“Mozel Tough”

So we’re talking about implausible conspiracies in class. The Jewish space laser is a pretty good recent example. I ran across this hilarious add from the shop of the National Museum of Jewish American History the other day on Facebook. The ad copy reads, “Designed by Lazar Wolf and launched in 5780 from a secret base behind a Lower East Side deli, the Jewish Space Laser conducts orbital missions to smite anti-Semitic tropes and sabotage conspiracy theorists.
Now, you can carry a tchotchke-sized scale model of this very real and not at all fake satellite weapon which definitely exists.
50% of profits from this product will be donated to organizations working to defeat QAnon supporters. Your purchase also supports the Museum and its mission.”

Currently on back order. But they also have patches and tee shirts.

The 10,000 year clock

the heart of the monastery in Anathem

Jacobs mentions the Long Now Foundation in Breaking Bread with the Dead. I’m most interested in them for their timekeeping project: building a mechanical clock that will run for 10,000 years. I’ve seen their Prototype 1 clock at the British Science Museum, and even that “rough draft” is a remarkable feat of engineering. The 10,000 year clock also gave Neal Stephenson the inspiration for the monastery in his book Anathem. There, the monks live in different walled-off sections of an enormous compound. A giant clock at the heart of the compound opens gates between those sections and the outside world periodically. Some monks can come and go every year. Other monks see their gates open only once a decade. Yet others live in a section with gates that open once per century, and some live in a section whose gates open only once every thousand years!