selidor

Thesis: submitted - and accepted with corrections.

Poetry published in 2013:
"Gneiss-Mother". The Cascadia Subduction Zone, January 2013.
"Grandmother Ash". The Cascadia Subduction Zone, January 2013.
"Ōtautahi in Spring". inkscrawl #5, 15 January 2013.
"Foam, Braided with Teeth". Stone Telling #9, 1 March 2013.
"Orpheus in Orbit". Ideomancer, 3 March 2013.
"The Unicorn Observer Principle". Imaginaire, 8 April 2013.
"An Unexpected Review". Niteblade, June 2013.
"If Wurrunna Had Seen the Mardi Gras". Goblin Fruit, Spring 2013.
"Relic of the Journey". inkscrawl #6, August 2013.
And "Loki, Dynamicist" was placed third in Strange Horizons' 2012 Readers' Poll.

Moved from Australia to Canada. Found and made a home.

Saw the salmon run, and walked in cedar forests.

New job. New collaboration. So much data to play with!
Conferences in Campbell River, Vancouver, Victoria, Melbourne (first-ever invited talk!), Denver.

Succeeded in finishing all the blocks for my quilt bee, somewhat delayed - but done.
First quilt commission request.

Saw my godmother for the first time in years, on an island about as remote as one can have in New Zealand.

Anabasis: finding a new path.

Current Mood: relaxed
Crossposts: http://selidor.livejournal.com/38114.html

Not long. Oh dear.
Then: freedom! To be followed by sleep. Possibly for a week. And then fixing all the things for the Mighty Paper.

But because one of my friends who I have never met is creative and wonderful, there was this happymaking thing:

@astrokiwi (michele bannister) by pixbymaia

And now I have been modelled in LEGO, with the first verse of The First Flute, Played in Enceladus's Light: Five Voices. The best days are those when science and poetry overlap.

You folks should all go vote for the names of Pluto's fourth and fifth moons. Charon, Nix and Hydra need mythological friends.

Crossposts: http://selidor.livejournal.com/34988.html

My poem "Ōtautahi in Spring" is now online as part of the fifth issue of the small and perfectly formed inkscrawl. It was written in response to the Christchurch earthquakes, a feeling of watching from afar as the city I know well tried to reform.

Perhaps that's why the patupaiarehe; they are he iwi atua, supernatural beings (I hesitate to say fey, but the import is approximate); here first, having seen earthquake after earthquake, like the generations of godwits that fly the width of the world every year.

There's some lovely poems there; do go see.

Crossposts: http://selidor.livejournal.com/34536.html

Hello, Dreamwidth! Trying a crosspost. The one annoyance with Dreamwidth that I have noticed is that Livejournals that I am subscribed to are not showing up on the Dreamwidth reading list, which will stop me switching for now. Otherwise the interface is pleasant & familiar. Do folks find it preferable to have comments enabled on both sides, or just one?

My contributor's e-copy of The Cascadia Subduction Zone, Vol 3, No. 1 arrived today, with my poems "Gneiss-Mother" and "Grandmother Ash". I'm particularly fond of the second for playing with deep time, geological natural disasters and hominin ancestors.

And apparently the Isis-cave now wants to be a poem cycle, involving sea-caves, pohutukawa roots, Lascaux. Why now? Couldn't this happen after the thesis?

Fire warnings are at extreme; going to be above 35 C this entire week. A little scary, as this is the bush capital.

The culling of the books is complete. Everything except my work books & the cookbooks fits on one (medium-cubbyholes, eight-shelf) bookshelf. And all my work papers are sorted & culled, with one neat stack left of things to incorporate into thesis. Either this is procrastination or I am actually organised; hard to tell.

Reading things of recent:

Brit Mandelo's "The Finite Canvas": I love the two main characters in this; these are people who can be strong, and weak, and complex. At different times, in the same story! (and yes, this should happen in More Stories). If there was a story I would have wished for to point people to, back when the conversation on Strong Female Characters Again came up earlier in the year, this would have been it.
Genevieve Valentine's A Bead of Jasper, Four Small Stones: poignant, and the perfect detail brought happiness to my planetary scientist heart. This is the kind of sf I've been wanting to see in great abundance ever since reading Michael Swanwick's Slow Life: Clement and Clarke are decades old and reflect a different (and also, all!white!male!) future; time for a future of today.
And why did no-one tell me The Coldest War was out. There went my Friday night's sleep allocation. Though two days after reading it I'm almost feeling...like the ending wrapped everything up too pat, despite how interesting the characters remain. [whitetext for spoilers follows] Resetting back to midway through the first book and then rerunning so the world doesn't end...it makes the final volume Will They Save the World Again, which as papersky pointed out recently, has seemingly become the default plot option.

But Chapter "Objects Are Fun When Actually Observed" is nearly done. Even if I am starting to drop various spinning research plates and trying to catch things before they hit ~~the floor~~ deadlines. Onward!

I woke up this morning to an a capella group practising Christmas carols in the carpark across the road. Today is good.

My short poem "Ōtautahi in Spring" has been accepted by

mitchell_hart for the guest-edited issue of inkscrawl, #5. It was written back in spring as a reflection for Christchurch; there are patupaiarehe.

Oh, and a good time to mention: on Thursday, this dark of the moon, look up. There will be meteors.

This is too much fun to pass up. As per

papersky,

rushthatspeaksand others:

Tell me about a story I haven’t written, and I’ll give you one sentence from that story.

Which might become a line from a poem. Or more than one line.

It is a matter of great delight that with the tools of our mathematical minds we may come to grasp the ineffable workings of the cosmos.
I therefore know that you will join me in rejoicing: that most alarming of non-Euclidean geometries, described (and rendered!), thanks to an assidious worker in general relativity.

Possible Bubbles of Spacetime Curvature in the South Paciﬁc

Overheard in a debate about the use of "we", "I" or passive voice in single-author scientific writing:

"the third person was used by Caesar in his de Bello Gallico."

"This just shows that Caesar was not an astronomer, otherwise he would have written that Gallia had two parts: Gallia I and II. But later on he would have subdivided it in Gallia Ia, Ib and Ic, and several Gallieae II."

Current Mood: silly

My poem "Year-king" is now published as the coda of the first issue of

mitchell_hart's Through the Gate. This new magazine has a very thoughtful layout and collation: the grouping of the poems produces a lovely thematic progression. Very happy to be in the ToC alongside an excellent lineup: in no particular order, Rose Lemberg, Mari Ness, Sonya Taaffe, Bethany Powell, Devon Miller-Duggan, Alicia Cole, Dominik Parisien, Mat Joiner, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Adrienne J. Odasso, Shira Lipkin and Sally Rosen Kindred.

Those who are in Boston might well take the opportunity to go see these beautiful glass sculptures:

Fusing science and art, glassblower Josiah McElheny attempts to represent what cannot be represented: infinity. In 20 pieces, using glass, film, and photography, he examines the unfathomable.

This one came to my attention when its astronomer collaborator posted a description of the sculpture's origins to our worldwide open-access preprint server, A Study for the Center Is Everywhere. It distills a tiny piece of sky survey data into scupture, seven feet high.

The world is made better by all its beauty. Jewelled insects a-glory (one below, more at the link).

It's been the kind of week filled with proposal deadlines and little else. But the world is full of good things.

1. An ancient flower, pollinated only by ants. For seventeen years, one botanist has watched this little herb in its 300-year lifespan.

On the Spanish side of the Pyrenees mountains, two adjacent cliff faces hold the entire population of Borderea chouardii – one of the world’s rarest plants. It’s a small herb that grows into crevices in the rock. Its leaves are heart-shaped and its flowers green and unassuming. Now, Maria Garcia has discovered the plant’s survival strategy, which involves three different species of ants. Through these multiple partnerships, B.chouardii quite literally clings to existence.

2. In rebuilding a city, first start with the movie theatre, in the parts that survive and thrive.

Christchurch lost 21 cinema screens in the February quake. Alice in Videoland in the central city will open a 38-seat cinema at the back of its DVD store on Thursday. The ornate cinema is designed in the Egyptian revival style popular in the 1920s, complete with hieroglyphics, Tutankhamun masks and a carving of the goddess Isis above the screen.

3. I finished making a pretty thing, for a swap. Yes, there is fabric printed with postmodern fairytale remixes.

Current Mood: accomplished

So the Denisovans get more and more interesting.

A shortish Ars Technica piece leads off: a new, improved sequencing technique has allowed the Denisovan genome to be sequenced at up to 20x that of the Neandertal genome, making them our new best-known cousin.
And then John Hawks, whom I particularly trust as speaker-for-geneticists in this area, gives a more detailed analysis.

How did Asians end up lacking any evidence of Denisovan ancestry, when the peoples of Sahul (Australia and New Guinea) have six percent? [...] We must, I think, conclude that there was at least one, and possibly several episodes of massive population movement across South and Southeast Asia.

There's much more, including hints of FOXP2 differences: he writes clearly and well.

Human evolution, o fascinating field. So many peoples; what songs did they sing, what myths did they care for? For now, a single tooth is having to speak for all that they were.

Current Mood: excited

S/1 90482 (2005) needs your help

One moon, comes with dwarf planet, looking for a name. All lovers of Etruscan mythology in particular urged to apply.

We can't just keep calling this lovely little world 'the moon of Orcus'...

Update: Moon is now to be called Vanth. Thanks to

sovay for coming up with the suggestion!

Current Mood: mischievous

try feeding them with clicks...

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: 169 warm and fine
Current Music: hissing hard drive, processing code

In honour of Clyde Tombaugh, and all things Kuiper and cold and far-flung:

Happy 79th day of discovery, Pluto.

May we find you many more brothers and sisters.

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: 169 warm and fine
Current Music: click of the keyboard and hum of the GPSers

Yesterday I found a listing in the USGS announcements of new planetary names: Punga Mare named on Titan.
Hmm, I thought: this sounds suspiciously Māori. Surely not. But indeed, named for the son of Tangaroa.

And that got me to thinking, what else is there in the Solar System named for Māori mythology? I knew of the asteroids Aotearoa and Aoraki, which are more widely known, but this was the first nomenclature feature I'd ever seen.

So I went hunting through the list, and found a few:

( a sailor's language, and a mountaineer's )

And how did people come to choose such things? The references cited on the Gazetteer suggest just a teeny bit that these names were acquired from the equivalent of My Big Book of World Mythology. I wouldn't even consider using a name like Whaitiri or Mahuia in these situations without first asking. These are ancestors! So I hope that it was done properly...

Mind you, these names cover some very interesting planetary objects. It would be a fun and interesting outreach activity to make a page for teachers or suchlike featuring all the things named for Maori mythology in the Solar System, with back-to-back explanations of the science at each one, and the deity after which they were named. Would even make a nice small museum display.

...I foresee an International Year of Astronomy project in the works...

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: living room after a really good party in the house
Current Music: nz party playlist

All my thoughts to those under the smoke-clouds in Victoria. Too many people I know are likely to have friends, or family, or family of friends in that area.
The red skies come to New Zealand every time there is a bushfire across the Tasman, but this is not bushfire, but firestorm.

May they be safe. May everyone's friends and family, out in those burnt lands, be found safe.

Current Mood: worried
Current Location: cold cold Pasadena night

Quince crumble: an experiment last night...

I picked up a quince from the nearby Armenian grocer a while back, and had been pondering how to bake it. The quince was not much smaller than my head. My recipe went something like this:
1. Have quince. Quince must be baked for eating. Ooo, crumble!
2. Quince enthusiastically turned into many thin slices of quince, as if an apple cake was being made.
3. But quinces need 1.5 hours of cooking, and crumbles like much less than that. Besides, they are supposed to have stewed fruit. But there is only one quince, and its slices will stew down into not enough quince for a crumble.
4. Aha!
5. Quince slices baked in a greased pie dish for an hour, with a little brown sugar sprinkled on top.
6. Oat crumble mix (I just used the good Edmond's fruit crumble proportions) added on top and the whole thing baked for another half hour.
7. Success!

And eaten with a nice light icecream, a good vanilla bean or suchlike - I used pear & pecan - or plain yoghurt, the whole thing turned out very nicely.

Current Mood: peaceful
Current Location: warm living room
Current Music: Radio NZ Concert (internet streamed)

Yes. Exams are finished. Stellar structure a little less than satisfying, radiative transfer processes pleasantly as expected, and classical mechanics most amusing in that several questions were recycled in their entirety from the papers of previous years. I could have floated down the stairs with the happiness of just having everything done.

Then after the evening lecture, a presentation of many more statistics on the representation of women in the hard sciences in the EU-25 than I ever hope to have to see again, we partied. There was vino, tequila from Sophia (Mexico), Pimms from Joanna (England), and the other Michele provided lemoncello (sp?). I waxed lyrical on the difference between kiwis, kiwis, and kiwis. Kiwifruit is acceptable in Pimms: it is not cucumber, but it was better than the apple.
The South Americans provided the music. Everybody danced, and danced, and danced.

I think I've recovered from exams now...

A slight cold that I've been holding off all week has now hit in force. But more lectures on finding extrasolar planets, and a visiting lecturer to take to dinner tonight (we are all on a wine&dine roster), which promises to be fun. Time for a blessed cup of tea and a croissant, methinks.

Very good talk this morning on the hunt for extrasolar planets by Debra Fischer of SFSU. I agree with her that the most important factors for determining if a planet is habitable are its mass (retain an atmosphere, oceans, stay tectonically active, etc) and distance from its star (correct degree of heating, etc.). Really, everything else is subsequent window dressing. Though I'm not sure about the other significant point she had, the need for tectonic drift. Certainly, it helps increase species diversity through regular change of the macroclimate, but I don't see its necessity for the origin of life.

I have a presentation completed piecemeal for next Thursday, which will now only need a little tweaking. Some of the others have headed down the steep hillside to the lake. Last night we had a most spectacular fireworks display launched from down there on the shore, that lasted for many minutes. Showers of golden rain are probably the best firework yet created.

The cherries here are also wonderful. According to Michele (the Italian guy), they last for two months here. What with those and the European custard and nutella-filled and icing-sugar-dusted pastries that show up at breakfast and morning tea every single day, I am getting a regular overdose of sugar. Bouncy!

Apparently this is a bad place to make enemies. The way it is told, the Roman emperor Domician, fond of persecuting Christians, had a summer villa here. The ruins of his villa are now the gardens of the property of the Catholic Church.
The Barberini family built the current building as their family fortress and villa in the 18th century. Their ancestral home is now the Pope's summer residence, and the Pope from their family, Urban VIII, was the Pope under whose papacy Galileo was forced to recant.
The Pope's house is now the home of astronomers.

Current Location: Specola Vaticana

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selidor

December 2013

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Page Summary

the contemplation of year's end
Homo dissertationae is a tea-based lifeform
distant land of braided rivers
a gift in the crumbs of charcoal
for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied
sun in the morning and song on the breeze
sometimes the songs come calling
"all the rules of matter and perspective seemed upset"
the author has found that Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres
there will always be blood to bring the year back
it's a temple of magic, in a place that needs to be made whole: who else would you ask?
take a bone from the dry sea: whose hand held it last?
All things counter, original, spare, strange
such happy little fish
Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies! The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there
the peaks too have names to suit their whiteness
For us the land is matrix and destroyer
times of improvisation
Some very dedicated partying
down in the crater is the lake

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Recent Entries

the contemplation of year's end

Homo dissertationae is a tea-based lifeform

distant land of braided rivers

a gift in the crumbs of charcoal

for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied

sun in the morning and song on the breeze

sometimes the songs come calling

"all the rules of matter and perspective seemed upset"

the author has found that Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres

there will always be blood to bring the year back

it's a temple of magic, in a place that needs to be made whole: who else would you ask?

take a bone from the dry sea: whose hand held it last?

All things counter, original, spare, strange

S/1 90482 (2005) needs your help

such happy little fish

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies! The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there

the peaks too have names to suit their whiteness

For us the land is matrix and destroyer

times of improvisation

Some very dedicated partying

down in the crater is the lake