Homo Sum:
humani nil a me alienum puto

Links, pithy comments, you know the drill. The graphics on this one might not be astonishing, but the idea of supermassive black holes being flung from collisons at galactic cores is probably cool enough on its own to sustain interest. I love how science writers drop line like “these objects can have masses equivalent to [...]

A while back I wrote something about Steven Brust’s The Sun, The Moon, and The Stars–an entry discussing how it was one of those books that I read at the exactly correct time, and literally had the way I see the world changed (and to some extent shaped) by the experience of reading it. That [...]

I spent a lot of time last night looking at translations of Latin and Middle High German poetry. Oh, and listening to what I can only refer to as operatic renditions of the pieces. How did this happen? Well, actually, like many times when I start following a trail of weird connections, it all comes [...]

I’ve been following the video posts from the shooting of Scott Pilgrim vs The World, the movie that’s being adapted from Bryan Lee O’Malley’s series of Scott Pilgrim comics. Partly this is because I dig the comics, and it seems like the filmmakers are having a wonderful time adapting them, and partly it’s because Mal [...]

Today I ordered a copy of Possibilities, an EP by Sierra Noble. I’d never heard of the ridiculously young Métis from Manitoba prior to today–which actually kind of surprises me–but as soon as I encountered her on the web today I knew I was going to buy the album. What I encountered today (indirectly, via [...]

The latest addition the collection of stuff hanging around my house: a signed print of Wondermark #442: In which Beth keeps her Books, which I have had framed, and which is now hanging on the door to my office/library1 for obvious reasons. (Apparently Sarah told her mom tonight that Sarah and I are “bibliofiblioians”, and [...]

After more than 18 months of contemplation, I have finally broken down and tracked down a copy of the Codex Seraphinianus for myself. The cover surprised me a bit–I was expecting something in dark colours, more like an old school leatherbound Bible, not something that looks like this: The insides, though, are exactly what I [...]

When Youtube dies, this post will be very mysterious in my archives.

That’s “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère” by Édouard Manet. I spent a bit of time thinking about it recently because of a cut-and-paste error. It started when the guys over at SFFAudio pointed out that the podcasts of UCSD lectures are available for a limited time. Their intention was to direct us to quickly grab [...]

When I finally gave in to Jobs and switched from my series of non-Apple mp3 players to the iPod I wanted to give mine some character. Ironically, one of the primary reasons I switched was all the third-party stuff that was available for the iPod, so it was easy to start looking into ways to [...]

Man, I like Scott Morse‘s work. I have mentioned that I have several pieces of his original art in the house. The stuff I have hanging, though, are Morse’s black and white ink style work (I have some originals of some of his more recent stuff not yet framed). Here’s one of his recent colour [...]

I also the The Arts. Of course I’m an elitist liberal scum, but this just gives me one more reason to despise Stephen Harper. I could rant, but let’s let George at BookNinja do it instead, since he’s so good at it: First, he tried to set up arts and culture producers, from dance companies [...]

I have survived the day of endless meetings. As soon as the last evening meeting ended, I hauled ass down the road to the bookstore to unwind with some browsing before it closed. I made some weird purchases that I suspect I might not have made if I weren’t dazed and confused from the meeting [...]