The Magic of Dust

“Alternately, I asked, have researchers considered the possibility that the dust might have come from under my bed? Recently, my wool Schlitz hat fell down there. When I retrieved it, the hat had grown a full, gray rabbinical beard. ‘That doesn’t have anything to do with it,’ Dr. Mahowald said, without even pausing to consider my hypothesis. Her study didn’t measure dust from human sources, like our burping tailpipes and pilling sweaters, she explained. Dust is such a vague term. ‘I’m being very particular here: soil particles suspended in the atmosphere.’”
 — But Michael Tortorello is interested in the wider phenomenon. And his enjoyably florid story in the Home section of today’s

Times goes from clocking the speed at which a dust mote just 100 microns in diameter falls through the air (about a foot per second) to interviewing a bunch of hyper-fastidious neat freaks about how they keep their apartments clean. It’s all great fun. Here are some more songs about dust.