'when the light left them' (dark matter)

some interesting footage has emerged of vashti bunyan recording from the 60ies. you can see her singing but you can't hear her. it's kind of like that art project from a few years ago where the guy produced a film of all the motion by the players of the french football team off the ball (a football match where you only very seldom get to see the ball, one that resembles your actual experience of the game). normally the work that goes into making a recording is hidden (because it is in fact fatally dull and antithetical to the kind of seamless pleasure you would wish the listener to have).  

horsemouth had the title to this blogpost first. it was from an interview with an astrophysicist. she was saying we can only see these galaxies as they were  'when the light left them' we can't see them as they are now. and there is a second reason for this. between us and them is dark matter (better named transparent matter) that like a pane of glass or a glass of water refracts the light. what we see out in space is seen through gravitational lenses.

we see vashti as she was when she was recording back in the 60ies. we see the spaces and the cups of tea.

for the universe to behave as it does (given the laws we think it obeys) there must be a certain amount of dark matter in it. the astrophysicist had been estimating the amount of visible matter in the universe and thus the amount of invisible 'dark' matter using statistical analysis methods.  there is also the 'dark energy' that is causing the universe to fly apart (but that's a story for another day). 

at the end of the large great project (and with her daughter going off to school) the physicist decided to change direction getting into estimating the effects of climate change mitigation strategies (again by means of statistical analysis). she estimated that (after fossil fuels) the next biggest contributor to global carbon (dioxide) is the food industry and that it's emission could be reduced by a half (or was it a quarter) if we went vegan (the further advantage was that humanity would be able to produce enough food to feed itself on a quarter of the land it currently uses, thus allowing for significant re-wilding).

now horsemouth is a lazy vegetarian. as you know he will gladly eat cheese and eggs if they are offered) but he's been moving back in the direction of less dairy for a while. he suspects that stinky (and suspiciously soft) foreign cheeses are going to get more expensive after brexit. eggs he never buys. yoghurt he could probably eat less of, he's been experimenting with museli in water for a while. 

he hasn't eaten meat (baring a mistake in portugal in the 90ies) since 1984 (or thereabouts) and similarly for fish (baring a few minor lapses),

here it is a misty morning and horsemouth doesn't have to work.