In Which I Disucss What I Have Been Doing Instead Of Blogging

The astute reader has pointed out that I have not exactly been "updating" this blog lately, which is to say, I haven't posted anything in basically two months or more.

Thing is, I haven't really had much to say. I spent a week at the beach (oh, such a perfect beach it was) in June with my family and the significant other. There was sand and ocean and sky and rum and sleep and shrimp boil and sunshine everything was good. I've been reading a lot. In the last two months or so, I've re-read the entire Kushiel series (except for the middle part of Kushiel's Scion since that one isn't really all that good anyhow) in preparation for Kushiel's Mercy, which I got from the library and quickly devoured. This week I read Angelina Jolie's Notes From My Travels, which is essentially a publication of the journal she kept when beginning her work with refugees and the United Nations. (I'm particularly interested in Cambodia, and so her impressions of regions she traveled through some 4 years before me were particularly interesting, though the timing of her trip to Pakistan to see and meet Afghan refugees there in August 2001 is perhaps the trip with the most interesting timing.) I'm about halfway through Obama's Audacity of Hope; having read Al Gore's The Assault on Reason in February (which was actually the inspiration for this post, though I did at the time fully intend for a book review to be forthcoming...), I have decided to try to read more, you know, non-fiction. So far the Audacity of Hope is making me realize why so many people seem to be "in love" with Obama—he uses the word "damask" in the second paragraph of chapter 1 ... how can you not love that?! So far the book seems straightforward and honest, but then, I'm pissed off about his FISA vote and the lame-ass excuses he gave over it. I'll still be voting for him, of course—in the last eight years, McCain has gone from interesting to downright frightening—but it is good to stay informed and realistic. I also started reading Daily Kos—a totally unbiased source of information, I know, but what is? and I like the snark—which has managed to make my morning coffee-and-blogs time erm slightly longer. I also finally finished Freakonomics and The Know-It-All in May ... and I've become totally addictd to LibraryThing and its vast cataloguing and statistics-generating power. While visiting my parents, I also helped them scan in a few hundred of their books; why are such things so immensely interesting?!

Oh, yeah, and I guess I've kind of been working. The first few weeks after the beach were rough (there was a dearth of ocean, rum, and soft breezes in my office, and I'd gotten used to the 10 or more hours of sleep a night), but I had a paper accepted for publication around the end of June. I had gotten around a dozen emails about it after it first showed up on astro-ph—many of which were not just asking me to cite some obscure paper of theirs! So I think this is a case where the paper—and the interpretations—did substantially improve between revisions. So now I'm working on the "sequel" paper: paper #1 was on low-mass high-metallicity outliers from the mass–metallicity relation, so paper #2 is going to be on the high-mass low-metallicity outliers. I convinced myself today that the metallicities I'm measuring for this new sample aren't bogus, so now it's time to start compiling all of the data and building an explanation for why these galaxies are the way they are. The current plan is to present the main results at a conference in August so that some of the helpful back-and-forth that happened after the last paper showed up on astro-ph can perhaps happen before the paper is submitted this time.

I've been working on several other things as well, but getting into all of that would mean *gasp* explaining in part what my so-called "thesis" is about, and we wouldn't want to rush back into this relationship too quickly, now would we? Besides, I have a book to go read.

2nd Blogiversary

Today is apparently this blog's 2nd birthday. I'm too out of it right now to do anything special, mostly because I finally submitted the paper I've been working on for the last few months to ApJ (i.e., a journal) and the arXiv (it'll be up Thursday night and I'll probably write something real about it this weekend), and I've still go this "thesis proposal" thing to prepare for Friday. So, in the meantime, here is a word count breakdown of the paper. Your job is to guess the subject matter.

Word	Count
the	417
galaxy, galaxies	164
mass, masses, massive	105
metal, metallicity, metallicities	98
sample	78
we	76
star, star-forming, stellar	75
low	59
gas	41
correlation, relation	39
abundance, abundances	37
dwarf	30
relative, relatively	27
outlier	26
oxygen	22
less, more	22
e.g., i.e., vs.	20
seventeen, 17	18
therefore, thus, hence	17
effective, effectively	10
spurious, spuriously	6
pathological	2

You Asked For It

As the lone commenter (so far?) on the previous post pointed out, apparently kitty posts get more comments than art or science posts. So, here is a picture of δ Carina in a trashcan:
I'll probably have another science post sometime this weekend, but in the meantime, anyone have a good lolcat caption?

Ceci n'est pas un "link dump"

So I was fairly dead to the world (of the internet) in August. But with September comes a whole new month! I've been so slack on reading blog posts (probably a good thing, of course, given the general inverse correlation between number of blog posts read and amount of work done) that I've started using Google Reader to keep track of the unread posts. Seeing as how I've also recently bought my very own coffee pot so I can enjoy real coffee at home, this morning's internet perusal is also slightly more caffeinated than usual. In reality, I was actually planning on reading a set of papers on absoprtion systems in close quasar pairs, but I cleverly left the stack in my office. So you, whatever little readership is left after such a month of non-posts, win.

The Friendly Atheist talks a little bit about an article in the Columbus Dispatch on the recent surge of atheistic books; the article itself isn't terrible enlightening or interesting, but I think it represents a response to the overwhelming support the editor of the Faith & Values section was sent after innocently asking in February whether or not nontheists should enjoy a more representative sampling of articles in the F&V section than is typical.

Elizabeth Wood over at Sex in the Public Square rightly points out that the whole "debate" over whether sexual preference is chosen or biological is completely irrelevant to the fact that it isn't something that should be a basis for discrimination.

We also saw (and are seeing) all sorts of people fleeing from the White House like rats from a sinking ship; see this recent AP story on Tony Snow for a probably complete list. My favorite quote is:

Snow, ailing with cancer, had said recently he would leave before the end of Bush's presidency because he needs to make more money.

See, he could have said, "for health reasons," or something completely believable and forgivable like that ... but "more money"?! Sheesh. And certainly the timing these sudden desires for more money and wanting to spend more time with family are mere coincidences rather than being due to knowing something we don't know and not wanting to be held as accountable later. Certainly.

Speaking of people focussing on all the wrong things, Mark at Cosmic Variance provides a nice superposition of people worried about action rather than hypocrisy and baggy clothes rather than crime.

On a completely unrelated note, it seems that ScienceBlogs is doing a 500,000th comment contest, and it appears that the winner will be sent to Cambridge (the one in the UK, that is). Personally, I think Boston is the "greatest science city in the world," and I'm completely unbiased, but I also think most people (myself included) would rather score a free trip to England. I'd be perfectly happy to get my hands on one of those Sb mugs, though.

This is also one of the more fantastic times of year for those of us on the evil quarter system, seeing as how plenty of other places have already started classes and are being innundated with floods of undergrads. Best part is: I'm not taking classes this term! Or next term! Or, really, ever again! I doubt the gloating will ever get old.

And then we have this delightful gem showing us that I may not be representative of those educated in South Carolina:

Philosophia Naturalis #12

So I decided a while back that in doing Philosophia Naturalis #12, I was going to have a really awesome theme, but I haven't been able to come up with a good one. At first, I was thinking I'd do a magic or Harry Potter themed post, and indeed there have been several reports in the blagosphere about the science behind Harry Potter. Anne-Marie at Pondering Pikaia has tackled such issues as the botany of wands, the genetics of wizardry, and other such biological quandries. Or, if you're like me and much more worried about things like energy and momentum in your fantasy stories and movies, Blake at Science after Sunclipse will remind you exactly which aspects of physics need to be ignored (or simply to become more, ah, flexible) in order to actually enjoy, say, the X-Men. But even though I'm going to be picking my copy of Book 7 up from the local Barnes and Noble at midnight Friday night, I'm really not enough of a fangirl (and, indeed, all of the hype is getting rather annoying, though the geeking is rather fun) to allow this analogy to go much further.

With Brian May of Queen finally getting his PhD (and giving a few talks along the way), I considered doing some sort of rockstar themed post, but really, there isn't much else there.

The adventure role-playing game theme can be applied to most anything. You could be a skepchick doing research out in the middle of the Indian Ocean, forced to send blog updates in via a co-blogger (such as parts one, two, three, four, five, aaaaand six ... and while you're over there, you might as well vote in the Mr. Wizard video competition). But then, as you're going along, minding your own business as you try to steal a shopping cart, you're thwarted! Blake Stacey at Science after Sunclipse has the story.

Or, not. And this is where I remember that, oh yeah, I actually find themed blog carnival posts mildly annoying because they're usually really difficult to read. I just want a nice list of blog posts, with perhaps a few words of description for each.

• Surprisingly, I only saw one mention of the science behind fireworks, even in a time period covering Canada Day, (the American) Independence Day, and Bastille Day.
• Scott Aaronson wants to know: why are mass and charge so different? One affects the geometry of the universe, but the other ... not so grand.
  
• If you're trying to keep track of the current count of interesting planets without actually trying to digest astro-ph every day, Steinn over at Dynamics of Cats can help you out. In particular, there is supposedly an extrasolar planet now with water detected in its atmosphere; how much stock you put in three data points with large error bars is up to you. Steinn was also particularly excited over the first "true" Jupiter analog outside our solar system.
• Pamela Gay has a few words to say on some recently very high redshift galaxies and their possible implications for the epoch of reionization.
  
• In the realm of the small, Charles Daney at Science and Reason has a few words to say about axions, a likely candidate for the elusive dark matter.
• In other news, the Sun is not a cause of global warming, but the snows of Kilamanjaro may be disappearing for non-global warming reasons.
• If you like your blog posts interesting, but with no unique theme, check out Jennifer Ouellette's recent discussion of fast hybrid cars, cloud chambers, and iron science teachers.
  
• There has also been some discussion over what happened before the Big Bang; Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance discusses why a "bouncing" universe doesn't really make sense.
  
• Clifford Johnson finally got to use the post title There Will Be No Dawn, as he discusses the future of the Dawn mission to go visit the asteroid belt.
• Chris Rowan at Highly Allochthonous has a neat post on the history of the moon's orbit—based on geological evidence.
  

Alright, that's it for this month; I hope you've found something to enjoy and keep you busy while everyone else is reading Harry Potter 7 multiple times this weekend. PN #13 will be held at Cocktail Party Physics on August 16.

Announcement of Philosophia Naturalis #12

I'll be hosting Philosophia Naturalis #12 right here at a geocentric view on Thursday, July 19. Philosophia Naturalis is a blog carnival for the physical sciences. If you'd like to suggest an article, you can email me at pn12@mit.edu or leave a comment here. The carnival webpage also offers a more detailed explanation on what kind of articles we're apparently looking for, as well as a few other ways you can suggest a post. I'd like for submissions to be in by the night of Tuesday, July 17 so I can have at least a little time to organize my thoughts. Anything since June 20 is fair game.

And, yes, I did use a mailto link up there. I'm not sure I approve, but you should email me anyhow, unless you're a spambot.

General Exams Begin

I start my general exams today. I think that's what they're called. I've been informed they are definitely not quals or qualifying exams, but I don't understand the difference in semantics, and seeing as how they're just something I have to do, I don't really care either—thought I might again in a month.

As I explained last time in agonizing detail, our department just changed the policy for the exames-taken-after-classes-are-finished. I, like everyone else, chose to do the "new format," which is to say, I'm going to be learning a whole lot about the Lyman-α forest in the next ten days. (It's supposed to be two weeks, but thanks to extenuating circumstances, well, ten days is kind of like two weeks, right?) Then, a little less than two weeks after I turn in a pile of summary papers to my committee, I have an oral presentation scheduled ... on a completely different topic.

I spent today reading the Rauch (1998) review article of "The Lyman Alpha Forest in the Spectra of Quasistellar Objects." ("Quasistellar object" is a back-in-the-day word for "quasar.") Man, review articles are intense. The first review article (fine, it's actually from a lecture series, but anyhow) I ever read was Narayan & Bartelmann's discussion of graviational lensing. For the two years I worked on gravitational lensing (starting from absolutely no knowledge whatsoever), every time I went back to the article, I discovered some little nugget of information that simply hadn't penetrated my skull previously. Hopefully in the last four years I've learned a little bit about how to learn, as well as gained a tad of astronophysical background ...

Let this also suffice as a warning that blog posts might be somewhat more intermittant than usual for the next couple of weeks.

Post #100: Happy Blogiversary!

I apologize to my three loyal readers for having not posted much the last few weeks. I tried to make up for it by making the few posts much longer than usual, but the truth is, there has to be a good reason for my not mentioning such things as Coffee being mentioned on Cosmic Variance (apparently, we're fiesty!) or my winning a book for correctly picking The Number. You see, I am extremely silly and therefore had no choice to seize the opportunity to make my 100th post be one year after my first post. It wasn't very substantial, I know, and I didn't really start posting regularly until August or so, but still, a first post is a first post and a blogiversary is a blogiversary.

I could wank about how things here have changed over the past year (e.g., I no longer change the colors and template once a week, and I've even picked a title and everything), or ask for the zillionth time what people would like to read posts on in a desperate attempt to increase readership, but that would be both boring and pathetic. Instead, I've decided to celebrate this auspicious day by writing all about all of the topics I never write about.

First, there are all sorts of personal things I don't tell you about. For example:

• Any significant other(s) I may or may not have or have had
• The fact that though I live right next to a very active set of train tracks, the only irritating source of noise pollution in my apartment comes from the couple in the apartment above mine. They fight. A lot. Usually around 3a.m. (Hint: if she's yelling, "get the fuck off of me," you might be doing something wrong, man.) And then they freaking get up at 7a.m. and start banging around and vacuuming. Seriously, what kinds of people vacuum that early on a Saturday morning?? They must be vampires. Or, zombies. And I have started keeping my broom under my bed for just such special occasions.
• Actually, there are all sorts of people who get on my nerves, and were this a non-anonymous blog, the title would probably be "a geocentric rant" rather than "a geocentric view," and you would be privileged with an explicit insight to one of my officemate's eating habits.
  

You may have also noticed I generally don't link to other people's stuff, blog posts or articles or youtube videos or what-have-you. Other than just not feeling inclined to, I suppose it's because I don't see much of a point in discussing what everyone else has already said. I also don't typically discuss "issues," though whether this is out of shyness or apathy depends on the specific topic. Take, for example, these two:

• Gender/feminism/"women in math/science/technology"/blahblahblah: Apparently, this topic makes me rather snarky. The thing is, to first order, I just don't care. It's not that I'm particularly pleased with the current gender ratio in science, and it's not that I think "girls are dumb" (generally, I am inclusive enough to include all gender identifications in such a generalization). A lot of my frustration with this topic is centered on the fact that I don't think of myself as a "woman in science"—I think of myself as a scientist, and so when it comes to science, I get annoyed when people feel the need to apply such labels, even if it is to "applaud" all of the "obstacles" I've "overcome." The next level of frustration is do to the fact that, at least on the internets, a good number of the people who like talking about this crap are the types who blame every obstacle someone with two X chromosomes encounters on her gender. Maybe their parents didn't read "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" to them when they were little or something.
• Religion or the lack thereof: I happen to have rather strong opinions on this particular topic, and like everyone else with an opinion on religion&c, I know my view is correct and yours is wrong and it's my duty as a human being to enlighten you. And, were we to meet in person in a non-professional setting and you were to bring up the subject, I'd let you know exactly what I think. But the interweb is different, and, for now, I'm just not ready to come out of this particular closet; in general, my family believes in a God and my readership does not, and it's up to the latter group to guess which camp my tent is in.

Well, now that I've effectively ruled out almost every non-science topic other science-oriented blogging types discuss, I'm sure I'll have no problem resuming a regular blogging-rate this week.

"a geocentric view" is Not a Geocentric Universe

I recently got my first comment from some kook ascribing to the idea that the Earth really and truly is the center of the universe (of the, "I interpret the Bible as saying so so it must be true" type). I figure he can't be the only nutjob googling for support of the geocentric "theory" of the universe who finds themself on my blog, and every now and then geocentric whackos with too much power make the news, so I'll take this opportunity to make this perfectly clear:

Having a blog title "a geocentric view" is not the same as believing the Earth is the natural center of the universe; furthermore, anyone who actually believes that the Earth is the center of Everything is an arrogant, egotistical idiot of the worst kind.

Glad we got that settled. The idea (and the deluded who believe in the idea) that the Earth is the center of the universe is inane and archaic enough that I really don't see any sense in trying to explain it with off-center circles and diagrams and history lessons. If you are interested in the history and the math, though, I highly recommend the book "The Eye of Heaven: Ptolomy, Copernicus, Kepler" by Owen Gingerich. He gave a quite interesting talk here sometime last year which touched on a similar topic (though I think the material covered then was related to his more recent book, "The Book Nobody Read").

So since I'm on the topic, why did I choose "a geocentric view" to be my blog's title, if as an alive not brain-dead person in the 21st century I clearly know the Earth goes around the Sun? As I've already explained, the phrase comes from a poem by Auden; I like good poetry, so that's a good start. Partly from the context of the poem, the concept I get from the phrase "a geocentric view" is that regardless of whether or not the math and the paradigms are easier to stomach if the Earth is going around the Sun and the Sun is going around the Galactic center and the Milky Way is going towards Andromeda and the Local Group is going away from pretty much everything else in the universe—regardless of all of that—we are still people on Earth, observing the universe around us from the viewpoint of Earth. It's a geocentric view; no matter how much we know about the rest of the universe and our "real" place in it, those things that really matter to us (even to us astronomers) are those things confined to this pale blue dot, and no amount of learning will take that biased stance away from us.

On the other hand, the math really is easier if we let the Sun or the Galactic center the the origin of our coordinate system ...

Spring Break

This week is spring break. Normally, I guess this would mean an oasis of a week of working free from distractions, but for various reasons I'm not going to be doing much in the way of research this week. My paper is finally in its final throes before being submitted to a journal, and ideas about what I'm going to work on next have even begun to congeal... so taking a breather right now is even kind of good timing. I also have the distinct feeling that I won't be blogging much this next week either, but hey, it happens. I'll be back sometime.

And I should totally get points for how specific, enlightening, and interesting this post is.

Spheroid

One of my Favorite People in the Whole World (tm) has decided to start a blog. And, so, I must tell you people about it. It is called Spheroid. Its author, Amali, is an undergrad in Physics at MIT and is just totally awesome. She is, in fact, TRULY FASCINATING; she also doesn't like marmalade. If her blog is going to be anything like she is (which I'm guessing it will be) and if her blog is going to be anything like it has been so far (which it has been, so far) then it will be of the abso-friggin-lutely laugh-til-you-cry hilarious—yet subtlely funny—variety. And she loves physics. Amali bounces about physics, in a way most of us only do on the inside, or *gasp* have you forgotten what that kind of excitement feels like?? So far she's already discussed both chocolate and telescopes—you just can't get better than that.

Mmm, yes, so: if you would like to bring entertainment and the excitement of physics and learning back to your life, add Spheroid to your blogroll—and stop over and say hello!

Happy De-Lurking Week!

No, it's not a Girls Are Pretty headline; it's a blatant fishing for comments! I know, I know, Lurking is Learning, but that's irrelevant. So! It's time for you to de-lurk.

1. Have we met in person?
2. How did you learn about my blog?
3. What do you do (i.e., are you a scientist)?
   
4. Are the "technical" posts too technical or too dumbed-down?
5. Which kind of posts do you enjoy the most?
6. Anything else?
   

A Case of "It's Funny 'Cuz It's True"

I'm currently "taking time off." This means that I wasn't paying attention while booking flights this year and am spending an extra week "away" than I had really planned on. But that's okay, because I can work on my paper from anywhere, because I have a laptop and many many papers strewn about this table and room. So far, I'm somewhere around panels 3–5, but without the little kids running around:

Panel #2 was also nice, especially seeing as how I didn't sleep at all on Saturday night.

You can also refer to this particular post if you're wondering why the blogging is ... less often and of lower quality over the next few weeks than usually.

Nothing to Say

Absolutely nothing has struck my fancy enough in the last week to make me want to write about it. Perhaps I'm going through a phase of abnormally high standards: usually spending a morning trying to convince my office computer that, no really, it's okay, you can play a CD without throwing up and making loud ch-ch-ch sounds like a CD skipping that can be heard halfway down the hall (even though there isn't, you know, a CD in there anymore) would be enough to have me type out a post. Last weekend I had dinner with a girl I was best friends with in middle school, and apparently we've been living in the same city now for over a year without even knowing it, but there still wasn't anything there interesting enough to say anything about. I had some very tasty wine Monday night, but eh, it seems I just haven't been in the mood to say anything about that either. I had to go into a church on Tuesday and practice my hand-eye coordination with a touchscreen, but the results are still not in: the incumbent Republican U.S. Representative Pryce leads by ~3000 votes, but there are still ~10,000 absentee and ~10,000 provisional ballots to be considered. But that's okay, because the "Election Can Wait Til After Football." Good to know Ohio has its priorities in order ... I don't like blogging about politics anyhow, but Jim Talent did lose me a door prize. We had a map of Ohio with the 18 districuts outlined on it, and it took me days to get all of the red ink off my hands. My first published paper is supposed to show up on the Journal website Any Day Now (tm), but hasn't yet; I've been putting off writing up a summary my mother could understand since June. I saw Stranger than Fiction this afternoon, and it was quite good. If you like to laugh, go see it. I'd say more, but I don't like reading reviews of movies I haven't seen, so I certainly won't write a review of a movie most people reading this haven't seen yet. Emma Thompson's character has writer's block, but seeing as how I'm not trying to come up with ways to kill someone, I can't really use her muses as my own. I could go on and on, but I'd rather write and you'd rather read about something rather than how I can't come up with anything interesting. So to my three regular readers: what would you like to see me babble about?

A Geocentric View

I think I've settled on a blog title: Geocentric View. geocentric view? a geocentric view? It's all so complicated.

Even though mollishtronomy did make me laugh out loud (thanks, John), I wanted something slightly less restrictive, as I write about things other than astronomy. Okay, while that is also true, the real reason is that I have a really difficult time spelling "mollishtronomy": it's terribly difficult to not put a "k" after the "h," and then it all falls to hell after that. Well, okay that and the fact that I'm just a wee bit compulsive and if I'm going to pick a "real" blog title then it has to be perfect. I'd considered your life in boxes for a while, but then general reaction to that one seemed to be, "... boxes?" I also liked the sound of beneath star-freckled skies, but not only is it a tad too complicated, but Columbus is rather cloudy most of the year. quiet Euclidean space is simple and clean, though slightly too mathematical, and if I'm going to go the mathematical route, then it should by no means be geometric or topological, and certainly not Euclidean for crying out loud. On the other hand, "Abelian grapes" is a little too far from, you know, what I spend all day doing and what I actually blog about, and besides, it's already taken. Both three double-blind mice and three blind jellyfishes have been duly considered, and both were decided to be Awesome group blog titles, which this blog is not. When I started writing this post, particles to pelt was the title of choice, but the universal response to that seems to be, "pelt? ... like, fur? huh?"

No, the credit for a geocentric view goes completely to the unsuspecting Sean Carroll over at Cosmic Variance and a Mr. W. H. Auden who wrote some poetry once upon a time. (I wonder how many more links I can cram into this thing?) The BBC has a recording of Auden reading the relevant poem, entitled "After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics." It's well worth installing RealPlayer, though I found Sylvia Plath's intonation of "Lady Lazuras" much more intriguing: have you ever read a book where they have a poet character and the author goes on and on about how sonorous and melodic the character's voice is? What the author is really trying to say is that the (female) character's voice is like that of Sylvia Plath.

Anyhow, I digress. Here's the lovely poem:

If all a top physicist knows
About the Truth be true,
Then, for all the so-and-so's,
Futility and grime,
Our common world contains,
We have a better time
Than the Greater Nebulae do,
Or the atoms in our brains.

Marriage is rarely bliss
But, surely it would be worse
As particles to pelt
At thousands of miles per sec
About a universe
Wherein a lover's kiss
Would either not be felt
Or break the loved one's neck.

Though the face at which I stare
While shaving it be cruel
For, year after year, it repels
An ageing suitor, it has,
Thank God, sufficient mass
To be altogether there,
Not an indeterminate gruel
Which is partly somewhere else.

Our eyes prefer to suppose
That a habitable place
Has a geocentric view,
That architects enclose
A quiet Euclidian space:
Exploded myths - but who
Could feel at home astraddle
An ever expanding saddle?

This passion of our kind
For the process of finding out
Is a fact one can hardly doubt,
But I would rejoice in it more
If I knew more clearly what
We wanted the knowledge for,
Felt certain still that the mind
Is free to know or not.

It has chosen once, it seems,
And whether our concern
For magnitude's extremes
Really become a creature
Who comes in a median size,
Or politicizing Nature
Be altogether wise,
Is something we shall learn.

It's simple, yet "deep." While Auden is certainly not my favorite poet, he has quite a few pieces I enjoy, and I haven't found any of his works to be annoying or yicky. It's a poem about physics, and yet it's not revolting or condescending or plain wrong like so many scientifically minded poems are. I'll refrain from doing a full-out explication, but the penultimate stanza demands comment: both physics (a kind of science) and poetry (a kind of art) are ultimately a quest for understanding, the "process of finding out." Humankind is driven to it: we have to try to know. What Auden everso innocently asks, though, is just why the seekers seek, and would they be able to "stop any time they wanted"?

Oh, and it really gets me that in the recording the audience doesn't laugh at the end of the fourth stanza. I surely did.

Title

My blog wants to have a non-lame title, but I haven't got any ideas. Do you?

Hello, world.