If a Fly Can't Fly Can We Still Call it a Fly?

Here you see the world's only known fly that can't actually fly. It's called a hairy fly, and it lives only on one rock in Kenya and there are rumors that the colony was started by a guy from West Texas named Jim who managed to get on  a certain Wickidity practitioner's bad side. But that's not the real point. The main thing we're interested in is whether or not it can properly be called a fly, since the fly is a creature whose name implies an activity that this critter isn't actually capable of. More at Livescience.

I Measure Every Grief I Meet-- Emily Dickinson for Her Birthday, 12-10

I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, eyes –
I wonder if It weighs like Mine –
Or has an Easier size.

I wonder if They bore it long –
Or did it just begin –
I could not tell the Date of Mine –
It feels so old a pain –

I wonder if it hurts to live –
And if They have to try –
And whether – could They choose between –
It would not be – to die –

I note that Some – gone patient long –
At length, renew their smile –
An imitation of a Light
That has so little Oil –

I wonder if when Years have piled –
Some Thousands – on the Harm –
That hurt them early – such a lapse
Could give them any Balm –

Or would they go on aching still
Through Centuries of Nerve –
Enlightened to a larger Pain –
In Contrast with the Love –

The Grieved – are many – I am told –
There is the various Cause –
Death – is but one – and comes but once –
And only nails the eyes –

There's Grief of Want – and grief of Cold –
A sort they call "Despair" –
There's Banishment from native Eyes –
In sight of Native Air –

And though I may not guess the kind –
Correctly – yet to me
A piercing Comfort it affords
In passing Calvary –

To note the fashions – of the Cross –
And how they're mostly worn –
Still fascinated to presume
That Some – are like my own

City of Christmas Ghosts- Goldblade and Poly Styrene

The Snowman

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens

Happy Birthday Tom Waits

Belated, as his birthday was yesterday. We ran into Tom Waits twice in one day in Ashland a couple of years back. Now, if only we could get him over to West Texas.

Maybe Texas Should Try Getting David Lynch to do Anti-Littering Spots

Texas has a litter problem. One of the biggest parts of it is that a majority of Texans are  unaware that the "Don't Mess With Texas" thing is actually an anti-littering campaign. It's just too ambiguous for Texans. Now, if Texas were to take the New York approach... Just a suggestion.

NASA Announces Extra-Terrestrial Life?

At 2pm Eastern time NASA is holding a press conference on astrobiology. Will we see our alien brothers finally revealed. Tune in at NASA.gov.