Salt and Ice

.000000007 Percent (or Thereabouts) Solutions

2009-09-27T10:32:00.001-03:00

A great sketch about homeopathy.

Is Microsoft getting something right?

2009-09-25T15:50:00.001-03:00

A booklet -- not a tablet, not a notebook-- this is what I've been waiting for. I hope the end product is as good as I'm dreaming. "Courier is a real device, and we've heard that it's in the "late prototype" stage of development. It's not a tablet, it's a booklet. The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers

Privacy International

2008-01-04T12:18:00.000-04:00

I'm not blogging much these days, but the 2007 International Privacy Rankings are enough to wake me up, at least momentarily. Without privacy, freedom is a myth. Is this really the world we want? Do we, as Canadians, want to continue to allow our freedom to be eroded? If not, what can we do to prevent it? What will we do to prevent it?

Ideas Worth Spreading is

2007-11-13T13:23:00.000-04:00

the tagline for the TED website. And it's good to see a tagline with truth.TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their

How much rice is your vocabulary worth?

2007-10-26T18:36:00.000-03:00

Find out at FreeRice.* Here is a litte quote from the site's About page:FreeRice is a sister site of the world poverty site, Poverty.com.FreeRice has two goals: 1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free. 2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.They may be optimistic — who can say? But it's an addictive little exercise. Give it a go.*The link arrived in an

[99] Lift Balloons

2007-10-25T14:22:00.000-03:00

Okay, I made the 99 part up -- but seriously, a balloon carrying a solar telescope reached an altitude of almost 23 miles above the earth:*The Sunrise project has presented engineers with a number of extraordinary challenges. The balloon is designed to carry 6,000 pounds of equipment, including a 1-meter (39-inch) solar telescope, additional observing instruments, communications equipment,

Privacy Threats Video (and lawful access legislation)

2007-10-25T12:57:00.000-03:00

Update: To get a feel for the direction in which lawful access legislation points us, watch PBS Frontline's "Cheney's Law." (Synopsis here.)Michael Geist, author of the weekly column 'Law Bytes,' made the concluding remarks at the recent (end of September, 2007) International Data Protection and Privacy Commissioner's conference in Montreal. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has

Why Does God Hate Amputees?

2007-07-15T18:54:00.000-03:00

And why won't he heal them? Any believer in the christian god as a supreme being is helpless to answer that last question without resorting to self-delusion and intellectual dishonesty.

A Short Pier at Baltimore

2007-06-19T11:42:00.000-03:00

JC Bradbury of Sabernomics looks at the Baltimore Orioles' firing of manager Sam Perlozzo.Bradbury makes some good points. Personally, I think that the best thing that could happen to the Orioles would be for owner Peter Angelos to take a long walk off a short Baltimore pier, or at least sell the club to someone who is interested in fielding a winning team.Why pick on Angelos?Well, first of all

Frost-Damaged Sonnet (near the end of a long, cold May)

2007-05-29T15:33:00.000-03:00

Here's a poem I wrote last Friday. Anyone who is familiar with my stuff will probably notice that this one tumbles among my apparent obsessions like a pebble in a streambed.Frost-Damaged Sonnet (near the end of a long, cold May)Some June when lilacs aren't in bloomand willows are bare of bark,when there's no chickadee, no bumblebee,no baseball’s parabolic arc,when lips and tongues aren't

Picking Up (the) Pieces

2007-05-04T15:20:00.000-03:00

A month into the 2007 baseball season the most interesting story to me is that of the injury-wracked Oakland Athletics team. So far this year, they've suffered injuries of various sorts to Rich Harden (their best starting pitcher), Mark Kotsay (their best center fielder), Milton Bradley (their best right fielder), Dan Johnson (their second-best first baseman -- though he's back now), Nick Swisher

Found Poem

2007-03-20T13:52:00.000-03:00

Bouncing around today, I found How To Catch a Lion in the Sahara Desert.I'd call its original form an unintentional prose poem, but I've taken the liberty of inserting line breaks and doing some editing to turn it into the following (which I may attempt to record sometime in the next few days):Found Poem (How To Catch a Lion in the Sahara Desert)1. Theoretical Physics MethodsThe Dirac

Them Irish Are Some Keeners, Wha?

2007-03-18T14:47:00.000-03:00

Always in the vanguard where death is concerned. An Irish funeral parlour now offers, um, live streaming of funerals for people unable to attend in, er, body. They do seem to be using a tasteful and considerate approach (which is more than can be said for me)Just last week, he said, the funeral home negotiated with an internet service provider in New Zealand to upgrade one woman's connection

How To Make A SteamPunk Keyboard

2007-03-07T14:08:00.000-04:00

Call me a geek if you like, but I think this is a seriously cool DIY project. Though if I were to attempt it, I'd probably not even bother looking for an old typewriter to salvage keys from. I'd simply go with the brass-edged buttons for all the keys. Also, while it would be much more work (all those holes!), I think I might at least attempt to make a thin brass or wooden face to lay over or in

The Chicago Homer

2007-03-04T01:58:00.000-04:00

Even before I found the Chicago Homer tonight (more on it below, with a link) there were many things to like about Chicago — even for me, who has never been there. And probably never will be.For instance, in the middle of the 19th-century she became the livestock centre of America, butchering and shipping delicious beef and pork all over the USA.There is Wrigley Field, which opened in 1914.And

Cognitive Biases

2007-02-20T15:28:00.000-04:00

Here is a list of cognitive biases at Wikipedia. I, of course, don't suffer from any of them because I am not your average person.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

2007-02-11T14:25:00.000-04:00

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is a fascinating book written by Julian Jaynes, and published by Houghton Mifflin in 1976. Maybe many of you folks have read this book already. And if you haven't, maybe you should (I find Jaynes' writing very accessible). I managed to borrow a copy a little while ago (but it's apparent to me that I am going to have to acquire

Whatever You Say Say Nothing (a Seamus Heaney poem)

2007-01-31T15:37:00.000-04:00

Whatever You Say Say Nothing audiofile (6:06). Today I felt like reading a Heaney poem. The text of Whatever You Say Say Nothing. It's a powerful poem and requires no explanation from me.

The God Delusion, etc

2007-01-27T13:58:00.000-04:00

(A comment by Rob L on this post at Alone On A Boreal Stage led me to write this post.)"He [Richard Dawkins] does not quietly acknowledge the etherial [sic] quality of religion, but instead scorns it as an escape from the earthly responsibility of being a human being in the here and now (sounds a lot like Marx, actually...and Freud...)."The ethereal quality of religion." If the emphasis there is

That Silent Evening (a Galway Kinnell poem)

2007-01-15T15:15:00.001-04:00

That Silent Evening audiofile (2:38).As requested in the comments to a previous post, here is Galway Kinnell's That Silent Evening. Text here.

Oops

2007-01-14T12:09:00.000-04:00

I ran into a small technical difficulty (misplaced the 1/4 inch to 1/8 inch adaptor for my input jack). I won't be able to record until I get a new one tomorrow. My apologies.

Return of the Audioposts

2007-01-12T13:17:00.001-04:00

I'll be able to get back to posting audio renditions of poems this weekend. If anyone has any requests, let me know.

Pequeno Vals Vienes (Federico Garcia Lorca)

2007-01-09T01:36:00.001-04:00

"Pequeno Vals Vienes" is the poem on which Leonard Cohen based the song "Take This Waltz." I have long wanted to do my own translation of the piece. So I have. It's below. The original, Spanish text can be found here.update: I've done another version and posted it in the comments.Little Viennese Waltz In Vienna there are ten girls waitingfor death to sob on their shoulders;there's a forest

Wood Song (Eugene Lee-Hamilton)

2007-01-08T17:32:00.000-04:00

I never heard of Eugene Lee-Hamilton before today, the poem below (found at the preceding link) made me like him immediately. It reads, to me, somewhat like You Are My Sunshine (a very, very sad song). I also hear it being sung (in my head) by an alto, or a high tenor.Wood Song When we are gone, love, Gone as the breeze, Woods will be sweet, love, Even

Tums In Space!

2007-01-06T13:40:00.001-04:00

Here's a sweet youtube video of gravity-free sphere of water. If you watch past the two-minute mark, you'll see an antacid tablet dissolve in water in freefall.(Also, the narrator could be used as a generic example of the Poetry Reading Voice.)

Remote Astronomy

2007-01-05T13:06:00.001-04:00

This article at Universe Today has some background on robots as it works its way toward astonomers accessing their telescopes from home via the internet. Also some fine shots of Orion.

Supervillain/Superhero

2007-01-05T01:41:00.000-04:00

What can I say? I like comic books. And apparently I have the characteristics of my favourite supervillain and favourite superhero. Go figure.You are Dr. DoomDr. DoomBlessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.Click here to take the Super Villain Personality TestYou are Green LanternGreen LanternHot-headed. You have strongwill power and a good imagination.Click here to take the

History of Neuroscience

2007-01-03T12:16:00.000-04:00

The University of Washington has a Milestones in Neuroscience page. For some reason I've gone through and picked out years marking research on vision (I may have missed some, because I don't know quite everything; and I've inserted some links):Sightlinesca. 500 B.C. - Alcmaion of Crotona dissects sensory nervesca. 500 B.C. - Alcmaion of Crotona describes the optic nerveca. 500 B.C. - Empedocles

One God Further

2007-01-02T12:49:00.001-04:00

Richard Dawkins' new book, The God Delusion, has been out for a while. I haven't read it yet. But I will before long. Here's a fun little video clip of Stephen Colbert interviewing Dawkins.

A Reason for (some guarded) Optimism

2007-01-02T11:13:00.001-04:00

is the freely available information (such as below) archived randomly on the internet. As long as the power stays on, we may be okay.The paper which first suggested the double helix structure for DNA [asterisk and links mine]:A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid J. D. Watson and F. H. C. Crick (1) April 25, 1953 (2), Nature (3),

One liter of bile per day

2007-01-01T14:00:00.001-04:00

I just discovered Molecule of the Day and deoxycholic acid (a regular man is a happy man); which means I have one more site to read every day. Which is one more thing to keep me from posting regularly.

What poets do in Saskatchewan in the winter

2006-12-26T13:02:00.000-04:00

Is have themselves some barnyard fun.

LibraryThing

2006-10-24T14:02:00.001-03:00

I first found LibraryThing last spring, but it's taken me this long to start a concerted effort at cataloguing my books with it. (I'm not adding books in any particular order because they're not on my shelves, etc., in any particular order.) I have no idea when I'll be finished, but I hope to add a few a day until I've caught up to what I have on my shelves (and desk and dresser and tables and

Zielinski Text

2006-10-15T14:38:00.000-03:00

I've finally added the text of the poem to the Songs of Adrian Zielinski post.

Punks Like You are A Dime a Dozen

2006-10-14T11:43:00.001-03:00

Here's what can happen when I follow links: I started at this Sci Fi Tech entry about a steampunk laptop, and went through Steampunk, Cyberpunk, Punk rock, Anarcho-punk, Hardline, Hardcore, Riot Grrrl, Conservative punk, Nazi punk, Punk'd (a dismal MTV series) and, of course, just plain punk.

A Literary Dinner (Vladimir Nabokov)

2006-10-13T13:21:00.001-03:00

A Literary Dinner audiofile (1:55).A Literary Dinner appeared in the New Yorker on April 11, 1942.A Literary DinnerCome here, said my hostess, her face making roomfor one of those pink introductory smilesthat link, like a valley of fruit trees in bloom,the slopes of two names.I want you, she murmured, to eat Dr. James.I was hungry. The Doctor looked good. He had readthe great book of the week and

Overriding Self-Interest

2006-10-10T11:19:00.001-03:00

Researchers in Zurich suspect that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex may act as a sort of governor on self-interest, perhaps raising the question of whether morality itself is built-in to the brain. I wonder how long it will be until moral relativists claim a physiological basis to their beliefs. Or will creationists snap it up first as evidence of divine design?Personally, I'm more interested

A Woman and Her Dead Husband (a D. H. Lawrence poem)

2006-10-08T13:19:00.000-03:00

A Woman and Her Dead Husband audiofile (4:12).This poem (text here) was one of Lawrence's contributions to The New Poetry; an Anthology (1917,), edited by Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson, which I found in a used bookstore last week. I was damn happy to get my hands on it (my copy is the 1920 edition); The New Poetry was, and is, an important event in English poetry.

Songs of Adrian Zielinski (a Czeslaw Milosz poem)

2006-10-08T13:08:00.000-03:00

Songs of Adrian Zielinski audiofile (9:01).I haven't gotten around to setting my scanner back up since I moved, so, unfortunately, I can't provide the text of this poem at the moment. I will do that in the next couple of days. Meanwhile, here's an essay on Czeslaw Milosz.Songs of Adrian Zielinski1The fifth spring of war is beginning.A young girl is weeping for her lover.Snow is melting in the

Quantum Computing

2006-10-06T12:02:00.001-03:00

A research team at The Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen have moved a little closer to making quantum computers feasible. "It is one step further because for the first time it involves teleportation between light and matter, two different objects. One is the carrier of information and the other one is the storage medium," Polzik explained in an interview on Wednesday. The

Languages, Etc.

2006-10-03T16:15:00.000-03:00

Here's a jpeg of a chart showing the relationships of the world's languages. If I recall correctly, a character in Neal Stephenson's novel Cryptonomicon speaks Manx. Languages (and codes/programming) are recurring themes in Stephenson's fiction. In Snowcrash, Hiro Protagonist is confronted with a (Sumerian) meme which acts like a virus.(I do like the idea of spoken languages being programming

Back to blogging soon

2006-10-02T12:49:00.001-03:00

My hard drive lives. It even survived the move I made this weekend. I'll be blogging again more regularly very soon.And when I shake the bug that sideswiped me as it wreaked havoc amongst the lesser mortals of the Island, I'll do an audiopost of D. H. Lawrence's A Woman and Her Dead Husband.

Hard Drive Hassles

2006-09-15T03:11:00.000-03:00

I was hoping to audiopost another Czeslaw Milosz poem in the next couple of days, but I may not be able to as my hard drive seems to be on the verge of giving up the ghost. If it holds out, or if I stumble across a replacement I can afford this week, I will do the Songs of Adrian Zielinsky.

Memory Erasure

2006-09-07T11:25:00.001-03:00

According to the Chemical & Engineering News, proof has been found that long-term memory recording and storage works by increasing synapse responsiveness, and that the process and maintenance of memory requires the protein kinase M zeta.Hand in hand with this discovery comes, of course, the ability to undo memory by injecting a synthetic peptide called ZIP into the brain. Shouldn't it be called

Emily Up and Down and Back and Forth

2006-09-06T17:20:00.000-03:00

The fall is coming back, and I've fallen back to Emily Dickinson. This is my seventh Emily post. In them, in lieu of much comment, I generally link words or phrases of her poem to Wikipedia entries (or other things, such as The Devil's Dictionary today) they bring to my mind. The other posts are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.Today I've chosen poems in which emotion, faith, and whimsy seem to rise, fall, and

Fishin' In The Rain With An Umbrella (John MacKenzie)

2006-09-06T04:04:00.001-03:00

Fishin' In The Rain With An Umbrella audiofile (2:24).At work tonight I remembered this little piece I wrote 15 years ago.Fishin' In The Rain With An UmbrellaSome folks saythat fishin' in the rain with an umbrellaain't sportin'.An' that's all well an' fineif you're one o' those that argueover flies and tests o' line.But me gran'father tole me years ago —an' stressed it as right important —"It

Milosz somewhat of a success

2006-09-05T17:41:00.000-03:00

There's a fair amount of traffic on Salt and Ice today, some of it being directed here from a Wood's Lot in Ontario and looking for Milosz' A Book in the Ruins. Thanks to M. Woods for the link.

Lower the Boom (a John MacKenzie poem)

2006-09-04T14:34:00.001-03:00

Lower the Boom audiofile (5:09). Today is Labour Day, and Lower the Boom (text below) is the closest thing to a Labour Day poem that I've ever written.Lower the Boomfor Ivan Arsenault, killed in August 1998on this framework of steel and rivets,this erector set pushing into the skyHe stood here before the glass went on, stoodin and on the growing skeleton, graspingI-beams in the heat of Ontario's

Lord of the [Onion] Rings

2006-08-23T14:01:00.000-03:00

In the Lights of a Midnight Plow

2006-08-11T14:26:00.000-03:00

I've been waiting for David Hickey's first collection of poetry for a few years now, and it's finally happened. In the Lights of a Midnight Plow has been published by Biblioasis. I've read and been delighted by some of the poems in various forms, and I'm looking forward to the moment (hopefully tomorrow) when I have the book in my hands and can see where the poems I've read have taken themselves

Fat is Phat!

2006-07-04T15:02:00.000-03:00

Apparently myelin, the fatty insulator of nerve fibers, which enhances the brain's electrical connnectivity (and thereby brain cell communication) may be a substance that the body can regrow. Myelin regrowth is suspected in this Arkansas man's awakening and apparent ongoing mental recovery from a 19-year coma.

The Natural History of Elephants (Milton Acorn)

2006-06-04T21:50:00.000-03:00

The Natural History of Elephants audiofile (6:22).The Natural History of Elephants may be my favourite Milton Acorn poem to read aloud — how often does a person get to read the words viandes, shithouse, turds, sweet, frangibility, ministrations, laughter, love, semen, and glaciers all in the same poem? The poem's text can be found here.

Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías

2006-05-25T14:25:00.000-03:00

Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías audiofile (12:33)A lot of people find this blog by searching for Lorca's Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías. The original audio I posted was of poor quality and was broken in segments because of audioblogger's constraints, so I've decided to post a new, cleaner version which is all of a piece. Text here.

Wine From These Grapes title page

2006-05-22T11:33:00.000-03:00

One of my favourite parts of "Wine From These Grapes" is the title page. (Click on image for a larger view.)

Edna St. Vincent Millay

2006-05-20T06:03:00.000-03:00

A new used bookstore opened in Charlottetown on Friday, just across the street from where I work. So before work, I took a look in, and found an edition of Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Wine From These Grapes," printed in 1934. I read and re-read it at work, came home and just finished recording six poems from it; Autumn Daybreak, Childhood is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies, In The Grave No Flower,

Still Kicking

2006-05-19T12:08:00.000-03:00

Been sort of a long week. I'll be posting a bit over the weekend. Maybe another Emily/Wikipedia attempt. Maybe some audio. Maybe even some baseball.

The Moose (Elizabeth Bishop)

2006-05-17T03:51:00.000-03:00

The Moose audio file (6:35).Elizabeth Bishop's 'The Moose' is a poem set in a bus travelling west through Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. No destination is mentioned, or needed. The narrator begins "From narrow provinces / of fish and bread and tea...." Which is as succinct and apt a description of the Maritime Provinces as has ever been written. I know those three things, salt fish (and sometimes

Custard the Dragon and the Wicked Knight (Ogden Nash)

2006-05-15T22:44:00.000-03:00

Custard and the Wicked Knight audio file (8:06).Ogden Nash is just plain fun to read. Here's the poem's text.

The Tale of Custard the Dragon (Ogden Nash)

2006-05-13T19:40:00.000-03:00

Custard the Dragon audio file.The Tale of Custard the Dragon is a fun children's poem requested by humble servant a little while back. You can find the poem's text here.

The weekend

2006-05-13T04:47:00.000-03:00

I'll be putting more audio up on Saturday and/or Sunday. Anything to avoid cutting the lawn for the first time this year.

Minor League Split Stats Database

2006-05-11T12:32:00.000-03:00

The Minor League Splits Database is an amazing resource for dedicated baseball fans. Developed by Jeff Sackmann at BrewCrewBall, this tool will allow you to see what minor leaguers have done at home, on the road, vs lefties, vs righties and much more. For Blue Jays fans, here are alphabetical lists of all Jays minor league hitters, and all Jays minor league pitchers. Simply click on a player's

Housman Parody (anonymous)

2006-05-09T14:53:00.000-03:00

Housman parody (audio file here).Found this piece a while ago posted on amazon as a review of A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad. The text can be found in the comments on this post.

This Love Song (John MacKenzie)

2006-05-09T05:12:00.000-03:00

This Love Song (audio file here) is a piece I've been working on, off and on, for about six years. Thought I had finished it last year (though something about it still bugged me), but it came into my head tonight and I realized that I could fix it some more. So I had at it, and what you'll hear is what I did. I haven't written down the changes yet, and I'm going to sleep as soon as I finish this

Time, Time, Time

2006-05-08T13:39:00.000-03:00

No time to post this afternoon. Got to get to the bank. Tonight, after work, I'll be putting up the audio of a couple of poems.

Willie Nelson

2006-05-08T01:03:00.000-03:00

Went to see a Willie Nelson show tonight. It was good. Wasn't a life-changing event or anything, but it was good. Got to hear Pancho and Lefty (written by the great Townes Van Zandt), Me and Paul, and Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain live, finally. Sadly, he didn't do Red Headed Stranger.But he did do about six Hank songs which pleased the hell out of me, though I could've done without Jambalaya —

King(s) Albert

2006-05-06T13:52:00.000-03:00

Albert Pujols hit his major league leading 16th home run last night. There is no doubt that we are seeing one of the greatest players ever to wear a major league uniform. Baseball Prospectus has a nice little article on him which begins with thisPrince Albert seems a fitting name for the St. Louis Cardinals’ resident superstar. It’s a simple, regal name for a player who makes hitting look easy,

The Shooting of Dan McGrew (Robert Service)

2006-05-05T15:10:00.000-03:00

The Shooting of Dan McGrew audio file here. (And Dan McGrew text here)I find this poem even more fun to recite than The Cremation of Sam McGee. Sure, Robert Service had his faults. His poems were often sentimental, maudlin, forced. But when he got on a roll, as he did in this one, and in Sam McGee, and, to a much lesser extent, in The Ballad of Casey's Billy Goat (and, showing that he wasn't

Four Emily Dickinson Poems

2006-05-04T12:37:00.000-03:00

The audio file can found at this link.Emily Dickinson's poetry needs nothing I could say about it.

Three Ted Hughes Poems

2006-05-04T11:13:00.000-03:00

Follow this link to the audio for Dehorning, Pike, and View of A Pig.Ted Hughes moved close to blood and breath, his eye always on the fundamental things of this world, his chosen words often hard, harsh, and blunt, his poetry sometimes so much more like stones and water and flesh than the things themselves that a hyper-real sense of his surroundings seeps from his best work. I believe the man

So, You're Mike Scioscia

2006-05-03T02:08:00.000-03:00

Yes, you're Mike Scioscia, manager of the Angels, and your team is tied with the A's at three runs apiece after eight innings. Dan Johnson is leading off the ninth for Oakland. So do you bring in Scot Shields or K-Rod, or even Brendan Donnelly or Kevin Gregg? You know, guys who can actually pitch and might keep the game tied until your team bats in the bottom of the ninth? Nope, Johnson bats

Georgetown Memories (John MacKenzie)

2006-05-02T01:05:00.000-03:00

Georgetown Memories audio recording (the poem's text can be found in the comments on this post).This poem is a piece I worked on quite a bit a year or so ago. It is based on Li Po's Changgan Memories, best to known to the western world, I guess, in Ezra Pound's version The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter. George Elliot Clarke turned it beautifully to his own purposes in his verse novel Whylah

Any More Poetry Requests?

2006-05-01T13:29:00.000-03:00

Seeing as I have recording equipment until Thursday, are there any more requests for poems to be read aloud? I'm planning on doing a bunch anyway, to stockpile, but I'll do any reasonable request. Length isn't much of an issue this week — the amount of time your ass can stand to sit and listen is the only real limit.

Other Ingredients (E. J. Pratt)

2006-04-30T12:15:00.000-03:00

Here's a poem from the great Newfoundland poet, E. J. Pratt, (you can listen to the audio at the Internet Archive). More of his poetry can be found here. Other Ingredients is from The Witches Brew (linked version is annotated), 1926.Other IngredientsTo make a perfect fish menu,The witches found they had to placeUpon this alcoholic baseGreat stacks of food and spices too.Of all the things most

A Book in the Ruins (Czeslaw Milosz)

2006-04-29T20:53:00.000-03:00

Milosz' poem, A Book in the Ruins, was suggested by Humble Servant (who also provided the text) in the comments to this post. The audio can be found at the Internet Archive; text is below.update: The URL of the file has changed because I replaced it with an amplified version. I've fixed the above link to direct people to the new version.A Book in the RuinsA dark building. Crossed boards, nailed

Write a Fib, Win a Pair of Web Cams

2006-04-27T13:26:00.000-03:00

Idodeclare,this old webwill snare the strangestlittle marriages of mind andmath-a-matics, of machine and human languages.Whatis.com is running a little poetry contest of sorts. Write the winning fib (with a tech reference), which seems to be a six line poem using the first six fibonacci numbers to determine the number of syllables per line. According to the NY Times, the form was created by

Unsteady Eddie and the Lost-At-Sea Mariners

2006-04-25T18:53:00.000-03:00

Man, it must be tough to be a Mariners fan these days. Their closer, "Everyday Eddie" Guardado, once one of the most dependable relievers in baseball, looks like he's not only done, but overdone. "Manager" Mike Hargrove keeps jerking Jeremy Reed, their second-best outfielder and probable fourth-best hitter, in and out of the line-up; plus Hargrove's unfathomable little man-crush on Willie

Sore Throat

2006-04-24T15:59:00.000-03:00

May not be any audioposts for a few days. Came down with something over the weekend and my throat feels like my elbows and knees did after I wiped out on my bicycle on a patch of gravel when I was 11. And as for talking, when I ain't sounding like a Yamaha dirt bike with engine problems I'm sounding like my voice is changing again. Maybe it is. You can call me Squeaky.

Three Audio Poems

2006-04-23T09:30:00.000-03:00

The audioposts of three requested poems went up yesterday. They can all be found in the post immediately preceding this one.

Poem Request Week

2006-04-22T13:26:00.000-03:00

The Conqueror Worm, Edgar Allan Poe.Sunday Morning (parts I-IV), Wallace Stevens.Sunday Morning (parts V-VIII), Wallace Stevens.Love Song: I and Thou, Alan Dugan.LOVE SONG: I AND THOUNothing is plumb, level or square: the studs are bowed, the joistsare shaky by nature, no piece fits any other piece without a gapor pinch, and bent nails dance all over the surfacinglike maggots. By Christ I am no

Miscellaneous stuff

2006-04-20T15:55:00.000-03:00

The Global Seismic Monitor. In case you can't shake your booty on your own.Some open source programs for windows. A CD of open source stuff.The, ahem, Anagram Hall of Fame. Desperation = A Rope Ends It The Morse Code = Here Come Dots The Meaning of Life = The fine game of nil Slot Machines = Cash Lost in'emYeti Crabs. No, it has nothing to with the perils of sex with a mythical Himalayan

A Crisping of Leaves (After Before Night Falls) [John MacKenzie]

2006-04-19T19:07:00.000-03:00

As requested in the comments on this post, a poem of my own.

A bunch of books I like a lot

2006-04-19T18:57:00.000-03:00

For various reasons these books are important to me.<

And that's the ballgame

2006-04-18T19:59:00.000-03:00

The 1986 World Series game 6, that is, re-enacted in RBI Baseball with Vin Scully calling the action. Well worth watching. Enjoy. And now I'm going to watch the Jays and the Yanks.

Mermaid (Robert Lowell)

2006-04-18T14:38:00.000-03:00

(Dumbass that I am, I've finally figured out how to convert scanned images to text. So now, instead having to type in poems I want to post, or post about here, or having to search the web for them if I'm too lazy to type, I can just scan 'em and go.)So, below is Robert Lowell's Mermaid, originally published in his 1973 collection, The Dolphin. More about Lowell can be found at this link.)

Birches (Robert Frost)

2006-04-17T01:26:00.000-03:00

I just did an audiopost of the Robert Frost poem, Birches. It should be showing up soon, I hope. You can read the poem at this link.Update: I had to redo Birches because the first version never showed up.I've noticed that these posts don't work very well when I try to listen to them in my browser — they get truncated somehow. But they work just fine when I open the URL in a media player like

History (Robert Lowell)

2006-04-17T01:02:00.000-03:00

Don't hear much about Lowell these days. Of course, I'm so much to myself lately that I don't hear much about anything. Whatever ... Lowell's good reading for a wet April night when you can hear green hissing and crawling up into everything that grows while last year's leaves sink into the soil, and branches fallen from winter-ravaged trees scrawl, mindless as an I Ching casting, across the

Blue Jays Offense

2005-12-30T17:28:00.000-04:00

Here are some rough offensive projections I've done of the players who would be in the Blue Jays line up and on the bench according to the roster as of today. Over the next couple of days, I'll post projections for the Yankees and Red Sox, then try and do a comparison of the three offenses. Following that, I will move on to same for the respective pitching staffs.Reed Johnson LF Platoon G PA H 2B

In process

2005-12-29T12:24:00.000-04:00

I'm crunching a few numbers for the 25 man rosters of the Jays, Sox and Yankees to see how they would compare to each other if the season started today. I'll have a post about it up tomorrow afternoon.

Contention Intentions

2005-12-29T01:20:00.000-04:00

I'm slow getting to this, but the Blue Jays finally got the power bat they were looking for when they traded Miguel Batista and Orlando Hudson to the Diamondbacks for Troy Glaus and prospect Sergio Santos. The accquisition of Glaus, and of Lyle Overbay earlier this month, plus the Burnett and Ryan free agency signings, should give the Jays a realistic shot at the 2006 AL East title.Glaus strikes

A True Web Novel?

2005-12-16T14:31:00.000-04:00

I just took a read through The Sixth Tool, a blog, supposedly being written by a professional baseball scout, which is drawing interest here and there. My impression is that it's a baseball novel in progress, an examination of the conflict between the traditional and sabermetric approaches to the game. A morality play of sorts. I recommend starting at the beginning with the post titled Opening

Hurry up, please. It's time

2005-12-06T17:32:00.000-04:00

According to Jeff Blair of the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Blue Jays have struck again and signed starting pitcher A. J. Burnett, their second premier free agent of this offseason. This comes relatively hot on the heels of the Jays signing relief pitcher B. J. Ryan to be their closer. The Ryan deal (5 years, $47 million — the most total dollars ever given to a reliever) has been widely criticized

Wings in the Morning: Insect Evolution

2005-11-29T08:58:00.000-04:00

From a NY Times article by Carl ZimmerThe oldest living lineages of insects - which include bristletails and silverfish - number only 900 species today. These early insects may not have been able to become very diverse because they didn't have wings. When insects later evolved the ability to fly, they gained the ability to explore more territory and find new kinds of food - giving rise to more

Glue; Links; Nursery Rhymes

2005-11-23T14:15:00.000-04:00

Say you want to attach leather to ceramic, or glass to wood, what glue do you need? This site will tell you. It also has some interesting trivia. For instance:When you are sucking in all the toxins from your cigarette, you can rest assured that the glue used to hold it together is completely non-toxic. It is made from a combination of casein (milk) and wax (to increase moisture resistance), and

The Strange, Sad Case of H.M.

2005-11-21T10:11:00.000-04:00

In 1953, at one go, in a procedure radical even for the time (when brain shocks and lobotomies were — pardon the pun — cutting edge treatments for brain disorders), this man had the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the entorhinal and perirhinal cortices sucked out of his brain as an experimental cure for epilepsy. Strangely, it didn't work. What it did do was greatly affect H.M.'s ability to

"Quad" Erat Faciendum

2005-11-14T10:21:00.000-04:00

Rich Lederer's Baseball Beat over at Baseball Analysts is one of the best baseball columns you will find anywhere. Not only does Lederer have a firm grasp of statistics, he is able to discuss and frame those statistics in cogent and readable prose. Today, in The 2005 Quad Leaders, he looks at the top offensive players of the past season.

Chew On This

2005-11-13T00:50:00.000-04:00

Gum Blondes, portraits in chewing gum by Jason Kronenwald (site requires Flash). Would you call them masticreations ... mastipieces? I guess you could say they have a certain mastique.

Zapato Productions intradimensional

2005-11-11T01:19:00.000-04:00

“Serving The Paranoid Since 1997.” Find out the truth about "Belgium," and about black helicopters. Introduce yourself to Metric Time, and learn how to make an aluminum foil beanie.

Web Economy Bullshit Generator

2005-11-10T14:46:00.000-04:00

Would you like to deploy mission-critical experiences, or iterate efficient channels and harness integrated initiatives in order to incubate robust functionalities? Then this is the place for you.

Flashies

2005-11-10T14:37:00.000-04:00

A collection of odd little flash animations/applications. You may find some of these disturbing (Smile).

Autumn Leaves

2005-11-01T15:43:00.000-04:00

A look at a couple of possibilities as to why leaves might turn particular colours in the fall. Curious. I don't have enough information to lean one way or the other, but I will note that most of the elms around these parts are not all that healthy and that their leaves turn yellow.