Knocking At The Gate

I didn’t know where I was going until I found my brother Frank under a big spiraea bush. Frank was twelve then, and I wasn’t surprised to find him under there. He spent a lot of time under there on hot days. Just like a dog, he’d make a hollow in the cool earth all around the roots. And you never could tell what Frank would have under the bush with him. One time he had a dirty book. Another time he had a bottle of cooking sherry. On the day they dropped the bomb Frank had a tablespoon and a Mason jar. What he was doing was spooning different kinds of bugs into the jar and making them fight. The bug fight was so interesting that I stopped crying right away — forgot all about the old man. I can’t remember what all Frank had fighting in the jar that day, but I can remember other bug fights we staged later on: one stag beetle against a hundred red ants, one centipede against three spiders, red ants against black ants. They won’t fight unless you keep shaking the jar. And that’s wha...

At Lunchtable , Shanique Yates interviews Sean Patrick Thomas, who recently played Monteith in the recent Joel Cohen version of The Tragedy of Macbeth .

In an effort to get people to look into each other’s eyes more, and also to appease the mutes, the government has decided to allot each person exactly one hundred    and sixty-seven words, per day. Full poem here. Jeffrey McDaniel. (1998). “The Quiet World” from The Forgiveness Parade . San Francisco: Manic D Press.

Space Shuttle Challenger (OV-099) Challenger lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39B (LC-39B) at 11:38 on the chilly morning of Tuesday, January 28, 1986. The mission ended in tragedy moments later with loss of all hands. Commander Francis R. "Dick" Scobee Pilot Michael J. Smith Mission Specialist 1 Ellison S. Onizuka Mission Specialist 2 Judith A. Resnik Mission Specialist 3 Ronald E. McNair Payload Specialist 1 Gregory B. Jarvis Payload Specialist 2 S. Christa McAuliffe

Based on award nomination data through 2019, USDISH calculated the most-nominated pictures of all time. There are some surprises in here. Full methodology and discussion at USDISH .

  Although conjectures have been formulated about the proportions of primes in higher-degree polynomials, they remain unproven, and it is unknown whether there exists a quadratic polynomial that (for integer arrguments) is prime infinitely often. Image source Text Source

In 1843 Magazine , Catherine Nixey considers why we ever had offices in the first place and how they got to be the way they are.