Browsing Archive: September, 2011
Posted by Roger Boylan on Wednesday, September 28, 2011,
I
On the Coast of Coromandel
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods
Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.
Two old chairs, and half a candle,--
One old jug without a handle,--
These were all his worldly goods:
In the middle of the woods,
These were all the worldly goods,
Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò,
Of th... Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Friday, September 23, 2011,
According to scientists, neutrinos raced from a particle accelerator at CERN
outside Geneva,
where they were created, to a cavern underneath Gran Sasso in Italy, a distance
of about 450 miles, about 60 nanoseconds faster than it would take a light beam to make the same journey
That amounts to a speed greater than light by about 0.0025% (2.5 parts in a
hundred thousand). If this is a violation of the theory of relativity, it's a big fucking deal indeed, to paraphrase our esteemed Vice-Pre... Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Wednesday, September 14, 2011,
Flush with victory after finishing a 2500-word article on Vienna (it remains to be seen if it's accepted), I felt sentimental for the dear old place and found this video of the Vienna Boys' Choir singing that gloriously schmaltzy old ballad Wien, Wien, Nur Du Allein (Vienna, Vienna, Only You Alone): Wien, Wien, nur du allein
Sollst stets die Stadt meiner Träume sein !
Dort, wo die alten Häuser stehn,
Dort, wo die lieblichen Mädchen gehn !
Wien, Wien, nur du allein
Sollst stets die Stadt me... Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Monday, September 12, 2011,
"Ours is a useful trade. With all its lightness and
frivolity it has one serious purpose, one aim, one specialty, and it is constant
to it -- the deriding of shams, the exposure of pretentious falsities, the
laughing of stupid superstitions out of existence . . . Whoso is by instinct
engaged in this sort of warfare is the natural enemy of royalties, nobilities,
privileges and all kindred swindles, and the natural friend of human rights and
human liberties." Mark Twain Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Sunday, September 11, 2011,
Ten years gone, a world remade, a nation in decline. I'm inevitably reminded of the last century of the Roman Empire. Could we be at around, say, the middle of the 3rd century AD, when the Empire nearly collapsed under the combined pressures of civil unrest, war, and economic depression, only to be rescued by a strongman, Diocletian? Only to fall to the barbarian hordes a century or so after that?Idle speculation, for the most part. Nations fail and are redeemed, or not. This one will be. Rem... Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Thursday, September 8, 2011,
You read it here first. I'm about to waste the dwindling amount of time left to me by embarking on another no-doubt-doomed literary undertaking. It will be a novel set in three or more fictional cities, linked by character and/or circumstance--I haven't figured that part out yet. But these cities already exist in the demented world of my fiction. Killoyle, of course, is one. New Ur of the Chaldees, that charming college town in Ohiowa, U.S.A., is another, and both will be in the new book. San... Continue reading ...
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