(no subject)

I got to my place of work and found all the lights off. My dad and I waited until 8:00, and still no lights. "I wish someone would have told me that we had President's Day off," I said as we maneuvered back toward the expressway.

As much as I would have liked to have slept in, at least now I have a full day ahead of me. Now, what to do with it. . . .

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Wallace Stevens said, "Words are the only melodeon."

Melodeon, n. [Old French melodie, from Late Latin melodia, from Greek melodia, a singing; choral song, from meloidos melodious, from melos, song + aoidos singer.] A kind of small reed organ in which a suction bellows draws air inward through the reeds.

(no subject)

Love transcends marriage.

It's then, now.

Universe's Most Distant Known Object Seen

In a discovery that offers a rare glimpse back to when the universe was just 750 million years old, a team of astrophysicists said Sunday they have detected a tiny galaxy that is the farthest known object from Earth.

"We are confident it is the most distant known object," California Institute of Technology astronomer Richard Ellis said of the galaxy, which lies roughly 13 billion light-years from Earth.

The team uncovered the faint galaxy using two of the most powerful telescopes — one in space, the other in Hawaii — aided by the natural magnification provided by a massive cluster of galaxies. The gravitational tug of the cluster, called Abell 2218, deflects the light of the distant galaxy and magnifies it many times over.

The magnification process, first proposed by Albert Einstein and known as "gravitational lensing," produces double images of the galaxy.

( Read more... )

See also this BBC article.

(no subject)

Check out this conversation in philosophy.

what is marriage?

This culture clash has been years in the making, ever since people started believing that love was a reason for entering into the marital contract. If marriage were only for property and material reasons, that's one thing (arranged marriage). If marriage were only for procreation, that's another thing. But it passed into popular culture that two people who fall in love should be allowed to marry.

What do we want to uphold? Why should people enter into the marriage contract? Because they love each other.

a comment I made in write_away

Here's what Mary Kinzie had to say in A Poet's Guide to Poetry:

Just as the subject of a poem cannot be considered apart from the uses of voices, things, and images, so the line of verse cannot be discussed, let alone produced, without attention to the form of speech it contains. In fact, syntax--or the way the sentence is organized--is one necessary defining principle of the poetic line. All lines of verse either coincide with the phrase, clause, or sentence, thus splitting the phrasal units and causing tension between line and syntax (p. 75).

Viewed as competitors for the rhythmic control of the poem, the line is the conservative force and the sentence the anarchist as it pulls attention away from meter and line, which seek to contain it (p. 76).