something about this just makes me feel old.
musings on starlight, found via 3 quarks daily:
celebrating the commonplace:
celebrating the commonplace:
[...]Other things are thought about for the first time because they are so utterly commonplace that no one has bothered to think about them before. These are the kind of things I like to think about.read it all.
Consider starlight. What could be more commonplace than starlight?
Arcturus is high in the southeast these evenings. Arcturus is 36 light-years away. That's 216 trillion miles. And I saw it.
It's not like a special ray of light came from Arcturus to my eyes. That's what we often imagine. We've seen so many pictures of Stars of Bethlehem and Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars with beams of light shooting straight down to Earth that it's easy to believe that the light from the star is somehow directed towards us, personally. But, of course, when we think about it, we realize that this is not so.
The light from a star radiates in every direction, like a constantly expanding balloon of energy, getting weaker all the time. Only the tiniest fraction of a star's light falls upon the Earth...
previous posts
- some of us prefer an existent dinner. you know, a...
- a declaration
- shirley temple/tidal wave: a prom story
- the big nothing before the big something
- i'm not going to talk about immigration
- thinkin' of blue thunder...
- "god wills it!"
- and i'm sorry 'bout the visigoths
- here today, tomorrow next week!
- realities of reality
archives
- April 2006
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also me
- city lines magazine
- twitter (annus_mirabilis)
- ashley (almost a love song)
- kayleigh (i [verb] you)
- nicole (raise your hopeful voice)
- alli (what an odd-sized explosion.)
- haven kimmel's blog
- sara benincasa
- wonkette
- i blame the patriarchy
- who is ioz?
- a softer world
- toothpaste for dinner
- natalie dee
- married to the sea
- dinosaur comics
- xkcd
- terror island
- the perry bible fellowship
- cat and girl
- björk
- the decemberists
- the weakerthans
- sigur rós
- stephin merritt
- norfolk & western
- the essex green
- of montreal
- elephant 6
- arts&crafts
- laura veirs
- mary timony
- cbc
- alt weeklies
- al jazeera english
- george galloway
- marxists internet archive
- world socialist web site
- the pinky show
- quotidiana
- exit mundi
- the millennial abyss
- the revealer
- killing the buddha
- the brick testament
- colbert nation
- mcsweeney's internet tendency
- the brazen head
- iq infinity: the unknown james joyce
- ulysses by james joyce
- the leonard cohen files
- only revolutions
- luminarium
- geoffrey chaucer hath a blog
- haven kimmel
- purity of heart
- banana yoshimoto
- jeanette winterson
blogs
webcomics
music
news and political
curiosity, entertainery, and literary
about
-
me: aspiring writer, 'music nerd,' seeker of beautiful moments, college student, armchair theologian, nominal quaker, 'the diet coke of emo with no caffeine,' eclectic left-winger, and generally someone who thinks about things too much.
this: unedited, uninhibited, and uninteresting thoughts, nebulous stream-of-consciousness ramblings of memory, inside jokes, obscure references, emotional paroxysms, and slices of life. sometimes there are pictures.
what people are saying about me
'...something entirely different from anybody i've ever known.'
- krystin
'...a nice boy.'
- laura
'...a maoist!'
- greg
'...elevate[s] emotional self-destructiveness to an art form.'
- greg
'...my favorite pixie.'
- lizzie
'...a damn good conversationalist.'
- kelly
'...blue-raspberry [pie]! or or maybe cranberry raisin.'
- becky
'i feel like a wide eyed kid in the socialist candy store...and [he's] the clerk.'
- christine
'...far too sensible and perceptive to be straight.'
- catherine
'...not british.'
- catherine
'...would have made a good medieval monk. one of the non-crooked ones.'
- catherine
'...should have been born a dolphin.'
- elizabeth
ATOM 0.3
'life was just a series of things i'd read about coming true.'
-- michelle tea, the chelsea whistle
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