Friday, 29 March 2024

Category » The Universe

What I Learned Today, 2013-2016

Piggy’s description:

We could share factoids we’ve read, advice from personal experience, observations about the world, what-have-you. Everyone learns something new every day, and I’d like a place to share.

Continued from v. 2012.


Coming Soon: Pollyhymnia’s Next Novel

Cover of

It’s called The Wells Bequest and will be published in June. It’s already getting good reviews on Goodreads (www .goodreads . com/book/show/16101024-the-wells-bequest).


Happy Presumed Birthday, Will Shakespeare!

We don’t know that you were born on April 23, 1564, just that you were baptized a few days later. And there’s no evidence that you ever spelled your name “Shakespeare” when you signed it. But never mind. You gave us lines like these:

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.


North Carolina Kokonvention, 2012

Last summer, Randomosity101, Agent Lightning, Tesseract, Kiwimuncher, Koppar, Lady Bunniful, and assorted parents Kokonvened at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Stories. We have pictures to prove it, but they’ll have to supply the stories behind them:
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Happy Birthday, Albert Einstein (1879-1955)!

Albert Einstein standing in front of a shelf of books

A century later, we still have trouble wrapping our minds around the bizarre universe you unveiled. But it really does seem to be where we live.


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Happy Pi Day*, Everybody!

Pi Day poster from Robert's office

*(That’s 3/14 in USA date format, for those who write it the other way around.)

This photo from the employee lounge on Robert’s floor at Science magazine shows why geek-rich environments are great places to work.

Where will you be at 1:59?


Attention, Oceanography Fans!

Those of you with online access to Science magazine should definitely check out this week’s news feature “A Sea Change for U.S. Oceanography” at www . sciencemag . org/content/339/6124/1138 .

Short version: As research budgets shrink and technology improves, oceanographers are spending less time at sea and relying more on data from remote sensing.


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The Polling Place, v. 2013

Polling Place threads: vital source of Muserly information, time-wasting distraction, both, other, or what? (We pick “what?!”)

Continued from v. 2011.2


X-Men Panels for KaiYves

KaiYves is tracking the history of high-altitude balloons through a wide variety of sources. At her request, Robert has scanned relevant panels from “The X-Men” number 18 (March 1966) and posted them here for her inspection:

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Happy 204th birthday, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin!

Both were born on February 12, 1809. Both changed the world.


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Hot Topics, v. 2013

A place for careful, clear, respectful discussions of difficult topics. No flame wars, please. This isn’t the rest of the Internet (as you may have noticed).


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Dispatches from Collegeland, 2013

We haven’t started a new edition of this thread since 2010. It’s high time, wouldn’t you say?


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Happy Birthday, Professor Tolkien!

J. R. R. Tolkien, if he were alive, would be 121 years old today.

Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen,
yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!
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Coy Woodnesse, v. 2013

By popular request (well, Piggy’s request, and he’s certainly popular), here’s a new edition of the thread for practicing foreign and/or archaic forms of communication.

The 2012 thread included some possibly useful letters decorated with diacritical marks.

The original Coy Woodnesse thread, launched in 2005, explains the name, sort of.


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Happy Birthday, Carl Sagan!

(9 November 1934 – 20 December 1996)

Thanks and best wishes from the gang on the pale blue dot.


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NaNoWriMo* 2012

It’s on! We’ll see some of you in December.

*National Novel Writing Month

(TheNaNoBraSto gave sneak previews of what a few MBers planned to write.)


Happy Hagfish Day 2012!

Hagfish in an aquarium

Every year, the highly Muserly website Whale Times devotes the third Wednesday in October to celebrating one of the most unlovable creatures in the ocean, the lowly hagfish. For more information, visit www . whaletimes . org/HagfishDay1 . htm.


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Endeavour Refuels

Space shuttles need to eat, too, it seems. Here’s Endeavour last night on its way to the California Science Center:

Space shuttle Endeavour at doughnut shop in Los Angeles

NaNoBraSto 2012

Brainstorming for National Novel-Writing Month (also known as November). Let’s hear your ideas!


International “Talk Like A Pirate” Day, 2012

Jolly Roger

A hearty YARRRR t’ all o’ yiz!


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Books and Reading, v. 2012

Now including discussions of fanfiction!

Continued from v. 2011.


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Just for Fun

Robert writes:

While reading old newspapers online for a personal project I’m working on, I ran across this ad in the San Francisco Daily Alta (April 20, 1871). I’m posting it just because I love it:

The amazing Professor Hazelmayer

Twenty performing birds and mice! Many incomprehensible things! And the world’s only Stylocarfe! You can’t see shows like that anymore. It would definitely be worth a dollar (and some of you would be eligible to get in for 50 cents).


MuseBlogger Gallery, August 2012

Recently arrived pictures of interest:
 
 
KaiYves at NASA Headquarters for the landing of Curiosity on Mars:
KaiYves at NASA HQ for the Curiosity landing

Jadestone’s cuttlefish:
Jadestone's cuttlefish

Jadestone hugging her cuttlefish:
Jadestone hugging her cuttlefish


Back to School, 2012

It’s that time again (at least in the Northern Hemisphere), and you must want to talk about. So here’s a place to do it, courtesy of your ever-obliging GAPAs.

Actually, Jadestone reminded us with this helpful offer:

Think it’s time for another back to school thread? Since many musers are heading off to college for the first time I’ve been thinking about making a list of less-thought of items I found really useful to have freshman year.


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Mus, Anyone?

Unfortunately for its many aficionados, the Muse Academy card game Paker doesn’t work very well outside the Oasis. But we’ve found something almost as good: a Basque card game called Mus. Check it out on Wikipedia (http: // en.wikipedia . org/wiki/Mus_%28card_game%29). We’re sure you’ll want to learn to play it and teach your families and friends, too.


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