It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved…
Incredible Images of Dead and Dying Stars
Looking up into a starry sky, it seems as if the universe is endless — but that’s not the case. A star has a natural life span, but how and when it dies depends on its mass. Gigantic stars burst into supernovas, which “can briefly outshine entire galaxies and radiate more energy than our sun will in its entire lifetime.” On the other hand, when a super massive star dies, its remnant core can be so dense that it creates a black hole.
Others go a little more quietly. Because our sun isn’t as massive as some other stars, it is expected to swell up into a red giant in a couple billions years (likely enclosing the Earth) before it cools into a white dwarf.
Ultimately, what seems to be true for most stars is that they die spectacularly brilliant deaths. Thanks to projects such as NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, we’re able to see them as never before.
(via alnator)
(via contemplatingstardust)
FREDERICK’S NEW HOME WITH DAD.
“Two weeks ago my mountain of mail delivered forth a pipsqueak mouse of a letter from a well-known publishing house that wanted to reprint my story “The Fog Horn” in a high school reader.
In my story, I had described in a lighthouse as having, late a night, an illumination coming from it that was a “God-Light.” Looking up at it from the viewpoint of any sea-creature one would have felt that one was in “the Presence.”
The editors had deleted “God-Light” and “in the Presence”.
Some five years back, the editors of yet another anthology for school teachers put together a volume with some 400 (count ‘em) short stories in it. How do you cram 400 short stories by Twain, Irving, Poe, Maupassant and Bierce into one book?
Simplicity itself. Skin, debone, demarrow, scarify, melt, render down and destroy. Every adjective that counted, every verb that moved, every metaphor that weighed more than a mosquito - out! Every simile that would have made a sub-moron’s mouth twitch - gone! Any aside that explained the two-bit philosophy of a first-rate writer - lost!Every story, slenderized, starved, bluepenciled, leeched and bled white, resembled every other story. Twain read like Poe read like Shakespeare read like Dostoevsky read like - in the finale - Edgar Guest. Every word more than three syllables had been razored. Every image that demanded so much as one instant’s attention - shot dead.
Do you begin to get the damned and incredible picture?
How did I react to all of the above?
By “firing” the whole lot.
By sending rejection slips to each and every one.
By ticketing the assembly of idiots to the far reaches of hell.
The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddist, Zionist/Seventh-Day Adventist, Women’s Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eye the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.
Fire Captain Beatty, in my novel “Fahrenheit 451”, described how the books were burned first by minorities, each ripping a page or paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed forever.”
~ Ray Bradbury, coda of “Fahrenheit 451”
(via better-off-homeless)
(via jenniedavis)
Frederick’s First Swim.
Proud parents.
