MLT Club Member David Herrick
MLT Club MemberForum Replies Created
-
Got mine today! Yes, we missed most of the first month, but we can reuse this calendar in 2033: vintage MLT!
-
My apologies to Jung for beating him to the punch on this:
-
Well, I feel responsible for covering some of the dry (ha, ha) scientific facts about water:
1) It has the highest specific heat capacity of any common substance, meaning that you have to heat water up for a long time to raise its temperature significantly. That’s why ocean temperatures tend to vary much less than land temperatures.
2) H2O is a very polar molecule, with a positively charged side and a negatively charged side, which makes water really good at dissolving stuff.
3) Unlike most materials, water is less dense as a solid than as a liquid. If it were the other way around, ice cubes would sink to the bottom of your drink, and ponds in winter would freeze from the bottom up rather than icing over.
4) In the outer solar system (beyond the asteroid belt), ice is one of the most common substances making up planets, moons, and comets. In the interiors of some planets and moons, some of it is likely to liquefy to form subsurface oceans.
-
Happy birthday, Jacki!
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/dd/fd/f2/ddfdf2e8f15b887b359bdc80af7b86a6.jpg
-
For those who want to savor the end of the universe for eight hours, here’s a version of the “timelapse of the future” video slowed down by a factor of 16:
-
For the past week Songbird is at V = 531 and C = 1.46.
-
This is pretty consistent with current mainstream scientific thought, Juergen. But our understanding of the universe evolves much faster than the universe itself, and in a few decades at most this video will require substantial revisions, especially for events in the deep future.
Really fascinating video, though. You don’t see nearly as much stuff out there about the distant future of the universe as about the distant past, in part because we don’t have nearly as many observations to constrain our notions.
-
The Cosmos TV series jump-started my lifelong fascination with space exploration. Specifically, to see the four major moons of Jupiter transformed from points of light in a telescope to actual worlds, all very different from each other and all utterly unlike any worlds we had ever seen, was to me science fiction turned to reality.
Another great Sagan book is The Demon-Haunted World, which is a critique of the growing anti-intellectual movement and the dangerous trend of favoring superstitious interpretations of nature over scientific ones. He wrote it nearly thirty years ago, but sadly it’s much more relevant now than it was then.
-
Yeah, that storywriting activity turned out a lot better than I thought it would. I was thinking “Okay, here we go, a million monkeys at typewriters trying to produce Shakespeare.” You don’t see a lot of great literature written by committee. But everyone came together and made positive contributions. And of course, Lisa reading it aloud cemented the story as canon in MLT Club lore.
-
I remember this, Jung. It was actually pitched as a solar system “family portrait” as Voyager obtained a mosaiced image of the Sun and all the planets together. I laughed at the idea, as I knew it would just be a collection of bright unresolved pixels, a few of which would probably be lost in the Sun’s glare. But I was only thinking scientifically, not poetically. Leave it to Sagan to articulate what it means to look back at home from billions of miles away.
http://cdn.sci-news.com/images/enlarge/image_2500_1e-Pale-Blue-Dot.jpg
-
Thanks, Jung, I’ll give that concert some more consideration. I read that one of the Cowsills will be handling some of the vocals, so that might help to tip the balance. And who knows how many more chances there will be to see ANY of the original members performing? (Although I imagine Mike Love will want to be buried with a live microphone…)
I didn’t know about that new Brian project. What a neat idea! I hope it inspires Paul to do something similar with some Beatles songs; that would really be fascinating. Recently I heard Paul questioned about how he chose which songs to do on guitar and which on piano, and he said it was just a matter of which instrument was closer when he had the idea.
-
Walter, I’m pretty sure it works that way for everyone. I think it’s set up like that to guarantee that no one else will reply to your question before MLT does.
-
Jung, it was Cool, Cool Water from the Sunflower album. Interesting that that phrase is used in the song that you posted as well! Maybe they’re related?
The current touring version of the Beach Boys will be performing in my town in a couple of weeks, but the only “real” members are Mike and Bruce. I can’t decide whether I should go.
-
Dusty Springfield is one of a very small number of artists who won me over independently on several different occasions, simply because for a long time I had no idea that all those great songs I was hearing on the radio were all by the same person.
-
Ah yes, the Corrs! I discovered them on TV singing So Young, and I was so impressed by both their musicianship and their stage presence that I went out and bought their CD. I’m pretty sure that was the only album by a contemporary group that I purchased in a 30-year stretch between the Bangles and MLT. Coincidentally or not, all three of those groups include at least a couple of sisters.
