Five Bullets 8.18.23

Memoirs, Music, Muons & Milwaukee

Welcome back to Circles in Space.

If you’re new here, read this.

Good morning and happy Friday Everyone! It’s a rainy morning here in New York City with sun forecasted for this afternoon. Earlier this week as I was digging through my record collection I leafed through Hippie by Barry Miles and realized this week was the anniversary of Woodstock! The music that came out of that festival never fails to bring me back to that special place and time (even though I wasn’t even born yet!). Lately I can’t help but feel that we are living through a pivotal time in American history which parallels the 1960’s.

400,000 people attended the Woodstock Music & Art Fair on Aug. 15-18, 1969. Photo by Haley Lawrence on Unsplash.

Today’s bullets:

• Memoir: Revisiting My Rastafari Childhood, an excerpt from Safiya Sinclair’s book How To Say Babylon, is a moving account of Sinclair’s childhood growing up under the thumb of her Rastafarian father.

• Music: I’m diving back into records this week with the arrival of my new turntable. I’ve been spinning a lot of ‘60s and ‘70s albums including Led Zeppelin II which sounded particularly heavy. There’s nothing like hearing music come alive through a quality turntable and speakers. 

• NYC: The Concorde was moved by barge from the deck of the Intrepid to the Brooklyn Navy Yard for a paint job. The supersonic Concorde had an average speed of over 1,330 mph enabling it to fly from New York to London in just under 3 hours. Air France and British Airways decommissioned the Condordes in 2003. 

• Science: By accelerating muons - particles similar to electrons - around a powerful magnet, physicists have captured precise measurements of the particles ‘wobble’. The experiments yielded results inconsistent with the Standard Model theory which predicts how the particles should behave. Why is this important? This means that unknown particles may be influencing the muons behavior, thus pointing to the discovery of new physics. 

• Typewriters: Not sure how I missed this but back in June, Milwaukee, WI celebrated the typewriter’s 150 year anniversary with the inaugural QWERTYFEST! In 1873, inventor Christopher Latham Sholes licensed manufacturing rights for his typewriter to Remington and Sons. This model became the first commercially successful typewriter and included the QWERTY keyboard, still in use today. The Milwaukee celebration cements the city as the birthplace of typewriters and the modern computer keyboard.

That’s all for this week! Thanks for reading and have a great weekend.

Keith