unidentified distant machine

published this little piece frorm 1994 for the first time

Alone in my travelling
I am a witness to earth lights

I ask for my memories
An ending of time

General and President walk in with denial
A million places of lonely science

Gray over the rainbow
A gospel of white light

Radio Alive
I do not remember the pain

my one and only UFO poem i suppose it was of the times

also broke into the US poetry market this week with a poetry book as opposed to kindle e book on amazon.com christopher lantern his midnight name 26 pages of poetry on the theme of the universe, nature loving and ending love

lost kingdoms do they add up to anything but dreams

cities of the classical world a gazetteer of 120 centres of ancient civilizations by colin mcevedy from alexandria to xanthos illustrated with line maps good artiles on each ciites including assyrian and mesopotamian cites such as babylon their topolography, population and reasons for abandonmment from the tigris to the rhine from leptis to ptolemais

vanished kindgoms the history of half forgotten europe a history of europes vanished states from arelat -burgundy and tolosa to napoleonic eturia, poland lithuania piedmont sardina and austrian galicia some like piedmont sardinia told before and in places the book resembled little than a king list and was more detailed in post 18th century history of the states with emphasis on their current national tragedy

lewis carrol in numberland by robin wilson story of CL dodgson the author of An Elementary Treatise on Determinants, With Their Application to Simultaneous Linear Equations and Algebraic Equations and other works this tells about dodgson from student days to university don days and revels dodgsons work on logic puzzles , whimisical number methods and syllogisms that were funny to anyone living in the nineteenth century it also told of the mathematical and logicla background to alice and the hunting of the snark

einsteins heroes by robyn araianhod a first book by the author and it shows despite the tilte this mainly concerns itself with james clerk maxwell and his life and work including his pretty dire poetry which i can say is not as good as his science the book suddenly changes tack and halts to carry on from pages 130-197 to cover the world history of mathematics then back to maxwell some line diagrams but very text book and old fashioned

lady of red amaranth

this was one of my early poems on a subject i now rarely explore more of feeling of isolation and total surrender to the infinite
liked it and the lady that inspired at the time forget it now
feelings similar to one of my latest poems

Daedalus falls

Let me keep the night
Look up at that over branching ringing orb of the utterly celestial other and think
-Get Lost !

alien sky astrolabe

created this rough sketch of how the constellations are seen from alpha centauri years ago note emphasis on large lines making up long constellation and combinations of what we see as separate star patterns into one the aliens sky shows the sun as large star in cassipeia the harper on the map
so as the rhymme goes ,"harper, archer, water slayer,fear the slayer, death the bride, third sister, bright dancer to blind watcher"

proxima centauri i believe is somewhere at the bottom the map near the storm sister constellation between harper and archer
the orbit of alphacenturi B crosses the central halfas visible to a planet at 27 degrees axil tilt
supernovas the most important are marked on the sketch and bright stars would be important to a culture basing its calendar on the night sky and the two suns AB 81 year orbit across his sky by day and night
building a astrolabe of the centauri constellation still at foundation stage but more of art work than science project
check out astrofly software

daydream and call it science

read seeing further the story of science and the history of the royal society edited by bill bryson despite the large format title bill bryson had little to do with this book which is a dull disjointed collection of loose themed essays on science some polemic, others plain readers digest biographies ranging from scientists in the B movie horror to francis bacon and the origins of plastics

a better book on the rise of science was the sensorum of god the second in the skys dark labyrinth series by stuart clark this was well written and better than most historical novesl telling the interlinkied stories of newton hooke and halley the backdrop of the restoration period to the end of the stuarts was less dramatic and looking forward to the final book where einstein is the main character


the great builders edited by kenneth powell relates the careers of forty architects from sinan to vauban , joseph paxton to gaudi, buckminister fuller to kengo kama
knew very little about architecture and this book resd like a 1970s part work encylopedia

scenes of the street and other essays by anthony vidler
a dry academic history of paris city planning from the pre revolutionary to the fifth republic illustrate with line drawing of planned designs for colossal buildings and utopian monuments alongside plans of sewers and saltworks
so dry and dull found myself daydreaming and created three new poems

wonder book of wonderful things that are wonderful and I wonder about them

read bbc wonders of the universe by professor brian cox and andrew cohen the born professor writing an easy guide easy on the eye photos from the TV series fill the text almost the Cosmos of our age but lacks sagan's skills ful of glossy shiny gas hubble photos and words that never go beyond the theories four stars for effort

the world history of animation stephen cavalier lavish volume desite its short length at 416 pages illustrated with stills and reads like a very good website excellent value for the price detailing animation from 1899 to 2010 a book of memories great on mr magoo, bugs, porky and woody but also having room gfor len lye the canadian film board zagreb films and the whole range of techniques from anime to motion capture

greatest show on earth richard dawkins or rather as styled RICHARD DAWKINS greatest show on earth the evidence for evolution the triumph of the evolved ego dawkins goes back to darwinian diatribe and the origins of evolutuion with of course asides on evolution versus creationism the issue with this is that no matter what evolution is a curriculum subject based on remembering lists of clades and phylla and unlike creationism has no place for basic myth and emotions of story telling and with evolution depend on its own scholar language and complicated paths of descent lacks the hold over public popular imagination
dawkins is of famed an athest but fails to go beyond church atendance in the church of england as evidence and as anyone should know the church of england and religion are not the same thing

wireless by charles stross themes from 1950s sci fi and well told the first story missile gap about aliens moving the earth and its 1962 cold war standoffs to a huge disc wolrd where the soviets and US carry on the cold war or the colder war where stross combines cold war missile wars and HP lovecraft aliens as soviet allies two of the best

why are you waiting here ghost?

read ben kane the road to rome book three of the forgotten legion chronicle well this road leads no where feeble,lacking in a end story i had a feeling this was rushed before kane moved onto a new trilogy his hannibal series the first chapter of which shares this book
like tarquinus the haruspex i had the feeling i coud see what was coming next as the third book searched for a way out in a rome where kanes portrait of caesar never got beyond "the infamy infamy they all have it in for me" stage- only carry on cleo did it better lot of repetition and poor plotting so by the end i did not care what happened to the main characters as not to give too much away our hero decided to go east again but this story went west long before!!
a trilogy that started well with the forgotten legion but never really took off not enough story for two book let alone three

The New Secret Language of Symbols: An Illustrated Key to Unlocking Their Deep and Hidden Meanings by david fontana
a website of a book with brief text and varied illustrations ranging from meaning of trees,fruits and gardens, alchemy to rocks and metals, dragons to buddhism a useful resource

Shadows in the Steam: The Haunted Railways of Britain by david brandon ghosts on britiah lines are as expected often late, dirty and overcrowded and the sightings are either single or returning
a mixed bag of which only some railway connected aside form station spirits still dong their jobs years later a small bok filled with chapters ghosts in railway fiction and on TV and nearby ghosts from other books that had a railway station nearby

Up from Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution by ken wilber i had read this as an undergrad this is a new edition but seemed dated now only of interest to someone who still believes in the great chain of being theory full of quotes from ancient sources such as plotinus, gebser and casirer
any book that relies on its comments mythology from joseph campbell must be good for a laugh

bone age computer

looking back on how i used to do maths at school with the log tables and the slide rules which were then replaced about 1980 by chunky calculators with cylon redeye displays thinking of a computer i used in the 1990s the napier bones
napier created a portable calculating machine a line of ten bone rods numbered 0-9 and which you slide together to perform rapid (for the early 17th century ) calculations
for example above 5 X 684 work out out by hand using a quill pen by candlelight or just read off 3420 burn me for a witch! that's magic

the genaille rods did not arive until 1891 and i must admit do not have the fun of playing with my napiers bones which as of course as Genaille and co inspiration edouard lucas said eliminate the complicated need to add on and carry numbers in the single row and with these you follow the triangles starting from the right ie as above 907 X 5 = 4535
however genaille rod is now seen as a mathematical novelty and both work with single digit calculation only
you just buy more and more rods to calculate the bigger numbers