Dinner and a Movie [Today's News Poem (Sonnet), May 5, 2010]

Dinner and a Movie [Today's News Poem (Sonnet), May 5, 2010]

Amok in orbit, chatter bounces back
From whence it came. A galaxy of trash
On television—spewing meme attack—
Receives the signal-nonsense: systems crash,
Reflecting tins of din for dogs and cats...
A mother's giving birth behind a drape...
A starving baby needs your cash—you're fat
Besides... the first ten callers may escape
To Maui... Save yourself to save the world
They say. Who needs the bother? Save your cash
Instead and pray that Ancient Ones unfurled
Their solar sails to take you under lash,
Instead of glass on plate—or worse, just raw—
While teevee shows display. They'll watch with awe.

“Galaxy 15 could threaten nearby satellites because its communications package is stuck on and it may start interfering with its neighbors by siphoning off their signals. It's the first time such an event has ever occurred, and it sent Orbital Sciences, the satellite's builder, on a dash to figure out how to stop the satellite-run-amok.”
– Clara Moskowitz, 6:05 p.m. PT, Tues., May 4, 2010
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36919374/ns/technology_and_science-space/

“Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved... “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.””
– Jonathan Leake, The Times Online, April 25, 2010
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece

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Failure to Thrive [Today's News Sonnet, Feb 27, 2010]

Failure to Thrive [Today's News Sonnet, Feb 27, 2010]
“The 8.8 magnitude earthquake that struck off coastal Chile in the early hours of the morning is one of the biggest temblors anywhere in more than a century. ”
–Gautam Naik, Wall Street Journal, FEBRUARY 27, 2010, 3:44 P.M. ET
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704231304575091611248294970.html?mod=rss_Today%27s_Most_Popular

“"From our human perspective with our relatively short and incomplete memories and better and better communications around the world, we hear about more earthquakes and it seems like they are more frequent," Arrowsmith said. "But this is probably not any indication of a global change in earthquake rate of significance."... However, "relative to the 20-year period from the mid-1970s to the mid 1990s, the Earth has been more active over the past 15 or so years," said Stephen S. Gao, a geophysicist at Missouri University of Science and Technology. "We still do not know the reason for this yet. Could simply be the natural temporal variation of the stress field in the earth's lithosphere."”
--MSNBC, Feb 27, 2010
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35618526/ns/technology_and_science-science/

If even sun someday will serve as prey
To entropy, to holes so dense they're black
To us; then what has changed? The gods still fray
In all their forms; from Cronus, farther back
I'm sure, to Ancient Ones of Lovecraft fame,
To microscopes and telescopes that spot
Another entity usurping claims
Of ultimate hegemony. We thought
Our age of science granted might akin
To nebulae and yet the Earth's mishaps
Alone deny our transcendental win.
The paltry centuries disguise perhaps
Immense, perhaps impossible to grasp,
And mighty forces science—Gods can't clasp:
A death in eons, scoffed with dying rasps.



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