Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Still ringing in my head

is the somber melody from yesterday. But it's been transposed from a minor up to a major :)

The lovely line yesterday came from the poem, Auguries of Innocence. Auguries is derived from the Latin, augur, which means soothsayer or omen. Penned by William Blake, the poem in its entirety can be found here. Now this is a man who really understood BEAUTIFUL.


Tuesday, November 27, 2007

A more somber melody might go like this:

"To see a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour."

I just remembered this line from Tomb Raider.

There is something so timeless and beautiful about a grain of sand that this truly lovely rhyme may not do it proper justice.

Today was kind of like just another a day in a perfectly ordinary string of days, and yet it was not. Somehow, just going through a simple day as today seemed strangely extraordinary. I got up. I looked at the brightly lit sky. I shivered in the deceptively bitter cold. I walked. I read. I listened. I talked. I learned. I laughed. I welled up with emotion. I smiled. I grew wistful.

I contemplated becoming a day older and hopefully wiser. I wonder how many people in the world had the exact same thought as I did today? How many people had it ever?

Good people of the world: Raise your hands please if you have.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Fat or Muscle

weighs more?
Or is this just a density issue?

On the latest episode of the show that pits "beauties" against "geeks," the cigar model (girl) and the owner of 10,000 comics (boy) were arguing about this precise issue. How very a propos for a little post-Turkey banter, eh? :)
















Comic-boy claimed that fat and muscle weigh the same, and it's just a density issue, in which muscle is denser than fat. Cigar modelette countered that muscle does indeed weigh more than fat.






























Hmm, well ....

If something is MORE DENSE, then that would mean that it has more mass divided by volume, which would mean that for the same volume, the denser stuff would ALSO WEIGH MORE.

And if something WEIGHS MORE than something else, then something would have to have more mass, which can be achieved by the something being more dense or there being just such a large volume of the something that the sheer amount of the something overwhelms a denser competitor. In short, something that WEIGHS MORE is ALSO MORE DENSE than something else of comparable volume.

Thus reason would indicate that for comparable volume of stuff, MORE DENSE and WEIGHS MORE are inseparable!

Same concept is shown at this link below, but with more sources
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=576481











Cigar modellete and comic-boy, you're BOTH right or wrong, depending on what kind of people you are :)

Monday, November 19, 2007

"Turkey"

always made me think twice. It's been such a long time since I started learning English as a second language that I don't remember whether I first learned about Turkey, the country, or turkey, the bird. I'm inclined to think that it was turkey the bird, because Mrs. McGrady and her army of lunch ladies at Captain elementary would make a rotating parade of mystery meats, of which turkey was one of the less mysterious and more trustworthy. But I digress.



I had always suspected that the bird had something to do with the eponymous country, but only today did I find out the real story from where else but Wikipedia! According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, the following is the story behind the naming of America's favorite cold season mascot between Halloween and Christmas:

When Europeans first encountered turkeys in the Americas, they incorrectly identified the birds as a type of guinea fowl (Numida meleagris), also known as a turkey-cock from its importation to Central Europe through Turkey, and the name of that country stuck as the name of the bird. The confusion is also reflected in the scientific name: meleagris is Greek for guinea-fowl.

The names for M. gallopavo in other languages also frequently reflect its exotic origins, seen from an Old World viewpoint, and add to the confusion about where turkeys actually came from. The many references to India seen in common names go back to a combination of two factors: first, the genuine belief that the newly-discovered Americas were in fact a part of Asia, and second, the tendency during that time to attribute exotic animals and foods to a place that symbolized far-off, exotic lands. The latter is reflected in terms like "Muscovy Duck" (which is from South America, not Muscovy). This was a major reason why the name "turkey-cock" stuck to Meleagris rather than to the guinea fowl (Numida meleagris): the Ottoman Empire represented the exotic East much the same as did India.

Several other birds which are sometimes called "turkeys" are not particularly closely related: the Australian brush-turkey is a megapode, and the bird sometimes known as the "Australian turkey" is in fact the Australian Bustard, a gruiform. The bird sometimes called a Water Turkey is actually an Anhinga (Anhinga rufa)

In a similar confusion, Spanish explorers thought the turkey to be a kind of peacock and called it by the same word, pavo. Today, the turkey is still called pavo in Spanish (except in Mexico where the Nahuatl-derived name guajalote is commonly used), and the peacock is commonly referred to as pavo real ("royal turkey").

So that's the story of Turkey and a turkey :) Hope it was edifying and entertaining for you as it was for me.

Gobble gobble.
Thanks for reading and Happy Thanksgiving!



A turkey in Turkey :)

Monday, November 12, 2007

Blood pooling

is not like car pooling.
While car pooling is a very environmentally-sound and useful thing, blood pooling is not. Unfortunately, blood pooling also makes my feet big.

On Saturday, I sat down to read almost the entire day, and as a result, the shoes that had fit with room to spare the previous day became 2 sizes too small on Saturday :( The shoes looked something like this below.














So the lesson here is heed your elders. Especially when they say to take a walk once in a while!


Big foot sighting ahead:

Friday, November 09, 2007

What goes up must come down

even if we're talking about the weather. Or especially when we talk about the weather.

Autumn has finally come to stay in earnest. Summer was nice while it lasted, but the temperature had to turn south ... er, north... sometime.

I'm loving this autumnal weather during the day, but am feeling the cold at night.
I like the cold air to breathe at night, but do not like the rest of my body to be cold.
I like to snuggle in bed to keep warm, but do not like to fall asleep. But that's another story!

A dash of yin and a dash of yang. Just like a a book my college roommate gave me -- it's her own work and a limited edition. Thanks Old Roomie! You cheer up my day.

And I do need some cheering up as this studying is making my hair fall out a little more than usual. Have been organizing study objectives though, which helps: Cross our fingers and cross out toes, look above and look below <-- that's good for the neck :)

And now I leave you with this: The yin and yang of autumnal leaves and their ghostly twins in the water.