(no subject)

January's almost over. Time flies when you're an adult.

My birthday is in less than a month. Anyone in the Ann Arbor area want to get together in late Feb? I've been wanting to visit a karaoke bar for quite some time now. (Or, if anyone actually had a karaoke machine, we could have a nice lil private party.)

(no subject)

I had a really good dream, but I can't remember what it was about.

I do know that I was using RCT symbolism, though, because when I was woken up by a loud car outside my window, the image before me was a path/bridge under construction. And I remember waking up mad that the construction was interrupted.

(no subject)

Someone Steals Statue of Yoda

exciting, but frightening

New form of matter created in lab

Scientists have created a new form of matter saying it could provide a new way to generate electricity.

The fermionic condensate is a cloud of cold potassium atoms forced into a state where they behave strangely.

The new matter is the sixth known form of matter after solids, liquids, gasses, plasma and a Bose-Einstein condensate, created only in 1995.

[...] To make the condensate the researchers cooled potassium gas to a billionth of a degree above absolute zero - the temperature at which matter stops moving.

They confined the gas in a vacuum chamber and used magnetic fields and laser light to manipulate the potassium atoms into pairing up and forming the fermionic condensate.

[Deborah Jin of the University of Colorado] pointed out that her team worked with a supercooled gas, which provides little opportunity for everyday application. But the way the potassium atoms acted suggested there should be a way to turn it into a room-temperature solid.

It could be a step closer to an everyday, usable superconductor - a material that conducts electricity without losing any of its energy.

witch bottle, witch bottle, save me from hex

Artefact recalls witches' shadow

A chilling reminder of our superstitious past has been unearthed from a rural farmhouse.
The "witch bottle" was discovered buried in old foundations in the Lincolnshire village of Navenby.

Containing bent pins, human hair and perhaps urine, the bottles were supposed to protect a household against evil spells.

Dated to about 1830, it is evidence the fear of dark forces persisted far longer than previously thought.

[...] Mr Daubney [the Finds Liaison Officer for the archaeology department of Lincolnshire County Council] said: "It seems a bit like voodoo, using human hair and pins but it's not entirely clear why these items where used.

"One theory is that the pins were put in urine so when the witch went to the toilet, it felt like they were passing the sharp metal.

"What the bottles were intended to do was bounce back spells on the sender.

"Even if you did not know who the witch was, you would make one of these and sit back to see who died, then that person was the witch."

(no subject)

This always happens when I drink.

I never knew!

Kerry's rivals would be smart to borrow a page from Republicans and cast him as a liberal, out of touch with moderate Democrats in places such as South Carolina and Oklahoma.

"Since this is a conservative state, I don't think that's going to play well," Kweit said in North Dakota. "Democrats here don't want another Michael Dukakis," who lost the 1988 presidential race to George H. Bush after serving as Massachusetts' governor. Kerry was his lieutenant governor.

Rivals Hope to Curb Kerry's Momentum

(no subject)

Tonight on the bus I saw a black man wearing a beret. It takes a special man to wear a beret (and to wear it well!).

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"The world is the world through its theorists."

"Wisdom asks nothing more."

"Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic."

"One has a sensibility range beyond which nothing really exists for one. And in each this is different."

"The individual partakes of the whole. Except in extraordinary cases he never adds to it."

"There is nothing in life except what one thinks of it."

"The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly."

"It is in the explanation of things that we make to ourselves that we disclose our character."

"Everything tends to become real; or everything is moving in the direction of reality."

--Wallace Stevens, Adagia

fragments, 8/12/03

What elements of a poem should do: mesh, complement or culminate.

(no subject)

Is it safe to say that anything we may sense may not be true in actuality?