Friday, August 29, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
orwell diary ---august 28, 1938
Night before last an hour’s rain. Yesterday hot & overcast. Today ditto, with a few drops of rain in the afternoon. The hop-picking due to start in about a week.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
particle collider
They have just finished building a huge particle collider near France that is the largest (I believe, ever made) it is feared by some scientists that there is a chance it will create black holes in space time when it is used. It is being used to test for a theoretical partical called the The Higgs boson.
Much of this is beyond the brain of alex but I like the fact that they are trying to figure out how and why mass exists if most off the particles that make up mass are themselves without mass. I find this of interest.
birth of liquid flight.
almost done with this piece, will finish today. I have to unify the background. I am going to carve this piece in glass soon.
orwell diary--august 26, 1938
birch wall
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
orwell diary--august 25, 1938
Everything in Suffolk is much more dried-up than in Kent. Until the day we arrived there had been no rain for many weeks & various crops had failed. Near S’wold saw several fields of oats & barley being harvested which had grown only 1’ or 18” high. Ears nevertheless seemed normal. Wheat crop all over the world said to be heavy.
A bedstraw hawk-moth found in our back garden & mounted by Dr Collings¹. Evidently a straggler from the continent. Said to be the first seen in that locality for 50 years.
Little owl very common round here. Brown owl does not seem to exist.
Dr C. says the snake I caught was the “smooth snake”, non-poisonous & not very common.
Today hot again.
Gipsies beginning to arrive for the hop-picking. As soon as they have pitched their caravans the chickens are let loose & apparently can be depended on not to stray. The strips of tin for cloth-pegs are cut of biscuit boxes. Three people were on the job, one shaping the sticks, one cutting out the tin & another nailing it on. I should say one person doing all these jobs (also splitting the pegs after nailing) could make 10-15 pegs an hour.
Another white owl this evening.
