Visiopoetics

Ars longa,
vita brevis,
occasio praeceps,
experimentum periculosum,
iudicium difficile.
- Hippocrates

Breaking news, and the sound track for the moment.

Are you studying for a comprehensive exam in political theory? Have you been wishing and praying for a haiku summarizing ancient/medieval, modern, and contemporary political theory in three easy lines?

Pray no longer (unless you’re a medieval scholar)!

Obey authority. Question authority. What was the question?

“I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this [purchase of a scientificky publication] can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offense against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? and are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched?” - Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Dufief, 1814.

“Still, the regime of simple equality might work… But I suspect that difficulties will recur, and that at many points in time the only remedy for private privilege will be statism, and the only escape from statism will be private privilege. We will mobilize power to check monopoly, then look for some way of checking the power we have mobilized.” - Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice

“a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen, philosophers and divines” - Emerson, “Self-Reliance.”

Also, this is probably not a monarch.

Wikipedia terms Mentha Piperita, a.k.a. M. balsamea Willd, invasive. I term it delicious. Pictured: possessed peppermint, taking over the thyme, basil, parsley, and marigolds.

Intrepid readers will recall the monster cilantro of yestermonth in the heyday of its youth. This is what happens when you live fast and furious, kids: you get husky (but in the corn way, not the Midwestern way), and grow little silver pearls. Stay in school.

This song is about my great great (if not good) Uncle Dan. The Italian crowd is laughing at the beginning because the Boss mispronounces city (”chee-TAH”) as summon (”CHEE-tah”) when he tries to say it’s good to be in their very beautiful city. Like “Hey guys, it’s good to be in your very beautiful lawsuit” — but not that smooth.

Also: reports indicate Tucker “died with a toothache in his heel.” Rattlesnake? Dermoid cyst? Damn genes.

(Artwork is oils on 16″ x 20″.)

From the marvelous mini-Annals of Improbable Research (”mini-AIR”), June edition:

2010-06-06 Dirty Word Usage Poet

The judges have chosen a winner in the Dirty Word Usage Limerick
Competition, which asked for a limerick to honor the study “Sex
Roles and Dirty Word Usage: A Review of the Literature and a
Reply to Haas,” Timothy B. Jay, Psychological Bulletin, vol. 88,
no. 3, November 1980, pp. 614-21. http://bit.ly/9BqtWU

The winner is INVESTIGATOR John Jermey who wrote:

I wrote a love letter to Brenda;
I phrased it in accents so tender.
But now I’m in jail
And they’ve just refused bail,
‘Cos profanity varies with gender.

Here’s the offering from LIMERICK LAUREATE MARTIN EIGER:

Which sex uses dirty words more?
Women? Men? Both the same? What’s the score?
She says same. He says men.
Who is right? Then again,
Were it men, he’d have called her a whore.

———————————————————-
2010-06-07 Active Nonsense-Mediated Competition

Now-old new insights into nonsense inspire this month’s limerick
competition. To enter, compose an original limerick that
illuminates the nature of this report:

“New Insights into the Formation of Active Nonsense-Mediated Decay
Complexes,” Guramrit Singh and Jens Lykke-Andersen, Trends in
Biochemical Sciences, vol. 28, no. 9, September 2003, pp. 464-6.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0968-0004(03)00176-2 The authors are at
the University of Colorado at Boulder.

RULES: Please make sure that: (1) your rhymes actually do; and
(2) your poem is in classic, trills-off-the-tongue limerick form.

PRIZE: The winning poet will receive (if we manage to send it to the
correct address) a free, perhaps high-res PDF issue of the
Annals of Improbable Research. Send entries (one entry per entrant) to:

ACTIVE NONSENSE-MEDIATED LIMERICK COMPETITION
c/o marca AT improbable.com