WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2001-2022
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
by Shel Silverstein
The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
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Cool! Science!!!
It just takes everything I have to “tolerate” the voice and inflections of the Modern “Man” narating this….GAWD how it feels like a bad rash in my ears….and soul.
That was the first thing that came to my mind, as well. They all sound the same. Always the same lilt (is that a word?) and cadence. NPR, PSB, Discovery (not that I watch or listen to these). I guess it’s mimicry. They only listen to each other so how would they know how stupid they sound?
I wish I knew enough chemistry to poke holes in this ball thing, because I’ll bet a few years down the line we’ll be hearing about some cockamamy scheme to fix whatever the experts didn’t fully appreciate about their solution at the time.
As a kid, we fished the resovoirs around San Diego county. Those lakes were the main source of water for the city.
I wonder if there are fish in that impoundment and how they feel about their light being blocked out.
Why didn’t they relocate the filtration system to the other side of the system, between the reservoir and the distribution point?
Pretty cool solution.
Lot’s of ponds and lakes around here, we don’t have one, wish we did. The folks across the road have a pond, about 150’x150′, I’m gonna suggest they put a couple hundred thousand black balls in it. The grey herons will like em, so will the fishes.
Plastic comes from oil. In nature all things go back to what they were eventually.
Every plastic ball has a seam. They are black, which means they absorb heat from the sun. So half of each ball will be warming, softening, and expanding in the sunlight while the bottom half of the ball remains cool from the water. Sooner or later they will crack, leak, and begin taking on water. Sooner or later someone is going to have to dredge out the reservoir.
JWM
Interesting, the first use of black spheres floating on the top of the water was (I believe) was for making the movie “The Abyss (1989)”. They needed to create an Stygian darkness as would exist a mile deep in the ocean. No light source other than the observable lights on the vessels or held by the actors/divers. For safety reasons simply covering the tank with solid sheet of black plastic wasn’t allowed. But a diver could surface into the black balls and breath.
First use I’ve heard of since then.
These people make a mess of EVERYTHING. Then they celebrate their mess with a film narrated by a soulless, feminine-sounding man who condescends to explain to us, the idiots, why the mess is beautiful and good for humanity. And there is nothing you can do to stop them.
I don’t care how annoying the presenter is.
It is a neat solution. It solves several problems at once. It is a passive system, and it works for about ten years; and then you just fish out the old balls and dump new ones. (Preferably before they split.) And it is even scenic, in its own strange way.