Egg-drop challenges are popular science-engagement activities, but they often foster a misconception about the most impact-resistant part of an egg.
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Science in action
Poem of the day
The Ebb and Flow
by Edward Taylor (c. 1642-1729)
When first thou on me, Lord, wrought’st thy sweet print,
My heart was made thy tinder box.
My ’ffections were thy tinder in’t:
Where fell thy sparks by drops.
Those holy sparks of heavenly fire that came
Did ever catch and often out would flame.
But now my heart is made thy censer trim,
Full of thy golden altar’s fire,
To offer up sweet incense in
Unto thyself entire:
I find my tinder scarce thy sparks can feel
That drop out from thy holy flint and steel.
Hence doubts out bud for fear thy fire in me
’S a mocking Ignis Fatuus;
Or lest thine altars fire out be,
It’s hid in ashes thus.
Yet when the bellows of thy spirit blow
Away mine ashes, then thy fire doth glow.
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Game of the week
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C-A-N Y-O-U S-P-E-L-L H-Y-PO-C-R-I-S-Y?
By Edward Chermerinsky in the ABA Journal concerning the current’s regime’s attempt to get the Supreme Court to curtail nationwide injunctions: “The context of this case is a challenge to a controversial executive order by a conservative president. But conservative state governments and organizations repeatedly sought nationwide injunctions during the Biden and Obama presidencies.
“The context is important in another sense as well. At the same time Trump is repeatedly asserting broad executive powers, he is attempting to limit the ability of courts to check them by having the Supreme Court end nationwide injunctions.”
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Poem of the day
Day and Night
by Edith Nesbit (1858-1924)
All day the glorious Sun caressed
Wide meadows and white winding way,
And on the Earth’s soft heaving breast
Heart-warm his royal kisses lay.
She looked up in his face and smiled,
With mists of love her face seemed dim;
The golden Emperor was beguiled,
To dream she would be true to him.
Yet was there, ‘neath his golden shower,
No end of love for him astir;
She waited, dreaming, for the hour
When Night, her love, should come to her;
When ‘neath Night’s mantle she should creep
And feel his arms about her cling,
When the soft tears true lovers weep
Should make amends for everything.
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An example of karma (and schadenfreude)
Social media posts about PublicSquare have gone viral as Trump critics use it to find companies not to support ? the opposite of what the site was set up for.
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Poem of the day
The Haschish
by John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
Of all that Orient lands can vaunt
Of marvels with our own competing,
The strangest is the Haschish plant,
And what will follow on its eating.
What pictures to the taster rise,
Of Dervish or of Almeh dances!
Of Eblis, or of Paradise,
Set all aglow with Houri glances!
The poppy visions of Cathay,
The heavy beer-trance of the Suabian;
The wizard lights and demon play
Of nights Walpurgis and Arabian!
The Mollah and the Christian dog
Change place in mad metempsychosis;
The Muezzin climbs the synagogue,
The Rabbi shakes his beard at Moses!
The Arab by his desert well
Sits choosing from some Caliph’s daughters,
And hears his single camel’s bell
Sound welcome to his regal quarters.
The Koran’s reader makes complaint
Of Shitan dancing on and off it;
The robber offers alms, the saint
Drinks Tokay and blasphemes the Prophet.
Such scenes that Eastern plant awakes;
But we have one ordained to beat it,
The Haschish of the West, which makes
Or fools or knaves of all who eat it.
The preacher eats, and straight appears
His Bible in a new translation;
Its angels negro overseers,
And Heaven itself a snug plantation!
The man of peace, about whose dreams
The sweet millennial angels cluster,
Tastes the mad weed, and plots and schemes,
A raving Cuban filibuster!
The noisiest Democrat, with ease,
It turns to Slavery’s parish beadle;
The shrewdest statesman eats and sees
Due southward point the polar needle.
The Judge partakes, and sits erelong
Upon his bench a railing blackguard;
Decides off-hand that right is wrong,
And reads the ten commandments backward.
O potent plant! so rare a taste
Has never Turk or Gentoo gotten;
The hempen Haschish of the East
Is powerless to our Western Cotton!
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The lawlessness is a feature, not a bug
“Let us gently suggest that these facts don’t matter to Vance in the least. This is not meant glibly: For Vance, that is the case as a matter of principle. He is nakedly asserting the power to decree Abrego Garcia a criminal subject to expulsion, even if—or especially if—the facts show the contrary. The administration is doing this on many fronts, from this case to the efforts to remove foreign students to the deportations of Venezuelans to a Salvadoran prison.”
The Trump administration just admitted that a Salvadoran man was deported in error. Shockingly, Trump and JD Vance don?t seem to want to fix their mistake?and the implications of that are dark.
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The chaos is a feature, not a bug
The chaos at the Internal Revenue Service began almost immediately after the first envoy from the Department of Government Efficiency arrived last month at the agency’s Washington, DC, headquarters.
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Poem of the day
Vorfrühling
by Paul Heyse(1830-1914)
Stürme brausten über Nacht,
und die kahlen Wipfel troffen.
Frühe war mein Herz erwacht,
schüchtern zwischen Furcht und Hoffen.
Horch, ein trautgeschwätz’ger Ton
dringt zu mir vom Wald hernieder.
Nisten in den Zweigen schon
die geliebten Amseln wieder?
Dort am Weg der weiße Streif –
Zweifelnd frag’ ich mein Gemüte:
Ist’s ein später Winterreif
oder erste Schlehenblüte?
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