Nearly Everything

“Incidentally, disturbance from cosmic background radiation is something we have all experienced. Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive, and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe.”

“Because we humans are big and clever enough to produce and utilize antibiotics and disinfectants, it is easy to convince ourselves that we have banished bacteria to the fringes of existence. Don't you believe it. Bacteria may not build cities or have interesting social lives, but they will be here when the Sun explodes. This is their planet, and we are on it only because they allow us to be.”

― by Bill Bryson, from his book A Short History of Nearly Everything

In A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail -- well, most of it.

In his book In a Sunburned Country he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand -- and, if possible, answer -- the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves.

Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining. (from the book jacket)

Red, Red Bra

I was happy to see NJ's own Hal Sirowitz as the poem of the day last week.

Red, Red Bra

I bought a red bra, she said.
I knew you'd like it.
The only problem was I didn't
have a red blouse to wear with it.
I bought that & red pants
& shoes, so it wouldn't stand out
so much. I also thought of getting
red panties. But I said to hell with that.
I'm not going to worry if one small part
of the outfit doesn't match. And who's
going to see my underwear? Just you.
what do you know about fashion? Nothing.

by Hal Sirowitz

Winter Words

“Winter solitude-
in a world of one colour
the sound of the wind.”
― Bashō

“Melancholy were the sounds on a winter's night.”
― Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room


“I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.”
― T.S. Eliot


Oscar Wilde
“Wisdom comes with winters”
― Oscar Wilde




"I prefer winter and fall, when you can feel the bone structure in the landscape---the lonliness of it---the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it---the whole story dosen't show.”
― Andrew Wyeth


“The problem with winter sports is that -- follow me closely here -- they generally take place in winter.”
― Dave Barry

“A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.”
― Carl Reiner


"When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. That's my middle-west - not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

420 Characters

Last month, the illustrator-turned-author Lou Beach released a book of extremely short stories titled 420 Characters - miniature stories that began as Facebook status updates and that are just 420 characters long.

On the program, Studio 360, Kurt Andersen challenged listeners to write their own 420-characters stories. You can read them all here.

Lou Beach judged the contest, and kicked in the prize — a signed print of one of his own illustrations.

I really like this runner-up entry:

I pace my side of the lake we swam all summer. Winter’s first blizzard has blocked all roads; the half-mile swim between us is now a walk across thin ice. I say I’ll cross when the ice is thick. You propose we meet now—halfway. And then? If the ice cracks on your side, you’ll jump to mine, you say. Where have you studied ice? Think how a window swallows a baseball. You really want to take a swing at that?
—Mary Soufi, Vacaville, California

The winning entry:

It was dog number four that put the nail in the coffin, so to speak. It was about a month after the café went out of business, less, maybe. He comes home with it in his arms. Big thing, but still in his arms, carrying it across the threshold. I think he was trying to be funny. But it wasn’t funny. He was never funny.
—Samantha Wilson, Melbourne, Australia

LOU BEACH is an award-winning illustrator and gallery artist, well known for his record covers and magazine work. A book of his artwork, Cut It Out was published in 2006.

To read excerpts from 420 CHARACTERS and to hear them being read by Jeff Bridges, Ian McShane and Dave Alvin, visit www.420characters.com.

Zeitgeist 2011

Google offers a yearly review called Zeitgeist about how the world searched during the past year.

What mattered in 2011 - according to search?

Zeitgeist sorted billions of Google searches to capture the year's 10 fastest-rising global queries and the rest of the spirit of 2011.

See the results... (it might not give you faith in the future of mankind)


Watch a video version...

The Christmas Planet

This month a planet, properly known as Kepler 22-b, was revealed by NASA.

They have discovered thousands of planets outside our solar system using the Kepler space telescope, but this one is the most Earth-like world discovered so far.

It is located in an area nicknamed by astronomers the Goldilocks Zone. That's because it's not too hot, not too cold, but just right for life.

And the planet has been nicknamed the Christmas Planet because three photos of a planet are needed from Kepler to be sure that 22-b was for real. A 22-b year is 290 days long and photo number three came during the 2010 holiday season, so...

The Christmas Planet is 600 light years away. It is about twice the size of Earth. The average surface temperature is 72 degrees Fahrenheit, which sounds pretty nice right now.