Sunday, September 26, 2010

Science poetry: Heredity, Thomas Hardy

I am the family face;
Flesh perishes, I live on,
Projecting trait and trace
Through time to times anon,
And leaping from place to place
Over oblivion.

The years-heired feature that can
In curve and voice and eye
Despise the human span
Of durance -- that is I;
The eternal thing in man,
That heeds no call to die

--Thomas Hardy [source]


I like the alliterations and internal-half-rhymes in the first stanza. They remind me of what little I know about Anglo-Saxon verse. (I read Beowulf once...)

Monday, September 13, 2010

Milk Hero

That's a cup in the foreground. I wish I could play this every morning.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

$18 can buy a lot of fun

(My living group is doing Rush right now, which means my life is basically eaten for the next two weeks, such that I feel no shame about writing a punt-tastic post like this.)

I will just note that $18 can buy more dry ice than twenty MIT students can play around with for three hours. Try it out some time. Make sure to bring soapy water, interestingly-shaped glass vessels, small white and colored lights/LEDs, coins, spoons, and hot water.

Try putting a little water in a spoon and then resting the spoon on top of a chunk of dry ice. You can see the water freeze right before your eyes. It's pretty cool.