Homo Sum:
humani nil a me alienum puto

And now, a few observations about things completely unrelated to either North American election:

That Wisdom book showed up today. Totally worth the money. It’s been a long time since I bought a “coffee table book”, but if I had a coffee table I’d be proud to leave this out on it.
You know where I’m find [...]

My goal is to redefine the whole history of rhyme
‘Cause the only way to free the soul is to free the mind
And no wisdom as old as this should be confined
To total mystery, so we’ll just read the signs
And DaVinci codes, and try to see the science
In this linguistically-composed pristine design
–extracted from Rhyme Renaissance by [...]

You know the drill–some things that I found worthy of some comment:

I quite liked Julie Rehmeyer’s short piece on the math scholars who accidentally solved an astrophysics problem. It’s got all the good stuff: pure math, astrophysics (come on, “gravity lensing” just sounds cool, even without any context), serendipity, and above all a good science [...]

Sometimes I am very glad that I only have to deal with the relatively more abstract, if no less scary, concerns of modern Western society.
Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital
KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after [...]

Measure backs ‘American values’ in state schools
Arizona schools whose courses “denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization” could lose state funding under the terms of legislation approved Wednesday by a House panel.
SB1108 also would bar teaching practices that “overtly encourage dissent” from those values, including democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious tolerance. Schools would [...]

I am completely ensorcelled by A Wild Sheep Chase. I’m not sure to what extent that’s down to Murakami, and to what extent to Birnbaum, though. I suspect that I am on the brink of disappearing into at least eight Murakami novels and not coming up for air until I’ve devoured them all.
I can not [...]

I have always known
That at last I would
Take this road, but yesterday
I did not know that it would be today.
Ariwara no Narihira (translated by Kenneth Rexroth)

A strange old man
Stops me,
Looking out of my deep mirror.
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (translated by Kenneth Rexroth)

The mists rise over
The still pools at Asuka.
Memory does not
Pass away so easily.
Yamabe no [...]

One of the online fora I am active on included a pointer this week to a blog post showing some interesting Laotian rice wine:

(You can see an even bigger version of that photo at the author’s Flickr page.)
I’m not opposed to liquor with stuff in it generally–but there is some stuff that probably doesn’t [...]