91: The potato radius
Welcome to Border Crossing issue #91…
Hello, I hope you’re well.
Thanks so much for reading this and continuing to support my writing.
I’m getting loads down on the page at the moment — by far my highest daily word counts that I can remember — ploughing through both the non-fiction books (and the book proposals for them) that, prior to this autumn, gestated for far too long. There’s a way to go yet, but honestly, this progress feels viscerally rewarding. And no sign yet of running out of steam, so I’m bloody thrilled and (very rare for me) actually enjoying the process.
More soon, of course. Don’t want to jinx it by saying too much.
Jim Bob’s major new annotated lyric collection Where Songs Come From is out on Thursday 31st October and you can pre-order it now via the Carter USM store, or from Rough Trade, Cherry Red, or your usual indie book shop. It’s a beautiful, very large, clothbound hardback, full of images, as well as all Jim’s songs and a pile of detailed exploration of his songwriting life. In November, I’ll be on Jim’s UK book tour as driver and occasional pianist, so if you’re coming to one of those author events, please say hello.
gems
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Now we’re in October, it’s a perfect time to order your white poppies for Remembrance. Here’s the Peace Pledge Union website, you can order online there, and also learn about the long history of the white poppy as a traditional symbol of peaceful remembrance.
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My favourite art historian, Curator of the Royal Pavilion, Alexandra Loske has a new book out, The Artist’s Palette. Loske finds a vivid new way to draw us in to explore great, historic fine art, via the palettes of the artists, as they created the works. She teaches us how colour pigments and texture work, how fashion shifted over time, and what kind of decisions artist’s were making, without ever making us feel like we’re being ‘taught’.
3
Chris Ferrie writes on his Medium blog, on the mystery explosion in the 1980s of people named ‘Christopher’. Thanks a lot Rob Fleay for this tip-off.
4
Last week, I listened to a recent Scriptnotes podcast episode discussing Brad Pitt’s 2011 sports film Moneyball. Hosts John and Craig were joined by the author / showrunner Taffy Brodesser-Akner (who wrote the novel and then led the television adaptation of Fleishman Is In Trouble). It’s a great episode. Inevitably as a result, we re-watched Moneyball (which was added to Netflix not so long ago). The film holds up well, I think.
5
Continuing to follow the same tenuous thread, I’m also now hugely enjoying Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s second novel Long Island Compromise. The link is to Hive but I’m listening to the audiobook, which is an ideal walking read.
6
Democracy Now’s coverage of But We Must Speak - On Palestine and the Mandates of Conscience live event organised in NYC by Palestine Festival of Literature. Contributors include Michelle Alexander, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Rashid Khalidi and Yasmin El-Rifae.
7
Last Border Crossing I mentioned John Grindrod, author and inspiring tutor on the Arvon non-fiction course I took. Now John has launched a new advice newsletter series about non-fiction writing, via his Substack, called ‘Couch To 100k’.
8
This BBC film Bombing Brighton: The Plot To Kill Thatcher (about the IRA Brighton bombing of the Grand Hotel in 1984 — it’s a BBC iPlayer link) is fascinating. It tells the story well, with some effort towards (albeit not broad enough) context. Then, unexpectedly, towards the end it unfolds into a deeply thoughtful meditation on reconciliation. If you’re in Brighton, it’s also worth a watch for mid-eighties footage of the town.
potato gem
Here’s Percy, the mascot of Queens University Belfast’s University Challenge team. Apparently they’ll be knitting further costumery as they proceed in the competition, which they presumably will, since they slammed down 240 points in the first round.
Also, this week I learned about a neat thing, watching Brian Cox’s Solar System documentary series: the ‘potato radius’. This is the measure of the approximate size of a body in space, at which the force of the object’s own gravity overpowers the density of the material it is made of, so that instead of being a random rock shape, early in its lifetime, it devolves to a sphere shape. Therefore, anything bigger than roughly 200km — 300km in radius will almost certainly be a globe — like most of the planets and moons we know — while anything smaller will remain whatever random rock shape it is.
There are exceptions, when other forces come into play: the programme highlights the lovely egg-shaped minor planet Haumea, which orbits far out beyond Neptune and, at over 1,000km in radius, is well bigger than the ‘potato radius’. Haumea spins so quickly on its axis, centrifugal force overpowers even gravity, resulting in an egg-shaped world. It even has a couple of moons of its own, and a faint ring around it, all emphasising that centrifugal power of the quick spin.
It’s not mentioned in Cox’s telly series but we have begun to discover other egg-shaped worlds — created via entirely different processes — outside our own solar system. For example, the fascinating gigantic, pitch-black exoplanet Wasp 12b, orbiting the star Wasp 12. This planet is huge by our standards — a very dark, hot, low density gas giant, much bigger than Jupiter (by far the largest planet in our own solar system) and it is very close to its star — orbiting extremely quickly. A year on Wasp 12b lasts just over one Earth day. Also, thanks to being tidally locked, the same face of the planet always faces the star (similar to how the same face of the Moon is always faced towards Earth). So there’s no ‘day’ or ‘night’ on Wasp 12b, just one half of the planet in permanent night-time, the other side in permanent day. Moreover, on the daytime side, its parent star literally feeds off its atmosphere: gravity sucks billions of tons of atmospheric matter, up and away from the planet, the entire time. The winds down there must be incredible. Within ten million years or so (a very short period if you’re thinking astronomically) the planet will literally be eaten all up. Wasp 12b is a possible ‘diamond planet’ too, which may (as Jupiter also may) have a core that is a vast, extremely compressed lump of carbon, i.e. a gigantic diamond.
Sorry, nothing to do with potatoes. I love that it’s called the ‘potato radius’ though.
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get in touch
email: chris@christt.com
Instagram: @cjthorpetracey
always there
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Look after yourself and your people.
All my love,
Christopher
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