Wasteland Wrap-up #45

Close encounters of the crow kind, One Battle After Another, an interesting game of deduction...

Things are picking up, here, and I’m starting to have people I know from the US who are in town on other business, and that is fun. Yesterday I got to hang out quite a bit with Jeffrey Lewis and Ankit Panda, and that was really nice.

Jeffrey and I walked around Montmartre and other parts of city, and spent some time critiquing the various graves and tombs — some beautiful, some absolutely tacky — in the Montmartre Cemetery. I think the lesson I have taken away from them is a) less is more, b) don’t put a photo on a grave, c) if you put a photo on a grave, choose a good one, d) the only non-19th century aesthetic that really works is a 1930s one, and e) the idea of spending a lot of money on a monument that will be forgotten in a few decades and left to decay is, well, a questionable use of resources, I guess. One of the few “modern” looking ones that seemed to work well, I thought, was this sculpture on the grave of artist/sculpture Victor Brauner (1903-1966) and his wife, Jacqueline (1910-1985):

I don’t know what it means, but it is interesting and not gaudy.

I had lunch with a European colleague last week, and he remarked that Paris was not very natural/green looking compared to some cities, and I thought, I guess it depends on your point of reference. Compared to NYC and urban North New Jersey, it is pretty green looking. When I walking through Montmartre, just after a rain, I was struck by how green it in fact was:

I get, of course, that there is a distinction to be made between “natural” greenery and “cultivated” greenery (which this definitely is), but the number of trees here is wonderfully excessive.

In other “wildlife” encounters: at the Jardin du Luxembourg, Lyndon had a stare-down with a gigantic crow. Lyndon “won,” in the sense that the crow took off first.

Earlier last week I had a meeting at a cafe near Place de Trocadero, and wow, the views from there are something else:

And keep in mind this is how it looked on my not-that-great phone camera — in person it is sublime.

We saw our first honest-to-god French protest last week, too, when a pro-labor (and some pro-Palestine) protest marched down the boulevard near us. It was pretty impressive — maybe a mile or so of people. But also very orderly. After the protesters had finished, the city street sweepers followed up behind them and cleaned up any refuse. “Same for me as for the bosses,” was one chant.

Oh, and my next book received a starred review in the Library Journal, as one of its “Great Reads” for October:

This must-read book takes readers on a journey through the use of atomic weapons as it relates to the geopolitical landscape and how the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing shaped current views on atomic weapons and deterrence.

So don’t take it from me — “must-read book”! Out in December!

Lyndon waits patiently while we peruse the offerings at The Red Wheelbarrow, one of the English language bookstores.

Lastly, I’ve written up almost all of a blog post for Restricted Data on Manhattan Project fissile material supplies (enriched uranium and separated plutonium), but got hung up at the last minute with finalizing some of the data. But I should have it up early next week, for those who are interested.