I can think of few things more ironic that this:
The tornado that struck Kansas State University’s campus in Manhattan destroyed a wind erosion laboratory….
Research complete.
Category Archives: Poetry
Phishing for poems
The New Yorker often has good poetry. This one reminds me of how far we have come from the old meaning of fishing:
And now he feels he’s in his element,
Baiting a hook and casting forth the line,
And through clear water sees a heaven-sent
Swift flash of silver rise into air and shine.
Ah, let it go-go, dart back to the deep.
A lovely thing, but much too small to keep.
Does a phisher ever say “nah, this one is much too small”? Not enough data, or maybe too poor to steal from?
Probably not. The modern phisher is about as unlikely to follow catch-and-release rules as a greedy seagull. Or, as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow put it in Hiawatha’s Fishing:
Three whole days and nights alternate
Old Nokomis and the seagulls
Stripped the oily flesh of Nahma,
Till the waves washed through the rib-bones,
Till the sea-gulls came no longer,
And upon the sands lay nothing
But the skeleton of Nahma.
And upon the silicon lay nothing but the skeleton of users..
Mingling of Fairy and Witch Beliefs
After commenting on one of Bruce’s blog entries, I was reminded of a poem called “The Flyting betwixt Montgomery and Polwart”. I tried to find a handy copy to refresh my memory, but instead I ran into an odd article in Folklore:
At all events the British Association has more than once taken note of them, and has not gone so far as the Russian Commissary of Education, who has announced that all mention of fairies, angels, or devils in fairy tales is to be supplanted by the words “scientists and technicians who have served humanity.” Whether these partake the nature of angels or of devils, or incline more to that of fairies, I leave you to judge.
My thought exactly.
I wish I could find that old poem by Alexander Mongomerie.
Insufficiently Nimble
Tom Toles is often hilarious. I like it when he rhymes too:
