Dispatch No. 22
Dispatch No. 22
China + shorties + Science Schmience
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Non-Sequiturs
Zhōngguó - I love China. After numerous flights and a well-stamped passport, I felt almost like a local, even considering renting an apartment. I once dined on an octopus that I had playfully interacted with at a seafood restaurant. I learned bits of Mandarin from hookers in dive bars, learned to skillfully navigate squat toilets, and had more than my share of chicken feet and Tsingtao beer. While I tried to avoid the metallic tang of air of industrial zones, I did learn a clever trick. The ingenious one-handed counting method I picked up from my industrious colleagues has proved quite, um, handy on many occasions. Now it’s mine to share with you…
Courtesy of Reddit Three Seasons In One Day - Creative endeavors come in all shapes. For a while, mine was to shoot & cut little snippets of scenery or life I noticed. Lacking all creativity, I called them shorties. Below is an example with music by the prolific and talented Ryan O’Neal / Sleeping At Last
Science Schmience - In my flash fiction piece Eight Minutes we spend time with a group of children who are thinking about life in the last minutes before the sun dies. Something I never considered: the sound the sun makes, and might continue to make long after it’s dead…
Now, a little science — The sun could rival the loudest rock concert, assuming the vacuum of space didn’t exist, blasting at about 100 dB from its fiery stage. Stanford University, as you might expect, have recorded the sun’s vibrations for all to hear.
However, the idea that we’d hear the sun’s "jackhammer scream" for years if it disappeared is more science fiction than science fact. If the sun suddenly went out, its light and hypothetical sound would cease to reach Earth almost simultaneously—about 8.3 minutes for the lights to go off, with the sound stopping abruptly too, no drawn-out ghostly echoes. So while it's a fun thought experiment, the universe's acoustics don’t quite work like a prolonged rock ballad. Cue: Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
Music (Ben Folds Edition)
Fear Of Pop - Fear Of Pop
You Don’t Know Me - Ben Folds (feat. Regina Spektor)
You Don’t Know Me - University a Capella!
Words
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