Periodic Tables

Here we have a couple periodic tables. This post was inspired by Radiolab's "very 1970's periodic table."

Here's Mendeleev's original

And here's a guy wearing it as a shirt

Bye for now.

Just reading about Hannah Arendt in my free time here at work. Wikipedia is of course not the best (ie most impartial / fullest) resource but it is the easiest to conjure and least suspect.

One paragraph particularly stands out at me:

Arendt also argued that the revolutionary spirit endemic to the founding fathers had not been preserved in America because the majority of people had no role to play in politics other than voting. She admired Thomas Jefferson's idea of dividing counties into townships. Arendt's interest in such a "council system," which she saw as the only alternative to the state, continued all her life.^[14]

I am intrigued by the idea that "the majority of people had no role to play in politics other than voting." My first response was Yes this is correct. We the majority of the people are scarcely engaged in politics except for the Presidential elections every four years. Obviously if we the majority of the people were more committed / disgusted we would further a political system that is more representative -- a system of more than two parties so that we're not constantly gridlocked.

HOWEVER
Now that many of society's members have access to social media platforms I think there is this tendency to assume all people's voices can be heard. But I am not sure this is correct. It's true we have the ability, for the most part, to broadcast ourselves and state our opinions in a public forum. But who pays attention? Ktin said ages ago that Twitter is just something Adults do because they think the Young People do it. I'll modify and update that a little to say that young people do tweet but the Adults with the power to affect and popularize -- I'm thinking of CNN et al here -- just do it with each other. Meh I don't know how to explain this any better than just saying that those who have institutionalized power are more likely to publicize the ideas of the other people with institutionalized power, so the young people on twitter don't have any agency because they only have like sixteen followers. Or maybe I'm sucked into the vortex of only believing the media industrial complex so I don't notice the traction and impact of the segmented non-popularized non-status quo groups. Hmm

Then again I may be totally off-base. I didn't know about Gangam Style til like three days ago and hadn't heard Call Me Maybe until we went to Italy in September.

Dinner and sweater

Things that look like other things

foxgloves

foxgloves

"borderlines"

Compelling essay in the NY Times about the breakaway region of Transnistria, on the Eastern side of Moldova and the Western side of Ukraine.

Map by Joe Burgess/NYTimes

Time lapses

Ktin shared, via gchat away message, this amazing website:

people take photographs over time

Just our kind of thing! Reminds me of this girl's life so far in a video.

the tree

On March 23 at approximately 6:15pm I saw on google reader that Julia had posted something new on this site (LJN).  After reading it, I briefly browsed other items and eventually checked facebook. On my newsfeed, Sarah Lawrence College, (which I "like") had posted this picture:

This photo struck me as very familiar! It is an almost identical to the photos that I took of this tree everyday in April of 2006. The photo was so familiar that I double checked to make sure that I was not looking at my own tree pictures which are also posted on facebook.

Julia and I have not been in as frequent touch as we sometimes are. Even so, at 6:36pm I received the following text message from her:

                                            "De: Julia

                                              How would you

                                              feel about

                                              posting the slc 

                                              tree photos to

                                              ljn every day of

                                              april?
                                              Mar 23, 6:36 pm"

Coincidence???!!! Maybe. The photos were posted on the same days that I took them in 2006, starting on April 2nd when I took my first photo.