Archive for July, 2011

In July

Posted in Poetry with tags , on July 2, 2011 by telescoper

Why do I make no poems? Good my friend
Now is there silence through the summer woods,
In whose green depths and lawny solitudes
The light is dreaming; voicings clear ascend
Now from no hollow where glad rivulets wend,
But murmurings low of inarticulate moods,
Softer than stir of unfledged cushat broods,
Breathe, till o’er drowsed the heavy flower-heads bend.
Now sleep the crystal and heart-charmed waves
Round white, sunstricken rocks the noontide long,
Or ‘mid the coolness of dim lighted caves
Sway in a trance of vague deliciousness;
And I,–I am too deep in joy’s excess
For the imperfect impulse of a song.

by Edward Dowden (1843-1913)

Yesterday, when I was young…

Posted in Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags , on July 1, 2011 by telescoper

Looking for some old papers on my ancient laptop this afternoon I came across these pictures. I think they are stills taken from a series of video lectures I did a while ago (around 1996) called Topics of Modern Cosmology with a company called EUROPACE 2000. The course vanished without trace – although I still have the unedited footage in a box in my office – leaving only these  relics of a bygone era:

Thought for the Day

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on July 1, 2011 by telescoper

For naturalism, fed on recent cosmological speculations, mankind is in a position similar to that of a set of people living on a frozen lake, surrounded by cliffs over which there is no escape, yet knowing that little by little the ice is melting, and the inevitable day drawing near when the last film of it will disappear, and to be drowned ignominiously will be the human creature’s portion. The merrier the skating, the warmer and more sparkling the sun by day, and the ruddier the bonfires at night, the more poignant the sadness with which one must take in the meaning of the total situation.

From The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, first published in 1902…