KaiYves requested this month’s poem, a 9th-century Irish monk’s description of his quiet life with his cat, Pangur Bán (“White Pangur” or “Fair Pangur”). “Pangur” is the Irish Gaelic word for a fuller, someone who finishes fabric by beating or shrinking it to tighten the weave.
As translated and adapted by W. H. Auden to be set to music by Samuel Barber:
Pangur, white Pangur,
How happy we are
Alone together, Scholar and cat.
Each has his own work to do daily;
For you it is hunting, for me, study.
Your shining eye watches the wall;
My feeble eye is fixed on a book.
You rejoice when your claws entrap a mouse;
I rejoice when my mind fathoms a problem.
Pleased with his own art
Neither hinders the other;
Thus we live ever
Without tedium and envy.
Pangur, white Pangur,
How happy we are,
Alone together, Scholar and cat.
As translated by Robin Flower:
I and Pangur Bán my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
Better far than praise of men
‘Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He too plies his simple skill.
‘Tis a merry task to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.
Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur’s way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.
‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!
So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.
Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.
For good measure, here’s the Irish original:
Messe ocus Pangur Bán,
cechtar nathar fria saindan:
bÃth a menmasam fri seilgg,
mu memna céin im saincheirdd.
Caraimse fos (ferr cach clu)
oc mu lebran, leir ingnu;
ni foirmtech frimm Pangur Bán:
caraid cesin a maccdán.
O ru biam (scél cen scÃs)
innar tegdais, ar n-oendÃs,
taithiunn, dichrichide clius,
ni fris tarddam ar n-áthius.
Gnáth, huaraib, ar gressaib gal
glenaid luch inna lÃnsam;
os mé, du-fuit im lÃn chéin
dliged ndoraid cu ndronchéill.
Fuachaidsem fri frega fál
a rosc, a nglése comlán;
fuachimm chein fri fegi fis
mu rosc reil, cesu imdis.
Faelidsem cu ndene dul
hi nglen luch inna gerchrub;
hi tucu cheist ndoraid ndil
os me chene am faelid.
Cia beimmi a-min nach ré
ni derban cách a chele:
maith la cechtar nár a dán;
subaigthius a óenurán.
He fesin as choimsid dáu
in muid du-ngni cach oenláu;
du thabairt doraid du glé
for mu mud cein am messe.
Cats were on my mind when I carved this year’s jack-o’-lantern:
Then, after I finished, they were on my lap:
Aw, tell Mina and Mishmish the girl in the weird vest says hi.
Anyone else doing NaNo this year?
I am, ish! I’m writing a play, but I’m using NaNo structure to get me going. (It’s called The Merrie Comedie of the Redemption of Doctor Faustus, though that’s really just a placeholder title. Blank verse is so much fun.)
As it happens, I’ve gotten an idea for a plot at precisely the wrong time of semester as I’ll have to spend the next two months working on my final papers for my three classes and my second-year thesis. But I would like to take the opportunity to develop my idea and research it, especially because it would require a rebooting of my “Into the Cosmos” series.
While I would love to pick up writing new stories in that setting exactly where I left off, some very fundamental elements of it now seem kind of “I’m 14 and this is cool” and I’d like to alter them. For instance, it would probably be less offensive, open up the potential for more stories, and require minimal change to how he’s discussed in the existing stories if Teresa’s grandfather was an original character involved with the Apollo program with a backstory TBD rather than actually being Wernher Von Braun.
As much as I dislike the whole concept of the event (Copying Crisis on Infinite Earths 30 years later! How innovative!), maybe I could use Marvel’s Secret Wars reboot as an explanation/excuse for this and other changes, maybe not.
Also, I think I a redemption story for Faustus sounds really interesting.
I’m trying!
A friend of mine got so excited about it after I told her that she’s already about halfway dome with it. This is someone with a lot of time on their hands.
Junior year of high school my friend didn’t have time to work on it all month, because junior year, and then wrote all 50,000 words over the five days we had off for Thanksgiving. It was wild.
I’ve never done NaNo and I’m still not doing it because I don’t have a plan, because I started my job at the end of September! But what I am doing is actually fleshing out what that plan would’ve been if I’d been able to work on it. So at the end of the month I’m hoping to have an actual solid plan for a novel. That’d be cool.
I wish! But it’s my first ever semester of college so I’m prudently deciding to take a break this year. I did a NaNo earlier in the year, in April, so I don’t feel so bad. Maybe I’ll do a summer session.
Ah, thank you GAPAs, this may be a very appropriate poem as our studies become more intense this month towards the end of the semester.
For Halloween, I dressed up as Velma with the same clothes I used for Comic-Con, although I added gray tights under the skirt and a red scarf because it was a bit chilly. I worked the popcorn stand at the Children’s Halloween Parade post-parade carnival for three hours. It was pretty busy work, even though we filled a cardboard box with filled bags of popcorn before the carnival started, pretty soon we had no surplus at all and were hurrying to fill each bag and then immediately pass it to the customer and the line went all the way down the queue area that had been set up. People really like popcorn, I guess.
After that, I got dinner to go and bought some candy so that I could give it out to kids from my apartment complex who came by my door. I put down on the sheet in the lobby that trick-or-treaters could come by after 8 PM, which I changed to 7 after I got back earlier from buying the candy than I expected to, but I think it was too late anyway, because I only got 12 visitors.
And then there’s the Pangur Ban song from Secret of Kells….
On a totally unrelated note, I had my first cavity filled today.
Just back from Amsterdam yesterday after ten hours of train through Germany. I went for four nights with my boyfriend and it was great! On our last full day, having already seen a lot of the city centre, Rijksmuseum etc. we decided on the spur of the moment to cycle nearly sixty kilometres around the Dutch countryside on rental city bikes with no gears, and we only got slightly off-track once.
It was so nice to get away but it’s not been so much fun to be back to reality this week; the stress is rapidly returning. (I’ve noticed that November generally feels like a harder month. So many things to do, so little time!)
I agree about stress and November. But I’m glad you had fun in Amsterdam.
I don’t like these new “artsy” comic book trade paperbacks with no summary blurb on the back cover, just more art or a quote. How is someone who hasn’t heard of the series before supposed to know whether or not it would interest them?
“Now that I’m not wiiiiith you, I close my eyes and dreaaam
Remember all my days as a victim of gravityyyyy…”
The leaves in Central Park are turning their fall colors. I love when leaves are those perfect shades of golden orange-yellow and you can look up and see them against the blue sky… but if you try to take a photo, you only get black leaves against a blue sky or orange leaves against a white one.
HDR? You’d need a tripod, but that might be able to capture all of the colors.
I decided for NaNo my goal will be to get to 50k on my pokemon fanfic! AKA write 3.5k words over the whole month. You gotta start small!
I guess maybe people would want a life update?
I got a job! Like, 3 months ago! I moved back to the East Bay area in August and I’m working at a, um, local university *wink wink*. I’m a technician in a fungal lab. I thought that I’d be working on a bunch of different projects, but it turns out I’ve been conscripted into one specific, huge, three-year-long project dealing with post-fire fungi. Stage one is sequencing the genome and transcriptome of about 20 different strains that were collected last winter from sites burned in the Rim Fire in 2013. But fungi are fickle creatures and there isn’t a lot of established extraction technique. So the last few months have been trying various techniques to see what works best. We’ve hit upon one that seems to work okay without subjecting us to too much phenol so I think we’re going to continue with this one.
I wanted to have a more genomics-focused job, but this is the best I got. Actually, it’s the only job I got. I got fairly close to getting two others, but one I botched with a disasterous interview and the other I was in the top three and had to weigh accepting this job against continuing the interview process. I chose the former.
I don’t think I posted about it on here, but I kind of want to share a bit about the horrible interview. Protip: always read some of your potential employer’s publications, even though it had never mattered in your other interviews. …Yeah so I probably would have gotten this nice job in St. Louis helping to study the visual system had I actually tried to read up on his publications, since he paid for me to fly down there and scheduled a whole day for me to meet everyone in the lab individually, but since I was a POS and didn’t read anything I had to fly back early. It was the first time in my life that I failed so badly. But it’s a feeling that I’ll never forget. I honestly think failing is the best way to learn, and before that I was vaguely uncomfortable at how I was kind of coasting by. At least from now on I can say “at least I didn’t screw it up as bad as that interview.”
I truly think I’m happier here than I would have been there, though. The PI was young and seemed overbearing. Here the two PIs are older and more hands-off. They’re fun to talk to, but I rarely interact with them. Instead I work with a fun grad student. Plus this project is more ecology-focused, which I’m used to. The downside is the genomics aspect is… barely there. Dangit.
It’s fun being back in California. I’m sure I would have liked St. Louis, since it’s closer to Chicago and my (two) college friends, but the west coast will always feel like home. Additionally I absolutely love driving, and felt trapped in Chicago and DC without a car. I have to pay to park it on the street, but my car is here!! I can go wherever I want!
I haven’t tried to make any friends yet since I’m so caking tired after work. Why are so many social events during the week?! I seriously need to work on my sleep schedule if I’m going to have any kind of social life. I end up staying up just a little too late, until around 11pm or so. Then there’s this guy who skypes in the hallway near the router for 30 minutes or so since the faster internet doesn’t reach up into the attic where he stays. Shortly after that someone comes in at around midnight and takes a 30-minute shower, which keeps me awake for a bit since my room’s right next to the bathroom. It’s okay, though, since the shower kind of sounds like a heavy rain. In summary, that means if I try to go to sleep any later than 10pm, I will be woken up by the skype guy and will stay awake until shower guy finishes. It takes forever for me to fall asleep so I have to start trying at least an hour before the disruptions start. 10pm bedtime means 10 hours of sleep, which is just enough for me. I think I require more sleep than average, which absolutely stinks because it’s a bunch of time lost and there’s nothing I can do about it.
For a while I neither played the cello nor studied math but I’m working on fixing one of those! My parents brought my cello down when they visited me for Labor Day, once we confirmed I have space enough and time enough to practice! I took it out to play a couple of times and my skills haven’t regressed as much as I’d feared! Now that I have my car (that’s an ordeal you probably don’t want to hear about) I can work on finding a teacher. There are probably plenty in the area, it’s just a problem of whether they’re taking any new students at this time of year.
Shoot I ended up rambling. I guess I wanted to summarize the past six months or so. I guess the point is I’m doing well! It’s nice to finally not have to worry about what I’ll be doing next. At least for the next year or so!
Congratulations on the job, the location, and the cello! If you time it right, maybe you can use the latter to get back at Skype Guy.
If you ever have any free time and energy, go visit Rosanne in Palo Alto! She’d love to see you.
What he said!
Thanks for the replies! I get a bit… wordy after I’ve had some alcohol.
I want to write a fanfic that would feature in a background role a very minor character who appeared in only two comics a quarter-century ago. They weren’t given much backstory in those two issues, but they were very clearly based on a real person who had been in the news at the time of publication, so my planned backstory for them would also broadly parallel the real person’s career. However, apparently this character did receive a capsule profile in an edition of the Marvel Encyclopedia that was published 12 years ago, so I would like to find that book and just see if they were given any backstory at all there that might conflict with my outline.
However, neither Forbidden Planet nor the Greenwich Village used bookstores I usually depend on seem to have it and I can’t get them to order something I’m not going to buy, because I’m not going to buy a whole book to read one profile. Should I just call up random comics stores in the area and ask if they have it?
Maybe the information is in online wikis?
Have you searched library databases for the book yet?
I don’t know how likely libraries are to have a softcover comic book reference volume from more than a decade ago, but I can try.
Online was the first place I looked, and where I found scans of the original comics the character appeared in, as well as the fact that they’d had a profile in that book. Even the Marvel Appendix hasn’t gotten around to covering them (I know they want to cover every powered character before they get around to the non-powered ones like this person).
Libraries are always worth a try.
I think the nearest place on WorldCat that they have it is somewhere in NJ.
NaNo update: just went to my first-ever write in, won 2/4 word wars and am now up to 14k! So energized.
We had a school “election” today (As in the voting for a president of the United States, not for a student representative)
We were encouraged to vote for a “real” candidate, but the Beta Club (who was organizing the “election”) let go of that rule quickly.
I voted for Hermione Granger (even though she isn’t eligible), and there were about 30 votes for the Beta Club president who told students who weren’t sure who they were voting for to write in her name. Harambe the Gorilla and Pedro Sanchez (from Napoleon Dynamite) were also popular options.
They really did “Vote for Pedro”, then!
I remember my elementary school did this during the 2008 election. I didn’t see a write-in option and was too young to form my own political views, so I voted for Bob Barr, a Libertarian, because he wasn’t Obama or McCain.
You didn’t vote for Kokopelli?
Aw man, I totally should have. I was an avid Muse reader at the time, too.
Team Whoever Wins Nobody Talk About The 2020 Election Until July 2018 At The Earliest.
Hold each other close, emotionally and physically. This is such a difficult night.
Excuse me if I seem a little pensive today.
My work is having an ice cream and booze commiseration party due to the election results.
In that vein, I would like to propose a MB pie party, where we buy/make pies and use them to toast to the idea that no matter what happens, we will try to make the world a better place. Can be anything from a single-serve pie from a convenience store to a giant homemade pie.
Not today, I think.
Apologies, I didn’t mean today. Just whenever people are ready.
Groundhog: Oh, feel free to start the party whenever you like. But I won’t be able to join you until later.
I very greatly envy the Vendée Globe sailors at the moment and wish I also was all alone in the Atlantic on a boat far away from everyone and everything and I didn’t have to come back to land for three months. Rich Wilson and Conrad Coleman may be the luckiest American citizens on the planet.
And Coleman, as a dual citizen, is perhaps the luckiest of all because he can go home to New Zealand when everything is over.
Well, I don’t enough enough couches for y’all, but if some of you are cool with yoga mats on the floor we can make it work.
Or we all just move to straight to Iceland. Muse University has a grad school program, yes?
My parents would never let me leave the country while I’m getting my fellowship for this PhD. No matter what happens they’d tell me I was funded for five years and I had to stay and get it.
Holy Koko I didn’t realise you were already doing a PhD that is so awesome
At NYU Anthropology you enroll once and study to get both your Master’s and PhD, so I’m technically both a Master’s and a PhD student, although I don’t have either one yet.
Hi, MuseBlog. I’m dropping in at the end of a terrible day to let you know I love you. I don’t comment much, but I do log in to read what everyone has posted here, every day. You remind me that curiosity, kindness, respect, and enthusiasm are still abundant.
I love you too, CO.
Thank you, Choklit Orange. Curiosity, kindness, respect, and enthusiasm are the heart and soul of MuseBlog. What a rare little place this is, and what rare people you all are.
Right now it feels as if everything that so many have worked so hard for so long to build was just a sand castle that a big wave has washed away. We’ll have to start over from scratch, and it will take decades to set things right. Such a waste. I’m sorry. You deserve better.
Is the dream of the 90s still alive anywhere, even Portlandia?
I love you too, Chok. we’ll get through this. <3
Love you too. *internet hugs*
Hugs and choklit, CO
Me too, a few times a week. Love you all.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Hey Robert, this is totally random, but what year did you start working at “Science”?
January 2000.
Ah, and did you come right from NASA or did you do something else in-between?
In between, I worked as an editor at the American Geological Institute, took the Foreign Service Exam, spent a year studying Arabic at the Foreign Service Institute, and worked in Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt. Then I went to graduate school.
You worked at NASA?!? That’s so cool!
Are you assembling a dossier?
No, I was just curious about where the different stories you’ve told slotted in.
Question for Robert, or anyone else here who has either paid writers or worked as a writer:
When paying writers per word, what is included from that word count?
The questionables: title/headline, byline, bio, pull quotes, subtitles within the piece.
GroundhogKittymine: Just the text, in my experience. The editors will rewrite all of that other stuff anyway.I think you have mistaken my sister for me.
Oops, sorry. My mind has been doing strange things this week.
*hands plate and goggles to Robert*
Would these help?
Beyond a shadow of a doubt.
*SMASH!!!!!*
I feel the world is very different now from the one it was a week ago.
Rest in peace, Leonard Cohen.
For stress relief, I cannot recommend taking a good walk highly enough.
Agreed. I’m taking an Avian Ecology class this semester, and half our class decided to spend our independent project weeks doing a survey of bird-window collisions on campus. That means a pair of us walking around six buildings every morning an hour after sunrise. One of my surveys happened to be yesterday morning, and honestly, walking around outdoors on a quiet morning feeling like I was doing a small amount of good in the world was one of the best forms of self-care for me.
SCENE: Düsseldorf Ceramic Works, Germany
A messenger with a clipboard rushes into an office. The woman behind the desk stands up, surprised.
Messenger: “Frau Trossen!”
Frau Trossen: “Is it–”
Messenger: “Yes, another order from Iceland for the ‘JFS’ model!”
Frau Trossen: “But that’s the five hundredth one in the past six months! When they submitted a special order for a china set built to custom specifications, that was unusual, but I thought nothing of it. But then they ordered a dozen, and then a hundred, and then just this past year, they seemed to order another set or five every *week*!”
Messenger: “Yes, Ma’am, it’s very strange. The address appears to be a sort of educational institution. Shall we configure the assembly line in Building 6?”
Frau Trossen: “Oh, of course, they can have whatever they want as long as they keep paying. But what in the world could they want with–” *looks at order on clipboard* “–ONE THOUSAND MORE SETS OF FINE CHINA?!?!”
Scene: Muse Academy Island, Hyperborea, Sub-Basement 3 of Coontz House
Loud clinking and crashing sounds are heard as the camera follows a group of students wearing sweaters in the various MA House colors as they search for something within a vast room full of tool cabinets of varying sizes. Passing “Australopithecene Fossils”, “Stratospheric Parachutes”, “Popcorn CFL Lightbulbs”, “High-Powered Hairdryers”, “Iraqi-Canadian Superweapon Components”, and “Antikythera Mechanism Schematics”, they come to a cabinet marked “JFS Plates” and each take an armload of plates and a few teapots and teacups, and stagger out of the room into a hallway.
The sounds of crashing get louder as the group travels down a corridor passed doors marked “Amphibian Nursery”, “Vertical Wind Tunnel”, and “Tsunami Simulator” (defaced to read “Tsimulator”, with “Oh yeah, real original!” written underneath in different handwriting). They enter one door and join a line of students already waiting with their own goggles and armloads of plates. At the end of the line is a large gym-like room where students stand facing brick walls, hurling the plates, cups, and teapots at them and rejoicing in the sounds of the breakage.
Zooming out, the text painted on the far wall of the room is visible: JUST FOR SMASHING PLATE-THROWING ROOM. A banner below it adds “Post-Election Special Hours 5:00-23:00.”
Happy birthday, Fireh!
Happy Birthday!
Oh Kokopelli, there was an earthquake in New Zealand… This year, my gosh, this year…
More birthdays coming up this month:
November 18
Enceladus (1996) (remember him?) and Kyra aka Cello-Playing Mathematician (1993)
November 27
Purple Panda (1991) and Dodecahedron (1993)
Man, I miss Enceladus. He and I played through the Portal 2 co-op campaign together.
Yeah! I always wonder how people from the old days of MuseBlog are doing. I used to be in contact with Zinc over social media, but that was like three or four years ago. Last I remember she was really into emo bands and social justice stuff.
It’s always exciting when old-timers visit. I wish them well, wherever they are.
Same.
Has anyone seen “Arrival”? I saw it yesterday and wonder what you think.
No but the trailer makes it look very cool!
I hope we can keep having a serious space movie come out every fall for several more years at least.
Not yet, but I like Ted Chiang’s stories. (He wrote the story it is based on)
“Story of Your Life” is one of my favorite stories in any genre. The movie makes a few minor changes but is remarkably true to the original. I was impressed.
I saw Arrival!!
I read “Story of Your Life” in my freshman writing seminar in 2011 and it’s possibly my favorite short story. This past weekend, I saw it with a friend of mine who took that seminar with me in Rochester way back when, now has her degree in linguistics, and is now coincidentally in grad school at Columbia. (Columbia is not very close to the part of NYC I live in – she traveled about an hour on the subway to see me).
At the beginning of the movie, I had some trouble suspending disbelief, especially with the changes made between story and screen. (How can a professor who looks too young to have tenure afford that beautiful lake house, for one thing?). By the end of the movie, I was convinced that they’d done a good job with a difficult to adapt story. (The short story does some really interesting things with verb tenses and abstract descriptions that a voice-over might not do justice to.)
SPOILERS FOLLOW
Of the things I noticed that diverged:
– The daughter died of cancer as a child instead of an extreme sports accident as an adult. I think this choice worked well. The sports accident thing felt kind of weird anyway, it relied a lot upon the main character’s descriptions of her daughter as being like her father/unlike her, and those didn’t come to screen very much, since they were first-person introspective. The cancer was really only strongly implied, not dwelled upon.
– There’s this weird gravity thing going on to visit the heptapods? In the story it was a looking glass, at ground level, that people could walk up to. I feel neutral about this but think they spent a little bit too long on the “gravity is weird here” introductory sequence
– The heptapods speak English perfectly even though we barely understand heptapod and have some weird motive about saving humanity so that we could help them in the future? I’d cut this scene entirely and replace it with a longer montage about learning the language, if it was me directing this movie. Comes out of nowhere, doesn’t add much.
– The part with the call to China was completely new. While I don’t feel it was necessary to the short story, it worked fine in the movie, and slow-burn introspective movies are much rarer than slow-burn introspective short stories.
– I didn’t like that the movie implied early on that the main character’s flashbacks/new perception of memory was a side effect of radiation or something. I think this was corrected later on.
– I didn’t like that the movie said the heptapods gave us their perception of memory as a gift. In the short story, it wasn’t clear why they came or left, and they gave gifts, but nothing new. I liked the mystery/ambiguity.
– Not as much multivariate calculus in the movie.
– Naming the daughter Hannah “because it’s the same forward and backwards” is a little too overt for me.
– There was a point about 2/3 through the movie where I thought “in a just world the rest of this movie would cut evenly between Louise’s past and present”. AND THEN IT DID. Not that we live in a just world, but I was really impressed.
Also: space squids (more or less)!
Finally some good news:
Last night, I posted a funny PowerPoint I had made about the Vendée Globe on External Blogging Site, and when I woke up, it had gotten more than a dozen notes, which made me feel really good.
I had to pay some extra bills to the university this semester, which left me really strapped for cash for the past two weeks, but I finally got my stipend check today, so I was able to pay back my roommate for taking on the whole cable bill, renew my Planetary Society membership, buy some granola bars, and eat dinner off-campus.
A crowdfunded space documentary I donated to five years ago finally premiered at the NYC DOC documentary film festival tonight and because it was showing just a few blocks away, I was able to attend. The people I was in line with were really fun to talk to and we ended up sitting next to each other. The documentary was a bit disjointed but still worthwhile, and just seeing and hearing all of the familiar sights and voices and sounds was a very strong mental tonic. Before the show, the woman from the festival had introduced the filmmakers and promised us that there would be a Q&A afterwards with them and “a special surprise guest”, so when the lights came up, and she called them up to the front… It was Bill Nye! I actually screamed.
He talked about the Planetary Society and asked if anyone in the audience was a member. I raised my hand as did one other guy, and Mr. Nye pointed at me and said “You?”
And I was pretty star-struck, but I managed to say “I just renewed this morning!”, and he said “I love you, man–err, woman!”
Everybody had really great questions and then I got to shake Mr. Nye’s hand and thank him for doing so much for science and space and he said “Thank *you* for being part of the Planetary Society.” And I said my name and then he said my name! DAY MADE.
When I got back, I checked on my PowerPoint post again and saw that it now had more than fifty notes, a lot of which were shares! And in terms of the race itself– holy cake are those sailboats fast. They left France a week ago and they’re almost at the flipping EQUATOR.
I saw your powerpoint! It was intriguing!
That’s so cool you got to meet Bill Nye! An inspiration to more than a few MuseBloggers, probably.
I’m really thrilled Alex Thomson is doing so well and is leading the Vendée Globe now that the sailors are crossing into the Southern Hemisphere, and although I realize a lot can happen in the Southern Ocean, but assuming he keeps his lead, I almost wonder if, as historic as it would be for a non-French sailor to win for the first time, it might be better for the upcoming French elections if he didn’t because anything seen as a loss of prestige would probably help the conservative faction.
I now fully understand why I came in late and straight-up skipped so many days of work earlier this year–it was definitely because of the cold. Right now the cold is pretty much at the level it was back in February and I have so much trouble getting to sleep that I am a zombie in the morning. I got in bed at 9pm last night to try to warm it up. I was awake until at least midnight, and I got up at 1:30 and 4:00 because I was so uncomfortable. I took today off because I needed to stay in bed longer to catch up at least a little bit. My parents are bringing down a space heater on Friday so I just have to survive until then! Maybe I should try my sleeping bag… there’s a thought.
I can’t understand how the other people living in this house survive it. It’s not like last time where literally every other room in the house had heat except mine; the whole house is this cold. They must all have space heaters.
Godspeed to the crew preparing to launch to the International Space Station today.
CNN, get that moron off my screen and show the launch.
They’re in orbit! Enjoy the next two days and 36 sunsets and sunrises!
I’m excited to see “Fantastic Beasts” and “Moana” with my brother over Thanksgiving break. Both are getting great early reviews.
Do you need an account on Voldynet to watch Voldynet Live Streaming programs? Apparently that’s the only way to watch the America’s Cup World Series Fukuoka live in the US.
I don’t think so. (You don’t have a Voldynet account???)
No, External Blogging Site is quite enough social media for me.
My roommate signed in for me and I was able to watch! Very happy that Team Japan won one race for the home crowd, I just hope it’s not the only one this weekend!
They didn’t really do too well, but they did come in second in the last race. The British team will get the World Series trophy and the gold medal for this event. And, fate willing, they’ll all meet again in Bermuda in May for the actual America’s Cup competition.
Just swapped email with Larry Gonick:
RC:
A “Cartoon Guide to Preserving Civilization” might find a ready market right now. Just sayin’.
LG:
I think it’s going to take more than a Cartoon Guide at this point…
On Nov 17, 2016, at 10:20 AM, Robert Coontz wrote:
I finally got around to reading the copy of “Journey to the Centre of the Earth” that I bought at Shakespeare & Company back in August. It’s probably the Jules Verne book I’ve read the most frequently after “Around the World in 80 Days”, but I hadn’t read it for many years and this translation was somewhat different than the one I had read back then, so it was interesting to see passages I knew phrased somewhat differently.
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER THIS BOOK IS 150 YEARS OLD AND STILL PRETTY POPULAR BUT JUST IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T READ IT I DON’T WANT TO SPOIL THE ENDING
Being speleophobic, I found the dangers just as frightening as ever, but oh, that ending on the sun-kissed slopes of Stromboli and the description of the view! What a sense of rebirth and relief! At dinner, I had been talking with my father about how the Vendée Globe unintentionally duplicates the Hero’s Journey and the archetype of facing an ordeal in the underworld and returning to the world of the living as a better person with knowledge to share, but this book is perhaps the most literal non-mythical interpretation of that archetype.
Stromboli!
So finals are destroying me, that’s fun. Anyone know how to force yourself to write a ten-page paper in about three seconds just to get it over with?
On the plus side, I’m finished with two of my classes and almost certain I did well in both.
Ahahaha I am with you in academic helltopia my friend. I need 3 problem sets by Monday and my weekend-social-interaction-to-prevent-insanity is lunch tomorrow. We’ll get through this *twitch* *twitch*
My first year, I found listening to the entire LotR soundtrack while I wrote to be helpful with a paper. Few lyrics while lending the process an epic feel.
Good luck.
“There may come a day when this brain ceases to analyze and synthesize ideas; when these fingers lose their ability to wield a keyboard; but that is not this day. This day…we write!”
Good idea, I should try that for these last eight hundred words. I need something inspirational for this last push.
Does anyone have any thoughts on NASA’s paper on the theoretical EM drive paper that was just published? Robert? I find it really fascinating–for it to work, the Copenhagen interpretation has to be thrown out in favor of pilot-wave theory, or something which gives comparable results. I’m not a physicist, but just on a philosophical level that makes a lot more sense to me (I’ve never been able to swallow the multiple-worlds theory and “wave function collapse”–it seems like a product more of idealism than of physics).
Piggy,
I’m maintaining a wait-and-see attitude. On the one hand, things that seem too good to be true usually are. On the other hand, surprises like that are exactly what science sometimes delivers.
Sometimes the most difficult concepts can be explained by a handful of words.
Lucy,
Do you have some favorite examples you’d like to cite?
I guess I’m mainly referring to sense memory, which I spent forever researching. I tried to explain it to friends and family, so I spent awhile rambling.
Or Love. That’s a good one.
And Music, and World Peace and…
Yesterday, I ended up at North Cove Marina while walking in Battery Park. The docks were almost empty, there were only three boats inside. It’s pretty crazy to think that the boats I saw there six months ago are now in the South Atlantic heading for the Cape of Good Hope.
Alex Thomson sets a new record time from France to the Cape of Good Hope– 17 days and 22 hours!
Really, TIME, you’re not even going to give me the option of voting for Bertrand Piccard for Person of the Year?
I think it’s clear who is going to be the Person of the Year for 2016.
They said that in 1968, too, though.
Ah, yes: the Apollo 8 astronauts, who orbited the moon. I don’t think we’ll see anything like that this year.
I mean that they can buck the trend and choose someone who did something positive and inspiring as a stance against other possibilities who represent the opposite.
I understand.
Greetings, Midwestern MBers! I’m in Wisconsin for Thanksgiving week. It’s bright and clear here but rather cold. How are things in other parts of the world?
Astoundingly warm. And crazy busy.
Hi Robert! I’m right next door for the week, in Minnesota.
Cold and windy here in New York!
Colder than I’d like, but since I live in the South I really can’t complain. Also, busy.
“bright and clear … but rather cold” is pretty much what we’re having in Illinois, too. We’re supposed to get snow Wednesday!
In the Deep South, it’s cold, but not that windy.
Beautiful weather in southern California! Clear, chilly mornings – so I can finally use both my blankets – warming up into pleasant afternoons. We’ll see what eastern Washington is like when I fly home for Thanksgiving tomorrow night.
I could use another blanket…
Grey and somewhat rainy in Switzerland, which pretty much reflects how I’m feeling about this week. It’s not more busy than usual; why is it such a struggle to get myself to classes?
Much better than last year. Every Thanksgiving, the seminary has a big football game, and last year it was 33 degrees and raining. This year it looks like it’ll be sunny.
Dark and rainy – but the Christmas lights were coming on when I walked through town, and there’s woodsmoke drifting in from the houseboats on the river… alarmingly cozy.
Only about an inch of snow on the ground in rural upstate NY, almost none closer to the more urban areas.
Yesterday I worked remotely from my father’s office – he has an incredible view of the river from it. I thought I didn’t miss home much, and I thought I had seen enough trees for a lifetime in my first 21 years when I moved to the city… it was really beautiful, though.
Fair but cloudy today. Showers last night. An unseasonably warm November, but at least California’s finally getting some rain.
So. Much. Rain. And cold. I’m doing a thanksgiving 10k fun run tomorrow, and it’s supposed to be gusting up to 30 mph (which, honestly, isn’t THAT bad, but it’s also going to be cold/rainy. And it’s a 10k). Also, my goal its to run it in under 50 minutes, but my (kind of swole) cousin who’s in town for thanksgiving is going to be racing against me… and I think he’s going to win.
We’re rooting for you, TPT! Just finishing 10K under those conditions counts as a victory in my book.
Keep yourself rightly insulated with proper gear so you don’t get sick and do your best!
Alright! 51 minutes, and he only beat me by a few seconds. We had a ton of thunder and lightning, though, and sheets of bruising hail – I actually have a ton if welts all over my hands now. It was actually a lot of fun, though, even if it did hurt (and I was probably really close to getting hypothermia). Oregon!
Great! You deserve a hot shower!
I’m afraid I missed you, I apologize.
I’m back in Northern Virginia now but will return to Wisconsin for a couple of weeks in December. Driving this time, so I’ll probably cross several MBers’ states (Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois).
Home! After everything that’s happened since I left, it feels so good to be home and out of the city.
This Thanksgiving I am, as always, grateful for all the lovely folks here on MB.
Yesterday I semi-impulsively chopped all my hair off (it was short, but now it’s very short), today I started work as a seasonal UPS driver helper, because I’m between boat work right now. I got my captain’s license, and I’ll be doing winter maintenance on a ship in Baltimore for a few months this winter, then hopefully will be 2nd mate on one of two different boats I’ve applied to.
In the meantime, since I now know I’m going to be here at my parents’ house for a few months, I think my course of action is to try to go to all the oldtime music and contra dance events I can plausibly make it to. (Glen Echo sometime, Robert?)
I’m glad MB is merrily bowling along, I try to keep somewhat caught up, but I don’t remember last time I posted.
Glen Echo with pleasure, Fern!
I am thankful for MuseBlog and for all of you.
I am thankful for all of you, who are so much of me.
Attention, Gilraen! Are you out there lurking? I might have accidentally deleted our application for a new account in a batch with a bunch of fake ones.
Also, Lucy the Henchgirl: do you still need an account?
An account would be nice, but it’s not necessary
Done!
We had three types of pie!
Which pie had the best ballistics? Pumpkin always works well for me, probably because the homogeneous filling minimizes in-flight wobble.
I agree that pumpkin is the most solid in-flight and it also squishes satisfyingly upon impact.
For bunker busting, however, there’s nothing like pecan.
It certainly hurts the worst at impact of of any conventional filling.
At my dining hall Thanksgiving last week, we had wonderful mini chocolate bourbon pecan pies. Today, my family had pumpkin.
♥
Aaah, pecan pie is my favorite. I usually use rum for mine, but this year my mom found this maple syrup that had been aged in bourbon barrels, and we used that instead of the dark corn syrup. The results were wonderful.
Robert, would I be abusing our friendship if I asked a Q&A-style question about a factual aspect of a story I’m planning out?
Not at all, Kai. But, you know, there are probably people on campus at your university who could give you an authoritative answer. Why not skip the middleman and ask them?
I’m not sure which department I’d even ask in, it’s kind of a forensics question, kind of engineering, and kind of geology. Also, I don’t know anyone in those departments and this question involves superweapons and that would be a bad first impression to make.
So, that curious chimera of old science fiction, introductory physics classes, and abandoned military projects– launching things into space with a giant cannon. In the story, the cannon is the answer to the central mystery of how a villianous organization is secretly launching satellites for their own nefarious purposes without having access to booster rockets. The mystery then becomes how to find the launch site and the cannon and stop another launch. While this is a Marvel fan-doc, I don’t want to use too much fictional techonology or physics to help with the investigation.
The question is: Would the vibrations from the firing of a space cannon be visible on seismographs and could this be used to determine its location?
My research so far has told me:
– Forensic seismology, although now mostly used to locate nuclear tests, was created in World War I to locate artillery, presumably much less powerful than a space cannon would be.
– The noise of firing the Project HARP cannons was heard across Barbados, but I can’t find any information about if it was visible on seismographs.
– The Encyclopedia Astronautica and numerous other websites that parrot it, say that if the Project Babylon gun had ever been completed, its firing would have been “equivalent to a nuclear bomb and sufficient to register as a major seismic event all around the world.”, but they don’t give a source and one site I saw discussing this said that calculation is wrong but didn’t give anything better.
(Is this story an excuse to write my characters fighting Gerald Bull As A Marvel Supervillain? Basically.)
Wow, that’s an arcane one. Offhand, I’d bet it would be detectable. I remember reading that seismologists had detected “footquakes” from fans stomping their feet at the Africa Cup soccer tournament in Cameroon in 2006. If they could do that, tracking down a space cannon ought to be manageable. Why not just write the story as if it is and leave messy details such as plausibility for later?
I meant to write “fan-fix”, but I suppose a “fan-doc” could be fanfiction that imitates the form of an in-universe document?
And that was supposed to be “fan-FIC” just as in the original. Stupid autocorrect.
Twitter reports the death of Ron Glass, who played Shepherd Book on “Firefly.”
This year….
I’m so done with this year.
It might not be done with us, though.
I’m getting to be afraid of going online and seeing who else has passed on.
Hello everyone, it’s been a while.
Notable things that have occurred since I’ve last been active on here:
I’m a sophomore now, still working on my Biology and Writing double major. I attended and presented at the National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing earlier this month, which was very cool!
I am happily in a relationship (with the same person as last time I mentioned this; we did take a break from the relationship for a while because she felt that it would be the best thing to do at the time for mental health reasons, but now we have been back together for a while) and I feel pretty darn lucky to have such a wonderful person in my life. Current animals are 10 ducks and two guinea pigs.. I adopted the guinea pigs (Angelica and Eliza) two months ago, a while after the loss of my two previous piggies. They were the most timid piggies at the rescue, but they are warming up to me really well!
How have y’all been?
Congrats on the relationship, the career advancement, and the guinea pigs!
Has anyone suspected the possibility of the hot pink bunnies being behind the events of this year?
Happy birthday, Dodecahedron, Purple Panda, and Cinnamoon-wherever-you-are!
Happy Birthday!
I’m starting to feel torn between being an archeologist and a comic book artist. Either way I’m not expecting to get very rich.
If you choose to go into archaeology, you can use your artistic skills as a science popularizer to share information about archaeology with the public. I am hoping to be able to do the same thing but as a writer.
There’s also scientific illustration or museums!
Archaeology is an interesting field, but to get well-paying jobs in it you generally need a master’s. With a BA, you can work on a crew for CRM (taking test samples from sites about to get used for construction to make sure there aren’t artifacts) but that doesn’t pay super well. A lot of the work is outdoors, or potentially in museums or universities.
I so agree with scientific illustration! When I was at the Smithsonian I met the resident botanical illustrator and her works were stellar. Probably a different skill set than comics, but still drawing!
Especially in paleontology, somebody has to draw up what the dinosaur looks like!
Doesn’t have to be a separate skill set. Look up Rachel Ignotofsky’s work.
Hey Catwings! I haven’t posted on the ol’ blog in forever (hey GAPAs), but my “comic book artist” senses were tingling. Both comics & archeology are admirable goals!
I would consider myself a “professional” cartoonist at this point, but the income I make from comics is definitely not enough to sustain me. I have a full time day job in retail, which I like & which lets me live in the (very expensive) city I live in haha. However, I’m still young (23) & the people who seem to be making their living with comics/illustration are much older & have been at it for a long time.
Also it’s great to have many different interests! Comics & archeology aren’t mutually exclusive & your passion for one will influence the other & vice versa!
Great to hear from you, Kagcomix!
Are there any specific academic necessities for becoming a professional artist or writer for graphic novels? Or do you just have to practice drawing a lot?
I’d say college/art school is a good idea if it’s an option for you. But if it’s not an option for you in the near/immediate future, definitely keep drawing and strengthening your portfolio. As for the writing side of comics, I have no idea how to get into that, but it probably starts with writing your own comics and making connections within the community. Comics seems to be one of those industries where it’s important to know people.
Also, have you read Bad Machinery? It’s one of my favorites.
Bad Machinery is great! I think ebeth introduced me to it back when it was Scary Go Round in like 2007? & That opened a gateway to webcomics for me.
I did go to university & get a BFA in illustration, but it doesn’t really hold any weight professionally. I’m glad I did it because I feel like I learned so much & was pushed much farther than I would have been on my own. But I also went to school in Canada where tuition is much less expensive (my entire degree cost less than 1 year at many US schools), so i didn’t accrue massive amounts of debt. However, no one has ever asked me whether or not I have a degree in my comics endeavours (& full disclosure, I’m mainly self published, tho I did have a book come out front a small local publisher earlier this year).
I guess the tl;dr is: taking art classes is very useful (especially life drawing!!) And i found university to be a positive experience (it helped me improve tremendously & also i found my way into the local arts community that way), but what is most important is to love making comics, even when it’s hard. You just gotta keep making them.
Hopefully that’s helpful!
I just learned that Toyota issued a statement that the official plural of “Prius” is “Prii”, which isn’t normal Latin (“Priora” would be), but sounds adorable. I can now talk about how my father has owned several Prii over the last decade.
It feels a little odd to be playing in a Christmas Concert at school when teachers still have plush turkeys in their room.
I’m reading a book called Wonders and the Order of Nature, for my course on the history of science, and I have to stop and record how much I love humans.
“[Frederick II] dispatched yet others to collect driftwood from the shores of northern Europe, in search of the famous barnacle geese (fig. 1 .4. 1 ). He reported the results of this last experiment in his great treatise, De arte venandi cum avibus (c. 1 245 -5 0): “On them we saw a kind of shellfish clinging to the wood. In none of their parts did these shellfish exhibit any form of a bird and, because of this, we do not believe this opinion unless we have a more convincing demonstration of it. It seems to us that this opinion arose because barnacle geese are born in such remote places that men are ignorant of where they nest.” (Daston & Park 64)
What are we, really? Dumb naked apes with no noses to speak of and sub-par eyes and ears, ruled for the most part by fear and impulse, trapped in a machine we built that has grown too complex for us to understand, desperately inventing meanings for things that just are for no particular reason. But we’re such stubborn little beasts that sometimes we cut through the stupid lies we tell ourselves and each other —
Ah, I can’t even express why this passage makes me so happy. I guess because someone wondered about where geese came from, of all things, and then checked very carefully and methodically. These days it’s too easy to believe our thundering capacity for self-deception is going to destroy us all and take a chunk of the planet with it. Maybe it’s true, but someone in the thirteenth century cared enough* to spend days trudging down a beach turning over damp driftwood, and for almost eight hundred years people cared enough to write down and preserve what that person found. Not knowing when, or if, it would ever be of any use to anybody at all.
*Well, he probably did it because the man at the top said he had to, but I still have a lot of feelings.
This made my day! You just became part of my NaNo project.
I wonder which historical figure has the most *individual* fictional characters based on them? (i.e. Count Dracula is one character regardless of the many ways he’s been interpreted, so for Vlad Tepes “that still only counts as one! And I would only count first-hand inspirations, so while Indiana Jones is based on the exploits of many people and could count as one character for each of them, every character inspired by Indiana Jones could not also be put down for one of his inspirations unless a character was specifically created to be based *both* on Jones and on, say Hiram Bingham.) I would guess that it’s probably Julius Caesar, Napoleon, or Hitler given how many stories there are that are allegories for one of those periods and have to thus have a character based on the central leader.