Scenes from a Marriage (TV 2021)

Rotten Tomatoes

Scenes from a Marriage (TV 2021): Intimate look at a troubled marriage. Series lays the kindling, ignites, blazes, finally settles into a steady burn. Couple talk at each other endlessly but seldom connect. Intense acting by Chastain and Isaac. Worthy homage to Ingmar Bergman. A-

"How Terribly Strange to be Seventy"

"Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be seventy."

I wasn't yet twenty when Simon and Garfunkel released the album "Bookends" and I first heard those lyrics from "Old Friends" that would haunt me all my life. Fifty years on, I don't find it terribly strange to be seventy. What I find terribly strange is to reflect on the fact that there are no songs about what it feels like to be 120. The milestones in my life are piling up behind me. The road ahead is becoming less congested. The horizon is ever closer. Melancholy fills me. That is what I find to be terribly strange.

POTD: Fresh Air Butcher

From 2019 11 21 Kom Ombo and Edfu

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Edfu, Egypt. It shows a fresh air butcher in a street market.

Bonus photos after the jump.

POTD: Temple of Horus

From 2019 11 21 Kom Ombo and Edfu

Today's photo-of-the-day is from the Temple of Horus in Edfu, Egypt. It's a relatively modern shrine, if you can call 2,000 years old modern. it was built in the Ptolemaic Kingdom between 237 and 57 BC. Greek pharaohs. Greek architecture. Those columns would look at home in ancient Athens (or on a federal building in Washington, DC). It is one of the best preserved shrines in Egypt.

TIL: America is on Track for "Fusion Never"

Source: New Yorker.

Since I was a young boy in the 1950s, I remember hearing the lure of electricity generated by nuclear power. "Too cheap to meter" was the promise. Fission nuclear reactors never delivered on that promise and turned out to have such serious shortcomings — think Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima — that fewer fission power plants are being built today than are being retired.

Fusion power promised to solve all those problems. No meltdowns, no leftover radioactive waste, no need to mine or handle uranium or plutonium. Fusion power always seemed to be right around the corner. Today I learned, it's still right around the corner, but we're not even trying to get there anymore. At least not seriously.