Tower of Power

I’ve posted before about being tall.

I am 6′ 7″, and it’s been a blessing and a curse.

I’ve found some comfort lately in a book called The Tall Book, by Arianne Cohen, who is 6′ 3″.

The Tall Book by Arianne Cohen is a celebration of life from on high. Published by Bloomsbury USA.

This book is written for adults, but tall people of all ages can be glad it’s on the library shelf waiting for them when they need help in unlocking the mysteries at the center of talldom. It’s helped a lot of people already.

“As a twelve-year-old told to act my age and not my shoe size, I could honestly say, ‘They’re the same.’ This is a book for everyone, like me, who grew up (and up) to be proud of their height,” says 6′ 4″ Olympic gold medal basketball player Rebecca Lobo. I’m glad I found it!

1001 reasons to smile

If I thought about it really hard, I could probably come up with the names of twenty children’s books I consider to be immortal classics. Never in a million years could my feeble brain think of one hundred. Author Julia Eccleshare describes an incredible 1001 of them in her new book, 1001 Children’s Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up.

1001 Children’s Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up is the best guide to classic and contemporary children’s literature today. Organized by age group in nine hundred and sixty pages of glorious full-color illustrations, each title is reviewed by a top-notch author (Judy Blume, for one!) with mentions of related books readers might like. Included are many foreign contributions to children’s literature, such as France’s La Vache Orange (The Orange Cow) and Sweden’s Visst kan Lotta Cykla (Lotta’s Bike).

This heavy hardcover is much more than just a reference guide. It will take you on a journey of discovery into fantasy, adventure, history, and much more, introducing you to, or reminding you about, books that enable you to travel to some of the most famous worlds imagined, such as Narnia, Middle Earth, and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. You may fall down a rabbit hole, as Alice does to reach Wonderland, get swept up in a cyclone to Oz, or crawl through the back of a wardrobe to experience the snowy wastes of Narnia.

Above all, this book is fun, fun, fun. Every one of its nine hundred and sixty pages brings a smile to my face.

A really close-up pic

This is a computer-generated image of how we’re used to seeing a molecule represented, with balls and sticks showing the placement of its atoms. It looks familiar, doesn’t it?

(c) IBM Research/dailymail.co.uk

Now, scientists from IBM have used an atomic force microscope to capture an image of the actual chemical bonds within a molecule. The researchers focused their lens on a single molecule of pentacene, a common hydrocarbon. The molecule is made up of 22 carbon atoms and 14 hydrogen atoms.

“This is the first time that all the atoms in a molecule have been imaged,” bragged lead researcher Leo Gross.

So, what does a molecule of pentacene actually look like? This!

The inner structure of a pentacene molecule, as imaged with an atomic force microscope. (c) IBM Research/dailymail.co.uk.

The hexagonal shapes of the five carbon rings are clear, and even the positions of the hydrogen atoms around the carbon rings can be seen. Incredible!

Here are the scientific heros behind the project, proudly displaying their atomic force microscope. Amazing job, guys!

IBM researchers Nikolaj Moll, Reto Schlittler, Gerhard Meyer, Fabian Mohn, Leo Gross, and their atomic force microscope. Photo by Michael Lowry. Image: IBM Research—Zurich.

The Swing swings!

(c) Jay Ward Productions

Lawry from New Haven, CT writes:

Dear T,

I am a professor of Poetry at a prestigious university, and I am disappointed that you have turned to Bullwinkle the Moose to elucidate what you rightly describe as “the Music of the Soul.”

In my view, Bullwinkle the Moose has little to no understanding of the finer points of poetic expression. May I direct you to Robert Louis Stevenson, whose verse entitled The Swing is everything a poem should be and more. I hope you enjoy it.

The Swing

by Robert Louis Stevenson

How do you like to go up in a swing,

Up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing

Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,

Till I can see so wide,

River and trees and cattle and all

Over the countryside—

Till I look down on the garden green,

Down on the roof so brown—

Up in the air I go flying again,

Up in the air and down!

T replies:

Welcome, Lawry! I yield to no one in my admiration for Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer Robert Louis Stevenson, author of the adventure novel Treasure Island, among other classic works. But I also admire Bullwinkle the Moose. You are obviously not aware of the fact that Bullwinkle received an Honorary Mooster’s Degree from his alma mater, Wossamatta U. Or that he recited Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Swing in the very first episode of The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends. You should check it out sometime. It’s on hulu.com.

Bullwinkle going up in a swing, up in the air so ... orange? (c) Jay Ward Productions

Dear dictionary…

Karly from Bronxville, NY writes:

Dear T,

I’ll be a sophomore at college next year, and I can’t believe how many things I still haven’t figured out yet. I was on the town with a friend last night and we wondered why some streets are called Streets while others are called Lanes or Avenues or Boulevards. I’m sorry to say that neither of us knew the reason, even though we’re both Honors students!

As soon as I got home, I turned to the dictionary. Here’s what I learned:

A Street is a public road in a town or city, especially one that is paved, with sidewalks and buildings along one or both sides.

A Lane is a narrow country road or city street.

An Avenue is a street running at right angles to others called Streets.

A Boulevard is a broad street often lined with trees.

So, a Lane can be a street, and a Boulevard can be a street, but a Lane can never be a Boulevard! Don’t you love the dictionary?

T replies:

Hi, Karly. Thanks for taking the trouble to clear all that up. I’ve asked myself those same questions, but I’ve never bothered to look up the definitions. I do love the dictionary. The only problem with it is that in order to look up a word to see how it’s spelled, you’ve got to know how it’s spelled! By the way, I currently live on an Avenue, and I grew up on a Street and a Boulevard, but I haven’t yet lived on a Lane.