Wait, it's too soon ...

says John Hawks, to order those Neanderthal genetic test kits. Dang. He has cogent reasons why.

Robin Blaser: Lunch Poems

Pierre Joris has a fine video up over at Nomadics featuring Robin Blaser's last reading. Blaser returned in 2008 to Berkeley and his old Bay Area stomping ground (he probably did a good bit of stomping, back in the day) to read in Robert Hass' Lunch Poems series. This time out, Robin reads many of his later short poems. Grab a sandwich and listen in.

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Update: Here's an earlier post about Robin.

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And here's the YouTube video, somewhat downsized:



Catch the larger version over at Nomadics.

Photos from the Olson conference

Ben Friedlander has posted an album of photos from the Vancouver Olson Centenary Conference over at Flickr. The above pictures Ralph Maud, one of Olson's most important editors and biographers, a scholar of great insight.

Seeing the whole sky

Europe's Plank telescope has been busy for the last year looking for cosmic microwave background radiation. As a step in that process, it's completed an image of the whole sky as seen from Earth. The white band through the horizontal center of the image is our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent for BBC News, has more.

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Update: Steve Andrew has a good explanation of the current state of the theory of the universe's origins that clarifies what the Plank telescope is all about.