Elemental haiku by Mary Soon Lee: “A review of the Periodic Table composed of 119 science haiku, one for each element, plus a closing haiku for element 119 (not yet synthesized). The haiku encompass astronomy, biology, chemistry, history, physics, and a bit of whimsical flair. Click or hover over an element on the Periodic Table to read the haiku. Share these poems and add your own on Twitter with hashtag #ChemHaiku.”
The poetic astronomer Maria Mitchell captured this best in her rueful and rapturous observation that “we have a hunger of the mind which asks for knowledge of all around us, and the more we gain, the more is our desire,” and yet “we reach forth and strain every nerve, but we seize only a bit of the curtain that hides the infinite from us.”
Every Loss Reveals What We Are Made of: Blue Bananas, Why Leaves Change Color, and the Ongoing Mystery of Chlorophyll
This a really entertaining ski video from Markus Eder that combines the playful free skiing of Candide Thovex with JP Auclair’s street skiing. My kids do free skiing — not on stuff like this quite yet — and let me assure you that as steep, fast, and big as everything looks in that video, it’s steeper faster, and bigger in real life. It took so much effort and planning to make that run look so easy.
It was in one such epoch that Johannes Kepler took six years from decoding the laws of the universe to defend his herbalist-mother in a witchcraft trial, while elsewhere in Europe the world’s first prim and proper botanical gardens were sprouting up.
Harry Freedman’s workmanlike examination of how the musician’s spiritual life shaped his songs is rich in detail if a little too earnest in its quest for enlightenment
In 1963, when he was 29, Leonard Cohengave a speech in Montreal’s Jewish Public Library: “I believe that the God worshipped in our synagogues is a hideous distortion of a supreme idea – and deserves to be attacked and destroyed,” he said. “I consider it one of my duties to expose the platitude which we have created.” Cohen had come to imagine himself as part of an underground “catacomb religion” of poets, a new kind of “cantor”, “one of the creators of the liturgy that will create the church”.
Leonard Cohen: The Mystical Roots of Genius review – the God behind the guy
Watch a New Video for Leonard Cohen’s “Puppets”
The Thanks for the Dance visual arrives on the fifth anniversary of Cohen’s death
This scene could be a metaphor for Madeleine’s life of late. Just two years ago, the then 22-year-old actor’s world was sent spinning when she landed a lead role in one of television’s biggest productions (the budget for each episode of The Wheel of Time is reportedly more than $US10 million), and she arrived alone in the Czech Republic for filming just days later.
“I think I had about two weeks’ notice before I had to fly out [of Australia],” Madeleine recalls.
“It was definitely a very difficult transition. When I first got over here, it was quite a shock. I’m quite a family-orientated person, so being over here in a foreign country – by myself – for the first time with a big new job was daunting.”
Oh wow, this could be massive’: Madeleine Madden readies for stardom