washing dishes: a father’s glimpses

Lunarly biased

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This sounds like confirmation bias:

And after I looked at that science, I started thinking about what else the moon has done, what else the moon has meant to us, and I kind of came to think that the moon is responsible for every giant leap that we have made as a species.

Rebecca Boyle interviewed by Clara Moskowitz, January 8, 2024. https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/without-the-moon-human-society-might-not-exist/

Curiously, I just grabbed an elementary age book on Earth and dirt today at the library. I flipped through the first 5-10 pages that alluded to the Big Bang and a graphic of a cross-section of Earth. And I read with a reluctance as I wondered about how exactly do scientists know what the molten rock at the center of the Earth is. I have had such utter confusion cycle through me like phases of lunar bewilderment. How do we even describe it — like, what is liquid rock? Is this just some scientist pairing up with a linguist to figure out how to convey the abstract? Or did the scientist solicit a poet for help?

So, this interview between Boyle and Moskowitz raises false dichotomies between science and religion, these sameness/differences between Earth and moon. The false divisions that humans create as a way to simultaneously understand something and also ostracize something. I’ve not dwelled in philosophy much but I’m again fixating on these existential matters.

Then to read that *month* derives from moon. And calendar comes from calends. (Not that I understand what the calends is. Not yet.) Then, there’s the teaser about a Portuguese word or phrase and a Welsh word or phrase that more aptly conveys the nostalgia of looking back at Earth. Of course, other languages have words that more acutely describe or more fully encompass. Makes me curious if the phrases are a nostalgia for home, or return to Earth, or being denied what is cherished.

Epilogue: I’ve put a request in for the book seemingly published [checks notes] today. I’ll see how high or low on the hold list I am.