Motus Mentis

As I had hoped, things have finally settled down, and the lovely Nina and I have withdrawn to the Outer Cape for a brief but restorative interval of dietary indiscretion (on my own part at least), healthful physical activity, and diminished reponsibility.

As always, there is much of interest going on in the world beyond Wellfleet’s shores, but with the mind deliberately unfocused for the next day or two I am likely to offer little more than froth and marginalia. For example:

Here are two striking photos that came my way in an email link this morning; having nothing weightier to offer, I thought I’d share them with you. They show a dramatic condensation effect, known as a ‘Prandtl-Glauert singularity’, that occurs when an object breaks the sound barrier (it is also known as a “shock collar”).

Here’s an F-22 Raptor going supersonic:

…and here’s an F-18 Hornet:

Well worth our tax dollars, I think.

Meanwhile, while poking around at Norman Geras’s outstanding blog I ran across links to two websites dedicated to some orthographic “pet peeves” of mine (and perhaps, Dear Reader, yours as well): the abuse, respectively, of quotation marks and apostrophes.

Finally, I feel the need to comment on at least one recent geopolitical event: the recent coup in Honduras. Despite the fact that the military action was taken in order to restore the rule of law — in response to a blatant act of defiance, by that nation’s president, of the Honduran Supreme Court over an illegal referendum intended to remove term limits and ease the path to dictatorship — our government has seen fit to make common cause with Hugo ChÁ¡vez and Fidel Castro in denouncing it. To some of us this seems, to put it mildly, very wrong indeed.