the necropolis sprawls across the desert -- desolate... to us
Necropolis [Haiku]
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Tributary [Free Verse]
Your river is a tributary. My river is a tributary, merging & flowing to a sea. I feel your molecules, floating past my own, intermingling & in some way tingling: a jangled excitation. And, [at the sea] we will be, together & [at the sea] we will be together. I no longer worry that I'm a river with no name -- an anonymous tributary -- because every sea has many names.
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DAILY PHOTO: Kaindy Lake, Kazakhstan
The submerged trees [below] for which Kaindy Lake is famed came about when part of the mountain sloughed off to create a natural dam and reservoir [above.]
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BOOK REVIEW: Doctor Strange: Surgeon Supreme, Vol 1: Under the Knife by Mark Waid
Dr. Strange, Surgeon Supreme Vol. 1: Under the Knife by Mark WaidMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
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Those who know the character of Doctor Strange from either the comics or the movies know that his backstory is as an arrogant – but brilliant – surgeon whose hands are badly damaged in an accident. In his far-flung search for a cure, he stumbles onto the realm of magic and ends up making a career change from surgeon to sorcerer. The premise of this volume is that Strange’s hands are cured and he precariously divvies up his time between the demanding jobs of neurosurgeon and Sorcerer Supreme.
The plot of this six-issue arc revolves around a theft from Strange’s own estate, a theft which grants his unknown enemy and her known henchmen the power to give the Sorcerer Supreme a run for his money, magically speaking. The shift to a two-hat wearing Stephen Strange facilitates him being none-the-wiser about the magically powerful weapons being deployed against him coming from his own forge. It also creates a series of tense periods during which he’s simultaneously urgently needed in the magic and material worlds.
I felt the volume did a good job of building up to a face-off with the big bad while making each issue a worthwhile standalone story. There are false flags and other mechanisms to keep one guessing about how the story will unfold. Some of the issues were more gripping and creative than others. The most brilliant, in my opinion, was the issue three battle in a tattoo realm to which the tattoos of humans – including one of Strange’s patients – drain said individuals’ life-forces. That issue most captured the psychedelic bizarrity that makes Doctor Strange comics so splendidly clever, unique, and enjoyable to read. The concluding story / resolution was also compelling.
I enjoyed this volume and would recommend it for fans of Doctor Strange.
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BOOK REVIEW: Nature’s Numbers by Ian Stewart
Nature’s Numbers. Discovering Order And Pattern In The Universe by Ian StewartMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
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This popular mathematics book reflects upon the ways in which patterns appear in nature and how mathematics can shed light on said patterns. It explores why tides are predictable while weather patterns are anything but. It investigates why flowers disproportionately have a number of petals that is in the Fibonacci sequence (a list of numbers in which each is formed through the addition of the previous two numbers.) It shows one how an eyeball can evolve, and how long it would be expected to take. It describes where and how we see calculus, probability and statistic, chaos theory, and complexity in nature.
It’s unambiguously a pop math book, there’s not an equation in sight. It does use diagrams and various graphics to convey ideas, and these help to simplify and visualize the topic. If anything, I would say the book could have benefited from more graphics [and might even have benefited from a less strict rule about sticking to colloquial prose.] (Meaning, some of the analogies and attempts to relate clarified ideas better than others.)
I found the book highly readable, and believe that – overall – the author did a fine job of providing food for thought without getting too complicated for the general reader. There were points at which the author seemed to lose his train. For example, he off-ramped into criticisms of the division of mathematics into applied and theoretical branches and the tendency to more greatly value the applied side of this false dichotomy. I have no doubt this is a worthwhile subject of discussion, but not necessarily in this book.
If you’re looking for a readable discussion of how mathematics is used in the study of nature, this book is worth reading – especially if you are equation-phobic.
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DAILY PHOTO: Monochrome Danube, Budapest
The Naked Dream [Free Verse]
There is a dream in which one is naked. But no one is looking at you,... yet And that is so much worse; the anticipation of being gawked at is more disconcerting than being gawked at. And, yet, one can't bring oneself to shout, attracting onlookers, so as to end the misery of anticipation. One can only sit with one's naked expectations -- wading in anxiety.
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Bardo Mind [Free Verse]
lost in a disembodied Bardo state fantastical happenings mainlined into consciousness with a side of swirling phantasm and all the angry demons and all the faceless gods churn around the periphery
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Bell Sound [Haiku]
a bell rang. something awoke in him, while something died
Tiger Riding for Beginners 