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You may have heard, scientists recently determined that Scholz’s Star passed within a petameter of the Sun only 70 thousand years ago. That means it swept through our Oort Cloud. (For a good perspective on how far out the Oort Cloud is, click here.)
Well, if you’re thinking that those numbers really don’t help you understand how close that is in interstellar terms, here’s a graphic to help you make sense of it, with the distances to many of the nearest stars provided for perspective. Continue reading
For the background on this one, check here.
ripesuck /RIPE suk/ n • One who is easily bribed.
– Depraved and Insulting English, by Peter Novobatsky and Ammon Shea
Someone who studies ancient Egyptian cancer is an ankhologist.
– Historical Dictionary of Slang, by J. S. Farmer & W. E. Henley
When novelist Kamila Shamsie finally got around to reading Moby-Dick and to visiting Antarctica—at the same time—she had a realization that shows how every reading of a book is a different book, depending on where we are in life when we read it. Her reading of Melville’s classic was particularly evocative:
[F]rom the start, the echoes between what I was reading and what I was seeing around me seemed to ask for me to take note, quite literally.
And so very quickly (in fact, by page 20, as my annotations tell me) my favorite reading spot became a high chair on the bridge, where I could look up from the “ice and icebergs all astern” on the page to see the very sight before me. “Through icy water — we feel the ship scrape against small icebergs,” I wrote as the Polar Pioneer progressed through the Lemaire Channel with snow-covered cliffs on both sides and snow petrels swooping about. At the top of the next page I read Melville’s phrase “brace the ship against the icy concussions of those battering seas” and at the bottom is my handwriting again: “Almost constant shuddering through the ship now that it is impossible to skirt the icebergs.”
Sometimes the annotations were marks of difference rather than similarity between the Pequod of “Moby-Dick” and the Polar Pioneer of my voyage. “Supreme lord and dictator” is how Melville describes Captain Ahab. Beside that sentence I wrote, “And here I sit, on the bridge, behind Captain Yuri of very tolerant countenance.” I should say that “very tolerant countenance” is not in my everyday speech. But by this point the book was working its way into me — as was the surrounding landscape.
Check out the rest of her intriguing account here.
forty-rod. The worst possible whiskey, said to be lethal at a distance of forty rods.
– The Encyclopedia of Civil War Usage by Webb Garrison with Cheryl Garrison
Everybody has their Top Ten lists. Sure, lists are a viral sensation in the Age of the Internet, but let’s not forget that Casey Kasem was counting down our Top 40 favorite songs for years in the Age of Radio. And, in earlier centuries, America’s Founders came up with a Top Ten List of Amendments to the Constitution, which Americans now call the Bill of Rights.
Generations of Medieval theologians gave us lists of angels and archangels, not to mention the Top Seven Deadly Sins. The Hindus gave us a Top Seven list of chakras. Greeks had their Top Twelve list of gods, and Plato had his Top Four list of virtues. Gautama had two lists: the Top Four Noble Truths and Top Eight factors that lead one to the cessation of dukkha.
The West gave us a Top Four list of elements. The East gave us a Top Five list of elements. And Moses counted down the Top Ten Commandments over 3000 years ago.
So, in that ancient and noble tradition, I tried to come up with a Top Ten list of writers who have influenced my writing or my thoughts on writing. Here we go! Continue reading