March 2012
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February 2012
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Happy Leap Day
Today is Leap Day which occurs every four years when we tack on an extra day at the end of February to calibrate our human-made calendar to the natural world.
The Earth does not orbit the sun in an even 365 days, but rather in 365 days, five hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds.
This extra day has given rise to several traditions and superstitions over the years, especially in the Middle Ages. In...
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The largest photo of the night sky ever taken →
A 360-panaromic view of the night sky composed of 37,000 separate photographs! Follow link for the the high-definition zoomable version.
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Feeling Uncertain? →
On this date in 1927, physicist Werner Heisenberg first described his Uncertainty Principle in a letter.
In a nutshell, the Uncertainty Principle states that the more precisely we can determine a particle’s momentum, the less information we have about its position, and vice versa. The principle represents one of the most fundamental differences between quantum mechanics and classical...
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“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
– Philip K. Dick
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“Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness...”
– Saint Augustine
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“The old man was dreaming about lions.”
– last line of The Old Man and The Sea, Ernest Hemingway
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“I don’t think poetry is based just on poetry; it is based on a thoroughly...”
– A quote from Jane Hirshfield - born this day in New York City in 1953.
She went to Princeton, where she was in the first graduating class to include women in 1973.
She published her first poem not long after, then went of to northern California to study Buddhism for the next eight years, during...
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“I like to do things like get in a taxi and say, “The library, and step on...”
– David Foster Wallace
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Read A Book Today Because...
on this date in 1455, the first printing of the Gutenberg Bible began in Mainz, Germany. Celebrate a book today. No Kindles please.
Although books in China had been printed as early as the 9th century, every book in Europe had been produced by hand, copied painstakingly by scribes, until Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with moveable type.
Gutenberg had been experimenting with...
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Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
My, my… what a fitting tribute on the President’s Weekend that I saw the trailer for or Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which debuts in theaters nationwide June 22.
Be forewarned history teachers.
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“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
– Anaïs Nin
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“I write emotional algebra.”
– Anaïs Nin
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“Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.”
– W.H. Auden
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“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
– F.Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
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Lunch Poem
“Cook” by Jane Hirshfield, from Of Gravity & Angels
Each night you come home with five continents on your hands: garlic, olive oil, saffron, anise, coriander, tea, your fingernails blackened with a marjoram and thyme. Sometimes the zucchini’s flesh seems like a fish-steak, cut into neat filets, or the salt-rubbed eggplant yields not bitter water, but dark mystery. ...
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Open-Door Policies at 2-Year Colleges Face Threat
Via http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/open-door-policies-at-2-year-colleges-face-threat-report-says/
The nation’s college-completion agenda may be threatening open-door admissions policies at two-year institutions, says a report released today by the American Association of Community Colleges. The organization is concerned that colleges may become more selective in admissions in an attempt to...
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