carry on chili peppers

dark they were and golden-eyed

Our faithful antiquarian, JF Ptak’s Science Books, finds some lush, poetic language in the debate that spanned from the time when astronomer Percival Lowell’s assistant Carl O Lampland described the exacting photographs taken of the surface of Mars by Eugene Michel Antoniadi.

Lampland came by this poetic license by way of an Italian false-friend (falso amico) but the mistranslation sparked a vigorous back and forth about Martians and design that lasted from 1886 to 1909, when the photographer accounts for the optical illusions in the channels that captivated the public and attempts to finally dispel the persistent illusion. There’s an excerpt below in translation but be sure to visit the source up top for more verses and more finds from old books and journals.

Our observations lead us to divide the channels into several categories, namely: In diffuse shadows, more or less irregular, some of which appear double in a fleeting way; In gnarled blobs; In gray masses, shapeless and disjointed; In irregular, thin blurring, in the construction of a hedge of Martian seas, and widen into a vast and confused shadow further on, like new with their tributaries, seen at a great distance.

lending library

The Washington Post gives a kind and circumspect obituary for Todd Herbert Bol (*1956 - † 2018) who passed away over the weekend, succumbing to the cancer that took the life of his mother nearly a decade prior and inspired him to create his global, public bookshelf initiative as a tribute to her memory and generosity.
The first Little Free Library was posted outside his home and Bol’s network eventually would surpass the number of libraries built nation-wide in America by tycoon and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie—but that’s not even counting those affiliate champions who found much appeal in this simple concept and a little craft. There’s one in my neighbourhood that’s expanded to baby clothes and shoes as well as children’s books at the foot of a large apartment block, and this repurposed telephone booth that we encountered at a campsite in Switzerland.  The quick but enduring and endearing spread of Bol’s idea means his legacy will go on for a long, long time.  Give your local bookshelf a friendly acknowledgement and donate a good read.

planetary terrestrial analogues library

The European Space Agency has collaborated with numerous museums and university geological departments to curate a collection of rocks and minerals, BLDG Blog reports, as a heuristic tool for future exploration, reasoning out properties of extra terrestrial surfaces and strata by relating it to more mundane and familiar correspondents.
Jarosite, for example, is a rare volcanic rock that is testament to the presence of water on Earth and was found on Mars early on before any evidence of water had been discovered. The growing catalogue of space-prospectors consists of around forty-five hundred known Earth minerals, complimented with three hundred isolated from meteorites, one hundred thirty from the Moon and about eighty Martian samples.