70%

That graph of what a PhD is reminded me of why I've dodged graduate school for so long -- because I like the idea of keeping my sphere of knowledge relatively regularly shaped, without that awkward growth protruding from it. I would rather know a lot about everything than everything about one tiny fraction of the whole of knowledge. Or, that's how I've been feeling for the past 29 years or so. Recently, though I've succumbed to this craving to be an expert in something. Just last week I looked up from the table in Doe Library where I was working to watch mindlessly as someone on the other side of the stacks was rolling the book cases back and forth to find just the right volume, and I was reminded of the library in terms of its being a physical manifestation of the internet, which I had at my fingertips. I thought about my small book case at home and the amount of space it might take to house every book I've ever read and compared that mental shape to the vast expanse of Doe and its endless supply of books and my goal of learning 70% of everything felt an even more herculean task than ever. Even compared to absorbing the contents of 70% of just the volumes in Doe library, applying to graduate school and even pumping out a PhD seemed like simple things one can accomplish in due time. It has been a comforting thought.

Not overly brief recap.

I can't say I've been living under a rock the past few weeks. It's more like I've been spread out in an even film over a wide area, kind of like an electron cloud.

• I finally went to Yoshi's.


• I took in my banjo teacher's band's bluegrass / Irish trad show at the Starry Plough.


• I dressed up in a lengha, carried a lei and threw flower petals to help marry my cousin to his wife.


• There have been fully two Shakespeare plays at that glorious outdoor theatre in Orinda. Both Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing.


• The Tallest Man on Earth was brilliant. Brilliant and fantastically Swedish.


• I counted birds at in a salt marsh.


• I toured a water treatment plant.


• There was a greywater forum at the East Bay Municipal Utilities District. (Speaking of greywater, I have been made to understand how to install certain simple greywater plumbings).


• There was the making of membrillo.


• Aida in AT&T Park.


• The Big Lebowski in that wonderful bastion of hipsterdom, Dolores Park.


• There has been regular salsa dancing.


• There have been and will continue to be house warming parties.


• Multiple trips to Botanical Gardens and various collections of trees are causing me to expound on the identifying characteristics of our arborescent brethren.


• I am having another go at a little garden upstairs, this time with three boxes and a couple more big pots.

Mostly though when I think about how great things are right now (including even the thought of grad school applications, amazingly) I am just taken aback by the magical appearance of Matt on that street corner as arranged by our friend Sarah. I am secretly and terrifyingly living almost precisely the life I would have wanted or that I thought about before I decided it was best not to think about such things.

Firebird

The phoenix in its embodiment of reinvention, reincarnation, recycling, re-creation, invincibility, wisdom and strength of will is my ultimate power animal. Even more than a lion, though I can't cast aspersions at lions. I'm not much of one to roar, but to fly around with a tail of flames, I could get into that.

A quick trip into space

Wrinkled roses

There was a line in the Tale of Genji somewhere about a particular flower in someone's fall or summer garden. The flowers, they thought, were nice, but those members of the medieval Japanese court really looked forward to the faded blooms and their particular shade of yellow, the way they hung just so on the stems crisp and delicate. I am thinking of that this morning with the odd-dozen wrinking pink roses hovering just above my computer screen faded in spots and seemingly a darker, more intense magenta in others, aging gracefully, perhaps more beautiful now, long after someone else might have tossed them away.

Were you aware of it? vol. 35: G is for Goldilocks

Professor Steven S. Vogt of the Lick Observatory at UC Santa Cruz is apparently 100% sure that life does or will exist on the planet he discovered late last month, affectionately known to the scientific community as Gliese 581 g.

Gliese 581 g (the planet) lies in the so-called 'habitable zone' of its parent star, the red dwarf Gliese 581, meaning that it's close enough for there to be liquid water -- not boiling, not frozen -- making it just right for life. The planet has a rocky atmosphere and enough gravity to hold onto its atmosphere.

But don't pack your bags yet, as far as science can tell, our little Goldilocks of a planet (or maybe it should be a Mama Bear of a planet??) appears to be tidally locked to its parent star, meaning that the same side of the planet always faces its sun. The border zones where it's eternally sunrise or sunset might be nice, though.

Gliese 581 (the star itself) is located 20 light years from Earth in the constellation Libra.


On All Things Considered.
On Talk of the Nation Science Friday.

Were you aware of it? vol. 34: Explosive Double Feature

"About 75 bystanders, most of them residents who had found the whale to be an object of curiosity before they tired of its smell, were moved back a quarter of a mile away. The sand dunes there were covered with spectators and land-lubber newsmen shortly to become land-blubber newsmen, for the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds."

I admit I derive a childlike glee from the mental image of serious-minded city council men being smacked in the face by fast-moving slabs of rotting whale flesh despite their confidence that 20 cases of dynamite would disintegrate it mid-air. Similarly amusing is the though of filing an insurance claim for a car totaled by the impact of a rotting whale meat-eor.



"Barbara, I've never seen a uh haha a bomb scare quite like this. I mean it's literally a fully clothed bomb expert and a bomb robot with a stuffed animal."

Jezebel puts it best:
Police Save Kids From Stuffed Pony-Terrorist