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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Absolute Write is one of the leading sites for information on writing and publishing, especially the scam versions thereof. It has a broad, deep online community with an enormous message base going back years. Now it needs help. See the details and discussion here
Preditors and Editors
Everything you wanted to know about literary agents
On the getting of agents
Writer Beware
Miss Snark
Writer's Net

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(and my Wish List)

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Hand-Foot Syndrome – cont. Another side-effect  
Cancer drug erases fingerprints
Travel warning with capecitabine (Annals of Oncology: Vol 20, No 7, p. 1281)

A patient who took a drug for cancer lost his fingerprints, which caused him to be detained for hours when he tried to visit the United States, according to an unusual case reported on Wednesday. The patient was unaware the treatment had wiped out his fingerprints.
The 62-year-old patient had been taking capecitabine, a follow-up drug for chemotherapy for cancer of the head and neck, Singaporean specialist Eng-Huat Tan and colleagues recounted in a letter to the British journal Annals of Oncology.
Capecitabine's side effects include inflammation of the palms and soles of the feet. The skin can peel, bleed and develop ulcers, and with time can cause fingerprints to be eradicated, Tan said. … "He was detained at the airport customs for four hours because immigration officers could not detect his fingerprints." … Mr S. was eventually allowed to enter… He was advised to travel with a letter from his cancer doctor to explain his fingerprint-free condition.
The report urged patients who are put on long-term courses of capecitabine to be aware of the unusual risk. [AFP]

News Links:
Cancer drug wiped patient's fingerprints (Aust ABC News)
Drug erases fingerprints, causing immigration drama (SMH)
Cancer drug capecitabine causes patient to lose fingerprints and be detained by U.S. immigration
(The Medical News)
Cancer Drug Causes Patient To Lose Fingerprints And Be Detained By US Immigration (Science Daily)
Side Effect of Drug Capecitabine Is Fingerprint Loss (CancerQuest)
Cancer patient lacking fingerprints held by US customs (The Family GP)
Cancer drug causes patient to lose fingerprints and be detained by US immigration (e! Science News)
Cancer drug erases fingerprints (BBC News)

Labels: cancer, chemotherapy, medical, travel, treatment

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 7:07 am

 
Neil Gaiman's wedding poem  

A Wedding Poem

This for you, for both of you,

a small poem of happiness
filled with small glories and little triumphs
a fragile, short cheerful song
filled with hope and all sorts of futures

Because at weddings we imagine the future
Because it's all about 'what happened next?'
all the work and negotiation and building and talk
that makes even the tiniest happily ever after
something to be proud of for a wee forever

This is a small thought for both of you
like a feather or a prayer,
a wish of trust and love and hope
and fine brave hearts and true.

Like a tower, or a house made all of bones and dreams
and tomorrows and tomorrows and tomorrows.

Neil Gaiman's Journal: post-wedding post, Saturday, 19th August, 2006

Labels: celebrations, mortality, poems, poetry

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 9:47 pm

 
And we thought they just made those stories up  
Art imitates Life imitates Art?

A New Zealand couple from Roturua are reportedly on the run after $NZ10 million – instead of $NZ10,000 – was mistakenly deposited in their Westpac bank account.

(Assorted news stories abound; comments (some context, especially on the comments).)

Labels: links, news, NZ, oddities, stories

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 3:58 pm

 
Magpie Dishonour  

Trying to resist the Pretty, Pretty, Shiny Things!

How cruel is this lioness, tempting, teasing, playing with her prey? Go thou, & save me from temptation. Take them away!

Repeating my earlier entry on the same subject:

Magpie Telegraph Alert
My Tormenting Temptress, Elysian One, has had a bit of an unpleasant time and setback recently. She's started a special sudden June Shiny Sale of her jewellery to help recover. It's fascinating, captivating, intriguing, sometimes glorious, stuff. Or pretty and shiny, if you will. Maybe you'll like it.

The names of the pieces — are there many makers who give such names to their jewels? — can send your imagination spiraling in all sorts of ways. Contemplation has inspired different people to other creative endeavours, and they've put together a chapbook with stories, poems, essays matched with their Muse-in-Artifact: “Glass Bead Games”. You can order that there too. Two of my small obsessions intertwined in a nefarious snare! <makes dramatic 'suffering' gesture>

Go then! Feast your eyes and imagination; remove (curse you; bless you) temptations!

And if you're coming on this entry sometime in futurity when the sale & so forth is past, still go thou, and check out what's happening at 'Honor Your Inner Magpie', or what was happening back in the day …

Labels: beauty, links, shiny, shopping

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 5:44 pm

 
Science & Technology, destroying Wonder, Beauty, Art & History  

Religion & History through Science

Have you seen the new comprehensive interactive three-dimensional image/model of the Saint Domitilla catacombs, made using laser scanners & digital images by a team lead by Dr Norbert Zimmerman of the Vienna Academy of Sciences (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften — ÖAW on Totenstadt )? (BBC story; START-Projekt site. I find Fig. 9 particularly impressive.) Google may have made an offer already (Google UnderEarth? Google AncientEarth?).

Local Hero: They're using 3DM Analyst from ADAM Technology in Perth, Western Australia, to generate high-resolution 3D photo models. It sounds like great fun: "the same camera and software can be used for the smallest projects, in the order of 30 microns (over 1,000 points per square millimetre), up to large projects spanning several kilometres." My optimist senses wonderful and amazing possibilities; my cynic sees baby-sized Hello Kitty dolls personalized with your daughter's face; my pessimist foresees even darker and dirtier uses.

Art through Science

A video of an installation, 9 was 6 if (by Swedish artist Christian Andersson), from the "it's not a blog" of Mattias Rickardsson - nu även digital at www.analogue.org/ mr

A kinetic sculpture at the BMW Museum, recorded on the ART+COM site. It is made from "714 metal spheres, hanging from thin steel wires attached to individually-controlled stepper motors, and covers an area of six square metres".

Labels: 3D, art, history, Roman, Rome, technology

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 8:06 pm