“For a Coming Extinction” (W.S. Merwin)
For a Coming Extinction
Gray whale
Now that we are sinding you to The End
That great god
Tell him
That we who follow you invented forgiveness
And forgive nothing
I write as though you could understand
And I could say it
One must always pretend something
Among the dying
When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks
Empty of you
Tell him that we were [...]
Pretty Brains
From one of my favorite blogs, Neurophilosophy, comes this lovely image of a 19th century papier mache brain. Be sure to click through the caption so you can see the whole thing in multiple views. Speaking of brains, I enjoyed reading Jonathan Mayhew’s inventory of his own neurological state, especially as it relates to music. [...]
God Comes Clean
In one of those once-in-an-infinity tabloid scoops (via Discordian Research Thecnology), God — “close to tears at times” – admits that he dabbled in evolution when he was a young deity. [Be sure to click through for the photo of God.]
Best Name of a Place to Work
Donald Lamb is the fortunate soul who gets to print on his business card that he is the director of the Center for Astrophysical Thermonuclear Flashes at the University of Chicago. I actually wrote a poem once about a cosmic gamma ray burst, though apparently this is a different phenomenon from the one described in [...]
Twisted: Chiral Forms
I’ve known since my first biology class in college that organic molecules come in right- & left-handed versions that are otherwise identical, but I hadn’t been aware of the various speculations regarding how they came to be that way in our neighborhood of the universe. It’s wonderful to think that our proteins & sugars might [...]
The Culture Wars Have Moved into Physics
I’m about as far from being a physicist as it is possible to be, though I am fascinated by the history of science & the way it works within Western culture. I am, however, a veteran of the culture ward wars (if only a foot soldier), and I can tell you that the conservatives in [...]
Sharks & Bees
The sharks are going, as well as the bees. We can’t be far behind. Not if there is any justice in the world. When the sharkis die, the oceans will die; when the bees die, perhaps soon, the land will die.
The Map is Not the Territory
Two good meditations on the relationship of the scriptural map to the territory of reality by Fred Clark. I was particularly taken by Clark’s description of his awakening to reason because it bears a strong similarity to my own, though in my youth I moved away from the church more out of a sense that [...]
The Great Backyard Bird Count
It’s not too late to participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count. Just count the birds where you are for a minimum of 15 minutes, then turn in your results at the site linked above. There is even help with identification. Useful information about bird population patters has been collected over the last few years [...]
Imaginary Blog Titles
Carl Zimmer is my favorite science writer & this piece in Forbes, of all places, doesn’t disappoint. If I needed to start a new blog today, I would call it Chirping Rats:
Play is also an opportunity for animals to bond. Rats, for example, like to rough-house with one another, releasing high-frequency chirps that may be [...]
