#2. Oh Me! Oh Life!
Sometimes I struggle to come up with something motivational to say, especially during these hard times we live in. This past two weeks has been some of the best for me in a year--I got to go on a cruise with my brother, and I got to go away for the weekend with my wife (it's our anniversary on the 17th).
But I've felt almost guilty being happy about these things because it's hard to celebrate when other people are suffering. I sat on the balcony of my room on the cruise ship, watching the perfectly blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico go by, and watched on my phone as the Dow dropped almost 2000 points in two days. To talk about the great time I was having--even though I had never been on a cruise before and this had been planned a year in advance--seemed to be like Nero fiddling while Rome burned.
Walt Whitman wrote about a kind of existential worry and doubt in his poem "Oh me! Oh life!"
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
If you're a Gen-Xer like me and watched Dead Poet's Society a LOT growing up, you can hear those words in Robin Williams' voice: "That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."
When all is bad, and you ask why, know that life exists, and that you play a part.
Interesting Things From This Week:
A partial human skull dating back 1.1 to 1.4 million years ago.
#1. Archaeologists have found a partial human skull in Spain that is the oldest known human remains in Western Europe, dating back 1.1 million to 1.4 million years. Human bones dating back 1.8 million years ago were recently found in Georgia, but this find in Spain shows how much farther the human race had spread than we ever knew.
#2. A group of citizen scientists is making astronomical discoveries that would never be possible without these laypeople. The group--which anyone can join (as long as you have the right telescope) spans the globe and has 15,000 astronomers. One of the things they found--by pooling their power--is a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting a distant star. In 2022, when NASA was experimenting in redirecting the path of an asteroid, these folks helped! Pretty cool.
Soon we may be able to regrow lost teeth!
#3. Scientists in Japan are about to enter human trials in a treatment that will allow you to regrow lost teeth! The therapy has worked in animal trials on ferrets and rats, and, if all goes well and this passes the human trials, you could be regrowing your lost teeth as soon as 2030!
Saturn with a kabillion moons
#4. Saturn continues to be a show off when it comes to moons. It already had 146 known moons, but a new paper this week documents an additional 128 moons orbiting Saturn. It has long been thought that Saturn's moons and rings exist because of some large planetary collision nearby, but the new findings suggest that it was probably at least two large collisions. (Also, I think it's cool that some of the moons orbit clockwise and some are counter-clockwise.)
This Week’s Pleasant Distractions:
Before The Electric State was a major motion picture, it was a graphic novel. And say what you will of the movie (I personally enjoyed it) I’ve been a fan of Simon Stålenhag for a long time. This video from the Curious Archive explores the weirdly dystopian, robotic world of this art experiment. It’s a cultural critique; it’s a fascinating story; it’s just great to look at. Watch the video, then maybe get the book. (The movie is aesthetically similar, but tonally different. Still: the aesthetics are great.)
If I am really trying to woo my wife, I do it with the bolognese from Basics with Babish. A bolognese is essentially a creamy meat sauce cooked with a soffrito, and the recipe here has it slow cook and melt into the most succulently buttery sauce you have ever tasted. It’s labor intensive in the beginning, even if you don’t make your own homemade chicken stock (I’ve only done it once and it didn’t make a huge difference) but by the time that four hours of simmering is over your house will be full of decadent aromas and you’ll have forgotten all the work.
I’m a huge fan of archaeology, having lived right in the heart of the southwest and spending a lot of time exploring the ruins of the Ancestral Puebloans. But what I’d like to point you to today is this great video from Ancient Americas about Cahokia. Cahokia is one of the most criminally overlooked civilizations in the Americas—primarily because they didn’t build much out of stone and the ruins (essentially mounds of earth) are not as flashy as what you find in Chaco Canyon, Chichen Itza, or Tiwanaku. But it’s amazing, and it’s right here in the middle of the United States!
