Green Chemist: A Q&A with Departing EPA Science Advisor Paul Anastas: Scientific American

Green Chemist: A Q&A with Departing EPA Science Advisor Paul Anastas

Anastas is leaving the EPA to return to academia but still maintains that green chemistry "can meet environmental and economic goals simultaneously"

By Jane Kay and Environmental Health News | January 18

Editor's Note: Paul Anastas, the father of green chemistry, is leaving his high-ranking post at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency next month and returning to Yale University. During an interview with Jane Kay of Environmental Health News, Anastas, who will remain at his post for another month or so, said there has been a "growing realization across EPA" that green chemistry "can meet environmental and economic goals simultaneously." During his two years as science advisor and assistant administrator at EPA's Office of Research and Development, Anastas played a key role in many important decisions and issues, including the use of dispersants during the Gulf oil spill and the agency's long-awaited analysis of dioxin.—Marla Cone, Editor in Chief

Animated Adaptation of The Giving Tree Narrated by Shel Silverstein to Celebrate a New Posthumous Book | Brain Pickings

A spider lives inside my head
Who weaves a strange and wondrous web
Of silken threads and silver strings
To catch all sorts of flying things,
Like crumbs of thought and bits of smiles
And specks of dried-up tears,
And dust of dreams that catch and cling
For years and years and years . . .

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Green

The Solar System Set to Music: A Near-Perpetual Homage to Bach | Brain Pickings

Fugasmic!

"...a remarkably dimensional musical composition created by assigning each planet in the Solar System a particular note along the natural harmonic series, starting with Mercury’s B and going all the way up by two octaves and a ninth to Pluto’s C#. The composition is a palindrome, which means it can be played the same way in either direction, and, with more than 62 vigintillion individual notes, it’s the longest palindrome in existence — by far. At the accelerated tempos of the Solar System, it would continue without repetition for over 532.25 septendecillion years — a sort of soundtrack for near-infinity.

An homage to Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Art of the Fugue, embedded in the piece is the iconic composer’s “musical signature” — the arrangement of the stereo imaging reflects the precise position of the Solar System at the moment of Bach’s birth, viewed from the perspective of the Sun as it faces the constellation Libra, “so that each note chronicles his birthday on every planet.”