High above the flying scud and dark-rolling clouds, there floated a little isle of sunlight, from which beamed forth an angel’s face; and this bright face shed a distinct spot of radiance upon the ship’s tossed deck.
“Ah, noble ship,” the angel seemed to say, “beat on, beat on, thou noble ship, and bear a hardy helm; for lo! the sun is breaking through; the clouds are rolling off – serenest azure is at hand.”
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Cells in embryos make their way across a steep “developmental landscape” to their eventual fate.
Embryonic cells continuously monitor their changing surroundings and make small corrective adjustments, optimizing as development proceeds, locking in on their planned identity relatively late.
Processing positional information makes genes variously switch on and off throughout the embryo, giving cells distinct identities based on their location. (Some cells unfortunately take the wrong paths and are unable to get back on track.)
All the information is there in the landscape and processing that information effectively may be the phenomenon that makes a bunch of loosely stuck-together atoms behave like the thing we call life.
Had I been like a man living in a wood from which he knows there is no exit, I could have lived; but I was like one lost in a wood who, horrified at having lost his way, rushes about wishing to find the road.”
-Leo Tolstoy
Had a great test ride today. Harley-Davidson LiveWire has a very strong, broad powerband and handles quite well as a quiet (and sweet smelling) street bike.
Expected sunny weather but instead got drenched by a cloudburst when approaching the foothills around the valley, so I stuck with the streets around town and put off riding the winding back roads. Still, lots of fun.
I am thoroughly invested in electrifying California with focus on electric motorcycles. LiveWire is #1 in the lineup of futuristic transportation vehicles.
Just think of the many issues needing resolution before the year 2034, including fortifying the energy grid and making electric recharging more convenient. It’s an exciting challenge.
Human thought is still best described by metaphor, poetry, & other literary devices to express what we do not fully understand. Experience is a matter of sensibility & intuition, of seeing & hearing the significant things, of paying attention at the right moments.
Garry Kasparov
Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head. Found my way downstairs and drank a cup and looking up I noticed I was late. Found my coat and grabbed my hat, made the bus in seconds flat. Found my way upstairs and had a smoke, and somebody spoke and I went into a dream.
A Day in the Life by The Beatles
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times over many years and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers.
The introduction begins like this:
“Space,” it says, “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space. Listen…”
and so on.
Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, was identified nearly 50 years ago and is among the most studied astrophysical objects.
The results released this month are the culmination of a multi-year effort and a decades-long journey by the astronomy community to approach the event horizon through high-resolution imaging, gaining new insights into accretion, outflow, and gravitational physics on scales not accessible through any other observation.
gravity, light, consciousness – the three primitives”
Something M read in an old New Yorker
Rocket Launch Live <- for the latest launches to date
