraft landed the first roving remote-controlled robot on the Moon. Known as Lunokhod 1, it weighed just under 2,000 pounds and was designed to operate for 90 days while guided in real-time by a five person team near Moscow, USSR. Lunokhod 1 toured the lunar Sea of Rains (Mare...