Living for Facts














Laurent wanted to be sure that everyone knows that the above photos were taken on the weekend. Done.

And here's Émile looking cute, just before losing his lunch.

My mind is finally affected by Lucy's big questions (usually posed at night, just after mama has turned out the light, and is about to close the door.) I found myself wondering:

How big is the universe?
How many stars are there in the universe?
Is there an infinite number of facts?

If you are like me, then you want to know the answers. Luckily, a lot of people wonder these things (except possibly the last?)

  • The universe is estimated to be 150 billion light years in size, and rapidly expanding. Wheeeeeeee!
  • There may be at least 70 sextillion stars in the sky, but we can't know for sure at this point. 70 sextillion is 7 followed by 22 zeros. Smaller than one googol, which, as any five year old (at least the ones in this house) can tell you, is 1 followed by 100 zeros. An interesting side note is that this number was named by a ten year old... They also like to talk about "googolplex", which is ten to the googol, but I hesitate expounding exponents for kindergartners.
  • And the last question? Clearly, the answer is "yes", or what would we have to live for?

And, finally, the wild kingdom had a photo shoot.

Comments

Post a Comment

Subscribe

* indicates required

Popular posts from this blog

What comes next?

Image
Surgery was a month ago. Since then I have been sleeping, writing, painting (a little) and playing with my children. Each child alone is a pleasure, although the two together are baking soda and vinegar. I'm not saying which is which. Finally, Laurent took smallest monkey to France, where smallest monkey will spend a whole month alone with his grandparents, because we all needed a break, including Emile. He might even start maternelle,  preschool, there, for a short while. Everyone gets a break, but I miss him like crazy. Starting tomorrow, I will be going to Boston every day for radiation - that's three hours round trip for 15 minutes of being turned into the Hulk. I'm doing it because they will also be giving me more chemo, and I apparently love chemo that much... Every day is hard. It's a mixture of crabby because I might die within the next five years, and blissed out because life is so beautiful, and crying when I hug my family. It's extrem
Read more

Women in abstraction: a century and a half of female artists at the Centre Pompidou

Image
The Women in Abstraction show at the Centre Pompidou was arbitrary, condescending, and totally worthwhile. I mean, Elle font d'Abstraction is just short of “Look! A woman can make a painting! How quaint!”  Still, go. You won't regret it.  They more than make up for any condescension... And if they don't, we're clearly hungry for this exhibit. I counted two women in attendance for every man – yes, really, I counted.   “The utopian ideals of pure abstraction have allowed women artists some kind of entree into art, since a truly universalist art practice would be genderfree... but it was a myth.” - Mira Schor, 2009, from “Some Notes on Women and Abstraction” On a personal note, I hadn't been expecting to have a night alone in Paris. I certainly hadn't expected to have a good time. I'd always associated Paris with exhausting in laws, arguments, and trying to keep up with fast paced conversations in a new language. But my flight out of Charles De Gaulle was sched
Read more

NaNoWriMo and Escapist Literature

Image
My name is Julia, and I am addicted to escapist literature. I'll read far into the night, even through the night, to get to the end of a story. Even a cluster of not exceptional YA fantasy stories, like the ones I've recently brought home from the library. (Librarian: "You know those are from the young adult section?" Me: Blank look.) Or maybe the stories are good, and I've just had a temporary raising of the bar for books in general, from having finished Abigail Thomas' memoir, Three Dog Life . Which is one of those books full of truth written beautifully, that often made me laugh, about loss of what we know, and loving what takes its place. Profound, in other words. Most of what I read isn't profound. My mother, who worked in a bookstore for part of my childhood, brought home great boxes of books without their covers. Some of my all time favorite books, of which I know every illustration, I wouldn't recognize on your coffee table at a
Read more