Here are photos of the first of two big architectural/engineering projects my father was involved with over the course of his career, during the late 1960s into the 1980s, though his career went on from there.
These are iPhone photographs of large glossy prints, 8 1/2 by 11, most of them black and white, that I came across recently in a box of family artifacts.
This first is the Batavia Accelerator Project, now known as Fermilab.
Kant’s take on happiness; Arthur C. Brooks’ three bite-sized dimensions to the meaning of life; Thomas B. Edsall on whether conservatives are happier than liberals.
A Big Picture item: what does our COVID response say about humanity’s capacity for altruism?
Why is there a National Prayer Breakfast? Why do some Christians think death is such a good thing? Is COVID to blame on Maine lobsters? Is the answer to misinformation tighter social bubbles, or simply to stop talking so much?
This is one of my two favorite photos that I’ve taken in my entire life. This is a photographed snapshot. It’s a view from the east coast of England, when I visited the place my parents lived in the 1950s when they had me, in Felixstowe, near Ipswich. I made a trip there in 1992, and this was a view off the coast, looking onto the North Sea, one evening. Click to embiggen. Sorry for the smudges on the print, which is nearly 30 years old.
Starman Jones is the 7th of 14 novels that Heinlein published from 1947 to 1963, at annual intervals except for a four-year gap between the last two, that were called “juveniles” at the time — that is, designed for younger readers — what are now called YA, for Young Adult, novels. (It’s worth noting that the 13th of these, Starship Troopers, is usually *not* considered YA, in the way all the others are, but that’s a topic for another time.)
I read most of these books in the early ’70s, before my 20th birthday, but I came to Heinlein later than I bonded with Asimov, Clarke, and for that matter, Bradbury. Over the decades my regards have shifted, though I still find myself rereading Heinlein after I’ve already, in the past five years, reread most of AB&C.
Water through the body; human inability to account for long-term threats; how sometimes the answers to conspiracy theories are simple.
Ls&Cs: Foundation, Dune, and Long-Term Projects
I haven’t seen the new Dune movie and am not sure I will, in part because my partner just doesn’t care about that kind of movie (and I could never do anything like going to see a movie by myself), and in part because I have to be careful going out given my current immuno-compromised condition.
I have seen the first two episodes of the Foundation TV series, and found it OK. Some of Asimov’s content is detectable. But reviews of the third episode make it sound like it’s become Star Wars, complete with a Death Star surrogate, so I don’t think I’ll continue.
Reactions to Foundation are increasingly negative. Reactions to Dune are mostly positive, but some quite negative, among my Facebook friends, and in the reviews. I’ll collect a few links here for, perhaps, future reference.
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