WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
April is over. May moon.
How many more for my regard,
hundreds, a handful?
Better not trouble the dark water due north of north.
Better to concentrate on something close, something small.
This stick, for instance. This word.
–Charles Wright
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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.