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Very cool little story that also involves a Frederic Church painting and newspaper archives. Following a trail that began with a 19th century painting and led to hundreds of newspaper reports, the researchers discovered that the “strange huge meteor-procession” mentioned in Whitman’s noted collection “Leaves of Grass” indeed refers to a rare procession of earth-grazing [...]
I suppose that my face-blindness has made me the person I am.
I don’t much like movies or People magazine, not because I’m above caring about movie stars, but because I don’t recognize most of them. I became an addictive reader, an author and an English professor because, in the world of words on paper, [...]
There are no sidewalks where I live, but if there were, my sidewalk, and my conscience, would be clear. Here’s the first stanza of a five-stanza poem by TImons Esaias.
Originally there were eleven CommandmentsMoses, perhaps confused by the unfamiliarsnow, ice, and sidewalk,botched one, and left it out.
Interesting examination of role-playing, illusion, identity, and power in Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave, one small branch of which was the inspiration for the 1976/7 computer game Colossal Cave Adventure. In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave was a popular tourist destination for travelers from around the United States and beyond. The cave [...]
There’s a dissertation in here. All I have the energy to do today is imply a connection.
Using a police state to market technology in 1984:
Using a police state to market technology in 2010:
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The Jurupa Oak tree first sprouted into life when much of the world was still covered in glaciers. It has stood on its windswept hillside in southern California for at least 13,000 years, making it the oldest known living organism, according to a study published today. –Independent
Reading this story reminded me of a story [...]
These dandelion children–equivalent to our “normal” or “healthy” children, with “resilient” genes–do pretty well almost anywhere, whether raised in the equivalent of a sidewalk crack or a well-tended garden. Ellis and Boyce offer that there are also “orchid” children, who will wilt if ignored or maltreated but bloom spectacularly with greenhouse care…. Gene variants generally [...]
X-altruists are compelled to good, even when doing so makes no sense and brings harm upon them. The cannot tolerate injustice, and go to extreme lengths to help those who have been wronged, regardless of their personal relationship to them. Now, I am not speaking of the guy who helps an old lady cross the [...]
Awesome Flash animation from the University of Utah, showing relative sizes from a coffee bean to a carbon atom.
I wish it could also zoom out and show astronomical sizes, too, like this FSU slide show (not as smooth as the Utah one) or the famous Powers of Ten movie.
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