Mike Gravel: What The...?

Democratic presidential hopeful and former Alaska senator Mike Gravel is banking on his expertise in--uh--in telepathy?



Mike Gravel Is Running For President Of The Entire Galaxy [Oliver Willis]

Terror Bird vs. Gigantoraptor

I first read about the 10-foot Terror Bird of South America in a National Geographic magazine at my friend's house sometime last month.

"Imagine an ostrich with larger, more powerful legs and neck, armed with massive claws," said Herculano Alvarenga, a terror-bird expert at the Museu de História Natural in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

"An ostrich, the largest living bird, can swallow an apple. But a phorusrhacid could swallow a medium-sized dog in one gulp," Alvarenga said.

Gulp. Indeed.

Today on NG's website, I came upon the recently discovered 16-foot Gigantoraptor of China.

Gigantoraptor erlianensis, which lived some 70 million years ago, is the largest toothless dinosaur known to date and possibly the biggest feathered animal ever to have lived, according to a team led by Xing Xu from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, China.

So, Terror Bird is just that--a bird. Gigantoraptor is a birdlike dinosaur--I suppose because it has arms, too, and not only legs.
I wonder how Adam and Eve liked living with them.

April Inventory

Here's a poem I've been into lately.

April Inventory
by W. D. Snodgrass

The green catalpa tree has turned
All white; the cherry blooms once more.
In one whole year I haven't learned
A blessed thing they pay you for.
The blossoms snow down in my hair;
The trees and I will soon be bare.

The trees have more than I to spare.
The sleek, expensive girls I teach,
Younger and pinker every year,
Bloom gradually out of reach.
The pear tree lets its petals drop
Like dandruff on a tabletop.

The girls have grown so young by now
I have to nudge myself to stare.
This year they smile and mind me how
My teeth are falling with my hair.
In thirty years I may not get
Younger, shrewder, or out of debt.

The tenth time, just a year ago,
I made myself a little list
Of all the things I'd ought to know,
Then told my parents, analyst,
And everyone who's trusted me
I'd be substantial, presently.

I haven't read one book about
A book or memorized one plot.
Or found a mind I did not doubt.
I learned one date. And then forgot.
And one by one the solid scholars
Get the degrees, the jobs, the dollars.

And smile above their starchy collars.
I taught my classes Whitehead's notions;
One lovely girl, a song of Mahler's.
Lacking a source-book or promotions,
I showed one child the colors of
A luna moth and how to love.

I taught myself to name my name,
To bark back, loosen love and crying;
To ease my woman so she came,
To ease an old man who was dying.
I have not learned how often I
Can win, can love, but choose to die.

I have not learned there is a lie
Love shall be blonder, slimmer, younger;
That my equivocating eye
Loves only by my body's hunger;
That I have forces true to feel,
Or that the lovely world is real.

While scholars speak authority
And wear their ulcers on their sleeves,
My eyes in spectacles shall see
These trees procure and spend their leaves.
There is a value underneath
The gold and silver in my teeth.

Though trees turn bare and girls turn wives,
We shall afford our costly seasons;
There is a gentleness survives
That will outspeak and has its reasons.
There is a loveliness exists,
Preserves us, not for specialists.

Tampopo

My friend, Abe, turned me on to this fantastic Japanese movie, Tampopo, a year or so ago.
Ostensibly, it's a comedy. You'd never know from the scenes here, but these were the most memorable to me.
(This is SFW, but there is definitely a food fetish theme going on.)
From the description: De l'art de consommer un oeuf comme on se consume à deux.
Certainement.

Prescience

via Found Magazine

Angkor Wat

The NY Times ran this story about photographer John McDermott's spectacular photos of Angkor Wat, but neglected to link to his personal site where you can view many more.

To capture the eerie calm, he had planned his trip to coincide with a total solar eclipse.

“The light does really funny things during an eclipse,” he said. “First of all, it’s devoid of color, becomes monochromatic, sort of platinum. And then it ripples and does unusual things, so the whole setting becomes quite surreal” — as if Angkor Wat, with its graciously decaying walls and bas-relief depictions of Buddhist hell, wasn’t surreal enough already."

Cool beans.

M. Ward Covers Joanna Newsom's "Sadie"

One of my favorite musician's covering one of my favorite songs.
(The audio/video on this isn't great--it's off-sync--but it also isn't appalling.