Italian music in Dakota

Уолт Уитмен

Итальянская музыка в Дакоте.

В вечернем воздухе, обволакивая
Скалы, леса, форт, орудия, шагающих часовых, бесконечные пустоши
Прозрачными потоками, флейтами и корнетами,
Волнующая, задумчивая, бурная
(И все же уместно звучащая даже здесь, получающая новый смысл,
Даже более изысканный, чем раньше, - как будто бы она возникла тут,
А не в богатом городском доме и не в сверкающей опере;
Звуки, отзвуки, блуждающие мотивы словно бы дома тут:
И невинная любовь Сомнамбулы, и боль Тоски,
И твой, Полиевкт, исступленный хор),
Лучащаяся в желтом косом закате, -
Музыка, итальянская музыка в Дакоте.

И Природа, владычица пожухлой реальности,
Выглядывая из своей мрачной лощины,
Признавая родство, пусть и отдаленное
(Так старый корень признаёт своим цветок или фрукт),
Слушает с наслаждением.

Original: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/italian-music-in-dakota/

Animal Review

Blog that totally made my day (almost two days, to be precise; thanks to wonderful poet Alexey Tsvetkov for the link): http://animalreview.wordpress.com. It's actually a collection of very funny and erudite reviews of, as one can guess, different animals, with subsequent rating of said animals. Among the best ones are hilarious garden snail review full of reproaches upon lame Evolution (no, it's not an auto review, again) self-indulgence, an Ode to Dung Beetle and a solid advice for zebras to move to Wisconsin for obvious marketing reasons. Authors (seems there are two of them) are having a book in print soon with some new animals being reviewed; hopefully they'll put new reviews on the website anytime soon too.
Ciao!

Lost in translation

If you have taste for "the best words in the best order", i.e. poetry, here is one of the most beautiful pieces of poetry i've ever read. "Lost in translation" by James Merrill was written in 1970s; it's blank verse with rubayat insertions. The poem is about a boy who spends one summer with his french (not so french as we get to know later) governess waiting for the delivery of a puzzle from NY and then assembling that puzzle with her.
The poem itself is a puzzle; it is wrought with a rare craftsmanship and the details of this puzzle are of rare beauty indeed. The spiritism seance where the medium divines the piece of puzzle which boy has stolen from the set years ago and kept with him his whole life; boy's misinterpretation of mademoiselle's letter concerning his parents future divorce; shadows of Valery and Rilke travelling through the poem. Even the remembering of the details of the poem is a pleasant affair.
Links that are very helpful for getting the nuances: wiki, collection of reviews (very good) and a good translation by Grigoriy Kruzhkov for russian audience (i'm still pretending that someone is actually reading this entry, very funny)
Enjoy!

The unique universe by Lee Smolin

In his very entertaining article , Lee Smolin argues against the "timeless multiverse" concept (i.e. that our universe is merely one of the many probability-driven universes) and explains why Newtonian physical schema fails when applied to the study of the universe as a whole. In Newtonian schema, there is a notion of "configuration space", i.e. of the set of possible states of a given system. To find a law, we set some initial conditions, run some experiments, change the conditions, run the experiments again and thus distil the laws that are independent of these conditions (and in some sense independent of time since time in this scheme is being used only as a "parameter on a trajectory in configuration space"). But in case of the cosmology that tries to find laws for the whole universe, there is no such thing as initial conditions, and there is no possibility to repeat experiment to find out what belongs to "law" and what is conditional. Thus, history of universe as a whole becomes not one of the possible trajectories of configuration space but essentially laws of physics itself.
Funny how it reflects McLuhan's "medium is the message" concept, btw.
Discussion below the article is quite interesting, too.