Today I talked to virtually no one for the first time in quite a while. It’s almost like meditation. Reminds me of what L said when we were out drinking Friday night (as usual). She and G were talking about scuba diving, about how being underwater hearing only your own breath and hardly being able to see anything unless it’s right in front of you gives you a feeling of being alone in the universe, a feeling of vulnerability and isolation, of insignificance. I commented, “That’s just like meditation.” No reaction.
I don’t need to go scuba diving in the Philippines to experience such a feeling.
I’ve kept a journal (OK, a diary) for many, many years now. It first started in September 1984 as a junior high school 1st year (7th grade) English assignment — each day, we would be given a writing prompt and at the end of the 10-week term (quarterly system back then), the English teacher would look it over and write feedback.
At least, that was the idea. In mid-October my family moved to a county and school system about 60 miles away (it’s more complicated — we couldn’t move in to the new house at first and so my siblings and I were looked after by various relatives, so we didn’t go to school for about nine to ten days). The new school didn’t use journals at all. English class was boring. Grammar and sentence diagramming.
So I kept writing at home, almost on a daily basis in the beginning.
But I’ve been fairly inconsistent over the years. I filled several notebooks, all different sizes and shapes. I stopped writing in one notebook at some point in 1999 when I moved to Japan and started another one. Then some time in 2004 I decided it was a waste of paper not to finish the 1999 one. Then I filled it up and started typing in a Word file. Then I went to Montreal four years ago and started writing in paper notebooks again.
It’s, quite frankly, a great big mess.
But there are some good ideas in these notebooks, and lots and lots of bizarre poems that I swear I do not remember writing. (Also at least half a dozen attempts at “automatic writing.” If you don’t know what that is, look it up.)
So from time to time, I’ll post some bits and pieces here. Just for safe-keeping.
Who knows? I may wind up publishing some of it at some point. Or at least drop some of it into the mouths of future SciFi characters.
A European-built orbital satellite was launched into space on Saturday from Florida on a mission to shed new light on dark energy and dark matter, the mysterious cosmic forces scientists say account for 95% of the known universe.
Like the James Webb telescope, the Euclid will be positioned in a LaGrange point (L2, in this case), rather than in high Earth orbit.
If all goes well.
It’s interesting that the Guardian article says the telescope was “designed and built entirely by Esa,” although NASA supplied parts and its launching pad was made available and the telescope was launched using a SpaceX rocket. And ESA consists of nearly 2000 scientists from the US, Canada, and Japan as well as various European countries.
It’s a joint project. That’s how science should work in the first place.
(For more on dark matter, dark energy, gravity, and quantum mechanics, check this out.)
Yeah, minor surgery. On March 3, 2020, I had a benign tumor the size of a gum ball removed from my left shoulder.
It had been created by repeated rubbing of my shoulder bag strap on sweaty skin. Or rather on sweaty shirt over sweaty skin. I walk half an hour back and forth the train station to my workplace each morning and evening, and the summers in Kyoto are hot hot hot.
So there I was lying on a surgeon’s bed, getting my shoulder skin snipped into three pieces and pried open. My blood pressure shot up to 190 at one point. The surgeons told me to relax.
Uh. Yeah. They didn’t tell me how close the tumor was to a major artery, but I could make an educated guess.
There was a cloth screen between my face and my shoulder so that I couldn’t see what they were doing. And of course they had numbed the entire area and I couldn’t move my left arm at all.
But it was an unpleasant experience. No pain, but I could of course still hear the clip clip clipping of scissors on skin. And I have an imagination.
(Fwiw I have written a short story based on getting my wisdom teeth taken out—also with local rather than general anesthesia—though I didn’t include the factoid that my root tips shot across the room like tiny cannonballs and were never found again).
Fortunately, the surgery was successful— they even showed me the tumor (it looked like a tiny blancmange, and now you’ll have that image in your mind next time you eat one). They even asked me if if wanted to keep it (um, no thanks).
And afterwards the scar was barely visible, so good a job they did with the stitches.
Two days after the surgery, we went into lockdown and had to wear masks everywhere.
Are there things you try to practice daily to live a more sustainable lifestyle?
Now this is an interesting prompt.
1. Organic gardening
I’ve been gardening for just over ten years now. My father had an organically-grown garden for several decades, and I’ve been able to get a lot of advice from him on how to grow vegetables without using chemically-based fertilizers and pesticides/herbicides.
To be honest, sometimes the insects and the weather do get the best of the plants. But at least I know what’s in them, and I can keep the soil healthy as well.
Everything in this photo was organically grown. Well, not the bowls…
2. Composting
Part of gardening is using compost, or rotten food scraps, as fertilizer. We recycle any food left uneaten as well as the bits of vegetables that are often tossed into the garbage, things like roots, insides of peppers, the ends of beans, and of course egg shells.
Egg shells can be reused to help bushes as well, due to their calcium content. Although I have found that the shells need to be rinsed before chucking them near the stem of bushes. Otherwise we get some unwelcome animal nightlife…
3. Reuse reuse reuse
Any clothing we no longer have a use for (kids got too big, Dad spilled coffee on a favorite shirt or cooking oil on a favorite pair of shorts, a towel that frayed and is too dangerous to use…) we do one of two things:
(i) recycle with our local school’s monthly clothing pick up, or
(ii) turn it into rags that can be used to clean up spills rather than use kitchen paper towels.
We also get a lot of plastic bags — and I do mean a lot — because practically everything in Japan comes wrapped in plastic. Cookies and sweets are all wrapped individually. Vegetables are wrapped in plastic. Even meat from the store winds up in separate plastic bags (just in case they leak on the way home).
So we reuse as many of the plastic bags as possible, typically to collect household trash (especially during allergy season!). And, of course, to collect plastic, plastic bottles, cans and bottles for recycling.
4. Bath water
Like most homes in Japan, we have a pump attached to our clothes washer. Japanese are accustomed to taking evening baths (I don’t; at least, not in summer, since the water makes me sweat and then I have to take a shower all over again). The next morning, we reuse the bath water to wash clothes.
5. No AC or dryers
Strictly speaking, we do use the AC on occasion. But we designed our home to have lots of sliding doors between rooms and wide windows and balcony doors. That way, we can just open up everything and have a nice breeze come down the mountain behind us. The house stays relatively cool even during the hot sticky summer months and we can avoid using air conditioning (except when it rains and we have to close windows).
We also hang out clothing to dry to avoid using the dryer. It’s better for clothing, anyway, and in addition to not wasting electricity, lowers our utility bills.
These are just a few examples. It’s not much, but a little bit here and there adds up to a lot over time.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go throw some used egg shells under the tomato plants. 🍅 🥚
The link below includes a night sky in Montana, which makes little sense when the researchers were in Beijing and Honolulu…
“The first-generation star we observed has the potential to become the oldest star we have ever seen,” said Alexander Heger, a professor in the school of physics and astronomy at Monash University in Australia who was part of the research team. “It probably had only lived for 2 1/2 million years and then exploded.”
Oh, and it also was discovered to be 260 times the size of our own Sun…just as theorized.
More importantly, this involved scientists from three different countries (China, Japan, and Australia), sharing information and working together for science.
Imagine if that spirit of cooperation could be extended into other domains…
…Ispace engineers observed that the estimated remaining propellant was “at the lower threshold and shortly afterward the descent speed rapidly increased.”
The bankruptcy filing by Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit Holdings Inc (VORB.O) has dealt a blow to Japan’s hopes of building a domestic space industry, with plans for a Kyushu-based spaceport designed to attract tourism on hold for lack of funding.
Still, it’s jarring to see TV news about JAXA and NASA doing “joint” explorations of Mars, and then see a constant failure of JAXA to do anything based in Japan.
Something is seriously wrong with this space agency. And I suspect it has nothing to do with the scientists or astronauts.
An air taxi service set to feature at the 2025 World Exposition in Osaka was tested in Osaka Castle Park on Tuesday, in what the prefectural government says is the first time in the country one of the craft has been piloted from the cockpit.
The “taxi” they tested only fits one person. If the plan is to taxi visitors to the Expo back and forth between various artificial islands, I hope there are plans to test the actual three- to six-seaters.
And of course, there is always the “big challenges ahead are Japanese regulations and residents’ feelings” things. I wouldn’t be surprised if the first flying taxi to successfully taxi people around by air also becomes the first flying taxi to have a flying traffic accident.
(That’s what happened to Ohio City inventor James Lambert, who was testing an early gas-powered car when he hit a tree. Ireland claims to have an earlier accident, but it wasn’t a vehicle anything like a modern car.)
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