January 2010
62 posts
I heard what was said of the universe, Heard it and heard it of several thousand years; It is middling well as far as it goes - but is that all?
—Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself.”
‘I can’t refute you, Socrates,” Agathon said, “so I dare say you’re right.”
“No,” said Socrates, “it’s the truth you can’t refute, my dear Agathon. Socrates is a pushover.”
—Plato, Symposium.
…in 2000 two Burmese pythons were captured in the Everglades National Park; in 2008 the number hit 343. Biologists believe that tens of thousands now live in the park. other constrictors have begun appearing above the Everglades: boa constrictors south of Miami and African pythons west of the city…Relocated pythons have demonstrated a homing ability, returning up to 48 miles the place...
Funk upon a time In the days of the Funkapus
The concept of specially-designed Afronauts
Capable of funkatizing galaxies
Was first laid on man-child
But was later repossessed
And placed among the secrets of the pyramids
Until a more positive attitude
Towards this most sacred phenomenon, Clone Funk,
Could be acquired
(we want the funk, give up the funk)
There in these terrestrial...
He that gathereth in summer is a wise son…
—Proverbs.
Better a patient man than a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a city.
—Proverbs.
He had just come up from the South Seas with John LaFarge, who had reluctantly crawled away toward New York to resume the grinding routine of studio work at an age when life runs low. Adams would rather, as a choice, have gone back to the east, if it were only to sleep forever in the trade-winds under the southern stars, wandering over the dark purple ocean, with its purple sense of solitude and...
mallecho, from malhecho: mischief.
Mich´ing: a.1.Hiding; skulking; cowardly.
—Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by C. & G. Merriam Co.
Marry, this is miching mallecho.
—William Shakespeare, Hamlet.
It was my watch below till twelve, but I wouldn’t a turned in anyway if I’d had a bed, because a body don’t see such a storm as that every day in the week, not by a long sight. My souls, how the wind did scream along! And every second or two there’d come a glare that lit up the white-caps for a half a mile around, and you’d see the islands looking dusty through the...
I’ve changed my hairstyle
So many times now
I don’t know what I look like.
—David Byrne.
With love we sleep, with doubt the vicious cycle turns and burns
—Bruce Springsteen.
All relatedness has its foundation in the relatedness of actualities; and such relatedness is wholly concerned with the appropriation of the dead by the living— that is to say, with ‘objective immortality’ whereby what is divested of its own living immediacy becomes a real component in other living immediacies of becoming. This is the doctrine that the creative advance of the...
Voices rose. Music rose above them, transformative dub bruising the ear, you could hear its confrontational basslines twenty miles out to sea. Above this clamor rose the sharp, urgent pheromone of human expectation— a scent compunded less of sex or greed or aggression than of substance abuse, cheap falafel and expensive perfume.
—M. John Harrison, Light.
It was, in fact, a cloud factory,—these were the cloud-works, and the wind turned them off done from the cool, bare rocks. Occasionally, when the windy columns broke in to me, I caught sight of a dark, damp crag to the right or left; the mist driving ceaselessly between it and me. It reminded me of the creations of the old epic and dramatic poets, of Atlas, Vulcan, the Cyclops, and...
Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.
—Immanuel Kant.
Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu, “I have a big tree named ailanthus. Its trunk is too gnarled and bumpy to apply a measuring line to, its branches too bent and twisty to match up to a compass or square. You could stand it by the road and no carpenter would look at it twice. Your words, too, are big and useless, and so everyone alike spurns them!” Chuang Tzu said, “Maybe you’ve...
The gammas of greatest interest to astronomers, though, come from things that are dead, dying or deadly. When a massive star blows up in a supernova explosion, is debris sparkles with gamma rays, and the stellar corpse left behind— a neutron star or black hole— has such intense gravity that it drives the ongoing generation of gammas. At the centers of galaxies, black holes with the...
…the alchemists’ great contribution to artists’ blue was ultramarine. It is made from blue lapis lazuli, a semiprecious stone then mined in Afghanistan. The costly raw material and elaborate preparation— which involved endless kneading of the lapis powder and washing in lye— led to the rich, dark blue seen, as Ball points out, in paintings of the robe of the Virgin...
The first machine that could pull music from the air was Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville’s phonautograph, which he introduced in 1857. The device used a horn to focus sound waves and direct them onto a small diaphragm; attached to the diaphragm was a stylus that scratched a record of the waves onto a soot-stained rotating glass cylinder. The device showed that sound recording was possible,...
Not all feather colors are produced by pigment, however. Nanoscale keratin structures within the feathers trap air and scatter light of certain wavelengths, depending on their shapes— the dark blues of the Eastern bluebird, for instance, result from twisted air channels and keratin bars.
—Christine Soares, “Feathers.”
“I have a new Desmond story, at least new to me. Paul saw a picture in a newspaper showing Aristotle Onassis in front of the Hollywood home of Buster Keaton, looking at it with an eye on buying it. Paul’s comment was ‘Hmm. Aristotle contemplating the home of Buster.’”
from Gene Lees’ interview of Dave and Iola Brubeck, featured in the book Cats Of Any Color....
Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. “Do you wish to buy any baskets?” he asked. “No, we do not want any,” was the reply. “What!” exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, “do you mean to starve us?” Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off—that the lawyer...
Joseph dreamed a dream and told it to his brothers, and they hated him even more.
—Genesis.
Come and see:
Every proper dream comes from this level;
so you cannot have a dream without false imaginings intermingling,
as we have established.
Therefore parts are true and parts are false.
You cannot have a dream that does not reflect this side and that.
—The Book of Zohar.
Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life…
—Philippians.
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind…
—William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.”
Mitch [Breitweiser]’s gritty and realistic take on superheroes is part of a growing neoclassical illustration movement that is breathing new life into old heroes. Cinematic action scenes, lush backgrounds, and emotive characters are the hallmarks of Breitweiser’s work.
—http://comicbookdb.com/creator.php?ID=2484
http://revver.com/video/1133511/porky-pig-dough-for-the-do-do-1949/
—Bob Clampett and Friz Freleng, “Dough for the Do-Do.”
…philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations.
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn…
—John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale.”
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places…
—The Psalms.
No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well. For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out. In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that is....