MYSTERY BABYLON

Peter Tosh: Mystery Babylon (Link)

Note:  I’ve often thought that this is my favorite among all of Peter Tosh’s songs and recordings. But there are so many fine ones.

As for Mystery Babylon, the subject becomes more and more confusing.  Just yesterday . . . .

"Don't come in," he murmured wanly,

   Gloria and Dick came in at five and called his name. There was no answer—they went into the living room and found a chair with its back smashed lying in the doorway, and they noticed that all about the room there was a sort of disorder—the rugs had slid, the pictures and bric-à-brac were upset upon the centre table. The air was sickly sweet with cheap perfume.

    
   They found Anthony sitting in a patch of sunshine on the floor of his bedroom. Before him, open, were spread his three big stamp-books, and when they entered he was running his hands through a great pile of stamps that he had dumped from the back of one of them. Looking up and seeing Dick and Gloria he put his head critically on one side and motioned them back.

  "Anthony!" cried Gloria tensely, "we've won! They reversed the decision!"



  "Don't come in," he murmured wanly, "you'll muss them. I'm sorting, and I know know you'll step in them. Everything always gets mussed."



   "What are you doing?" demanded Dick in astonishment. "Going back to childhood? Don't you realize you've won the suit? They've reversed the decision of the lower courts. You're worth thirty millions!"


   Anthony only looked at him reproachfully.

   "Shut the door when you go out." He spoke like a pert child.



   With a faint horror dawning in her eyes, Gloria gazed at him—



   "Anthony!" she cried, "what is it? What's the matter? Why didn't you come—why, what is it?"



   "See here," said Anthony softly, "you two get out—now, both of you. Or else I'll tell my grandfather."



   He held up a handful of stamps and let them come drifting down about him like leaves, varicolored and bright, turning and fluttering gaudily upon the sunny air: stamps of England and Ecuador, Venezuela and Spain—Italy….



 

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922.

Keynsham: Bonzo Dog Band (Link)

Something In Between

To say that things happen in time means in part that they happen in a certain order.  To say that things are located in space implies that they have a certain position vis-à-vis each other.

The following statements all refer to temporal and spatial relations:

(          (1) The abdication occurred between the two world wars.

            (2) The Napoleonic wars were followed by a period of relative calm.

(          (3) Belgium is east of England and north of France. 

            (4) The table stands between the chair and the window.

With respect to time, some of the basic relations are simultaneous, before,  and between.   Whether this list is essentially complete, or perhaps redundant in some respects, are questions that we shall not try to answer at this point.  (The answers may seem obvious to the reader now, but that impression may change as we follow the history of the problem.)  At least, a theory of time must give an account of these relations and thus explicate such common assertions as (1) and (2).

     With respect to space, it is not easy to make even a plausible preliminary list of basic relations.  It is hard to believe that such relations as north of and east of – though they are clearly spatial relations – can be in any way basic to the subject.  For these relations concern entities on the earth primarily; we may say that Polaris is north of any point on earth, because a sighting of Polaris indicates the northerly direction.  But this seems already to some extent an analogical extension of the term “north,” and it would certainly not make obvious sense to ask whether Polaris is north of the sun or the star Alpha Centauri.  Moreover, is Asia Minor east or west of North America?  The relation between of example (4),  however, is not subject to these restrictions and ambiguities.  Thus, a theory of space must at least give an account of the spatial betweenness  relation.

Now, relations give rise to order.

Text:  Bas C. van Fraassen, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Time and Space, New York,  Random House, 1970, pp. 3-4.

Illustrations: (1)  Sara Rubinow, They All Agreed Something Was Missing, 2010; (2) Dolphin pod (unknown photographer); (3) Daniel Maclise, Lawn Before The Duke’s Palace, Orlando About to Engage with Charles the Wrestler (scene from As You Like It), oil on canvas, 1854; (4)  Framed passport photo of F. Scott Fitzgerald inscribed to his Princeton roommate, J. Biggs, "Yours in ironic humor, F. Scott Fitzgerald" and counter-inscribed "Recieved (sic) as given in gentle humor, J. Biggs"; this photograph later served as frontispiece illustration for Fitzgerald's "This Side Of Paradise"; (5) Albrecht Dürer, St. Jerome In His Study, engraving, 1514.

Music Link:  Kevin Ayers -- Something In Between (from Still Life With Guitar) 

Diamond Bigger Than The Ritz

 Astronomers Discover Planet Made Of Diamond

"The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon — i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun.” -- Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne

By Ben Hirschler

LONDON | Thu Aug 25, 2011 2:26pm EDT

 

(Reuters) - Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.

        The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.

        "The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon -- i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun," said Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

         Lying 4,000 light years away, or around an eighth of the way toward the center of the Milky Way from the Earth, the planet is probably the remnant of a once-massive star that has lost its outer layers to the so-called pulsar star it orbits.

      Pulsars are tiny, dead neutron stars that are only around 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) in diameter and spin hundreds of times a second, emitting beams of radiation.

        In the case of pulsar J1719-1438, the beams regularly sweep the Earth and have been monitored by telescopes in Australia, Britain and Hawaii, allowing astronomers to detect modulations due to the gravitational pull of its unseen companion planet.

       The measurements suggest the planet, which orbits its star every two hours and 10 minutes, has slightly more mass than Jupiter but is 20 times as dense, Bailes and colleagues reported in the journal Science on Thursday.

        In addition to carbon, the new planet is also likely to contain oxygen, which may be more prevalent at the surface and is probably increasingly rare toward the carbon-rich center.

        Its high density suggests the lighter elements of hydrogen and helium, which are the main constituents of gas giants like Jupiter, are not present.

       Just what this weird diamond world is actually like close up, however, is a mystery.

        "In terms of what it would look like, I don't know I could even speculate," said Ben Stappers of the University of Manchester. "I don't imagine that a picture of a very shiny object is what we're looking at here."


(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Sophie Hares)