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Writing

Can’t spill coffee on a digital book

Recovered from the Wayback Machine. One very nice perk of being an O’Reilly author is getting full membership in O’Reilly’s online digital book library, Safari. I think about the 34 boxes of books I have stored back in San Francisco and can’t help but feel that digital is really the way of the future. At least […]

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Just Shelley

Get Used to Disappointment

A friend told me last week that disappointment is part of any friendship. I have to agree with him because any relationship between people that is something more than the barest superficial association is going to have times when one, or both, is disappointed in each other. The same has to hold with our friendships […]

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History Just Shelley

Once we believe in ourselves…

Another e.e. cummings poem has been coming to mind lately, spurred on by the discussions about the ‘proper’ amount of sorrow we should feel at the loss of the Columbia crew. Proper sorrow. What is that? I do not know what proper sorrow is. cummings once said: We do not believe in ourselves until someone […]

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Writing

Curving Space with cummings

Summary:   I seldom write about poets, preferring to leave this genre to others better suited. But the talk yesterday about the shuttles and Hubble and Chandra, and of stars and black holes and other aspects of astrophysics, brought to mind one of my favorite poems, Space being(don’t forget to remember)Curved, by e.e. Cummings I seldom […]

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Just Shelley

Blanc Mange

If we look hard enough, we can find the lowest common denominator among us, and we can beat down the peaks and fill in the valleys and take comfort in the sameness among us. And one spark of beauty, one ray of true art, can multiply, like the loaves and the fishes, to feed the […]