Backa the staxa The John Adams Building, knowsit ...
Sneaky cameraphone captures ...
Declassified Government papers ...
Classic rows of archived history herein ...
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Backstage Snaps
Took these backstage at the L - O - C
Backa the staxa The John Adams Building, knowsit ...
Sneaky cameraphone captures ...
Declassified Government papers ...
Classic rows of archived history herein ...
Backa the staxa The John Adams Building, knowsit ...
Sneaky cameraphone captures ...
Declassified Government papers ...
Classic rows of archived history herein ...
Monday, March 12, 2007
Dark Matter
Learned about Dark Matter from this article by Richard Panek. A humbling but fascinating read!
Since the invention of the telescope four centuries ago, astronomers have been able to figure out the workings of the universe simply by observing the heavens and applying some math, and vice versa. Take the discovery of moons, planets, stars and galaxies, apply Newton’s laws and you have a universe that runs like clockwork. Take Einstein’s modifications of Newton, apply the discovery of an expanding universe and you get the big bang. “It’s a ridiculously simple, intentionally cartoonish picture,” Perlmutter said. “We’re just incredibly lucky that that first try has matched so well.”
But is our luck about to run out? Smoot’s and Perlmutter’s work is part of a revolution that has forced their colleagues to confront a universe wholly unlike any they have ever known, one that is made of only 4 percent of the kind of matter we have always assumed it to be — the material that makes up you and me and this magazine and all the planets and stars in our galaxy and in all 125 billion galaxies beyond. The rest — 96 percent of the universe — is ... who knows?
“Dark,” cosmologists call it, in what could go down in history as the ultimate semantic surrender. This is not “dark” as in distant or invisible. This is “dark” as in unknown for now, and possibly forever.
If so, such a development would presumably not be without philosophical consequences of the civilization-altering variety. Cosmologists often refer to this possibility as “the ultimate Copernican revolution”: not only are we not at the center of anything; we’re not even made of the same stuff as most of the rest of everything. “We’re just a bit of pollution,” Lawrence M. Krauss, a theorist at Case Western Reserve, said not long ago at a public panel on cosmology in Chicago. “If you got rid of us, and all the stars and all the galaxies and all the planets and all the aliens and everybody, then the universe would be largely the same. We’re completely irrelevant.”
... the time has come to rethink a fundamental assumption: When we look up at the night sky, we’re seeing the universe.
Not so. Not even close.
>>> the rest of the article
Since the invention of the telescope four centuries ago, astronomers have been able to figure out the workings of the universe simply by observing the heavens and applying some math, and vice versa. Take the discovery of moons, planets, stars and galaxies, apply Newton’s laws and you have a universe that runs like clockwork. Take Einstein’s modifications of Newton, apply the discovery of an expanding universe and you get the big bang. “It’s a ridiculously simple, intentionally cartoonish picture,” Perlmutter said. “We’re just incredibly lucky that that first try has matched so well.”
But is our luck about to run out? Smoot’s and Perlmutter’s work is part of a revolution that has forced their colleagues to confront a universe wholly unlike any they have ever known, one that is made of only 4 percent of the kind of matter we have always assumed it to be — the material that makes up you and me and this magazine and all the planets and stars in our galaxy and in all 125 billion galaxies beyond. The rest — 96 percent of the universe — is ... who knows?
“Dark,” cosmologists call it, in what could go down in history as the ultimate semantic surrender. This is not “dark” as in distant or invisible. This is “dark” as in unknown for now, and possibly forever.
If so, such a development would presumably not be without philosophical consequences of the civilization-altering variety. Cosmologists often refer to this possibility as “the ultimate Copernican revolution”: not only are we not at the center of anything; we’re not even made of the same stuff as most of the rest of everything. “We’re just a bit of pollution,” Lawrence M. Krauss, a theorist at Case Western Reserve, said not long ago at a public panel on cosmology in Chicago. “If you got rid of us, and all the stars and all the galaxies and all the planets and all the aliens and everybody, then the universe would be largely the same. We’re completely irrelevant.”
... the time has come to rethink a fundamental assumption: When we look up at the night sky, we’re seeing the universe.
Not so. Not even close.
>>> the rest of the article
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Archives Videos
I just learned about Google digitzing all of the National Archives' films. DIG IT RIGHT HERE!
I got it from this excellent article on the current state of digitizing. Google is our friend. Deal with it.
I got it from this excellent article on the current state of digitizing. Google is our friend. Deal with it.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
The Death of Artists
Today I learned about the funs in differences of Baudelaire translations! They fluctuate wildly to make them poetically fit.
Check the takes on THIS KILLERNESS:
+
La Mort des Artistes
Combien faut-il de fois secouer mes grelots
Et baiser ton front bas, morne caricature?
Pour piquer dans le but, de mystique nature,
Combien, ô mon carquois, perdre de javelots?
Nous userons notre âme en de subtils complots,
Et nous démolirons mainte lourde armature,
Avant de contempler la grande Créature
Dont l'infernal désir nous remplit de sanglots!
Il en est qui jamais n'ont connu leur Idole,
Et ces sculpteurs damnés et marqués d'un affront,
Qui vont se martelant la poitrine et le front,
N'ont qu'un espoir, étrange et sombre Capitole!
C'est que la Mort, planant comme un soleil nouveau,
Fera s'épanouir les fleurs de leur cerveau!
— Charles Baudelaire
>>>OKOK! 1st of all, I am SUPERDELIGHTED with these French rhymes!
Grelots and Javelots!
Complots and Sanglots! > hellyes!!
étrange et sombre Capitole ... !!!
now for some English versions >>>
The Death of Artists
How many times must I shake my bauble and bells
And kiss your low forehead, dismal caricature?
To strike the target of mystic nature,
How many javelins must I waste, O my quiver?
We shall wear out our souls in subtle schemes
And we shall demolish many an armature
Before contemplating the glorious Creature
For whom a tormenting desire makes our hearts grieve!
There are some who have never known their Idol
And those sculptors, damned and branded with shame,
Who are always hammering their brows and their breasts,
Have but one hope, bizarre and somber Capitol!
It is that Death, soaring like a new sun,
Will bring to bloom the flowers of their brains!
— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)
The Death of Artists
How often must I shake my bells, and kiss
Your brow, sad Travesty? How many a dart,
My quiver, shoot at Nature's mystic heart
Before I hit the target that I miss?
We'll still consume our souls in subtle schemes,
Demolishing tough harness, long before
We see the giant Creature of our dreams
Whom all the world is weeping to adore.
Some never knew their Idol, though they prayed:
And these doomed sculptors, with an insult branded,
Hammer your brows and bosom, heavy-handed,
In the one hope, O Capitol of shade!
That Death like some new sun should rise and give
Warmth to their wasted flowers, and make them live.
— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)
La Mort des artistes
how often must I shake my bells, and deign
to kiss thy brow debased, full travesty?
to pierce the mark, whose goal is mystery,
how oft, my quiver, waste thy darts in vain?
we shall exhaust our soul and subtle brain
and burst the bars of many a tyranny,
ere we shall glimpse the vast divinity
for which we burn and sob and burn again!
some too their idol never knew, and now,
flouted and branded with the brand of hell,
go beating fists of wrath on breast and brow;
one hope they know, strange, darkling citadel!
— can Death's new sunlight, streaming o'er the tomb,
lure the dead flower of their brain to bloom?
— Lewis Piaget Shanks, Flowers of Evil (New York: Ives Washburn, 1931)
[and perhaps my favorite from the pbk. I roll with]
The Death of Artists
How often must I shake my bells and kiss
Your low forehead, O dismal Caricature ?
How many arrows must I shoot amiss
Before I strike the target's mystic lure ?
We must wear out our souls in subtle schemes,
We must dismantle many a scaffolding,
Before we know the Creature of our dreams
That fills our hearts with sob and sorrowing.
Some never know the Idol of their soul;
Like sculptors damned and branded for disgrace
Who hammer upon their own breast and face,
They have one hope -- their somber Capitol!
That Death may rise, a sun of another kind,
And bring to blossom the flowers of their mind.
- this translation is by Jackson Mathews, who worked with many poets, and did lotsa Baudelaire and Paul Valery stuff.
Check the takes on THIS KILLERNESS:
+
La Mort des Artistes
Combien faut-il de fois secouer mes grelots
Et baiser ton front bas, morne caricature?
Pour piquer dans le but, de mystique nature,
Combien, ô mon carquois, perdre de javelots?
Nous userons notre âme en de subtils complots,
Et nous démolirons mainte lourde armature,
Avant de contempler la grande Créature
Dont l'infernal désir nous remplit de sanglots!
Il en est qui jamais n'ont connu leur Idole,
Et ces sculpteurs damnés et marqués d'un affront,
Qui vont se martelant la poitrine et le front,
N'ont qu'un espoir, étrange et sombre Capitole!
C'est que la Mort, planant comme un soleil nouveau,
Fera s'épanouir les fleurs de leur cerveau!
— Charles Baudelaire
>>>OKOK! 1st of all, I am SUPERDELIGHTED with these French rhymes!
Grelots and Javelots!
Complots and Sanglots! > hellyes!!
étrange et sombre Capitole ... !!!
now for some English versions >>>
The Death of Artists
How many times must I shake my bauble and bells
And kiss your low forehead, dismal caricature?
To strike the target of mystic nature,
How many javelins must I waste, O my quiver?
We shall wear out our souls in subtle schemes
And we shall demolish many an armature
Before contemplating the glorious Creature
For whom a tormenting desire makes our hearts grieve!
There are some who have never known their Idol
And those sculptors, damned and branded with shame,
Who are always hammering their brows and their breasts,
Have but one hope, bizarre and somber Capitol!
It is that Death, soaring like a new sun,
Will bring to bloom the flowers of their brains!
— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)
The Death of Artists
How often must I shake my bells, and kiss
Your brow, sad Travesty? How many a dart,
My quiver, shoot at Nature's mystic heart
Before I hit the target that I miss?
We'll still consume our souls in subtle schemes,
Demolishing tough harness, long before
We see the giant Creature of our dreams
Whom all the world is weeping to adore.
Some never knew their Idol, though they prayed:
And these doomed sculptors, with an insult branded,
Hammer your brows and bosom, heavy-handed,
In the one hope, O Capitol of shade!
That Death like some new sun should rise and give
Warmth to their wasted flowers, and make them live.
— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)
La Mort des artistes
how often must I shake my bells, and deign
to kiss thy brow debased, full travesty?
to pierce the mark, whose goal is mystery,
how oft, my quiver, waste thy darts in vain?
we shall exhaust our soul and subtle brain
and burst the bars of many a tyranny,
ere we shall glimpse the vast divinity
for which we burn and sob and burn again!
some too their idol never knew, and now,
flouted and branded with the brand of hell,
go beating fists of wrath on breast and brow;
one hope they know, strange, darkling citadel!
— can Death's new sunlight, streaming o'er the tomb,
lure the dead flower of their brain to bloom?
— Lewis Piaget Shanks, Flowers of Evil (New York: Ives Washburn, 1931)
[and perhaps my favorite from the pbk. I roll with]
The Death of Artists
How often must I shake my bells and kiss
Your low forehead, O dismal Caricature ?
How many arrows must I shoot amiss
Before I strike the target's mystic lure ?
We must wear out our souls in subtle schemes,
We must dismantle many a scaffolding,
Before we know the Creature of our dreams
That fills our hearts with sob and sorrowing.
Some never know the Idol of their soul;
Like sculptors damned and branded for disgrace
Who hammer upon their own breast and face,
They have one hope -- their somber Capitol!
That Death may rise, a sun of another kind,
And bring to blossom the flowers of their mind.
- this translation is by Jackson Mathews, who worked with many poets, and did lotsa Baudelaire and Paul Valery stuff.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
