The Leap Year as Explained by Neil deGrasse Tyson: “I was sitting here minding my own business but you had to ask; you had to ask about the calendar.”
Once upon a time Frasier decided to “take a leap…”
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“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
I still think it could all be divided up into 10 increments, rather than the current mish mash of numbers. 10 hours in a day, 10 days a month, 10 months a year, etc.
Mrs. (a.k.a. The Possum Queen when she’s not listening) and I committed matrimony on this day 28 years ago.
People who don’t know her very well think that was pretty smart of me, so I’d only have to buy her an anniversary gift every four years. Fat chance of that! She’s been worth it, though, and then some.
So Happy Anniversary to you Mr H.
And what does she call you when you’re not listening?
She calls me whatever she wants, whether I’m listening or not!
Leap year – schleep year. It’s a novelty. All I desire is to see the US make up its mind between “regular time” and Daylight Saving Time. I want the one where the sun hangs around in the evening so I can enjoy the end of the day with a little extra light…I hate seeing it become dark early but I’ll settle for consistency. Pick one dammit and retire the other.
Tyson… ?
Ahh, yes, Neil deGrasse Tyson; the affirmative action inheritor of Carl Sagan’s title; while lacking his intellect.
You can take it as read that I am fully up to datea with the career of Tyson but in this case the facts he brings are interesting, even fascinating. I generally don’t run a purity test on items I’m using to make or illuminate a particular point. If I did that stuff would be scant indeed.
Not surea if either Sagan or Tyson were giant intellects in any subject other than “Explaining things simply.”