But this one’s a bit more, well, out of the mainstream, shall we say? But just as fascinating. Street Anatomy · Wearing your anatomy on your skin: the anatomy tattoo gallery (via Andrew Sullivan)
Blog
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Go look!
At Astronomy Picture of the Day, take a look at “A Spectacular Sky Over the Grand Tetons,” the image for August 14, 2007.
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Trollope
No, not trollop! I’m reading Anthony Trollope’s Chronicles of Barsetshire, in a very nice 1950 hardbound pocket edition from The World’s Classics, published by Oxford University Press. The binding is 3/4 red cloth with gold fleur-de-lys, with a cream spine and red title inset on the spine. And there’s a little ribbon bookmark. I have this fantasy of sitting on the T reading and having a church lady ask if I’m reading the Bible, so I can say, “No, Trollope.”
I’ve now finished Dr Thorne and Framley Parsonage. The Framley one finally begins to tie together major characters from the earlier novels (although I’m not sure if that continues). These two, certainly, form a sort of a pair, though not so much as the first two, which definitely have a complete story between them.
Next up: The Small House at Allington.
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An insufficient analysis
Andrew Sullivan posts about “a challenging analysis” of the U.S. position in the Middle East with reference to gas and oil sources, but I don’t think that’s sufficient. The pertinent sentence from the portion of the Star-Telegram article he quotes:
Any group, nation or coalition of nations able to dominate this region would hold the keys to domination of a world economy dependent on these fuels.
As soon as any nation becomes independent of these fuels (which we all, eventually, must), they escape this domination. Instead of focusing on being the dominant force in the world, the United States would do well to ensure that we are not subject to the vagaries of oil and gas production, in the Middle East or anywhere else.
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Faces of Faith panel discussion
Yesterday I was on a panel in Second Life for a University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism fellowship program project. The fellows had researched and created reports on “Faces of Faith: God Sex Family” and decided to bring their reports into Second Life. As part of their weeklong exhibit, they organized this panel of SL religious figures (video). It was a real privilege to be on the panel.
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Mainspring
I’ve been reading again, and I have some catching up to do with titles I’ve already finished.
First up: Mainspring by Jay Lake. This is in a strange, small category. It’s kind of Steampunk, but it’s also theology or fantasy. The closest thing to it I’ve read before are J. Gregory Keyes’s alchemical Ben Franklin and Newton books (which I read back in 2001).
In Mainspring, the protagonist is visited by an angel and sent on a quest to rewind the clockwork mainspring of the earth. I enjoyed it. Some interesting twists. I look forward to reading more of him. (Ooh—it looks like there may be a sequel.)
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In praise of editors
You’ll need to watch an ad to get a one-day pass if you don’t already subscribe to Salon, but this essay made my day: Let us now praise editors
I’ve also worked with writers who have reacted to my gentle suggestion that one of their precious, ungrammatical commas might perhaps be removed as if I’d insisted that Maria Callas perform “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy” as the final aria in Bellini’s “Norma.”
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Very intense optical illusion
Astronomy Picture of the Day rationalizes including this really good optical illusion by relating it to the virtues of non-human observation in science.
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Fun, and strange
148 — Oh, Inverted World « strange maps. I subscribe to the RSS for the strange maps site. Sometimes what they find is just weird, but others it is mind-bending, like this one.