I'd Rather Think About Sound

I'm reaching one of those points of anger and aghastness I've sometimes come to in the past. This time it's over Republicans cynically fomenting genocide in Springfield, Ohio, as a campaign strategy. 

One thing I think we all can do is call our most likely U.S. Senator and urge them to move to censure J.D. Vance for his activities. In my case, I thought that was Tina Smith, since Amy Klobuchar is likely to think it's too overtly political for her to do it. (This while House Republicans are currently planning to haul Tim Walz before a committee to talk about taking students to China when he was a teacher.)

Anyway, instead of more on that, a palate cleanser of a sort.

Jason Kottke today shared one of his 10-year-old posts about the world's loudest sound: the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. The post is full of astounding details about the power of sound to melt concrete, stop breath, create fog, tear apart houses, kill people... and, of course, the more mundane things like shatter glass and break eardrums. 

It told me how loud a Saturn V rocket was, and generally reminded me that the decibel system works on a logarithmic scale, which I knew, but it becomes very obvious when reading Kottke's post.