Visiopoetics

CREEPY

+ CATTY

———-

SPOOKY

The Daily Progress runs a modified version of my letter to the editor on the Virginia gun show loophole.

The under-explored problem here is the conflict between privacy and security.  If all freelance sellers had direct, easy access to everyone else’s criminal and medical records, might there be concerns regarding blackmail, identity theft, and the like?   Probably - which is why you want a public servant running NICS checks. It limits sensitive information access to a smaller number of individuals whom someone else has taken the time to vet.

But if all gun shows of a certain size had a federal agent at a booth running free NICS checks (a sadly redundant phrase), would it take something more to get sellers and buyers to use the booth?  That’s a social experiment we haven’t tried yet, so we can’t answer that question.  It certainly seems like it might be quicker and more cost-efficient to try this simplest solution, first.

(”Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” is oils on 12″ x 16″ canvas board.)

Firstly, this illustration goes with local writer Ariel Gomez’s fantastic short story, “El Monstruo del Rey y su Astuto Escriba.”

Secondly:  look, oh look, chocolate is officially good for the heart!

Artwork is oils on 16″ x 20″ stretched canvas.

Happy Belated Birthday Martin Gardner — recreational mathematician and benevolent Platonist extraordinare!

(i)

GARDNER

+ PLANTS

————-

ETERNAL

(ii)

GARDNER

+ PLANTS

+ SEEDS

————-

ETERNAL

(iii)
GARDNER

+ TENDS

+ ROSES

+ GOLDEN

+ ANGLES

—————

ETERNAL

As I report for Demockeracy this week, President Obama won the Nobel Piece Prize.  Mmm, candy-coated progress.

Artwork is oils on 16″ x 20″ stretched canvas.  Real live wilds coming soon to a theatre/2009-vintage doctor’s office New Yorker near you.

Autumn:  time for a chicken in every pot.

BREW

+ NEEDS

+ RANGING

————–

BIRDIES

The Christian Science Monitor features “Driving Into Sunset,” which I wrote after nearly skewering a gorgeous monarch butterfly with an errant windshield wiper while driving to and fro Northern Virginia to conduct an interview for my polygraph documentary.

From the fabulous mini-Annals of Improbable Research (”mini-AIR”), October edition:

The judges have chosen a winner in the Severed Gecko’s Tail
Limerick Competition, which asked for a limerick to honor the
study “Flip, Flop and Fly: Modulated Motor Control and Highly
Variable Movement Patterns of Autotomized Gecko Tails,” Timothy
E. Higham and Anthony P. Russell, Biology Letters, 2009.

The winner is INVESTIGATOR DON DAVIS, who wrote:

The lizard’s tail drops to the ground
Then continues to flop all around
For thirty-odd minutes.
It may even spin. Its
Autotomized antics abound.

TONY RUSSELL, co-author of the gecko tail study, sent in this
limerick:

A pert female gecko called Fay
Encountered a hungry male Jay
Who pecked at her head.
Her tail flew off instead.
He was duped by gymnastic display!

Here’s the offering from LIMERICK LAUREATE MARTIN EIGER:

Higham and Russell expound
On autotomy. Here’s what they found:
The tail of a lizard,
When severed or scissored,
Goes flipping and flopping around.

———————————————————-
2009-10-10 Triple Zech Competition

A study written by Zech, Zech and Zech is the subject of this
month’s limerick competition. To enter, compose an original
limerick that illuminates the nature of this report (suggested by
Tom Gill):

“Late Quaternary Environmental Changes in Misiones, Subtropical NE
Argentina, Deduced From Multi-Proxy Geochemical Analyses in a
Palaeosol-Sediment Sequence,” Michael Zech, Roland Zech, Héctor Morrás,
Lucas Moretti, Bruno Glaser and Wolfgang Zech, Quaternary
International, vol. 196, nos. 1-2, March 2009, pp. 121-36.

DOI:10.1016/j.quaint.2008.06.006.

NOTE: Also see the unrelated book Triple Zeck, by Rex Stout
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, possibly Zechular, high-res PDF
issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. Send entries (one
entry per entrant) to:

TRIPLE ZECH LIMERICK COMPETITION
c/o

marca AT chem2.harvard.edu

For Barry the Samurai Squirrel, proud new owner of my beet and radish seeds.

RUNNING

+ SUNSHINE

+ TREASURE

—————-

REIGNING