Links for 2010-07-20

"On its third swing past Mercury, NASA's Mercury Messenger spacecraft discovered an unexpectedly young lava plain, rapid rufflings of the planet's weak magnetic field and an unanticipated dance of elements in the thin atmosphere.
"I think the biggest surprise for the community is that the planet is turning out to be much more dynamic than people appreciated," said Sean C. Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington who is the principal investigator for the Messenger mission. "

"Probably the most important institution of the modern Occult is in the halls of the common law."

"When I ask people to describe their writing process, what often surfaces is the idea that writing is what happens AFTER they have read everything there is to read, clearly and thoroughly worked out an idea in their heads, and have large blocks of time to empty the fully-developed idea onto the page (or into the computer). In other words, "writing" is simply the physical act a scholar engages in after she's gotten everything figured out internally. Hand-in-hand with this exclusively mechanical understanding of writing is the sense that particular emotional states are a prerequisite for writing. In other words, people frequently tell me they need to FEEL _________ (inspired, excited, energized, confident, clear, etc.) before they can sit down and write. As you can imagine, people who need to feel perfectly inspired and have a fully formed article in their head before sitting down at their desk rarely write."

"As Launchpad continued apace this last week, every day brought new, hilarious and terrifying information about our universe. But sometimes, in the ocean of information, there was an anecdote so beautiful and/or grisly that you just felt the need to share, you know?"