moon phases

Started this before change to "New Blogger", as backup in case of trouble with digiphoto blog "In a Small Dark Room", or rants & links blog "Hello Cruel World" . Useful - at one stage Dark Room was there, but like the astrophysical Dark Matter, we could't see it ... better now, but kept Just In Case.

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There is nothing. There is no God and no universe, there is only empty space, and in it a lost and homeless and wandering and companionless and indestructible Thought. And I am that thought. And God, and the Universe, and Time, and Life, and Death, and Joy and Sorrow and Pain only a grotesque and brutal dream, evolved from the frantic imagination of that same Thought.
Mark Twain (letter to Joseph Twichell after his wife's death)
[me, on a bad day]

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WRITER'S LINKS
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(and my Wish List)

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good stuff garnered  
This looks like there's some good stuff to be garnered.

Figures of Speech
(Turns of phrase, Schemes, Tropes, Ornaments, Colours, Flowers)
http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/Figures/Figures-Groupings.htm

Overview
Like wildflower seeds tossed on fertile ground, the figures
of speech, sometimes called the "flowers of rhetoric" (flores
rhetoricae), have multiplied into a garden of enormous variety over time.
As the right frame of this web resource illustrates, the number of figures of
speech can seem quite imposing. And indeed, the number, names, and groupings of
figures have been the most variable aspect of rhetoric over its history.

An interesting pattern for next Fat Tuesday? Think of some groovy yarns to use.
http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEfall04/PATThallowig.html

This could be good for fun in the backyard -- especially if the backyard is as large as Hawksview @ Guildford
http://www.crazyape.com/product.aspx?CategoryId=60151&ProductID=137932

Also, the Preparing for Emergencies website (UK version)
http://www.preparingforemergencies.gov.uk/

Which should get you into the right frame of mind for this cheery little piece
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/21/national/21cameras.html
In Chicago, they are taking away your right to wander in circles:

Chicago Moving to 'Smart' Surveillance Cameras
By STEPHEN KINZER

Published: September 21, 2004
...
Police specialists here can already monitor live footage from about 2,000 surveillance cameras around the city, so the addition of 250 cameras under the mayor's new plan is not a great jump. The way these cameras will be used, however, is an extraordinary technological leap.
Sophisticated new computer programs will immediately alert the police whenever anyone viewed by any of the cameras placed at buildings and other structures considered terrorist targets wanders aimlessly in circles, lingers outside a public building, pulls a car onto the shoulder of a highway, or leaves a package and walks away from it. Images of those people will be highlighted in color at the city's central monitoring station, allowing dispatchers to send police officers to the scene immediately ...
City officials ... have raised the possibility of placing cameras in commuter and rapid transit cars and on the city's street-sweeping vehicles.
"We're not inside your home or your business," Mayor Daley said. "The city owns the sidewalks. We own the streets and we own the alleys."

Meanwhile, back at the Skywalker Ranch; in relation to the reworking George Lucas (Inc) has done on the earlier Star Wars films re-releases, Jonathan Vos Post (someone who's made many contributions to maths & literature) has pointed out this, which Aldous Huxley wrote in regard to a later edition of Brave New World:

To pore over the literary shortcomings of twenty years ago, to attempt to patch
a faulty work into perfection it missed at its first execution, to spend one's
middle age in trying to mend the artistic sins committed and bequeathed by that
different person who was oneself in youth - all this is surely vain and futile.
And that is why this new Brave New World is the same as the old one. Its defects
as a work of art are considerable; but in order to correct them I should have to
rewrite the book - and in the process of rewriting, as an older, other person, I
should probably get rid not only of some of the faults of the story, but also of
such merits as it originally possessed. And so, resisting temptation to wallow
in artistic remorse, I prefer to leave both well and ill alone and to think
about something else.

[permalink] posted by Mez at 3:42 pm