The Alphabet as Poem

The  Javanese alphabet itself forms a poem, and a perfect pangram, of which the line-by-line translation is as follows^[2]:

Hana caraka There (were) two messengers
data sawala (They) had animosity (among each other)
padha jayanya (They were) equally powerful (in fight)
maga bathanga Here are the corpses.

in detail:

hana / ana = there were/was
caraka = messenger (actually, 'one who is loyal to and trusted by someone')
data = have/has
sawala = difference (regarding a matter)
padha = same, equal
jayanya = 'their power', 'jaya' could mean 'glory' as well
maga = 'here'
bathanga = corpses

• 

  Hana caraka (There were two messengers)
• 

  Data sawala (They had animosity)
• 

  Padha jayanya (They were equally powerful in fight)
• 

  Maga bathanga (Here are the corpses)

This story was told in the myth of Aji Saka, a Javanese mythology that tell the story about the came of civilization to Java, brought by legendary first king named Java Aji Saka, and the mythical story of Javanese script origin.^[4]

Hart Crane - The Broken Tower - James Franco Trailer

Marching Through a Novel: John Updike

            MARCHING THROUGH A NOVEL

                Each morning my characters
                   greet me with misty faces
                willing, though chilled, to muster
                   for another day's progress
                through the dazzling quicksand,
                   the marsh of blank paper.
                With instant obedience
                   they change clothes and mannerisms,
                drop a speech impediment,
                   develop a motive backwards
                to suit the deed that's done.  
                   They extend skeletal arms
                for the handcuffs of contrivance,
                    slog through docilely
                maneuvers of coincidence,
                    look toward me hopefully,
                 their general and quartermaster,
                    for a clearer face, a bigger heart.
                I do what I can for them,
                    but it is not enough.
                FORWARD is my order,
                    though their bandages unravel
                and some have no backbones
                    and some turn traitor
                like heads with two faces
                    and some fall forgotten
                in the trenchwork of loose threads,
                    poor puffs of cartoon flak.
                FORWARD. Believe me, I love them
                    though I march them to finish them off.

The Man with the Miniature Orchestra' by Dave Algonquin.

Perpetual Ocean

This visualization shows ocean surface currents around the world during the period from June 2005 through December 2007. The visualization does not include a narration or annotations; the goal was to use ocean flow data to create a simple, visceral experience.

This visualization was produced using NASA/JPL's computational model called Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, Phase II or ECCO2.. ECCO2 is high resolution model of the global ocean and sea-ice. ECCO2 attempts to model the oceans and sea ice to increasingly accurate resolutions that begin to resolve ocean eddies and other narrow-current systems which transport heat and carbon in the oceans.The ECCO2 model simulates ocean flows at all depths, but only surface flows are used in this visualization. The dark patterns under the ocean represent the undersea bathymetry. Topographic land exaggeration is 20x and bathymetric exaggeration is 40x.

credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

source: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?3827

No mention of Bery Bainbridge's wayward and original perspective on the subject but Mendelsohn's particularly good on the cinema's treatment of the incident

 

Unsinkable

Why we can’t let go of the Titanic.

by Daniel Mendelsohn April 16, 2012 

In the early nineteen-seventies, my Uncle Walter, who wasn’t a “real” uncle but had a better intuition about my hobbies and interests than some of my blood relatives did, gave me a thrilling gift: membership in the Titanic Enthusiasts of America. I was only twelve, but already hooked. The magnificence, the pathos, the enthralling chivalry—Benjamin Guggenheim putting on white tie and tails so he could drown “like a gentleman”—and the shaming cowardice, the awful mistakes, the tantalizing “what if”s: for me, there was no better story. I had read whatever books the local public library offered, and had spent some of my allowance on a copy of Walter Lord’s indispensable “A Night to Remember.” To this incipient collection Uncle Walter added the precious gift of a biography of the man who designed the ship. It has always been among the first books I pack when I move. A little later, when I was in my midteens, I toiled for a while on a novel about two fourteen-year-old boys, one a Long Islander like myself, the other a British aristocrat, who meet during the doomed maiden voyage. Needless to say, their budding friendship was sundered by the disaster.

I wasn’t the only one who was obsessed—or writing. It may not be true that “the three most written-about subjects of all time are Jesus, the Civil War, and the Titanic,” as one historian has put it, but it’s not much of an exaggeration. Since the early morning of April 15, 1912, when the great liner went to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, taking with it five grand pianos, eight thousand dinner forks, an automobile, a fifty-line telephone switchboard, twenty-nine boilers, a jewelled copy of “The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam,” and more than fifteen hundred lives, the writing hasn’t stopped. First, there were the headlines, which even today can produce an awful thrill. “ALL SAVED FROM TITANIC AFTER COLLISION,” the New York Evening Sun crowed less than twenty-four hours after the sinking. A day later, brute fact had replaced wishful conjecture: “TITANIC SINKS, 1500 DIE.” Then there were the early survivor narratives—a genre that has by now grown to include a book by the descendants of a Lebanese passenger whose trek to America had begun on a camel caravan. There were the poems. For a while, there was such a glut that the Times was moved to print a warning: “To write about the Titanic a poem worth printing requires that the author should have something more than paper, pencil, and a strong feeling that the disaster was a terrible one.” Since then, there have been histories, academic studies, polemics by enthusiasts, and novels, numbering in the hundreds. There’s even a “Titanic for Dummies.” This centennial month alone will see the publication of nearly three dozen titles.

The books are, so to speak, just the tip of the iceberg... (Read more)

Steve Hayes - Ball of Fire

Is there a better enthusiast than Steve Hayes? This is his most recent recommendation - Ball Of Fire - and every bit as good as he tells you it is

He's nearing 100 - recommendations of great and classic movies, that is - on his youtube page: he makes you want to watch them all.