The Modern Synthesis

Piracy

2012-01-18T15:48:00.000-08:00

Please write your Senators and Reps, America. At LEAST sign a few petitions.

Free INTERNETZ 4 EVAA!

Also, don't steal someone else's shit and market it as your own. That's called Piracy (also Plagiarism), and that's why we're in this mess in the first place.

Censorship

2012-01-10T16:59:00.001-08:00

Top court grapples with cursing,
nudity on air – USATODAY.com

Enlightened

2011-12-26T10:00:00.000-08:00

via Budda Kittehs

How Beer Saved the World!

2011-12-24T19:59:00.001-08:00

Did you know that beer was critical to the birth of civilization?

That’s right – beer.

Scientists and historians line up to tell the amazing, untold story of how beer helped create math, poetry, pyramids, modern medicine, labor laws, and America.

If you think beer is just something cold and filling to drink during sporting matches or in the kind of bars that you probably shouldn’t order wine in, then, boy, are you ever in the dark.It turns out beer is responsible for, like, all the greatest things on earth.

Learn more about what beer did for you!

Parachute

2011-11-26T10:00:00.000-08:00

Theocracy

2011-11-24T00:56:00.001-08:00

Christian Theocracy: How Newt Gingrich and the GOP Would Abolish Courts and Legislate Morality

via Slate

by William Saletan

Is the United States sliding toward theocracy? That’s what Republican presidential candidates have told us for more than a year. Radical Islam, they’ve argued, is on the verge of taking over our country through Sharia law. But this weekend, at an Iowa forum sparsely covered by the press, the candidates made clear that they don’t mind theocracy—in fact, they’d like to impose it—as long as it’s Christian.

You can find video of Saturday’s “Thanksgiving Family Forum” on the Web sites of two organizations that sponsored it: CitizenLink and the Family Leader. Here are highlights of the candidates’ remarks.

1. Religious Americans must fight back against nonbelievers.
To quote Herman Cain:

What we are seeing is a wider gap between people of faith and people of nonfaith. … Those of us that are people of faith and strong faith have allowed the nonfaith element to intimidate us into not fighting back. I believe we’ve been too passive. We have maybe pushed back, but as people of faith, we have not fought back.

2. The religious values we must fight for are Judeo-Christian.
Rick Perry warned:

Somebody’s values are going to decide what the Congress votes on or what the president of the United States is going to deal with. And the question is: Whose values? And let me tell you, it needs to be our values—values and virtues that this country was based upon in Judeo-Christian founding fathers.

3. Our laws and our national identity are Judeo-Christian.
Michele Bachmann explained:

American exceptionalism is grounded on the Judeo-Christian ethic, which is really based upon the 10 Commandments. The 10 Commandments were the foundation for our law. That’s what Blackstone said—the English jurist—and our founders looked to Blackstone for the foundation of our law. That’s our law.

4. No religion but Christianity will suffice. Perry declared, “In every person’s heart, in every person’s soul, there is a hole that can only be filled by the Lord Jesus Christ.”

5. God created our government.
Bachmann told the audience:

I have a biblical worldview. And I think, going back to the Declaration of Independence, the fact that it’s God who created us—if He created us, He created government. And the government is on His shoulders, as the book of Isaiah says.

6. U.S. law should follow God’s law.
As Rick Santorum put it:

Unlike Islam, where the higher law and the civil law are the same, in our case, we have civil laws. But our civil laws have to comport with the higher law. … As long as abortion is legal—at least according to the Supreme Court—legal in this country, we will never have rest, because that law does not comport with God’s law.

7. Anything that’s immoral by religious standards should be outlawed.
Santorum again:

God gave us rights, but He also gave us laws upon which to exercise those rights, and that’s what you ought to do. And, by the way, the law should comport—the laws of this country should comport with that moral vision. Why? Because the law is a teacher. If something is illegal in this country because it is immoral and it is wrong and it is harmful to society, saying that it is illegal and putting a law in place teaches. It’s not just—laws cannot be neutral. There is no neutral, Ron. There is only moral and immoral. And the law has to reflect what is right and good and just for our society.

8. The federal government should impose this morality on the states.
Santorum once more:

The idea that the only things that the states are prevented from doing are only things specifically established in the Constitution is wrong. Our country is based on a moral enterprise. Gay marriage is wrong. As Abraham Lincoln said, the states do not have the right to do wrong. … As a president, I will get involved, because the states do not have the right to undermine the basic, fundamental values that hold this country together.

9. Congress should erase the judiciary’s power to review moral laws.
Newt Gingrich suggested:

I am intrigued with something which Robby George at Princeton has come up with, which is an interpretation of the 14^th Amendment, in which it says that Congress shall define personhood. That’s very clearly in the 14th Amendment. And part of what I would like to explore is whether or not you could get the Congress to pass a law which simply says: Personhood begins at conception. And therefore—and you could, in the same law, block the court and just say, ‘This will not be subject to review,’ which we have precedent for. You would therefore not have to have a constitutional amendment, because the Congress would have exercised its authority under the 14^th Amendment to define life, and to therefore undo all of Roe vs. Wade, for the entire country, in one legislative action.

Gingrich said the same strategy could secure the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages and protects the right of states to disregard same-sex marriages performed in other states. In his words, “You could repass DOMA and make it not appealable to the court, period.”
10. Courts that get in the way should be abolished. Gingrich again:

The simplest first step which I would take is to propose—and I hope this will be a significant part of the campaign next year—I have proposed to abolish the court of Judge Biery in San Antonio, who on June 1 issued an order that said, not only could students not pray at their graduation, they couldn’t use the word benediction, the could not say the word prayer, they could not say the word God, they could not ask people to stand for a moment of silence, they couldn’t use the word invocation, and if he broke any of those, he would put their superintendent in jail. I regard that as such a ruthless anti-American statement that he should not be on the court, and I would move to literally abolish his court, so that he could go back to private practice, as a signal to the courts.

Biery’s order was an overreach. In fact, it was overturned two days later by an appeals court. But he’s only the first target of the anti-judicial purge. The next words after Gingrich’s threat came from Santorum, who said: “I agree with a lot of what has just been said here. I would go farther—one step farther, Newt. I would abolish the entire Ninth Circuit.”
11. The purge of judges should be based on public opinion.
Gingrich once more:

Part of the purpose of singling out Judge Biery and eliminating his job is to communicate the standard that the two elected branches have the power and the authority to educate the judiciary when it deviates too far from the American people. And I think you would probably take that approach.

12. Freedom means obeying morality. Santorum concluded, “Our founders understood liberty is not what you want to do, but what you ought to do. That’s what liberty really is about.”
There was one voice of dissent among the candidates. Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas, argued that people should be allowed to make bad decisions, that freedom of choice in religious matters should extend to atheists, and that powers not reserved to the federal government should be left to the states. But in a field of candidates bent on legislating Christian morality and purging uncooperative judges, Paul stood alone. Protecting America is too important to let the Constitution get in the way.

Resignation

2011-11-20T10:24:00.001-08:00

Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi

Linda P.B. Katehi,

I am a junior faculty member at UC Davis. I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, and I teach in the Program in Critical Theory and in Science & Technology Studies. I have a strong record of research, teaching, and service. I am currently a Board Member of the Davis Faculty Association. I have also taken an active role in supporting the student movement to defend public education on our campus and throughout the UC system. In a word: I am the sort of young faculty member, like many of my colleagues, this campus needs. I am an asset to the University of California at Davis.

You are not.

I write to you and to my colleagues for three reasons:

1) to express my outrage at the police brutality which occurred against students engaged in peaceful protest on the UC Davis campus today

2) to hold you accountable for this police brutality

3) to demand your immediate resignation

Today you ordered police onto our campus to clear student protesters from the quad. These were protesters who participated in a rally speaking out against tuition increases and police brutality on UC campuses on Tuesday—a rally that I organized, and which was endorsed by the Davis Faculty Association. These students attended that rally in response to a call for solidarity from students and faculty who were bludgeoned with batons, hospitalized, and arrested at UC Berkeley last week. In the highest tradition of non-violent civil disobedience, those protesters had linked arms and held their ground in defense of tents they set up beside Sproul Hall. In a gesture of solidarity with those students and faculty, and in solidarity with the national Occupy movement, students at UC Davis set up tents on the main quad. When you ordered police outfitted with riot helmets, brandishing batons and teargas guns to remove their tents today, those students sat down on the ground in a circle and linked arms to protect them.

What happened next?

Without any provocation whatsoever, other than the bodies of these students sitting where they were on the ground, with their arms linked, police pepper-sprayed students. Students remained on the ground, now writhing in pain, with their arms linked.

What happened next?

Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.

This is what happened. You are responsible for it.

You are responsible for it because this is what happens when UC Chancellors order police onto our campuses to disperse peaceful protesters through the use of force: students get hurt. Faculty get hurt.

One of the most inspiring things (inspiring for those of us who care about students who assert their rights to free speech and peaceful assembly) about the demonstration in Berkeley on November 9 is that UC Berkeley faculty stood together with students, their arms linked together. Associate Professor of English Celeste Langan was grabbed by her hair, thrown on the ground, and arrested. Associate Professor Geoffrey O’Brien was injured by baton blows. Professor Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner, was also struck with a baton.

These faculty stood together with students in solidarity, and they too were beaten and arrested by the police. In writing this letter, I stand together with those faculty and with the students they supported.

One week after this happened at UC Berkeley, you ordered police to clear tents from the quad at UC Davis. When students responded in the same way—linking arms and holding their ground—police also responded in the same way: with violent force. The fact is: the administration of UC campuses systematically uses police brutality to terrorize students and faculty, to crush political dissent on our campuses, and to suppress free speech and peaceful assembly. Many people know this. Many more people are learning it very quickly.

You are responsible for the police violence directed against students on the UC Davis quad on November 18, 2011. As I said, I am writing to hold you responsible and to demand your immediate resignation on these grounds.

On Wednesday November 16, you issued a letter by email to the campus community. In this letter, you discussed a hate crime which occurred at UC Davis on Sunday November 13. In this letter, you express concern about the safety of our students. You write, “it is particularly disturbing that such an act of intolerance should occur at a time when the campus community is working to create a safe and inviting space for all our students.” You write, “while these are turbulent economic times, as a campus community, we must all be committed to a safe, welcoming environment that advances our efforts to diversity and excellence at UC Davis.”

I will leave it to my colleagues and every reader of this letter to decide what poses a greater threat to “a safe and inviting space for all our students” or “a safe, welcoming environment” at UC Davis: 1) Setting up tents on the quad in solidarity with faculty and students brutalized by police at UC Berkeley? or 2) Sending in riot police to disperse students with batons, pepper-spray, and tear-gas guns, while those students sit peacefully on the ground with their arms linked? Is this what you have in mind when you refer to creating “a safe and inviting space?” Is this what you have in mind when you express commitment to “a safe, welcoming environment?”

I am writing to tell you in no uncertain terms that there must be space for protest on our campus. There must be space for political dissent on our campus. There must be space for civil disobedience on our campus. There must be space for students to assert their right to decide on the form of their protest, their dissent, and their civil disobedience—including the simple act of setting up tents in solidarity with other students who have done so. There must be space for protest and dissent, especially, when the object of protest and dissent is police brutality itself. You may not order police to forcefully disperse student protesters peacefully protesting police brutality. You may not do so. It is not an option available to you as the Chancellor of a UC campus. That is why I am calling for your immediate resignation.

Your words express concern for the safety of our students. Your actions express no concern whatsoever for the safety of our students. I deduce from this discrepancy that you are not, in fact, concerned about the safety of our students. Your actions directly threaten the safety of our students.

And I want you to know that this is clear. It is clear to anyone who reads your campus emails concerning our “Principles of Community” and who also takes the time to inform themselves about your actions. You should bear in mind that when you send emails to the UC Davis community, you address a body of faculty and students who are well trained to see through rhetoric that evinces care for students while implicitly threatening them. I see through your rhetoric very clearly. You also write to a campus community that knows how to speak truth to power. That is what I am doing.

I call for your resignation because you are unfit to do your job. You are unfit to ensure the safety of students at UC Davis. In fact: you are the primary threat to the safety of students at UC Davis. As such,

I call upon you to resign immediately.

Sincerely,

Nathan Brown
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Program in Critical Theory
University of California at Davis

Injustice

2011-10-22T17:28:00.000-07:00

Helmsman

2011-10-19T20:56:00.000-07:00

Francisco Eppens, Timonel (Helmsman), Mexico, 1940

Logos

2011-10-17T21:38:00.000-07:00

Irene

2011-08-27T20:37:00.000-07:00

2011-08-16T21:33:00.000-07:00

from Hark, A Vagrant!:

Lyrics

2011-04-07T18:27:00.000-07:00

Model Rail

via XKCD

________________

wilcoyote

Dowry

2011-03-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

______________

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via Toothpast for Dinner

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wildcoyote

I am very salty.

2011-03-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

I am very salty. You know, salt-of-the-Earth kind of person. And I can't help but to keep thinking of the Way the Universe works. You know, the Tao and all that. It also helps, of course, to have a good deal of common sense. I imagine how there may be other life on other planets as we steadily gain the opportunity to perceive it. I imagine what they will be like compared to humanity. And I find myself hoping that they really aren't like us at all.

Humanity. Human beings. Homo sapiens. We sure don't know a hell of a whole lot for being so damn sapient. I mean, about existence, about balance, about the cycles of things, and how to live a life in harmony and stasis in the environment around you. All you have to do is observe the modern media, politics, or visit to your local Mega Mart to realize that a great deal of humanity is completely ignorant.

Blatantly ignorant, what's more. Oh, that's not to say they're apathetic, however. They care about these things, but not enough to make a real change; not enough to change how they behave, live, think. Change is inconvenient. It interferes with their busy little personalities and business schedules. It interferes with their marriages and their television programs. But they care in a "oh, that's terrible but there's really nothing I can do about it," kind-of-way. Well keep using up all your planet's resources to live your expensive, important little lives. One day it will all just be burned up, consumed by the Sun: nothing more than vapor and plasma.

But long before that happens, our gorgeous, special planet Earth will be a used-up, wasted little husk of post-humanity trash and carnage. And this--because of blatantly ignorant people like these and their addiction to the talking heads on television--will be our grand, human legacy to the Universe. There are nearly 7 BILLION people on the planet. I believe there was a phrase intended to convey the particular sentiment of this very statistic: It is called, "What The Fuck?"

How can anyone honestly believe that we can just zip around to the Mall and the Grocery Store when this is our present reality? Just use something and throw it away. Well, let me tell you how long it takes landfills to decompose. Some of it virtually never does. Let me also tell you how quickly they fill up. These giant lakes and oceans of trash can be seen from SPACE. And they grow like festering wounds, giant boils of human filth and refuse upon the face of our Mother Earth.

But I care. I really, REALLY genuinely care about these things. Because, in understand the Way, you must come to understand the How, the What, the When, and the Why. Well, in coming to understand these things, I have come to some pretty pathetic, embarrassing conclusions. And I find myself unable to do anything about all of this nonsense because of the strains and bonds that modern society has placed upon me. Needing cars and cellular phones and all other manner of our pretentious technology, that is "making a better world." All of these virtually pointless, precocious little things that one simply can't live without. Well guess what? Our world was just fine until humans somehow developed the clever idea that you could Boss People Around. Then, we decided that in order to Boss People Around, you had to really make them afraid of you for some reason. The Power of Deities. Satan and his fiery inferno called Hell. Death and disease and starvation. Infidels, heretics, and blasphemers. Losing all your hard-earned money. Secret agents. Nuclear warheads. Total economic collapse. Natural disasters and catastrophes. We also decided to sell them things, investing all our collective faith in the grand idea of monetary, arbitrary value. You need these things, you do! You simply couldn't bear to live without them. You surely couldn't survive without them, could you?

So when I am out working in my garden, riding my bicycle, swimming in the river, studying and wondering over Nature in her incredible majesty and infinite mystery, and busily trying to understand the Way Everything Works, I think about these people and it makes my Soul, my secret self, burn with anger. And (thanks to Yoda) we know what anger leads to: hate. And Hate leads to suffering.

But it's all so unfair! Why should I suffer this burden, when no one cares enough to do anything about it? HOW CAN THEY JUST SIT THERE AND NOT GIVE A DAMN?!

We are on a bullet train toward the brink of self-annihilation and people are too busy drinking double-tall, white mocha creme latte with little brown sprinkles and reading magazines to observe or care.

Self-important, bellicose, materialistic little bastards! I think that's what life on another planet would think of us when they got to know us even just a little bit.

And this is the grand legacy of our species. TA-DAAaaaAA!

I told you I was feeling rather salty.

Monster

2011-03-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

In recent News...

via Los Angeles Times

by Christopher Knight

______________________

Let's take a look at the real Federal budget, shall we?

Are we safe yet?

______________________

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Gaddafi, you have already lost, you just don't know it yet.

wildcoyote

Varieties

2011-03-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

The Very Many Varieties of BEER!

Click on the image above to get the high-res version!

________________

wildcoyote

Manatee

2011-03-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

Today's Tip: GO check out Miss Manatee!

The Vinegar Tasters (嘗醋翁) [Lao Tzu, Buddha, and Confucius as the Three Sours]

(excerpt from, The Butterfly)

Nothing that gets posted matters anymore. There is so much information, none of it matters. Everyone knows that terrible things are happening in the world, so why read about it? "Because it's history!" Well guess what, someday I'll be dead and I won't remember human history and I don't care. I don't care to inundate my consciousness with tragedy and mania in the name of being "plugged in." And someday humans are gonna be extinct, and later the Earth is gonna get swallowed up by the Sun, and everything we've ever thought up or built or cried over or wasted our money on will all just be vapor and plasma.

I'm info-tigued. TIRED OF INFORMATION! And so are you. What the fuck are you doing here anyway? Nobody reads this blog, don't you know that?

[read on...]

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and if you should wish to learn all there is to learn about the

Manatees: the mermaid's ambassadors

you may click on the picture or link above :)

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also worthy of mention due to potential hilarity are

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winning at blogging.

wildcoyote

If

2011-03-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

by Rudyard Kipling

(written in 1910 for his 12-year-old son, John)

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated don't give way to hating

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,

If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools,

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with cowards and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds worth of distance run

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

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wildcoyote

Narnia

2011-03-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

Probably one of the best works of children's fiction ever written.

I highly recommend you try it! Read it to your kids, even!

Love,

wildcoyote

Enzymes

2011-03-14T15:42:00.000-07:00

Enzymes

Freelance Whales

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also, go check out Active Child @ RCRDLBL.com!

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Human Planet
via BBC

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wildcoyote

Rango

2011-03-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

Here

2011-03-11T23:12:00.000-08:00

While you're here, why not put on some music? These places will take you there!

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sweet , sweet tunage.

wildcoyote

ThunderCats!

2011-03-07T10:00:00.000-08:00

Thing

2011-03-05T10:00:00.000-08:00

Relativity

2011-03-02T10:00:00.000-08:00

special thanks to mah gurl over at Word Travels for this one:

The Scale of the Universe

Seriously, go check this out. Now.

DO IT.
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“It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
- Dr. Carl Sagan

“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.”
- Stephen Hawking

“We simply do not understand our place in the universe--and have not the courage to admit it.”
- Barry Lopez
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makes one feel both reassured and insignificant, huh?

wildcoyote

Standards

2011-02-28T20:17:00.000-08:00

What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.

- John Ruskin

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via Cyanide and Happiness

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A unionized public employee, a Tea Party member and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches over and takes 11 cookies and then says to the tea partier, "Watch out for that union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie."

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Obama Won't Go to Court Over Defense of Marriage Act

via NationalJournal

President Obama now believes that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and will no longer defend the 15-year-old law in federal court, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

Symbolically and substantively, his decision represents a major advance for gay rights and presages a significant shift in how the government will handle questions about equality for gays.

In a statement, Attorney General Eric Holder said, “After careful consideration, including a review of my recommendation, the president has concluded that, given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny.”

Holder said that Obama concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, which defines “spouse” as a member of the opposite sex, “fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional. Given that conclusion, the president has instructed the department not to defend the statute in such cases. I fully concur with the president’s determination.”

[read on...]

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'bout damn time we got over that DOMA crap.

wildcoyote

Debloons

2011-02-23T10:00:00.000-08:00

Forgotten 80s Nintendo Games

via CollegeHumor

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Stuff You Should Know:

PIRATES

via The Smoking Jacket

As fun as it is to think that piracy is all about butt sex and grammatically hilarious jargon, it turns out the pirate game has a little more meat to it. Here are ten things you need to know about our favorite frilly-shirted rascals of the sea.

(Click on the picture or link above)

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wildcoyote

Dragon-tamer

2011-02-21T10:00:00.000-08:00

5 Real Deleted Bible Scenes In Which Jesus Kicks Some Ass

via CRACKED.com

The Gospels that made it into the Bible pretty much skip from the birth of Jesus Christ to his adulthood, but there are other documents that chronicle the adventures of Jesus Christ: Boy Wonder. They're part of something called the New Testament Apocrypha, a series of books deemed unfit for inclusion due to concerns over the message they'd send or, in some cases, the number of faces they'd melt with their sheer awesomeness. Most of the stories are pretty normal fare -- healing lepers and raising the dead -- but some are so insane that we learn that the answer to, What would Jesus do? is Whatever the hell he wants.

[Read more!]

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Clearly, Jesus should have been in Mortal Kombat.

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Funny "God Hates..." Signs
via 12 Hilarious "God Hates..." Signs

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wildcoyote

Multipass

2011-02-19T10:00:00.000-08:00

________________

Pop Icons in a Different Light
via ICanHasInternets

Go check out the website, there are many more!
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wildcoyote

Fixation

2011-02-17T10:08:00.000-08:00

via XKCD

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jedi tiger stupid panda waffle kicker!

wildcoyote

Fantastic

2011-02-15T10:00:00.000-08:00

via Fantastic Mr. Fox

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a fantastic way to celebrate my 100th post, no?

wildcoyote

Galilei

2011-02-13T10:00:00.000-08:00

THE SUN, WITH ALL THE PLANETS REVOLVING AROUND IT, AND DEPENDING ON IT, CAN STILL RIPEN A BUNCH OF GRAPES AS THOUGH IT HAD NOTHING ELSE IN THE UNIVERSE TO DO.

- Galileo Galilei

via How To Cope

Dominion

2011-02-11T22:49:00.000-08:00

And Death Shall Have No Dominion

by Dylan Thomas

And death shall have no dominion.

Dead men naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon;

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;

Though lovers be lost love shall not;

And death shall have no dominion.

Under the windings of the sea

They lying long shall not die windily;

Twisting on racks when sinews give way,

Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;

Faith in their hands shall snap in two,

And the unicorn evils run them through;

Split all ends up they shan't crack;

And death shall have no dominion.

No more may gulls cry at their ears

Or waves break loud on the seashores;

Where blew a flower may a flower no more

Lift its head to the blows of the rain;

Though they be mad and dead as nails,

Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;

Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,

And death shall have no dominion.

Contagious

2011-02-11T10:00:00.000-08:00

I don’t think that people accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it.

- David Lynch

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via Perry Bible Fellowship

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via Astronomy Picture of the Day

Clouds, Birds, Moon, Venus

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via Huffington Post

US Snowstorm Seen From Space: Wild Weather Captured By NASA

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wildcoyote

Atrocities

2011-02-09T10:02:00.000-08:00

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

- Voltaire

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Former Minutemen member faces murder trial

via CNN.com

Brisenia Flores arrived in her rural Arivaca, Arizona, home with her parents, Raul Flores and Gina Gonzales, on the evening of May 29, 2009.

Gonzales testified that four people knocked on the door, claiming to be law enforcement and border patrol. They said the house was surrounded because they had information that the family was harboring fugitives. Gonzales said her husband opened the door and allowed them inside, but they knew immediately that the people entering were not law enforcement at all.

Gonzales says that after a short struggle, the tall man shot her husband several times in the stomach and chest before turning the gun on her. She was shot in the leg and fell to the floor when she heard her husband choking on his own blood. She says he could hear the gunman reassure Brisenia, who was awakened by the blasts of the weapon, that she wouldn't be hurt.

Gonzales says her daughter began to question why her mother and father were shot when the gunman reloaded his weapon. "I can hear her say 'Please don't shoot me,' " Gonzales said, wiping away tears and sobbing.

The gunman paid no attention to her pleas and fired two shots into Brisenia's head, causing the girl to fly back on the couch, Gonzales recounted. She said she could hear her daughter struggling to breathe as the intruders began to steal items and leave the home. Gonzalez made her way to a weapon her husband kept in the kitchen and called 911.

Flores and his young daughter, who just minutes before had been sleeping peacefully on the couch, were both dead.

Prosecutors say Forde, a vigilante anti-illegal immigration activist, was not only the woman described in the home but was also the ringleader of the home invasion and murder.

Forde was once a member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps before being removed from the group for what members described to CNN as unstable behavior.

Saying the federal government has failed to secure America's borders, the Minuteman group took the job on itself and claims that its mission is to employ "civil protest, demonstration, and political lobbying" in protecting borders.

She formed a splinter group, Minutemen American Defense, and patrolled the Arizona-Mexico border armed with weapons. She led protests about the dangers and criminal activity along the porous border.

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still think Fox News has no effect on its listeners?

enough said.

wildcoyote

Booyakasha

2011-02-06T10:00:00.000-08:00

via Poodwaddle.com

Paripatetic

2011-02-03T10:00:00.000-08:00

Large Magellanic Cloud, bright Canopus and Sirius rise behind Moai Piro Piro
from Los Cielos de Chile, Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

by Stephane Guisard

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“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”

- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

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Ophiuchus!? What now?
via Sagan's Brain

6th century zodiac wheel, Beit Alpha, Israel

It was widely reported that not only is Ophiuchus a new sign that we'll all have to learn to live with, but that the precession of the Earth's axial rotation has, over a few millennia, shifted our view of the sky so that the Sun is no longer in the same apparent position along the zodiac as it was thousands of years ago, when this version of astrology was concocted. In other words, people with birthdays in late March have traditionally been considered Aries, but today the Sun is really in Pisces at that time of year.

This story is just so silly in a variety of ways. For one thing, it wasn't actually news. The Earth's precession doesn't happen overnight, and astronomers haven't just discovered it (read this discussion of the problem by Phil Plait way back in 2008).. In the words of Sam Cooke, it's been a long time coming. Then there was the panic and irritation that the traditional signs are all wrong (HuffingtonPost cleverly examined the Earth-shattering consequences of this shift).

Soon after this news, astrologers came to the rescue. Nothing to fear, they said. The Ophiuchus shift only applies to Sidereal Astrology, not Tropical Astrology. Most believers probably don't know the difference, but don't worry, we westerners typically believe in Tropical Astrology, which is unaffected. "Ophiuchus only affects those who were born 2009 onwards. If you're born before 2009, the sign stays the same." That's a relief.

The signs originated from the constellations, but are not the same thing. The signs are composed of 12 equal subdivisions of the sky, each 30 degrees in extent. The constellations are not laid out in such an orderly fashion.

There are thirteen astronomical constellations that cross the ecliptic. Whenever you refer to the zodiac use the number thirteen and name the constellations of the ecliptic (see Table #l). If someone complains that these are not the right constellations, just point out that all constellations are arbitrary and strictly artificial. The ones we use are the official constellations of the International Astronomical Union.

So, if Ophiuchus occupies more of the ecliptic than Scorpius, why is it not in the astrological zodiac instead of Scorpius? Ancient astronomers did not place Ophiuchus on the ecliptic; it is the modern construction of official constellation boundaries that gives it so much territory across the ecliptic. Since they are rather arbitrary boundaries, it doesn't make much difference. Most likely, it's because Ophiuchus is not a particularly bright constellation, while Scorpius is a very bright, vivid group of stars that really does look like a scorpion.

It remains to be seen whether the new dates for the 12-sign zodiac will be adopted, whether we'll keep the dates as we have come to know them, or whether we'll switch over to the new 13-sign zodiac.

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Stars over Templo V, Tikal

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wildcoyote

Isis

2011-02-01T10:00:00.000-08:00

Siouxsie Sioux - Into A Swan

from Mantaray (2007)

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Isis

by Nigel Quarless

via MixedBagMythography

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wildcoyote

Hadestown

2011-01-30T12:10:00.000-08:00

A long-neglected tradition on TMS: Sunday Art!

Today's featured artist: Mitch Dobrowner
artist site, here

Mitch Dobrowner grew up in Long Island, New York. His career in photography began with an old Argus rangefinder given to him by his dad. Aged twenty-one and hugely inspired by Ansel Adams, Dobrowner quit his job to document the American Southwest.

His intention is to convey a living, breathing ecosystem, which has existed far longer than we have and, hopefully, will be here for ages to come.

He knows immediately when he has shot a quality image, he says. ‘It as a moment when a sense of time and space is lost, and the exterior environment and my interior world combine.’

Dobrowner’s work has been exhibited across the United States and in France, and received numerous awards, including the National Geographic Society’s Visions of Paradise prize in 2009.

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the enemy is poverty and the wall keeps out the enemy

that’s why we build the wall, we build the wall to keep us free

Hadestown is a folk opera based on the Orpheus myth, and set in a post-apocalyptic American depression era.

It’s a land where people hide behind walls in a misguided attempt to preserve their “freedom” and protect their riches.

ANAÏS MITCHELL as Eurydice

as Orpheus
as Persephone
as Hermes
as Hades
as the Fates

Check out the music of Hadestown by clicking here!

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Con mucho cariño,

wildcoyote

Na

2011-01-25T21:23:00.000-08:00

Go check out TheOatmeal's State of the Web 2010

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via XKCD

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wildcoyote

How the Universe Works [w/ video!]

2011-01-18T02:53:00.000-08:00

“There is a theory which states that if ever for any reason anyone discovers what exactly the Universe is for and why it is here it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another that states that this has already happened.”

- Douglas Adams

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Alien Galaxies

via the Discovery Channel

There are billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. One of them is our own Sun. And around the Sun, orbits a system of planets and moons: a solar system.

“Our solar system is clearly a precious planetary system. And it begs the question: are there other solar systems like ours in the universe?

“The marvelous reality is that our own Milky Way galaxy contains some 200 billion stars or so. And many of those stars have their own planetary systems. Our solar system with its eight major planets is not alone; there are other brethren planetary systems out there—by the billions.”

Of course, astronomers hope to find another solar system with a planet like Earth. And they’re off to a good start. So far astronomers have discovered over 360 stars with orbiting planets.

“[…]Stars tend to be orbited by not just by one planet, by usually two, three, four, or a multitude of planets. Planets come in families. Not unlike the family of planets we enjoy here, around our own Sun. […] Planetary systems offer a wide diversity of different architectures sizes, masses of the planets, and so on, rendering our solar system just one type of a planetary system out of thousands. It’s bizarre at the least, if not completely frightening.”

- Prof. Geoff Marcy, Astronomer

It could be that each and every solar system is one-of-a-kind. But they all have one thing in common: each one begins with a star. First, a star is born in a cloud of dust and gas, called a nebula. These are the pillars of creation.

What scientists have been trying to figure out is, “What triggers the star-making process?”

One possibility is that a nearby supernova explosion took place, and rammed into this otherwise innocuous cloud, pushing it, smushing it, compressing it down so that gravity can take over. Once gravity takes over, the cloud begins to shrink, sucking in more and more gas, into a giant, spinning disk. Gravity, at the center, crushes everything into a dense, super-hot ball. It gets hotter, and hotter. Suddenly, atoms in the gas begin to fuse, and the star ignites.

The leftover dust and debris forms a disk spinning around the new star. It contains the seeds of planets, moons, comets, and asteroids.

“We have this marvelous, first-ever tool, by which we can take pictures of planets caught in the act of formation. It’s quite a marvelous opportunity to see the planets around other stars forming, thereby giving us a glimpse as to how our own solar system must surely have formed.”

Scientists understand not only where stars come from, but also how planets grow from the disk of gas and dust that remain. An astronaut in the International Space Station using grains of salt and sugar discovered that in the zero gravity of space, particles of dust don’t float apart; they clump together.

“The dust particles would collide, and stick, and grow into ever-larger dust particles, and eventually rocks, and eventually boulders.”

The bigger the boulder, the more gravity it has. It becomes larger, and heavier, and consumes bigger and bigger rocks. Eventually, some of these rocks grow into planets. This is what happened in our solar system, 4.6 billion years ago. There were about a hundred young planets orbiting around the new Sun. Collisions were inevitable.

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At the beginning, solar systems are violent. So it was with our own. As some of the planets grow larger, and so would the collisions. Only the largest survived—the rest are smashed to pieces. Something very large crashed into young planet Mercury. It blew the crust off, and left behind just the iron core. A similar collision on Earth resulted in our own Moon.

This demolition derby raged for 500 billion years.

“What we see now, Mars, Venus, Earth, Mercury… these planets from the inner solar system, they’re the survivors, they’re the ones who lived through these giant impacts.”

Debris from smashed infant planets ended up in the asteroid belt, a junkyard of rocky, leftover planet parts.

Most of the big impacts happened in the inner solar system. But, one of the planets, Uranus, was hit and knocked on its side. A mystery, since the outer planets formed mainly from gas, and escaped most of the ferocity of the inner solar system’s collisions.

“These rocky cores formed, and gas coalesced and accumulated around them. And this process actually happened fairly rapidly in astronomical terms—in only about a million years. And those are the giant planets we see today.”

Beyond the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, are Uranus and Neptune. These two are made of gas—and ice. And beyond them, lies the Kuiper Belt, a band of icy rocks, and dwarf planets. We used to think that one Kuiper Belt object, Pluto, was the ninth planet. We’ve since decided that Pluto is, in fact, a dwarf planet—one of many orbiting more than 3 billion miles from the sun.

“There are millions of these out there. They are so far away and so faint that they are hard to see. These are leftover from the formation of the solar system itself.”

The Kuiper Belt marks the edge of the Sun’s influence. There’s not much light, or warmth, out here. But it’s not the end of our solar system. A shell of trillions of icy objects, called the Oort Cloud, is even further out. The Oort Cloud is so far away, light from the Sun takes a full year to reach it.

From the cold, icy edge, to hot star at the center, our solar system seems stable. But something isn’t right: Uranus and Neptune are in the wrong place!

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The planets of the solar system grew from a giant disk of dust and gas. The four inner rocky planets closest to the Sun, and the giant gas planets further out. But Uranus and Neptune seem out of place—there wasn’t enough stuff this far from the Sun to make such big planets.

One theory suggests that Uranus and Neptune formed closer to the Sun and were pushed violently outward from it. So what could have shoved two massive planets clear across the solar system?

“We believe that Jupiter and Saturn got into this funny configuration, where Jupiter went around the Sun twice every time Saturn went around once. And that configuration allows the planets to kick each other more as they pass one another. And that caused the whole system to go nuts.”

The combined gravity of Jupiter and Saturn yanked hard on Uranus and Neptune, and pulled them away from the Sun. As they got pulled outward, the two planets plowed through asteroids and other debris left over from the formation of the other planets. This sent billions of chunks of rock flying in all directions. Some rocks form the asteroid belt. But most were thrown out to create the vast Kuiper Belt.

But the gravitational push from Jupiter and Saturn was so strong that it may have reversed the original position of the two planets (Uranus and Neptune).

“It’s possible that Uranus and Neptune formed in the opposite order—Neptune was closer to the Sun than Uranus. But these gravitational interactions actually swapped their positions.”

It was the blizzard of rocks that Uranus and Neptune ran into that acted like a brake, and slowed them into the orbits they keep today. The idea of planets changing orbits may sound crazy, but scientists have seen it happening in other solar systems. So now, they think it’s just the way all solar systems work.

In one far off system, scientists have spotted a planet as big as Jupiter orbiting its central star.

“Some of these giant planets are found orbiting very close to the host star, taking only days, a few days, to orbit the star. Obviously, such close-in massive planets are blow-torched by the star, which pushes the temperature of the planet to over 2000° C.”

There’s no way a gas giant, could have formed that close-in. It’s way too hot. The only explanation is that it must have formed out there, and moved in here.

The same thing could have happened in our own solar system. Scientists have found large amounts of the element Lithium on the surface of the Sun. Lithium doesn’t normally exist in stars—but it is found in gas planets. Maybe there was another gas giant in our own solar system that spiraled in, and crashed into the Sun. That would explain how the lithium got there.

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In the beginning, solar systems are violent, messy. But, over time, they settle down and become more stable. But stability is just an illusion: Any planet in the solar system is always in danger of total annihilation.

There are all kinds of solar systems in the Milky Way galaxy. Most seem strange compared to our own. Some planets have crazy orbits. Some smash into each other. Others dive into their stars. So, why are the orbits of our own planets so regular and stable?

“Well, that’s because all of the planets have motion left over from the formation of the solar systems. When the nebula collapsed around the Sun as the Sun was forming, there was an intrinsic motion. That gave our planet a velocity. Literally, we are free-falling towards the Sun at all times—but we’re going so fast we keep missing it. That’s what an orbit is.”

-Dr. Michelle Thaller, Astronomer

Think of a merry-go-round. The faster it spins, the farther you are thrown from the center. When it slows down, you lose momentum, and fall back inwards. It’s something like that with the planets. The disk that gave birth to them was spinning—and the momentum left over from that keeps everything going around to this day. Moving at 66,000 mph, the Earth takes almost 365 days—one year—to orbit the Sun. Other planets further from the Sun, have bigger orbits, move slower, and take longer. Saturn orbits the Sun once every 29 years. Neptune takes 164 years. Each planet stays on a precise path around the Sun—which for us is a good thing.

“Our solar system has a somewhat fortunate spacing of the planets, with nearly circular orbits. If our solar system did not have such neat and orderly spacing and orbits, the Earth would not be here—and we wouldn’t be here talking about it.”

The planets are on safe, stable orbits—but billions of comets and asteroids are not. Many come streaking into the inner solar system—and when they do, watch out!

“A meteor crater which we see here today formed as the result of a hundred-and-fifty-foot rocky, iron object coming and slamming into the Earth roughly 50,000 years ago.”

Some of the objects coming our way can be much bigger. Look at the Moon: it’s covered with large impact craters. Earth has been hit too—a lot. But the craters have eroded. We know that a huge asteroid smashed into the Earth off the eastern coast of Mexico 65,000,000 years ago. It was going 45,000 mph, and when it hit, it released more energy than 5 billion Hiroshima bombs. It wiped out 70% of life on Earth. A few more impacts like that could destroy all life on Earth. But, believe it or not, Earth has a giant bodyguard.

“Jupiter is actually probably really important for life on Earth. Jupiter’s gravity is so huge, and it’s just in the right place in the solar system, that it protects the Earth from comets that come from deep in the solar system and swing by the Sun and could possibly hit the Earth. As these comets come by, most of them get knocked out of solar system by Jupiter.”

In 1994, the comet Schumaker-Levi 9 raced toward the inner solar system. But it never got past Jupiter. Astronomers watched as Jupiter tore it to pieces, and dragged its remains down to the planet’s surface.

“We have seen planets smash into Jupiter and create fireballs that were bigger than the Earth. If Jupiter wasn’t there, the impact rate for the Earth would be something like 1000 times more than we see today.”

Lucky for us, Earth has the perfect orbit. We’re close enough to Sun for liquid water—but not so close that it boils away: just the right combination for life.

Question is, if our own solar system could create the perfect conditions, could other solar system do it too? Planet hunters have spotted a solar system 20 light years, and it has a planet just the right size, in just the right place.

Astronomers around the world are looking for new planets, in new solar systems. So far, they’ve discovered 420. Most are huge gas giants, like Jupiter. But, they’re either very close to the star, or much farther away. Then, in 2005, astronomers discovered a system with rocky planets, like our own. These planets orbit a star called Gliese 581.

“This star, Gliese 581, and its four planets is, frankly, quite bizarre relative to our solar system. The four planets we know of all orbit very close to the star than any we know of—closer than the planet Mercury, our closest planet, orbits the Sun.”

But Gliese 581 is a small star—it doesn’t burn as brightly or give off as much heat as our Sun. The planets can orbit much closer without being vaporized.

“There’s one, about 8 times the mass of the Earth, that is getting far enough away from the Sun to be in the habitable zone.”

Like Earth, this planet orbits at a distance where water is a liquid. And where there’s water, there is life.

In March 2009, NASA launched the Kepler Space Telescope. Its mission: to search for planets similar to our own, in new solar systems.

“We may find planets that have methane atmospheres, that have ammonia atmospheres. We may find planets that are covered in heavy organics, or a tar-like material. We may find some covered entirely by water. I think the most glorious quests of the next decade or two, is to learn the full diversity of the family of Earth-like planets that might be out there in the universe.”

With Kepler, astronomers expect to discover hundreds, possibly thousands, of new solar systems.

“Think about our own Milky Way galaxy. The galaxy has roughly 500 billion to a trillion stars. Some fairly large percentage of that have planets. Now think about how many galaxies we know of. We certainly haven’t found all of the galaxies out there yet, but the ones we can take a picture of are about 60 billion galaxies. When you look up into the night sky tonight, simply in the path of your sight, even if you can’t see it, there are billions of solar systems all around you.”

And there could be a solar system with a planet just like Earth. If it happened once, it could happen again. Solar systems don’t last forever. Orbits fall apart. Planets collide. But, even if it doesn’t, in another 5 billion years, a catastrophe will end our solar system as we know it.

Nothing lasts forever. Not even solar systems. Ours may seem stable now, but actually, it’s falling apart. Solar systems begin and end with collisions. The gravitational pull enacted by the planets on each other could cause orbital disruptions. If two planets come close enough together, the resulting cosmic tug-of-war could fling one or both planets out of the solar system. But, one way or another, our solar system is doomed!

Like all solar systems, the end will come: when the star at the center dies. In another five billion years, our own star will run out of fuel and become a red giant. It will heat up, swell, and engulf the first three inner planets. The Earth’s surface will be scorched, the seas will evaporate, and the land will melt. Most of the entire Earth will be completely vaporized.

For a while, the red giant will fall apart, too, leaving behind a tiny corpse of star called a white dwarf.

“From the Earth, this dead, rocky planet that used to harbor an enormously vibrant civilization, there would be this fairly faint dot, which would be our Sun—now a white dwarf: a dying, almost dead, star.”

The remains of the inner planets will continue to orbit the white dwarf. But the giant outer planets will live on, untouched, albeit colder than they used to be. Even though this is 5 billion years in the future for our solar system, it may have already happened to many other systems throughout the universe.

Our solar system emerged from chaos to eventually support life. We were lucky. We’ve just the right amount of planets, at the right place, at the right distance from each—all orbiting the right type of star. But it could have been a very different story.

“There are so many things that are fortunate about our solar system, starting with the Sun. The Sun is a very stable, easy star—a perfect thing for life to evolve around. That’s probably not a coincidence that we’re here.”

An extraordinary chain of events, over billions of years, has made our solar system the perfect place for life to evolve.

“What we see today is not what has always been, and it is not what will always be. We are not unique. It’s just the way things worked out.”

Are we unique among the universe because all the pieces fit to create life? We don’t know. But every week scientists are discovering new galaxies, and it may only be a matter of time before we find out.

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check this out:

Interstellar Space Travel Could Be Possible In As Little As 200 Years

via Sagan's Brain

Check out this excellent paper from Marc G. Millis, arguing that interstellar space travel could be possible in as little as 200 years. The paper calculates the amount of energy required for two types of interstellar missions, and uses estimates of world energy output growth to determine when the required energy might be available to such missions. Millis bases his calculations on the fraction of energy made available to current space missions, accounting for various technological innovations and broader considerations that might accelerate or delay serious consideration of interstellar missions. The math suggests that an interstellar spacecraft colony could be achievable in approximately 200 years, and a probe to Alpha Centauri could be launched within 500 years.

[read more...]

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“The reason why the universe is eternal is that it does not live for itself; it gives life to others as it transforms.”

- Lao Tzu, from The Book of Tao

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wildcoyote

Steampunk

2010-12-22T02:34:00.000-08:00

Abney Park - End of Days

via Youtube

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Steampunk Art Gallery

Eric Claeys, Cheshire Advice

Nigel Quarless, The Fall of Icarus

Lior Arditi, Stromboli's Catch

Fabricio Moraes, Steamnocchio

Marcin Jakubowski, Titanomachy: The Fall of Hyperion

Alexander Smolyakov, Sphinx

Jack Zhang, The Two Mighty Kings

Fabricio Moraes, Rocketeer

Aly Fell, Judith and Holofernes

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I wanna be an Airship Pirate.

wildcoyote

TIME

2010-12-18T12:32:00.000-08:00

via TIME Magazine

It's okay. We're still not completely sure, either.

WikiLeaks' Julian Assange

Faggots do! Queers too!

I get high with a little help...

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WikiLeaks

via XKCD

(STUDENTS ARE CALLING PRESIDENT JOHNSON EN MASSE TO PROTEST THE BOMBING AND IT'S JAMMED THE WHITE HOUSE SWITCHBOARD. COULD THEY COLLAPSE OUR CRITICAL PHONE SYSTEMS? HAS THE FIRST TELEPHONE WAR BEGUN? STAY TUNED FOR MORE ON THIS DANGEROUS NEW TECHNOLOGY.)

Cycles of Creation

2010-11-26T10:30:00.000-08:00

from Disney's Fantasia (1940)

via Youtube

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The Rite of Spring, Part 1: Genesis

Music: Igor Stravinsky - Le Sacre du Printemps

The Rite of Spring, Part 2: Evolution

Music: Igor Stravinsky - Le Sacre du Printemps

The Rite of Spring, Part 3: Extinction

Music: Igor Stravinsky - Le Sacre du Printemps

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from Disney's Fantasia 2000 (2000)

via Youtube

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Firebird

Music: Igor Stravinsky - Firebird

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: )
wildcoyote

Literature

2010-11-24T03:33:00.000-08:00

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions: Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish (or read an excerpt). Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses!

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1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 Night - Elie Weisel

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 The Road - Cormac McCarthy

69 Midnight’s Children and Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 East of Eden - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

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Go read something... worthwhile, K?

wildcoyote

Silvia

2010-11-20T13:29:00.000-08:00

Silvia by Miike Snow

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Check out Miike Snow, folks.

visit the band's website here!
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wildcoyote

Stories

2010-11-16T13:52:00.000-08:00

Politik

2010-11-12T14:06:00.000-08:00

Hello United States of America!

Confused? Apathetic (or even blatantly ignorant)? Upset and frustrated, but don't know why?

Politics!

The real source of all your daily problems.

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Ass-erica lived up to its name this week at the G20 Summit. And was very proud and patriotic about it, too!

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White House Undecided On Whether To Let Republicans Walk All Over Them
via Wonkette

Democrats in Congress were too afraid even to try to pass an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the middle class before the election, because Republicans saying anything at all about Democrats and taxes is very scary!

At least deciding to let Republicans completely grab control of the law-making process and all of the ground at the bargaining table is a concrete resolution, and one that could shift the blame of the sagging economy to the Republican Party.

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Funnies

"Wall Street hands out record bonuses. Poor people--get ready to be trickled down on!"

- Stephen Colbert

"I'll say this -- the president [George W. Bush] is everywhere talking about his book. And he is being very candid: In one interview, he said that he used to do stupid things while he was drunk. But think about it: Who among us hasn't had a couple of drinks and invaded Iraq?"

- David Letterman

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Excuse me, but Alaska does not belong to you.

Sarah Palin's new reality show, Sarah Palin's Alaska, premieres this Sunday on The Learning Channel.

"Whether you think Palin is America's breath of fresh air or a lightweight opportunist, there can be no argument this show is way more Palin than Alaska," New York Daily News columnist David Hinckley wrote. "If she were buying the time, she couldn't have created a more flattering infomercial."

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He's Got the Whole Planet, In His Hands...

via Pharyngula

This is the Republican who wants to be in charge of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, John Shimkus.

We don't have to worry about global warming or pollution or other such merely human problems! God promised that we never have to worry about that again, and he believes in the truth of the literal word of god.

We are so screwed.

- PZ Myers

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Consider Humanism.

...because I believe that education is the best investment for humanity.
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The good news?

There's still one person out there with some sense in this head.

wildcoyote

Mimic

2010-11-09T21:33:00.000-08:00

The Mimic Octopus

via Boston.com

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Astronomers Find Most Earth-like Planet to Date
via ScienceNOW

Survivalists take note. Astronomers may have found the most Earth-like alien planet to date, and it's located only a short distance away, cosmically speaking. The team says that the planet's proximity to its sun, coupled with the ease with which it was detected, suggests that the galaxy could be teeming with habitable worlds.
Most of the 500 or so planets astronomers have found orbiting other stars have fallen into the gas-giant class: very large worlds, some much bigger than Jupiter, that can't support life, because they lack solid surfaces, and because they orbit either too far from or much too close to their suns. The few rocky worlds discovered so far also orbit too near or far from stars to fall into what planetary scientists call the "habitable zone," in which liquid water—and therefore life—could exist.
But Gliese 581g looks like a game-changer. Detected from the minuscule amount of gravitational influence it exerts on its star, the planet lives a mere 20 light-years away in the constellation Libra. Gliese 581g is the sixth world discovered around its sun—and the fourth most distant. Yet its orbit brings it closer to its parent star than Mercury is to our sun. Still, it's squarely within the habitable zone, because the planet's star, which is a type known as a red dwarf, contains only about 30% of the sun's mass and shines with only about 1% of its brightness, the researchers will report in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

[read more...]
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Flux by Bloc Party
via YouTube

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fin.

wildcoyote

Noviembre

2010-11-07T12:00:00.000-08:00

Fall Rhapsody by Rabin Photography

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Are you a Skeptic like me?

Got a bone to pick with that "book" called the Bible?

Go check this out. It will make your day!

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...just in case you hadn't seen it already.
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from Caricature Corner
drawings by Bob Doucette

Sweeney Todd and Ms. Lovett

Henri Marie Raymond Toulouse-Lautrec Moŋfa

Edgar Allen Poe

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moar to follow...
:)

wildcoyote

Luminosity

2010-11-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

Fran Learte

via ArtistADay

Fran “drfranken” Rodrìguez Learte, was born in La Coruna, Spain in 1979. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Salamanca in 1998.

drfranken lives and works in Madrid, Spain. For many years he experimented with different techniques and mediums. Now he concentrates on digital art and his work as a computer programmer in engineering.

Fawkes

2010-11-05T04:00:00.000-07:00

Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

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wildcoyote