“… in the brief glance, heavy with patience, serenity, and mutual forgiveness, that, through some involuntary understanding, one can sometimes exchange with a cat.”
“Descent: A series of seven long-form poems by Catherynne M. Valente. Each poem will re-imagine a mythological katabasis, covering descents into the otherworld from Inanna to Tam Lin.”
“A hero is not a hero if he does not brave a katabasis.”
“Apophenia is the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena.”
“Minister Koike created the “Mottainai Furoshiki” as a symbol of Japanese culture to reduce wastes.” And: “How to use Furoshiki.”
Some of this stuff is or should be well-known, but: “100 things we didn’t know last year.” [via]
“The experts looked at the evidence in the long-standing debate over which came first – the chicken or the egg – and opted for the egg.” [via] Too bad they got it wrong.
“How do you know it’s been an extraordinary year in archaeology?”
“… any skin that would normally be covered by a modest bikini must be swathed in an opaque covering. But the law doesn’t specify what kind of material must be used …” [via] Oops. Using latex to cover things … why not get a some temporary tattoo ink done that blends across the latex-flesh line too? [et]
Baldwin, Torres, Baccarin and Fillion together again! Well, sort of. Check out Justice League Unlimited: Season 1. Not only are the actors there, but lots of dialogue and themes echo things that were or could have been Firefly. (There’s a fair number of actors from Star Trek here also … and a slew of others, including Amy Acker and Juliet Landau from other Joss shows.)
Holy. Who knew that Juliet Landau is the daughter of Martin Landau and Barbara Bain? (Everyone but me, probably.) She’s a child of Space: 1999! Okay, that was short lived. I realized that being born in 1965, according to IMDB, she was born even before the 1966 start of Mission: Impossible.