e pur si muove

On Death, Without Exaggeration
Wisława Szymborska
Translation: Joanna Trzeciak

It can’t tell a joke
from a star, from a bridge,
from weaving, from mining, from farming,
from shipbuilding, or baking.

When we’re discussing our future plans
it’s got to get in the final word,
off the topic.

It doesn’t even know the things
directly tied to its trade:
digging graves,
assembling coffins,
cleaning up after itself.

So busy killing
it’s doing it badly,
without system or skill.
As if it were just learning on each of us.

Triumphs aside
how about the defeats,
the missed blows
and second tries.

At times it lacks the strength
to swat a fly out of the air
To many a caterpillar
it’s lost a crawling race.

These bulbs, pods,
feelers, fins, tracheae,
nuptial plumage, and winter fur
all testify to a backlog
in its slothful work.

Ill will does not suffice
and even our help during wars and coups d’état
is too little so far.

Hearts are pounding in eggs.
The skeletons of infants are gowing.
Seeds are sprouting their first two leaves,
and often even tall trees on the horizon.

Whoever inisists that it is omnipotent
is himself living proof
that omnipotent it’s not.

There is no life that
couldn’t be immortal,
if only for a split second.

Death
always arrives that split second late.

In vain it rattles the knob
of the invisible door.
However much one has gotten done
that much it cannot take away.

[Ed: removed as possible act of vandalism.]

One of the first things I had to unlearn when coming to the University of Illinois was the connection between sun and heat.

When I was in Singapore, the equation was ridiculously simple:

Anyone who has spent at least a calendar year in the places of the earth where white stuff falls from the sky like cosmic dandruff will snigger. Sunny winter days are those when there is no cloud cover to insulate the land like a heavenly blanket, giving rise to bitterly cold days as the cold sun in a cloudless sky allows heat to radiate into outer space like nobody’s business. Oh, and don’t forget the extra-strong doses of carcinogenic UV radiation. Winter is so much fun, isn’t it?

So the mental rule has to be updated to read:

Like seriously. The amount of water vapor air can hold drops precipitously below 0°C. Drink like there’s no tomorrow!

I was talking to Kevin Lim (theory.isthereason) and found out to my dismay that it’s colder here in the Silicon Prairie than in the nation’s Snow Capital. Dammit. As of right now, the numbers are 27°F (-3°C) v. 14°F (-10°C).

But even these numbers may be nothing compared to what Western Europe will be like a few decades into the future. According to a study published in the scientific journal Nature, the flow of the part of the Gulf Stream which circulates warm water from the tropical Atlantic up the west coast of Europe has shrunk by approximately one third. The reasons are unknown but the consequences are dire indeed. This warm current has been responsible for the mild climates of Europe as compared to the relatively harsher weather experienced across the Atlantic in the United States and Canada. Without it, Western Europe would be in the deep freezer and probably half-coated with glaciers by now.

The biggest debate right now in climate science: is this, and the unusually hectic record of hurricane activity in the Atlantic region, consequences of global warming? For the first time in recorded history, the weather people have exhausted their stock supply of English hurricane names and are now making headway into the Greek alphabet with Hurrican Epsilon. What is our world trying to tell us? The problem with complex phenomena such as weather is that small changes do not necessarily cause the system to react in a predictable manner. By the time the average global temperature rises to the point where unambiguous signs of climate change manifest themselves, it may be well too late to do anything about it.