Category: Items of Interest

They call me, “Mr. Panther”

On our way to visit family in Central Illinois, we used to always pass a sign for Jim Edgar Panther Creek – State Fish & Wildlife Area. Personally, I’m glad my name isn’t “Jim Edgar Panther”. How could you ever live up to such name?

Sunday Poem

Phosphor Reading By His Own Light

It is difficult to read. The page is dark.
Yet he knows what it is that he expects.

The page is blank or a frame without a glass
Or a glass that is empty when he looks.

The greenness of night lies on the page and goes
Down deeply in the empty glass…

Look, realist, not knowing what you expect.
The green falls on you as you look,

Falls on and makes and gives, even a speech.
And you think that that is what you expect,

That elemental parent, the green night,
Teaching a fusky alphabet.

– Wallace Stevens

Stevens is not easy, but he repays the effort with his remarkable word choice and fierce cognitive engagement. Of particular interest to the scientifically inclined, his poems are often about the intersection between our minds and reality – clearly a theme in this poem. (Maybe this poem is also about you, trying to read this poem.) As he once wrote, “Poetry is a response to the daily necessity of getting the world right.”

Linkonomicon I

The round-up of links I felt like sharing in my various social media outlets:

What is the Federal Research Public Access Act and why should you care about it?

Nocturnal by Scott Sigler (pre-order) – because Scott’s fiction is my guilty pleasure, and the drilling into Lake Vostok is the perfect set-up for his next science horror story:

On 5 February 2012, a team of Russian scientists successfully drilled through 4 kilometers of ice to reach Lake Vostok, which had lain undisturbed for over 15 million years. Three days later they ceased communicating with the outside world. It took two weeks before a rescue team could reach the drilling site. This is the story of what they found. . .

The Hidden Beauty of the Bottom of Toy Cars – because I enjoy an elegantly built toy.

Republican in Washington State legislature delivers emotional address in support of gay marriage

Skeptically Speaking #150: Fungi & “Fossils”

BitTorrent doesn’t hurt US box-office, delayed international releases drive downloading – I’ve seen this result spun a few different ways, but the argument that the US film industry has not adapted to modern methods of distribution is pretty compelling to me, even if their films are not.

What Jeremy Lin Teaches Us About Talent – I don’t know if Jeremy Lin is the real deal or not, but I do know that most sports statistics and metrics, especially those used in scouting, are bunk.

What it’s like to be uninsured

Silk from Crickets: A new twist on spinning

Ento Box

The Bomb and the General – because anything by Umberto Eco deserves at least a look, and probably needs a few more if you are going to have any hope of getting it.

There Will Be Blood: Follow Up to Skeptically Speaking Podcast

Todd Glass comes out on WTF with Marc Maron Podcast – because its not about one guy coming out of the closet, but why so many people stay in the closet.

Happy Phi Day!

Also known as the Golden Ratio and purported to show up in, well, everything that anybody is willing to measure and then generously round the numbers in the correct direction, φ is equal to 1.618039887…

Finding a day for π is a piece of cake. 3.14 is March 14. Easy. Finding a day for φ, rounded off to 1.62, is a wee bit challenging. Continue reading “Happy Phi Day!”

Post-apocalyptic giant John Christopher passes away

Christopher Priest writes a brief obituary in the Guardian. Christopher (real name Samuel Youd) was one of the three giants of the excellent British school of post-apocalyptic fiction in the 50’s in 60’s, the others being John Wyndham and J.G. Ballard. Christopher, with his brutal The Death of Grass was somewhat of a transitional figure between the “cosier” Wyndham and Ballard’s dark novels.

h/t to io9.