Contributor Posts

Once, in the beginning,
at the start of life,
an imagined beginning.

There lies a creature,
within my soul, at rest
There, its lain, since I was,
born out of wedlock, not the best.

I know it's true,
for I've been told,
You will soon be free.
Out in the cold.

Why is persuasion so hard, even when you have facts on your side? More at The Conversation ➜ 

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

This is how the Sun disappeared from the daytime sky last month. The featured time-lapse video was created from stills taken from Mountain View, Arkansas, USA on 2024 April 8. First, a small sliver of a normally spotted Sun went strangely dark. Within a few minutes, much of the background Sun was hidden behind the advancing foreground Moon. Within an hour, the only rays from the Sun passing the Moon appeared like a diamond ring. During totality, most of the surrounding sky went dark, making the bright pink prominences around the Sun's edge stand out, and making the amazing corona appear to spread into the surrounding sky. The central view of the corona shows an accumulation of frames taken during complete totality. As the video ends, just a few minutes later, another diamond ring appeared -- this time on the other side of the Moon. Within the next hour, the sky returned to normal. Celebrate the Voids: It's Black Hole Week at NASA!

Video by Reinhold Wittich; Music: Sunrise from Also sprach Zarathusra (R. Strauss) by Sascha Ende

"What are you doing?",
said a voice, sounding like Doom,
as it rang out from,
the back of the room.

I'm speaking to a friend,
if you'd be so kind, to not
butt into my conversation,
for it is his ear that I've got.

Just go away,
leave me alone,
it's my new place,
which I call home.

I sit in wonder,
now alone,
with no one close,
who I could phone.

Not talking about
my family,
but about my
missing thee.

Thee who was,
my lovely wife,
no longer here but
now gone, from life.

I talked with her,
about daily events,
we had our positions,
weren't on the fence.

This luxury is
no longer here,
so I sit alone,
she's not near.

I know this sounds,
like a "Woe is Me,"
but in fact,
it's my reality.

A long time ago,
in a faraway place,
I envisioned, the beauty,
of seeing your face.

Your brown eyes,
so, warming to see.
The voice of an Angel,
who I saw, in thee.

Love, the eternal feeling of
the love of another. A deep,
caring love, which you never,
experience again. Cherish it now.

No, no,
I must explain,
the words,
Mark Twain.

When the measured,
depth of water,
is six foot,
or better,

we are talking about,
below the keel.
It's a measurement,
which is real.

A Meter here,
A Meter there,
Centimeters,
Are everywhere.

Hannah Arendt ( 1906 - 1975 ) German-American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century. Her works cover a broad range of topics, but she is best known for those dealing with the nature of power and evil, as well as politics, direct democracy, authority, and totalitarianism. She is commemorated by institutions and journals devoted to her thinking, the Hannah Arendt Prize for political thinking, and on stamps, street names, and schools, amongst other things. More

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What happens to a star that goes near a black hole? If the star directly impacts a massive black hole, then the star falls in completely -- and everything vanishes. More likely, though, the star goes close enough to have the black hole's gravity pull away its outer layers, or disrupt, the star. Then, most of the star's gas does not fall into the black hole. These stellar tidal disruption events can be as bright as a supernova, and an increasing amount of them are being discovered by automated sky surveys. In the featured artist's illustration, a star has just passed a massive black hole and sheds gas that continues to orbit. The inner edge of a disk of gas and dust surrounding the black hole is heated by the disruption event and may glow long after the star is gone. Hole New Worlds: It's Black Hole Week at NASA!