Sunday, December 31, 2023

Watching for Objects Near the Earth

Descriptive material from YouTube:

Managed for NASA at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) accurately characterizes the orbits of all known near-Earth objects, predicts their close approaches with Earth, and makes comprehensive impact hazard assessments in support of the agency’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Near-Earth objects are asteroids and comets with orbits that bring them to within 120 million miles (195 million kilometers) of the Sun, which means they can circulate through the Earth’s orbital neighborhood. Most near-Earth objects are asteroids that range in size from about 10 feet (a few meters) to nearly 25 miles (40 kilometers) across.

The orbit of each object is computed by finding the elliptical path through space that best fits all the available observations, which often span many orbits over many years or decades. As more observations are made, the accuracy of an object's orbit improves dramatically, and it becomes possible to predict where an object will be years or even decades into the future – and whether it could come close to Earth.

Saturday, December 30, 2023

The Luminary Churchyard

“I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.”

                                       - EMILY BRONTE, Wuthering Heights

Want to go deeper?  Click HERE.

Friday, December 29, 2023

Res ipsa loquitur

Res ipsa loquitur is a legal term, click HERE; but it might have implications for Philosophy.  To begin this investigation, compare Hypotheses non Fingo. Click HERE.

Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Tuesday, December 26, 2023

Michael Butterworth nominated for Critters Workshop Award

Michael Butterworth's Complete Poems (linked to the image below) has been nominated for a Critters Workshop Readers Poll Award.  Click HERE to vote in the poll.


My review of the book:

I read this book incorrectly, and I am happy to say so. I began by skimming through the pages, looking for poetry that was visually attractive, and this naturally brought me to those poems of an experimental nature: superpositioned parallel stanzas, sloping formations affecting the “progressions” of some speaker’s conceptualization, organized groupings of “innocuous” typeface… The most elaborate of these successful efforts is the curiously titled “Circularization of Condensed Conventional Straight-line Word-image Structures (Radial-planographic Condenses Word-image structures, Rotation about a Point)”. Notwithstanding what some readers may call the “self-conscious excesses” of the title, the production is intelligently and intelligibly structured—the presentation of a minimalist travel narrative progressing across chronological, historical, and conceptual dimensions; moreover, illustrated with radial diagrams demonstrating the configurations of these multi-dimensional progressions. Another experimental poem intriguingly titled “For Richard Kostelanetz” is (at this point in my investigation) unintelligible, but it remains formally inviting and, evidently, the product of a strict discipline and method. No doubt meanings will emerge upon further study; indeed, it is a “museum instillation” readers will want to repeatedly visit and consider, and discuss with other visitors.

After exhausting the overtly (that is, visually) experimental pieces, I turned to the front of the book and read through the poems that are more recognizably “conventional”. I discovered many more conceptual pieces, but also I was delighted to meet Butterworth’s gentle sensibility. Using few words, Butterworth can evoke a strong sense of voice, narrative, and the “feel” of emotional observations—which are thoughtful and measured. The effect is immersive. The book does what I require most from a book of poetry: it puts me in a "quiet sanctuary" where I can sit, feel stillness, think carefully about the ephemeral nature of words and emotions.

The collection is divided into six chronological sections that reflect stages in Butterworth’s life: 1965-1968, 1968-1975, 1975-1979, 1979-1989, 1989-2001, 2001-2020. This is perhaps the most sensible way to arrange the pieces, but throughout the author’s career, the gentle voice is centrally present. This voice is the true organizing principle, whatever he does. The author has led a life with many challenges, conflicts and losses, but—and maybe curiously—throughout these many disappointments and setbacks, Butterworth’s poetry sustains a quiet place of thoughtfulness, gentle response, and stillness.

At the front of the book are an Introduction (by critic and poet Jim Burns) and a Preface by the author. Burns properly underscores the author’s versatility, the terrific range of experiences and techniques that Butterworth employs—his craft, his attention to detail. The author’s Preface introduces the chronological sections, elaborating on many conflicted family situations, on-edge escapades, business successes and failures (Butterworth was a publisher, and he ran several bookstores in Manchester), arrests, courtroom dramas, and political conflicts. Also, Butterworth was one of the many aspiring idealistic writers who gathered with Michael Moorcock and pursued the British New Wave. J. G. Ballard (the visionary), Brian Aldiss (the Oxbridge intellectual) and Moorcock himself (the tireless tribal chieftain, guitar slinger, and typewriter Fagin) are popularly (and properly) the stars of the New Wave, but it was young writers like Butterworth who produced the truly exquisite gems of innovation that are the legacy of this characteristically 1960s movement. And how forward-seeing that movement was! Butterworth’s biography is fascinating, and it reveals the grist for Butterworth’s poetic mill. Remarkably, as I’ve already described, the madcap character of this biographical material is absent from the thoughtful and quiet poems that this life inspired. I read the opening introductory pages last, happily.


Tuesday, December 19, 2023

Monday, December 18, 2023

Sunday, December 17, 2023

Saturday, December 16, 2023

Vogue February 1939

Fashion Of The Future, VOGUE February 1939: Designs by Gilbert Rhode,  photographs by Anton Bruehl.



















Friday, December 15, 2023

Simultaneous Times #70

Simultaneous Times is a monthly science fiction podcast produced by Space Cowboy Books in Joshua Tree, California.  Click the image to listen to the latest episode, featuring Tara Campbell reading “I Hope I Call You Back,” and Jean-Paul L. Garnier reading “The Escape.” Jean-Paul is a frequent contributor to Emanations.


Thursday, December 14, 2023

Wednesday, December 13, 2023

Saturday, December 9, 2023

Tycho Lunar Crater











Radar Image































Crater Wall

















Central Mountain Complex

























Oblique view of summit area of Tycho crater central peak. The boulder in the background is 120 meters wide, and the image is about 1200 meters wide. LROC NAC M162350671L,R [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].  




Friday, December 8, 2023

Emantons Zen joins Kent Special Collections

I have received notification that Emanations Zen is now catalogued with Kent State University Special Collections, joining the complete set of the anthology available there.  Please click HERE to see the list.

Kind thanks to everyone at Kent Libraries--Professor Cara Gilganbach, Head, Special Collections & Archives; and Professor Kate Medicus, Special Collections Librarian, Cataloging & Metadata Lead--and Mack Hassler, International Authors editorial board member and Professor of English, Emeritus. 

Wednesday, December 6, 2023

Tuesday, December 5, 2023

Monday, December 4, 2023

Sounds of the Carnyx



YouTube description (machine translation):

Instrument built by Abraham Cupeiro

Instrument built by Abraham Cupeiro

Recorded/ Recorded/ Recorded: Mihl, interactive museum of the history of the city of Lugo.

The carnyx or carnix, also known as karnyx or karnix, was a wind instrument from the Celtic Iron Age, from 300 BC to 500 AD. C. It was a kind of brass trumpet, suspended vertically and with a bell in the shape of a xabaril head. It was used in war, probably to encourage troops into battle and intimidate enemies. The vertical position of the instrument allowed its notes to rise above the heads of participants in battles and ceremonies. 

Sunday, December 3, 2023

"England in 1819"

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;

Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow

Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;

Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,

But leechlike to their fainting country cling

Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.

A people starved and stabbed in th' untilled field;

An army, whom liberticide and prey

Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;

Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;

Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;

A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—

Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may

Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

                                             - Percy Bysshe Shelley




Friday, December 1, 2023

Witch's Cradle (Maya Deren, M. Duchamp - 1943)



Playing the "highbrow card"?
Mere obscurantism?

Thursday, November 30, 2023

Sunday, November 26, 2023

Emanations Zen on the road to Mt. Fuji

Here are images of Emanations Zen from artist Nobixhiro Santana.

He writes:

[Emanations Zen』は、カーター・カプラン博士によるエマネーションズ シリーズの 第10 巻です。カラーに関する私の短い文章とモノクロの8作品が収録されています。

("Emanations Zen" is the 10th book in the Emanations series by Dr. Carter Kaplan. Contains my short texts about color and 8 black and white works.)








Wednesday, November 22, 2023