Mutiny on the Bounty

Today is the 219th anniversary of the Bounty mutiny. I am celebrating Bligh's incredible navigational skills and his success in reaching landfall after a journey in an open boat of over 3,000 miles. I don't have much to say about the mutineers. Most of them met a sorry end.

You can tell where my sympathies lie.

World Graphics Day

April 27 was World Graphics Day. It is the anniversary of the International Council of Graphic Design Associations. I missed it, but in reading about the events, I was most amused by the "No Graphics" day event. Imagine a world with no graphic design - especially a supermarket with no graphics to illustrate the packaged food. Boring. Go thank a designer.

Punc-, punc-, punc-, punctuation

I remember learning punctuation in school. There were rigid rules for, what it turns out, is a fluid and evolving tool to make written language more understandable. Came across this interesting piece the other day on the subject.

In casual correspondence my rule of thumb has always been, why use a bunch of different punctuation marks, when a dash - (m-dash, please) - will suit so many purposes?

This made me think about the etiquette of letter writing. While it still is used in business, personal letter writing has declined precipitously. It has become so much easier to pick up the phone. But now a whole new world of language usage is evolving through technology. As David Crystal writes above, "The biggest punctuation changes since the Renaissance are about to hit us, because of the Internet."

Celtic Music

I went to see the Chieftains on Saturday night. As they were coming on stage, I saw a drummer, ok, a keyboarder (keyboardist?), right, a harpist in jeans who was female, another girl, this one in a red dress and some strappy, high heeled sandals. Wait a minute - girls? Then came the piper, fiddler and a fellow on guitar - four of them looking much younger (and more female) than I remembered the Chieftains to be. So, it turns out that I saw the Chiefs or the Tains, because only two of the Chieftains were actually on stage that night.

Sigh. It was a good, although somewhat subdued, concert. Some of the good old tunes. Some pretty snappy Irish step dancing - by a very peppy woman from Long Island and a couple of brothers named Pulaski. Ahhh, the Irish are everywhere.

I've got to get me a pair of shoes that make noise like that.

Hawks in the city

I was lucky today and saw two red tail hawks hunting the railroad tracks as I left work. I work in the middle of the city in a medical-educational complex, so this was a treat. There are enough open spaces with a large cemetery near by and a parkway that leads down to Lake Erie, that hawks can also make a living here.

Beelzebufo

This has been reported widely, but I still think it is cool (but mostly creepy.) It is the devil frog that was 16 inches long and weighed 10 pounds. The modern goliath frog is about 12 inches long and weighs about 7.5 pounds. It is found in west Africa. More.

Happy Belated Birthday, Darwin

I thought this was an appropriate posting for Charles Darwin's birthday (Feb. 12, 1809). Researchers have found a 48 million year old skeleton that has proven to be a close relative of whales. The skeleton which is the size of a small deer was found in India. It is a small, even-toed ungulate. The report that I saw in the National Science Foundation news says the whale relative was a plant eater, indicating that the adaptation modern whales have made to become carnivores happened after their adaptation to an aquatic life style. More here.

I thought this was interesting

In this news article from NASA, scientists are on their way to explore an unusual lake in Antarctica. This lake under the ice cap. It is fed by glacial melt. The strangest thing about it, however, is that its pH puts it in the range of Clorox or perhaps even more alkaline than that. People have been poking around our planet for a long time and they have found organisms that live in ice, in boiling temperatures, in methane rich environments, and in other extreme conditions. While exobiologists conjecture about the possibility of life outside our planet, other biologists have found life here on Earth in conditions just about at inhospitable as anything we can imagine being found on other worlds. So, a group of adventurers is going to explore Lake Untersee in Antarctica to see what is there. I liked the description the writer used for the exploration for life outside the "Goldilocks Zone."

Attention Time Travelers

I read here that sometime next week the Large Hadron Collider - the most powerful atom-smasher to date - will be turned on near Geneva, Switzerland. Some researchers speculate that the collisions may generate enough energy to affect the dimension of time. They muse that the interactions may be enough to initiate a worm hole in space-time. Further, if worm holes are indeed possible, this might be the gateway toward which travelers from the future may venture. It would be, in essence, the beginning of time travel, and if any of this is by any chance possible, it will be a landmark worth noting.

Mardi Gras

The day for Pancakes and Paczki (a traditional Polish jelly doughnut that is unpronounceable).
Eat and celebrate for you still have the whole month of February to get through. Punxatawney Phil had the right idea - I'm going back to bed.

Tuesday Haiku

Shadow on the stair.
Velvet nudge soft as snowflakes.
Tiger in the house.

Again with the science . . .

These are some of the most impressive photos I have seen in a long time. In addition to the other science sites/blogs I visit, this one is new to me and terrific. High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment based at the University of Arizona.

Saturday Haiku

A sniff is a kiss,
But a bat is only that
in cat sign language.

The Winter Sky

I went downstairs the other morning. My thoughts were occupied by the things I needed to do to get ready for work, feed the cats, pack a lunch, etc. My attention was suddenly arrested by the view from my dining room windows. From those windows I can see across my neighbors' lawns, across the street, and over the high school's baseball fields. The bare tree trunks on the tree lawns were black silhouettes. The sky was a vibrant raspberry. Over the next few minutes, the dynamics of the sunrise ran through colors from raspberry, to strawberry, to mango, then paled to apricot. I fed the cats and when I looked again steel gray clouds on a faded pale sky had replaced all of those amazing colors. Fleeting, but spectacular.

Welcome New Year

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson