Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts (3125)

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Aquarius at Noonday

An essay I posted yesterday: Aquarius at Noonday. An observation born of my experience as a physics & math teacher; as previously a process, device, manufacturing and product engineer. I consider myself -- a man of a 'certain age' -- one of Sputnik's Children. My fear is this generation's Sputnik moment may be [to use a track metaphor] after the gun, 40 meters to the rear of the rest of the globe, just getting out of the blocks.

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Black Hole Cygnus X-1

Black Hole Cygnus X-1 is a double-star system (really, the majority of black holes are found as such systems, literally one collapsed star cannibalizing the other). I have a link to Space.com and a video embed from You Tube at the link above.

 

The term "black hole" was coined by John A. Wheeler, while a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Read more on Dr. Wheeler in this NY Times article on his epitaph.

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Free Within Ourselves...


One of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once, "I want to be a poet--not a Negro poet," meaning, I believe, "I want to write like a white poet"; meaning subconsciously, "I would like to be a white poet"; meaning behind that, "I would like to be white." And I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself. And I doubted then that, with his desire to run away spiritually from his race, this boy would ever be a great poet. But this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America--this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.

[Last sentence]: We build our temples for tomorrow, as strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, 'free within ourselves.'

More at: The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, Langston Hughes
1926, The Nation, Courtesy of University of Illinois English Department

Tommie Smith, John Carlos, '68 Olympic Games
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