hurricane-2011: January 2011

Science Poems for January 2011: Index (Chapbook forthcoming!)

Last April I posted a science sonnet a day in celebration of National Poetry Month (index with links here). This month I posted a science poem a day, written in various traditional forms, in honor of Science Online 2011.

The "fifth annual international meeting on Science and the Web" ran from Jan. 13-16. Click on the logo below to access the conference page, which has links to posts, tweets, photos, and videos from the event.

As with the sonnets, my January poems took their cues from science-based articles. I also have two works in a special science poem section (vol. 33 #5/6) of Star*Line, journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. You can read my "Ciliate Sestina" here.

Two sonnets from last April's collection, "In Development" and "Manipulations," will appear in Open Laboratory 2010. Click on the badge below for links to the 50 essays, 6 poems, and 1 cartoon in the collection.

(Click here to see Andrea Kuszewski's gorgeous cover!)

This index contains links to the individual poems, the articles that inspired them, and descriptions of the different poetic forms.

Date: January 1, 2011
Poem: "Chronesthesia"
Source Article: "Scientists find evidence for 'chronesthesia,' or mental time travel" (PhysOrg, Dec. 22, 2010)
Poetic Form: Sestina, with 14-syllable lines

Date: January 2, 2011
Poem: "Ancestor Points the Way"
Source Article: "Genome of Mystery Human Relative Revealed by 30,000 Year-Old Fossil" (The Daily Galaxy, December 23, 2010)
Poetic Form: Abecedarian

Date: January 3, 2011
Poem: "Perihelion"
Source Article: "Perihelion 2011" (Steve Owens, Dark Sky Diary, Jan. 1, 2011)
Poetic Form: Interlocking Rubáiyát

Date: January 4, 2011
Poem: "Partial Solar Eclipse"
Source Article: "Partial eclipse this New Year" (The Telegraph, Jan. 1, 2011)
Poetic Form: Cinquain

Date: January 5, 2011
Poem: "Neurospora Lullaby"
Source Article: "Jet Lag Uncovered by Mold" (Science Daily, Dec. 29, 2010)
Poetic Form: Terza Rima

Date: January 6, 2011
Poem: "Steps Ahead of the Dunes"
Source Article: "Did Early Humans Migrate Across a Watery, Green Sahara?" (Jennifer Welsh, Discover Blogs, Dec. 30, 2010)
Poetic Form: Etheree

Date: January 7, 2011
Poem: "Tiny Captains"
Source Articles: "Young'uns adrift on the sea" (Susan Milius, Science News, Jan. 15, 2011 issue) based on "Coral Larvae Move toward Reef Sounds" (Mark J. A. Vermeij et al., PLoS ONE, May 14, 2010)
Poetic Form: Sapphic

Date: January 8, 2011
Poem: "The Ballad of Big Bug Ranch"
Source Article: "An Exploration on Greenhouse Gas and Ammonia Production by Insect Species Suitable for Animal or Human Consumption" (Dennis G. A. B. Oonincx et al., PLoS ONE, Dec. 29, 2010)
Poetic Form: Ballad stanzas

Date: January 9, 2011
Poem: "The Ascent of Descendants"
Source Article: "Not So Bird-Brained: 3D X-Rays Piece Together the Evolution of Flight from Fossils" (Science Daily, Jan. 3, 2011)
Poetic Form: Villanelle

Date: January 10, 2011
Poem: "Beneath the Bottom of the World"
Source Articles: "Russians Will Be First To Explore Untouched Antarctic Lake Vostok, In Hunt For Weird Life Forms" (Rebecca Boyle, PopSci, Jan. 7, 2011) and "Mysteries of Lake Vostok on brink of discovery" (Olivier Dessibourg, New Scientist, Jan. 2011)
Poetic Form: Pantoum

Date: January 11, 2011
Poem: "Dressed For Success"
Source Article: "Male and female butterflies 'take turns courting'" (Ella Davies, BBC Earth News, Jan. 6, 2011)
Poetic Form: Rhymed Quatrains

Date: January 12, 2011
Poem: "Counting Schools"
Source Article: "Fish as Good as College Students in Numbers Test" (Matt Kaplan, National Geographic News, Jan. 7, 2011)
Poetic Form: Double Acrostic Verse (first and last letters of the lines)

Date: January 13, 2011
Poem: "Tone Poem"
Source Article: "Favourite music evokes same feelings as good food or drugs" (Alok Jha, UK Guardian, Jan. 9, 2011)
Poetic Form: Rondeau

Date: January 14, 2011
Poem: "How's That Again?"
Source Article: "How to hear above the cocktail party din" (Alexandra Witze, Science News, Jan. 3, 2011)
Poetic Form: Triolet sequence

Date: January 15, 2011
Poem: "Two Toasts/Seeing Double"
Source Articles: "Chemical Analysis Confirms Discovery of Oldest Wine-Making Equipment Ever Found" (Science Daily, Jan. 12, 2011); and "Drunk scientists pour wine on superconductors and make an incredible discovery" (Esther Inglis-Arkell, io9, Jan. 12, 2011)
Poetic Form: Double Rispetto (var. of Strambotto), using Phalaecian hendecasyllables

Date: January 16, 2011
Poem: (Untitled)
Source Article: "With specialist pollinator absent, Himalayan gingers must adapt" (Science at the Smithsonian, Jan. 13, 2011)
Poetic Form: Korean Sijo

Date: January 17, 2011
Poem: "On The Threshold (after Martin Luther King, Jr.")
Source Articles: "Jan. 15, 1929: Birth of a Moral Compass, Even for Science" (Tony Long, Wired, Jan. 15, 2011) and "The Quest for Peace and Justice" (Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1964)
Poetic Form: Blank Verse

Date: January 18, 2011
Poem: "Paramecium at the Video Arcade"
Source Article: "Stanford Researchers Develop Video Games That Let You Interact With Microorganisms" (MedGadget, Jan. 14, 2011)
Poetic Form: Minute

Date: January 19, 2011
Poem: "Grand Raiment"
Source Article: "Weekend Featured Image: Massive New Supernova Shrouded in Shell of Gas & Dust" (The Daily Galaxy, Jan. 16, 2011)
Poetic Form: Pirouette

Date: January 20, 2011
Poem: "Sound Lines"
Source Article: "European beavers construct ideal habitats for bats" (BBC Earth News, Jan. 17, 2011)
Poetic Form: Ronsardian Ode

Date: January 21, 2011
Poem: "Mirror, Fading"
Source Article: "Thaw of Earth's icy sunshade may stoke warming" (Alister Doyle, Scientific American, Jan. 16, 2011)
Poetic Form: Ghazal

Date: January 22, 2011
Poem: "This Poem Will Amusia"
Source Article: "The Neuroscience of Tone Deafness" (Kevin Mitchell, Scientific American, Jan. 18, 2011)
Poetic Form: Cowleyan Ode

Date: January 23, 2011
Poem: "Spore Richard's Almanack"
Source Article: "An Amoeba Is More Fiscally Responsible than Most Americans" (Sharon Neufeldt, I Can Has Science?, Jan. 21, 2011)
Poetic Form: Kyrielle variant

Date: January 24, 2011
Poem: "Beaming Up (with a nod toward Geoffrey A. Landis.)"
Source Article: "Laser Propulsion Could Beam Rockets into Space" (Prachi Patel, Astrobiology Magazine, Jan. 21, 2011)
Poetic Form: Rhupunt

Date: January 25, 2011
Poem: "Passion's Strategy"
Source Article: "Friday Weird Science: The Magnificent Mammal Menage a Trois" (Scicurious, Neurotic Physiology, Jan. 21, 2011)
Poetic Form: Haibun

Date: January 26, 2011
Poem: "Second Sight"
Source Article: "Quantum states last longer in birds' eyes " (Rachel Courtland, New Scientist, Jan. 20, 2011)
Poetic Form: Italian Sestets

Date: January 27, 2011
Poem: "The High Road"
Source Article: "Success! Why Expectations Beat Fantasies" (Jeremy Dean, PsyBlog, Jan. 20, 2011)
Poetic Form: Vietnamese Luc Bat

Date: January 28, 2011
Poem: "Scent and Sensibility"
Source Article: "Scanning salmon smelling streams" (Zen Faulkes, NeuroDojo, Jan. 24, 2011)
Poetic Form: French Ballade

Date: January 29, 2011
Poem: "Balancing Act"
Source Article: "Mathematical Model Could Help Predict and Prevent Future Extinctions" (National Science Foundation, Jan. 25, 2011)
Poetic Form: English Quintains

Date: January 30, 2011
Poem: "The Human Variome Project"
Source Article: "China spurs quest for human variome" (David Cyranoski, Nature News, Jan. 25, 2011) and the Human Variome Project
Poetic Form: in the spirit of Hsiao-Fu

Date: January 31, 2011
Poem: "The Fires of Vinovium"
Source Article: "Stanford archaeologist shows how the Romans made pottery in Britain" (Cynthia Haven, Stanford Report, Jan. 20, 2011
Poetic Form: Rannaicheacht Ghairid (ron-a'yach cha'r-rid)

Thanks to Daniella Martin (Girl Meets Bug), An Inordinate Fondness #12 (hosted by Bug Girl), and Prof. Zen Faulkes for the shout-outs and poem citations -- and to P.F. Anderson, Thebeautybrains, Ellen Byrne, Dawn A Crawford, Karin Fornazier, Vida Jaugelis, Raima Larter, Joanne Manster, Susanna Speier, Karyn Traphagen, Bora Zivkovic, Anton Zuiker, the Citrus County (FL) NaNoWriMo Group, and The Way We Write for all the retweets! (I think that's everyone -- let me know if I've missed you!)

As with the science sonnets, I will compile this month's poems into a chapbook. I've done the cover design:

Cover components to the right include shots of a nearby retention pond and our gyroscope.

I will add some commentary on the different poetic forms. Meanwhile, the sonnets chapbook may be ordered by e-mailing me via my website.

The cover combines my shots of an African iris and a portion of the full moon reddened by Georgia wildfires in May 2007.

Join me on Facebook and Twitter!

Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo
Free downloads at the Deviations website, Smashwords, and Manybooks.

Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

"History Makes Fools of Us All"

It is good to know that, concerning the events in Egypt, there are a few folks out their with their rational thinking hats on. While it ain't all about us, we play an important role, and that role directly affects our nation. It is time to take a serious and sober look at the real effect our policies and diplomacies have on the world. Because:

It’s quite possible that if Mubarak had not ruled Egypt as a dictator for the last 30 years, the World Trade Center would still be standing.

Ouch. (HT: The Daily Dish.)

Good thing this guy is conservative, because if he were a liberal, he'd be accused of riding on the "hate-America-and-blame-us-for-everything" train. (I mean, hell, some individuals are already linking the protests to the onward march of Kenyan-anti-colonial-Sharia-Marxist-fascism, hating America can't be far behind.)

It is a delicate subject, after all. Just look at the confusion many Americans seem to be feeling, since they are unsure which "side" to support in Egypt. Who is doing what, how does America play a part in all this?

The last is, of course, the most complicated due to our cultural fear of introspection. No one wants to remember the US role in Cuba's history; or Iran's; or Iraq's; or Afganistan's or any of those places now that another international client of our tax-dollars is facing another popular revolt. We just like to have bad guys and good guys, and shame on History if it can't be more cut-and-dry than that.

Hell, this thing should be wrapped by now anyway, the 15 minutes of fame over, allowing our national narrative to declare us the liberator/conquerer/victims of something so we can compartmentalize it to the dustbin of national memory of vague recollection of grainy news footage and future "remember when" specials, and get back to the new season of American Idol.

Pesky reality.

.

Science Poems for January 2011: 31

Last April I posted a science sonnet a day in celebration of National Poetry Month (index with links here). This month I am posting a science poem a day, written in various traditional forms, in honor of Science Online 2011.

The "fifth annual international meeting on Science and the Web" ran from Jan. 13-16. Click on the logo below to access the conference page, which has links to posts, tweets, photos, and videos from the event.

As with the sonnets, my January poems take their cues from science-based articles. I also have two works in a special science poem section (vol. 33 #5/6) of Star*Line, journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. You can read my "Ciliate Sestina" here.

Also, two sonnets from last April's collection, "In Development" and "Manipulations," have made it into Open Laboratory 2010. Click on the badge below for links to the 50 essays, 6 poems, and 1 cartoon in the collection.

(Click here to see Andrea Kuszewski's gorgeous cover!)

Today's poem (the final installment in this series) takes its cue from "Stanford archaeologist shows how the Romans made pottery in Britain" (Cynthia Haven, Stanford Report, Jan. 20, 2011). Click on the article link to learn more about the research. To learn more about the traditional poetic structure used, click on the form name.

The Fires of Vinovium
(Form: Rannaicheacht Ghairid (ron-a'yach cha'r-rid))

Orange flame.
British kilns when Romans came
Lay beneath high grassy mounds,
Underground within a frame.

Native clay
Burned a twenty-hour day,
Yielding products dun and strong,
Making long-lived pots that way.

Industry.
Geoarchaeology
Shows ceramic arts back then,
In first century B.C.

More control
Lay within a mounded bowl.
More utensils could be made,
Groundwork laid. Peer through the hole.

Jugs and tiles
Kept to plain and hardy styles,
Topping Britain's import list.
In the mist glowed blazing piles.

Ancient fame.
Stanford scholars stake their claim,
Recreating Iron Age
Life on stage with orange flame.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too

Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Science Poems for January 2011: 30

(Click here to see Andrea Kuszewski's gorgeous cover!)

Today's poem takes its cue from "China spurs quest for human variome" (David Cyranoski, Nature News, Jan. 25, 2011) and the Human Variome Project. Click on the article link to learn more about the research. To learn more about the traditional poetic structure used, click on the form name.

The Human Variome Project
(Form: in the spirit of Hsiao-Fu)*

I.
The secluded child
Does not know she is evolving,
Does not know he is not alone.

Bedridden in small villages,
They are half a world apart.

Genetic mutations bring suffering,
Make other lives distant.

Yet each child has a human face,
Alike and different in their DNA.

II.
Genomic codes paint with tiny brush strokes,
Paintings of rivers in different galleries.

Yet one stream flows like another.
Water burbles over stones. See the wet leaves.

Sixty percent of all humans
Are affected by a mutation in their lifetime.

The paint brush slips. A stroke drags.
Color deepens or thins and flakes off.

The copyist misses a detail.
Bits of scenery fall away.

Or the river petrifies in ice.
Roots become brittle and break in the thaw.

III.
Beside the hospital bed
Parents clasp each other's hands and wait.

Within the small clinic
An uncle and grandmother listen.

Their lines remain unbroken for generations.
Tributaries meet in children's blood.

Genetic variations numerous as pebbles
Lie hidden beneath clouds of silt.

Yet all of the coursing waters
Are fed by the same rains.

Gathering pools lie in mountain valleys.
Curtains of vegetation and jagged peaks.

They reflect the white wings of migrating birds.
Striped fish tumble toward the ocean.

IV.
A single raindrop falls,
Liquid in a membrane.

Its round face copies the clouds
And the mountains, and all the world.

All the raindrops in the sea
Retain the memory of their reflections.

Upside-down miniatures more than a thousand-thousandfold.
Mirrors within mirrors within mirrors.

Within the body
The mirrors course.

An ocean in a single cell
Floats nucleus and mitochondria.

Yet mountains
Separate the children.

V.
Databases and data streams
Lie locked in valleys.

One genetic variant, one remote habitat.
Throughout the world, a diversity of protocols.

Information drizzles, feeds the soil, collects in drains.
Citations burrow beneath the mud.

Indexes sensitive to light swallow echoes,
Building stalactites in deep caverns.

VI.
A continent-nation
Floats in water.

Richard Cotton casts a wide net
from the University of Melbourne.

Glistening in the depths of our variome
Flits every mutation-caused case of each human disease.

He sets out his baskets. His quarry dart
Around medical centers and testing laboratories.

All around Australia the baskets fill.
And in Kuwait and Malaysia, Egypt and Belgium.

And to the north,
Through the East Sea, past the shining islands of Zhejiang Province,
Ming Qi's university clasps hands with Beijing.

There, a genetics institute shall rise from the four winds
Blowing on the waters of human code.

Torrents from a quarter of the world's population
Will flow like Yellow and Yangtze, Songhua and Pearl.

VII.
Secluded children touch each other on the breezes.
Secluded clinics form an island necklace.

Three hundred million U.S. dollars pledged from China
To thread shimmering droplets on a delicate web.

All countries, all peoples, all disciplines.
The sound of a species joining a puddle.

A diagnosis reflects in rising dew
Carried in a cloud over the mountains.

Heavy with rivers, it splits in thunder.
An answer splashes on a screen in a village.

Tears of joy swell from relatives' eyes
As harmony builds waves of treatments.

Thus is the project's Golden Goal:
Data shared on a million genetic disease cases by 2015.

---------

* In my attempt to approximate the Hsiao-Fu form, I have referred to Douglass Alan White (trans.), Ch'eng-kung Sui's Poetic Essay on Whistling (The Hsiao-Fu), Harvard University, 1964 (.pdf)

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too

Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Fake Ass History

Someday, someone's going to have to explain to me what Michelle Bachmann is talking about when she claims America's founders worked tirelessly to end slavery. (Starting at 1.05 on the video, till about 2.20.) Someone's also going to have to explain to me why the Tea Party operatives cannot seem to explain why she is saying the things she says. Simple question, really.

Did the Founders end slavery? No. They included the ability of already-free people to govern themselves, and built in the mechanisms to expand the idea of freedom to others. But on the slavery question, at that moment? They punted. It does not insult their memory to state the fact that they were men of their time, with weaknesses and sins commonplace at the time.

People who think otherwise are caught up in the romanticism of history, and being fooled by it. Or worse, trying to fool people with it.

Which is why I think that Tea Party spokesman kept trying to change the subject because he didn't want to say that stuff on air from his own mouth. He is committed to the revision of history, from the real dirty messy history we own to the clean, shiny utopia that puts campaign donations in his coffers. Another simple answer, to be sure.

Yeah, Matthews is a fiery interviewer who always swings for the fences, but when he connects (and he absolutely did in this case) he knocks that sucker out of the park.

And, yeah, people are riled up about it. And it ain't just "the left."*

They should be. This latest blatant confusion of actual US History with "shit-that-didn't-happen" is becoming more and more the norm. I'm tired of all these political leaders trying to fool America about some utopian past that never happened.

That's why some folks took notice when these clowns up and read a fake version of the US Constitution, as some sort of Congressional pep rally, ignoring things that actually went on in this country.

You can't write the 3/5's Compromise out of the Constitution. You can't write slavery out of American History. Those who try deserve nothing better than our scorn.

Of course, you could simply assume that the 3/5ths Compromise was the Founders' attempt to end slavery......because I guess they voted for it in order to end it...or something.

(* Unless, of course, "the right" draws a circle around themselves and considers anyone who disagrees with them "left wing.")

.

Science Poems for January 2011: 29

(Click here to see Andrea Kuszewski's gorgeous cover!)

Today's poem takes its cue from "Mathematical Model Could Help Predict and Prevent Future Extinctions" (National Science Foundation, Jan. 25, 2011). Click on the article link to learn more about the research. To learn more about the traditional poetic structure used, click on the form name.

Balancing Act
(Form: English Quintains)

A food web network is complex,
For when a keystone species dies
Its untimely extinction wrecks
The ecology. A cascade applies,
Killing more animals, severing ties.

Now a mathematical model
Could stop a cascade in its tracks
Through suppressing an urge to coddle.
To compensate for what habitat lacks,
Some species numbers should not wax.

Instead, removing an animal
From a compromised environment
Might make extinction preventable.
The land recovers before it is spent:
A twist on the conservation bent.

It sounds counterintuitive.
Removing a species seems unjust.
But in scarce times, something must give.
Avoiding extremes of boom and bust
Underlies this argument's thrust.

To deal with environmental change,
Estimate uncertainty
And then, by the numbers, rearrange.
Treat ecosystems dynamically
To maintain biodiversity.

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Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

One Man

I'll write more about the international stuff once we see what happens. History is being written right now, maybe in a way we haven't seen since 1989. While it unfolds, and you watch the passions of people yearning to be free struggle against the yoke of those who would curtail their liberty, ask yourself what effect can one man have on the world?

For this is what the blood of patriots and of tyrants looks like in real time. Why must the cost always be so high?

Will this just be another false dawn, forcing the United States again into the realm of realpolitik to protect our interests? Or we be able to come down on the side of true freedom as our moral compass demands? It is time we start looking very deeply at our own motivations, and perhaps even our own complicity in keeping things the way that they are.

For we will not decide the outcome here. Perhaps that is for the best.

And, yes, I choose my words carefully. The very fabric of my being as an American and a Southerner knows the meaning when I see images of a people on a bridge, praying in the face water cannons, tear gas and police batons.

I don't need to think too long to realize where I've seen that before.

.

Dancing With the Streetcar That Brung Ya

Here is a nice write up about the dynamics of mass transit. (HT: Jeffrey) But while author Jeff Schwartz is absolutely right in an altruistic sense, he's not looking at things like a cold-blooded sausage maker.

What do we want? Streetcars and mass transit connecting neighborhoods around New Orleans; viable transportation alternatives that make economic sense.

What did we have? Two and a half streetcar lines.

What are we supposed to get? One-and-three-quarters more streetcar lines than we had previously (half on Loyola Ave, half on Elysian Fields, and a long run down Rampart/St. Claude).

So why not run the line all the way down Rampart/St. Claude, into neighborhoods that desperately need investment and populations that need better transportation? Why run a costly spur down Elysian Fields to the River?

Because that's where Frenchman Street, with its famous nightlife drawing folks from all over the city, can be found. Because Elysian Fields-at-the-River is the door into the part of the French Quarter where you want to be. Because there is a money-generating city region that is already developed and sitting right there, and the powers that be want to squeeze. This don't rocket surgery to figure out.

Because without the spur down Elysian Fields, no streetcar line runs down Rampart/St. Claude in the near future, period. This conversation regarding development options remains academic, dreaming of what could be if only. But they ARE running that spur down Elysian Fields, which means we increase our streetcar activity in very meaningful ways.

And maybe, when people see how this works, extending the lines all the way down Rampart/St. Claude to the IHNC, and all the way up Elysian Fields to the lake, won't look like such big risks for the city to take.

.

Science Poems for January 2011: 28

(Click here to see Andrea Kuszewski's gorgeous cover!)

Today's poem takes its cue from "Scanning salmon smelling streams" (Zen Faulkes, NeuroDojo, Jan. 24, 2011). Click on the article link to learn more about the research. To learn more about the traditional poetic structure used, click on the form name.

Scent and Sensibility
(Form: French Ballade)

The years have passed since they were born
As hatchlings in a tiny stream,
When suddenly they're called to spawn.
They orient as in a dream
And focus like a laser beam.
What trips their ancient memory?
Their place of birth could be a gleam
When sockeye salmon smell the sea.

fMRI was trained upon
The brains of fish to find what seem
To make an odor's impact dawn.
What drives those shining schools to teem,
The better for their path to ream
The open ocean, finally
To rise as though the richest cream,
When sockeye salmon smell the sea?

Within their telencephalon,
As far as researchers could deem,
A deep brain signal cues the brawn
Of fish, to make them gather steam.
Amino acids in the scheme
Might trip their bulb olfactory,
But those are held in less esteem
When sockeye salmon smell the sea.

They're pushed ahead to life's extreme,
To mate and die, for fry-to-be.
Their offspring will their ways redeem
When sockeye salmon smell the sea.

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Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Somebody Your Mama'd Be Proud Of

Oh, to have a chunk of one's philosophy summed up by a comment on a thread dedicated to SEC fan zealotry that gets into a conversation about the Rebel flag. I know what you're expecting. But check this out from "haveagreatday":

This is quite a robust conversation. here's my take on the flag

we don’t need to fly the battle flag to celebrate our Southern heritage. As many here have pointed out, the battle flag is too bound up in the problems of slavery and the subsequent intolerance of Jim Crow to be flown without referencing those evils. They cannot be effectively separated and the battle flag is lost to history. Let it stay buried there.

The way you celebrate your Southern heritage, that is, what separates this region from the rest of the country, is by living out those values that make the South special. Cherish your family, spend time across generations, stay rooted in a place (I am the 7th generation of a group too foolish or proud or both to leave to Natchez, MS. My daughter represents the 8th generation of my family to be born and raised in here. We have lived in this county for 225 years, some in the same houses for over 100 years), recognize the romanticism of history but do not be fooled by it, help out your neighbor, go to church, give when you can to those who need it more than you do. I’ve said this before in a similar thread, that although the South has much to atone for, the good things of the South make it great. The good things about the South are why we are proud to be Southern. And that’s how you celebrate it, by exemplifying the good things. By being somebody your mama would be proud of. You don’t need a flag for that.

Recognize the romanticism of history but do not be fooled by it. We could all use a dose of that once in a while.

.

Science Poems for January 2011: 27

(Click here to see Andrea Kuszewski's gorgeous cover!)

Today's poem takes its cue from "Success! Why Expectations Beat Fantasies" (Jeremy Dean, PsyBlog, Jan. 20, 2011). Click on the article link to learn more about the research. To learn more about the traditional poetic structure used, click on the form name.

The High Road
(Form: Vietnamese Luc Bat)

I fantasized a road.
I built it. Nothing goaded me.
Only my thoughts ran free.
And in my head I see it clear,
Although it is not here.
But expectations steer me now.
And I must plan and plow
And figure out just how to build
To make my goal fulfilled.
Although I have not stilled my dream,
True expectations seem
To trump fantasy's gleam. Instead,
My real work lies ahead
(Even setbacks, I dread!) -- to drive
My effort, and derive
Accomplishment, not jive. And so,
To build that road, I know
If I expect to go and do,
My efforts will ring true,
More than the dreamy view I've won.
My will by action done:
Positive thinking's honest code.

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Infrastructure and Spending

Jeffrey at the Yellow Blog rightly points out that the American Society of Civil Engineers has given the cumulative state of American infrastrucutre an "approaching basic" grade. And like the post says:

Failing infrastructure cannot support a thriving economy.

This is one of those fundamental things that Americans don't like to acknowledge. Everyone is wondering why the economy is having such a hard time turning around; then they're wondering why air travel is such a hassle, rail travel doesn't work, gasoline prices change and keep investors skittish, and the streets we drive are cratered with potholes. At the same time our economy bleeds money to traffic, and icy weather shuts down Southern economies unprepared to deal with snow. And that's before we start talking energy grids, levees, and the way we fund all of these projects.

Why is it so difficult to make the connections between the sluggish economy and the state of disrepair? Without working roads, you can't move your goods to market, and people can't get to the market to buy your goods. This should be a simple concept to grasp. But politics and ideologies have taken center stage, ahead of national, regional and local needs. You know all the talk of leaving debt to our children and grandchildren? We ain't leaving them a whole lot of usable stuff, either.

Now, there are a lot of folks out there who think we can grow our way into prosperity, and think spending money on infrastructure is solely the realm of pork-barrell politics. But without the infrastructure to support "growth," we'll never get out of the trough we're in (and have been in for more than a decade). Investments must be made, and we can't let those who equate the idea of sustainable development with Marxism dominate the investment options we have to examine.

Yes, too many past infrastructure projects have been politicized as pork, and used to trade political favors. That needs to stop. Lest we forget, this country has spend billions on "infrastructure" in the past decades, even as everything has fallen apart. Maybe it is time to think about the National Infrastructure Bank, because what we've currently got isn't working.

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A Note About Spending Cuts...

Spending cuts seem to be the global order of the day. It's very fashionable. It's very en vogue. You could even argue that it's very necessary. But all of the implementations I've seen seem to be very short-sighted, top-down approaches. The money will simply disappear from budgets and those in charge of the budgets are expected to make it work anyway. That's not a real long-term solution to budget cuts.

Take education for example. We spend a lot more in the state of Georgia on education than we did a decade ago. But where is that money now? Part of it is paying for updated facilities. Part of it is paying for our post-No Child Left Behind testing requirements. These aren't things you can just yank the rug out from under.

The answer to cutting the budget is to analyze what we are spending and come up with a plan to decrease that over time. We can't just cut our testing funding this year to pre-NCLB levels, but in a 5-year plan we can probably make reasonable progress.

The biggest failing of government budgeting is that budgets are set in reaction to current economic conditions rather than in anticipation of future economic conditions. Busts follow booms but the government continually gets blind-sided by the bust because they were too busy increasing their operating costs to what the economy could bear during the boom. We do need to cut spending, but the answer is to find a budget model that is sustainable during both economic extremes and that requires thinking past what will get our elected officials into office again. So sadly, it'll never happen.

Republican Response Notes

I have my notes on the Republican response. I know it's a shorter speech, but I was surprised by the complete absence of foreign policy. I also think Ryan missed an opportunity to use current events in the UK to take shots at Obamacare (which isn't really a fair comparison but would likely have enough traction to stick). I felt like I was reading a remake of 1994.

-Good, tell us who you are because for the most part we really don't know.
-Leads with obligatory shooting,
-Goes to spending. Likes what Obama is saying there.
-Cut spending. You know... for kids.
-Slams Obama spending and ties stimulus to unemployment.
-Mixing fiscal responsibility and slams health care law for about a page.
-New vision. Forward not backwards. Always be twirling...
-Limited governement good
-Smaller gov't = effective gov't
-Regarding government spending growth: Act now. Supplies running out.
-Europe already in trouble and raising taxes and cutting benefits (This is largely untrue. The UK, Ireland and Greece are making up budget shortfalls larely by cutting spending which is only partially tied to benefits.)
-Washington and Wall St caused current financial mess
-Limited gov't good (in case you forgot from earlier)

More Streetcars

Please let this be true.

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Science Poems for January 2011: 26

(Click here to see Andrea Kuszewski's gorgeous cover!)

Today's poem takes its cue from "Quantum states last longer in birds' eyes " (Rachel Courtland, New Scientist, Jan. 20, 2011). Click on the article link to learn more about the research. To learn more about the traditional poetic structure used, click on the form name.

Second Sight
(Form: Italian Sestets)

Magnetic fields can give a bird direction
When seasons change and time to migrate looms,
But how that's done has been a mystery.
Now theories of a quantum spin reflection
(Entangling of electrons, one assumes)
Might well explain a robin's faculty.

Within its eyes electrons are excited.
Light separates a pair, one on each molecule,
Yet they still spin in synchronicity.
But soon enough, this pas-de-deux is slighted.
Magnetic shifts affect a chemical
And orient the bird appropriately.

The robin is attuned to tiny changes:
Just 15 nanoTesla cause confusion.
Less than one-thousandth of our planet's force
Disrupts the avian as forth it ranges,
Creating navigational illusion,
Enough to throw the wanderer off course.

Its inner compass works (and could be thwarted)
As long as those electrons are entangled,
Existing in a short-lived quantum state.
Without those spins, its flight plan is aborted.
But somehow, in its brain, the bird has wangled
A longer-lasting way to operate.

Engaging for one hundred microseconds,
Those tangled spins retain coherence best,
Compared to molecules that we've designed.
It's led a team of scientists to reckon
That our techniques might someday pull abreast
Of mechanisms nature has refined.

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Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy).
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State of the Union Notes

I don't actually listen to State of the Union addresses but I do read the transcript. Here are my notes:

-Congratulates new Congress
-Obligatory shooting tragedy mention
-Recites plot synopsis of the 1986 Michael Keaton film Gung Ho
-Obligatory Kennedy quote (Robert, not John F)
-Using a space race comparison, Obama champions his budget which savagely defunds NASA
-Reinventing ourselves through renewable energy for approximately 10 paragraphs
-Education segue to Race to the Top plug
-Repsect teachers
-Make tuition loan subsidies permanent
-Makes hazy point about educating illegals. (If the problem is that we're sending them back after they get their degrees, then why not just send them back before they get them?)
-We should take on illegal immigration but not clear on how
-Infrastructure sucks
-High speed rail good
-High speed wireless internet good
-Simplify tax code
-Willing to work with anyone on altering new health care legislation as long as it doesn't involve any acutal compromise
-Cut spending
-Richest 2% rambling
-Make gov't spending info accessible
-troops troops troops troops troops
-Chilean miners rescued by American
-State of Union is strong

Overall, not too shabby once you get past the Gung Ho bit, but I'm still very upset that the President who is killing our mission back to the moon (and by extension any hope we have of reaching Mars) dares mention the space race. The Russians are running live Mars simulations as we speak.

Like Lambs to the Slaughter

Oh, isn't feudalism beautiful? In such a system, the people at fault can always reap the rewards of position, while asking those who work for them to do impossible tasks without adequate resources. And deny them those resources for years, even when told again and again what is needed to do the job right. Even evidence of these warnings seems no defense.

Then, if something happens, they fire those who work for them and flay them in the court of public opinion. Nothing is learned. The next group of workers steps up to do an impossible task without adequate resources, but the good times roll on for those at the top.

Local. Politics. Matter.

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Government Did Not Do That

David Frum writes a State of the Union I can believe in. It is like a real conservative trying to explain liberal pragmatism to right-wingers who don't want to believe it and left wingers who don't want to hear it.

I'd love to hear some of this tonight. We need the injection of reality.

And a healthy dose of why "the right" owns the discussion about fiscal policy.

Both links HT: Daily Dish.

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Science Poems for January 2011: 25

(Click here to see Andrea Kuszewski's gorgeous cover!)

Today's poem takes its cue from "Friday Weird Science: The Magnificent Mammal Menage a Trois" (Scicurious, Neurotic Physiology, Jan. 21, 2011). Click on the article link to learn more about the research (contains whale erotica!). To learn more about the traditional poetic structure used, click on the form name.

Passion's Strategy
(Form: Haibun)

The Bay of Fundy sparkles beneath a hot August sun. North Atlantic right whales, a science vessel, shapes in the water. A routine day of research tagging in the tingling air.

lozenges rising
she rolls onto her back
between two males

Leviathans float on their sides beside her, gray against liquid blue. The three could be sunning, exposed skin, the calls of gulls. Harpoons once rained down, raising clouds of blood, but not for decades. Today small people watch from a small boat, hunting only data.

serpentine organs
she becomes the focus of
mirror images

They form a mated trio, their battle one of peaceful giants. The males compete beneath the waves, their strength in vast storehouses of what passes from them. Built to curve about her curves, they touch within their common denominator, transporting their cargo.

tiny swimmers
the pull of a dark lagoon
two teams racing

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Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy).
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Water Word Problems

Pay attention, students, there will be a test at a later time. Or, at least, there will be news media asking "who is to blame?"

Let's see if we can get a figure that out before it shows up in your living room. Say you have a water-holding object. You have one device that puts water into the object, and one device that takes water out of the object.

If the device taking water out of the object moves slower than the devices putting water into the object, what would you expect to happen?

Exactly.

Now, what type of weather pattern might cause a great deal of need for water to be moved from one place to another in a short amount of time? What region of the nation experiences this type of weather activity?

Y'all have been paying attention, class! Good job!

Bonus question, from the Fix the Pumps post: You have one Federal entity removing water from the object, and three Local entities putting water into the object. The Federal entity tells the local entities to stop putting water into the object. How do you think the local entities will respond?

Where does the water go if the local entities cannot put it into the object designed to hold the water?

Points will be awarded based on creativity and accuracy. Discuss.

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Calvinball Theology

Fascinating stuff, and a lot of it.

HT: Daily Dish.

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Science Poems for January 2011: 24

As with the sonnets, my January poems take their cues from science-based articles. I also have two works in a special science poem section (vol. 33 #5/6) of Star*Line, journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. You can read my "Ciliate Sestina" here.

Also, two sonnets from last April's collection, "In Development" and "Manipulations," have made it into Open Laboratory 2010 Click on the badge below for links to the 50 essays, 6 poems, and 1 cartoon in the collection.

(Click here to see Andrea Kuszewski's gorgeous cover!)

Today's poem takes its cue from "Laser Propulsion Could Beam Rockets into Space" (Prachi Patel, Astrobiology Magazine, Jan. 21, 2011). Click on the article link to learn more about the research. To learn more about the traditional poetic structure used, click on the form name.

Beaming Up
(with a nod toward Geoffrey A. Landis)
(Form: Rhupunt)

Liftoff we have!
The rockets calve,
Escaping grav.
But oh, the weight.

The mix of fuel
Creates a duel
Of thrust and pull:
A payload's fate.

To carry more
Beyond Earth's floor,
We'll have to store
Less juice aboard.

Now microwaves
And lasers may
Create that day
We're striving toward.

A beam transmits
Its thermal glitz.
Momentum flits
From gyrotrons.

And vast arrays
Can form relays,
With cargo bays
Enlarged upon.

Space tourists might
Explore the night
As laser light
Propels them high.

Their launchers, sound,
Stay on the ground
And leave unbound
Their will to fly.

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Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy).
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