nypl:
Happy Birthday Sgt. Pepper! We kid… but only a little. Today marks the 45th anniversary of the release of the Beatles’ seminal album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Why not stop by the Library, pick up a copy and enjoy a beautiful Flashback Friday!
Has it been twenty years ago today already?
I just learned that (1) Babe was played by a girl, who (2) also did the voices of Chuckie from The Rugrats and (3) Dexter from Dexter’s Lab. omigoshwhoaa.
Allowing them to close completely would result in the instantaneous formation of a critical mass and a lethal power excursion. Under Slotin’s unapproved protocol, the only thing preventing this was the blade of a standard flathead screwdriver, manipulated by the scientist’s other hand. Slotin, who was given to bravado, became the local expert, performing the test almost a dozen separate times, often in his trademark bluejeans and cowboy boots, in front of a roomful of observers. Enrico Fermi reportedly told Slotin and others they would be “dead within a year” if they continued performing it.
While lowering the top reflector, Slotin’s screwdriver slipped a fraction of an inch, allowing the top reflector to fall into place around the core. Instantly there was a flash of blue light and a wave of heat across Slotin’s skin; the core had become supercritical, releasing a massive burst of neutron radiation. He quickly knocked the two halves apart, stopping the chain reaction and likely saving the lives of the other men in the laboratory. Slotin’s body positioning over the apparatus also shielded the others from much of the neutron radiation. He received a lethal dose in under a second and died nine days later from acute radiation poisoning. The nearest physicist to Slotin, Alvin C. Graves, was watching over Slotin’s shoulder and was thus partially shielded by him, receiving a high but non-lethal radiation dose. Graves was hospitalized for several weeks with severe radiation poisoning, developed chronic neurological and vision problems as a result of the exposure, suffered a significant shortening of his lifespan and died of a radiation-induced heart attack 20 years later. The other six people in the room were far enough away from the assembly to avoid fatal injury, but they all suffered other complications as a result of the accident. Two people suffered severe shortening of their lives and died years later from radiation-induced complications: leukemia (at age 42, 18 years after the accident) and clinical aplastic anemia.
| — | Sc..ience? A scary, somewhat stupid experiment in determining the critical mass of plutonium. |
It’s the first time in a long time that the Daily Show has made me properly double-up with laughter. But Joe Biden will do that to you.
The other girl said, with a sneer, “As if we care about your stupid karate.” This is the type of reaction I feared, as a parent, especially given that ASD children can go on for an hour about any topic that engages their interest.
But the first girl turned to her friend and said, “Well, I do care.” And proceeded to talk with my son about his karate progress. She was, of course, one of the six.
| — | Michelle Sagara, The Big Idea: Michelle Sagara |
In The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh, on page 48 (Viking Penguin 1989; 1st American edition): as near as I can tell, the narrator (what is his name?) is telling May Price about his uncle Tridib’s shipping of a giant table from the UK. In a moment, she’s going to get upset that he didn’t find anything more useful to bring home from her country, but let’s not get distracted. This is an aside to a story in which he’s hiding in a basement with his cousin Ila, who he’s got mad puppy love for, as they set out to play “Houses” in the hidden depths of her country estate. That story he has been telling his cousins Ila and Robi in a pub in London for what seems to be several hours at this point.
So how did they end up at a pub in London? I’ll tell you. That was an aside in the narrator’s description of Ila’s way of thinking, forged in the life of an itinerant child in a well-to-do house, swapping schools and friends around the world, as recorded by a succession of school yearbooks. The description of her yearbooks started as an aside from her inability to understand the narrator’s fascination with faraway, exotic places. That started as a exploration of her inability to remember the shared parts of their childhood in as much detail as him, which might have started as a exploration of Tridib’s reclusivity. It’s hard to be sure; the narrator (what is his name?) tells us he disagreed with Ila on the subject of Tridib’s reclusivity and penchant for humour, but the story he then tell us is about meeting Ila once under awkward circumstances, during which he told Ila about an anecdote about Tridib which she dismisses as “mere vagina-envy”. And that, as far as I can tell, is all she says on the subject of Tridib.
So what does all this mean? Beats me. I just wish this narrator (what is his name?!) was more interesting and less likely to spend a whole, probably drunken, evening in London in a pub with his cousins telling them intimate scenes from his childhood that one of them was already party to, for what seems to be several hours (i.e. long past the point at which any non-drunk listener would have told him to shut it — and is he telling him all the asides while he’s at it as well?). I wish the narrator would stick to a story and not keep jumping into others, letting them all slosh together in his tub with no barriers of time, space or people between them. Mostly, I just wish I wasn’t reading another Amitav Ghosh book after my horrible experience with his The Glass Palace. But this is the big one, his Most Famous Book. This, I will finish. I just might need some therapy during and after this experience.
| — | My favouritest Douglas Adams quote ever, from Mostly Harmless |
For a friend.
