fallen verses

“…as you’re crossing them.” - Lucas Anderson

Strangely, a revision:

Hmm… I’m not sure revision is the right word, but, based on one of the haiku I wrote for my Poetry Writing class:

Nacre and Dream

pearls of lcd nestled
in bifurcated nacreous shrouds-
oceans of data glowing on
hesitant sailors
who see no shore
whose compass and sextant
have been given to sirens
whose captain stands at the
wheel gently cradling the
astrolabe he plans to use
once night falls-
the waves rock his
vessel pulse their
messages in an unceasing
red-green-blue
1-0-1-
memes spawn and die
in a stochastic
process where only the
amusing self-propagate-
like Achilles anointed
in the river Styx I anoint
myself in this brine of modernity
and drink deeply
-it is ambrosia

Now, honestly, I have a somewhat different relation to them than the mothers being banned from facebook for posting photos of breastfeeding, but that is still a ridiculous decision.  Tara at Aetiology and PZ at Pharyngula are spreading the word.

Two from… somewhere…

Reincarnation: A Duo

1 Spirit’s View

death : transition
how many times
around
the wheel
until
I’m done

2 Top Hat’s View

Park Place – 6 – Baltic
how many times
around
the board
until
I win

or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Not-Working

LOLTHULHU
(via Pharyngula)
Delusional Social Networkers

No, this is not another rant about people who hallucinate power laws; this is about social networks which are constituted by sharing the same (or, rather, similar) delusional beliefs:Vaughan Bell, C. Maiden, A. Munoz-Solomando and V. Reddy, “‘Mind control experiences’ on the internet: Implications for the psychiatric diagnosis of delusions”, Psychopathology 39 (2006): 87–91 [pdf]

Abstract
Background: The DSM criteria for a delusion indicate that it should not include any beliefs held by a person’s ‘culture or subculture’. The internet has many examples of people reporting ‘mind control experiences’ (MCEs) on self-published web pages, many of which suggest a community based around such beliefs and experiences. It was hypothesised that some of these reports are likely to reflect delusional beliefs and the hyperlinks between web reports were likely to show evidence of social structure, demonstrating the ‘culture or subculture’ exemption to be increasingly redundant in light of new technology.

(via MindHacks)

Majority of Marriages End Before 25 Years, Census Finds

By SAM ROBERTS
Published: September 19, 2007 Don’t stock up on silver anniversary cards. More than half the Americans who might have celebrated their 25th wedding anniversaries since 2000 were either divorced, separated or widowed, according to a census survey released today.

(From the New York Times)

(via Pharyngula)

On reading assignment instructions.

My previous post (”Fun With Haiku“) was my initial attempt at writing a haiku for my Poetry Writing class. Silly me, I hadn’t actually read the instructions, which required a completely different set of haiku. I don’t normally write haiku, let alone a collection of thirteen, so I’m not going to complain about the result. As it turned out, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t read the instructions, they resulted in much more boring haiku:

lilypads on river
glitter with molten diamonds
wind on upturned face

boulders tumble through
glass funnel – silica mound
the swiftness of time

pearls of lcd
ocean of data glowing on
concentrating minds

“Girls love assholes / and kittens. ” Go read.

Fun with Haiku

Thirteen Scenes with the Moon

1.
caress of night’s breeze
as clouds uncover the moon
so the robe your breast

2.
alone in the sky
the moon cannot compare to
these twin orbs, your eyes

3.
a chrysanthemum
more fragrant than the night breeze
naught to your perfume

4.
twin moons: sky and sea
past your robe on mist and sand
pale satin skin glows

5.
your lips, parted, curled
the moon strains her ears to hear
announce, love, our bliss

6.
the moonbeams fall as
delicate arpeggios
radiant skin sings

7.
there are no bodies
but two suns - the moon reflects
our light to the world

8.
sing your hidden song
play the chords of your body
the moon sings nightly

9.
moon seen through the leaves
plum blossoms fall on our quilt
and tumble to snow

10.
the crescent moon cries
the raindrops fallen like tears
pool upon your breasts

11.
this pool of snowmelt
warmed by our passion
reflects the moon’s smile
and yours

12.
harvest moon above
we tumble amid red leaves
rebellious moans

13.
moon-lit mist like gauze
curtains waved by jasmine wind
come, the bed awaits

Note: The poem, overall, owes a certain debt to Wallace Steven’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” Haiku 1 is based on Jelaluddin Rumi’s “Like This.” Haiku 12 was inspired by a haiku by Hattori Ransetsu: “meigetsu ya / keburi haiyuku / mizu no ue” or “harvest moon… / smoke goes creeping / over the water” from William Higginson’s The Haiku Handbook.

A short film.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpZcUSs6eak]

Via Write now is good.

Bras Don’t Support Bouncing Breasts, Study Finds
By Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Staff Writer

Whether women are said to be flat-chested or big-busted, ordinary bras fall short when it comes to supporting bouncing breasts, a new study claims.

And during exercise, women’s breasts bounce more than previously estimated, moving a vertical distance of up to around eight inches (21 centimeters) compared with a past maximum measurement of six inches (16 centimeters).

The bouncing, in some cases with breasts weighing 20 pounds or more, can prove painful and damaging to the limited natural support system.

(via Innocent Bystanders)

I’m getting worried that my blog is going to leave me. After all, I’ve been spending a lot of time with new friends (i.e. textbooks); staying up to all hours of the night with them, and then largely rejecting it except for these small tidbits of attention that can’t really be called affection. :( And it’s not just my blog, oh no, it’s the ten tabs of blogs I have had open for four days because I can’t seem to find time to read them. So, anyway, here’ s more bullets and randomness which I hope will keep my involvement with the blog stumbling forward in this, my period of business and not blogging at work.

• Courtesy of Tara at Aetiology

Raise gas prices to slim down America?
…so claims this headline. Only the story screws it up.

The article highlights this dissertation research by Charles Courtemanche at Washington University in St. Louis. Courtemanche’s thesis is that the rise in gas prices causes more people to walk, ride bikes, or take public transportation (which they’d also have to walk to), as well as eat at home instead of going out; therefore higher gasoline prices can result in a thinner population. Sounds plausible. I won’t get into all the details of his research (the .pdf is available from the above link for anyone interested), but just by reading the abstract I can see a glaring error in the MSNBC report, which makes the gas price hypothesis sound a lot bigger than it is. See if you can spot it:

From Courtemanche’s dissertation abstract:

I use a fixed effects model to explore whether this theory has empirical support, finding that an additional $1 in real gasoline prices would reduce obesity in the U.S. by 15% after five years, and that 13% of the rise in obesity between 1979 and 2004 can be attributed to falling real gas prices during this period.

From Reuters:

The report, written by Charles Courtenance for his doctoral dissertation in health economics, found that the 13 percent rise in obesity between 1979 and 2004 can be attributed to falling pump prices.

Do you have keener eyes than Reuters’ editors? And who wants to wager how frequently this mistake will be cited in future stories on this topic, rather than the data that Courtemanche actually presents?

• Courtesy of Reuters

Town ditches traffic lights to cut accidents
Tue Sep 11 12:34:05 UTC 2007
By Catherine Bosley

BERLIN (Reuters) - A town council in Germany has decided the best way of improving road safety is to remove all traffic lights and stop signs downtown.

From September 12, all traffic controls will disappear from the center of the western town of Bohmte to try to reduce accidents and make life easier for pedestrians.

• Also Courtesy of Reuters

Can’t quit chocolate? Don’t fret, it’s no addiction
Tue Sep 11 15:23:23 UTC 2007
By Michael Kahn

YORK (Reuters) - Resistance is futile. The more we try to fight off a craving for chocolate, the more our desire for it grows, a British researcher said on Tuesday.

But chocoholics can take heart that such sweets are not addictive despite the fact many people consider themselves as having no control over their urges to eat the sweets, said Peter Rogers, a psychologist at the University of Bristol.

• And, courtesy of Write Now Is Good

Earlier today, I stumbled across the Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary. I had a lot of fun typing in words and phrases, then seeing how the words and their associations floated and bounced across my screen. Above is an excerpt of the image map for “create.” To see how wide its map goes, go to the Visuwords site and type it in for yourself.

I’ll definitely use this when I want more than just a standard line definition. It’s very playful, and I think this characteristic helps when people are brainstorming. Playfulness keeps their thought processes more open to different possibilities.



While not as movie-like as the web-site grapher, you can move the word-balls around and the lines surrounding them are elastic. It’s fun and educational!

…Now if only I could buy the blog flowers… that always works, right?