A couple of weeks ago I saw a link somewhere to a “list of fictional something-or-others” at Wikipedia. Might have been fictional expletives or fictional gods (which by the way is far too long a list since it could have been summed up easily in a single word, I’ll let you guess what that word is); I can’t rightly remember. I got the bright idea though to do a broad search for “list of fictional” at Wikipedia, thinking the results might make for a nifty little post. The search turned up a whopping 2150 results! That’s a lot of fictional stuff. Too much in fact. I mean how do you choose between fictional chimpanzees, fictional drugs, fictional robots, fictional universes, fictional narcissists, fictional books, notable mustaches in fiction, etc, in order to craft a cogent post? You can’t. So I scrapped the idea.

Quote, “Some stars undergo a natural process that generates acoustic waves similar to those produced by wind instruments. The gas inside the star contracts and expands, which leads to a heating and cooling cycle. This periodic change in temperature alters the star’s light intensity, and astronomers can detect the resulting pulse patterns with telescopes. Kolláth and Keuler use this data as a basis for their music, but after one critical adjustment: Since the frequencies of star sounds are much too low for humans to hear, the team uses a computer program to shift the pitches by as many as 30 octaves—over four times the difference between the highest and lowest notes on a piano. So essentially, stars produce sound waves that appear visually as patterns of light, which are then translated into music.” Seed story on astrophysicist Zoltán Kolláth and composer Jen? Keuler’s Stellar Music Project.

Related: space sounds, space audio, ESA sounds from space, space weather vlf receiver, listening to leonids, sounds from space: sonification applications, NPR The Musical Sounds of Space, and the sounds of Titan.

Quote, “In the beginning was the Word. There was a little pond and in the pond was a little letter “O”, a word. Soon the pond was full of trillions of O’s, happily mouthing their meaning. And the word was fruitful and multiplied. Then something happened. An “O” changed to an “I”. Another changed to an “A”. (Others changed to “x” and “p”, but these were not fruitful and were, sadly, deselected.) Soon, the pond was swimming with O’s and A’s and I’s. The I’s, in particular, thought they were something special, but the O’s were happy just to be noticed…” Zachriel’s Sea of Beneficence, part of the larger Word Mutagenation.

On this date in 1844 one Samuel Morse asked an age old question in a new way, and in so doing kicked the practice of Telegraphy in its intangible ass. It was the first message ever sent in Morse code. Unsurprisingly an answer was not forthcoming. 162 years late, let me hazard an answer: misery

human suffering.

A history of the pen. A brief history of writing instruments. The history of the ballpoint pen. How ballpoint pens work. The early history of the fountain pen. The pen trade. The Paul E. Wirt fountain pen. The story of the invention of steel pens. The four treasures of the study: brush pens. Quills. Cutting a quill pen. Fox with quill. Cat with quill. The writing [implement] of Jane Austen - the quill pen.

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