The Hottest Time of the Day

Where’s Traildog? It’s supposed to get to sixty today. But it is not right now. The temperature has just fallen below freezing as the sun came up. It is beginning to warm up but it is no where near sixty yet. The sun had just come up. I’ve always wondered, Kelly said, and I'm sure there is a simple explanation for this, why is it that the farther north you go in the summer time the later in the day they have their highest temperature? He’s awaiting my googling of an answer. I am curious how you’ll search for that, he says. I try. I am about to give up. It’s a matter of finding the right terminology, I say. Finally I find a clue it has to do with daily cycles of solar radiation and residual heat. I even find a graph in a PowerPoint presentation. The daily low and highs are at the points of zero net solar radiation and not at noon and midnight as one would have supposed.  We had both thought of the temperature only being affected by solar radiation. We had ignored residual heat altogether.

Our spread over the earth was fueled by reducing the higher species of vegetation to charcoal, by incessantly burning whatever would burn… Combustion is the hidden principle behind every artifact we create – W G Sebald – The Rings of Saturn, 1998 p170

The history of the 99% is the story of economics

The closer in time, the more nearly our contemporary a thinker is, the longer is the way to what he has thought, and the less may we shun the long way – Martin Heidegger – What is Called Thinking?, 1968 p70

When you don’t understand

            It may be

            Just might be

There’s nothing

            Nothing cannot be

Understood

Sin is a dangerous toy in the hands of the virtuous. It should be left to the congenitally sinful, who know when to play with it and when to let it alone – H L Mencken – The Vintage Mencken, 1990 p188

Girl Scout Cookie Time – 200 million boxes sold each and every year. Savannah Smiles is the new one this year. Only one council will be selling Ice Berry Pinatas this year. The popular ones continue to be Thin Mints, Samoas, Tagalongs, Do-si-Dos and Trefoils. Those no longer available include: Sugar-Free Chocolate Chips (brown box), Cina-spo\ins (replaeced by Daisy Go Rounds in 2009 and then by Shout Outs! In 2011 – light green box), All About Animals/Animal Treasures/Thanks-A-Lots (pink box).  Remember Lemon, Double Dutch, Ole Oles, Lemon Drops, Striped Chocolate Chip, Snaps, Sugarfree Chalet Cremes, Juliettes, Golden Nut Clusters, TrailMix, Caban Cremes, Country Hearth Chocolate Chips, Echos, Chocolate Chunk, Pecan Shortee, Medallions, Van’chos, or Granola Cookies? It's Girl Scout Cookie time again.

But passion will obscure our senses so that we eat and stuff and call its nectar – William Carlos Williams – In The American Grain, 1956 p207

The God Gene

The God Particle

Good God, It all makes sense

            Now

DRD4 = R2D2

            The imagination is real

Star Wars now in 3D

You cannot talk of colors to the blind. But a still greater ill than blindness is delusion. Delusion believes that it sees, and that it sees in the only possible manner, even while this its belief robs it of sight – Martin Heidegger – What is Called Thinking?, 1968 p165

Too little dopamine and you become catatonic; too much and you become schizophrenic

The distinction that goes with mere office runs far ahead of the distinction that goes with actual achievement – H L Mencken – The Vintage Mencken, 1990 p175

90% of Angola Louisiana’s 5,500 prisoners will die there. Elderly inmates are the country’s fastest growing prison population

To lose, is harder than to find – Martin Heidegger – What is Called Thinking?, 1968 p52

Salt of the earth; salt the earth

                                    Make infertile

Look back and turn into a pillar

                                    All so kosher

In the sea, in the bay, in a pan – wash up

                        In the marsh, grass, lake,

Invade the drawdown cone; water, cellar

                        Scrape down the saltpeter

Salt a mine, mine the salt – rock shaker – along

                        The salt road – caravan

Salted cod, salt beef and peas at sea – iodized

                        Salt tax, in the works, evaporate the lake

                                     Deposit, bath, set the table

Salt, de-salt; salt out, salt away

In a saltbox, eat salty crackers

                        Salted hash; salted passwords

                        Salt cedars on the salt flats

Rub into wounds

Gifted women are merciless observers of the men they love in their lives; but not being inclined to theorize, they make no use of their discoveries except when provoked – Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities, 1956 p1024

That you believe doesn’t make what you believe true, even if it is true that you believe

Nothing religious is ever destroyed by logic; it is destroyed only by the God’s withdrawal – Martin Heidegger – What is Called Thinking?, 1968 p10

Polar bears, it turns out, are Irish. DNA studies have traced the ancestors of the Polar Bear back to a brown bear in Ireland 20,000 to 50,000 years ago

It was hard for him to draw the line between a new way of looking at something and a distortion of the ordinary way – Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities, 1956 p986