In Ancient Times, Karasu, The Crows And Ravens Of Japan, Were Not Maligned As Garbage-strewing Pests,

The Illustrated Book of Manners: A Manual of Good Behavior and Polite Accomplishments, 1866

“‎You have to be the kind of person who can make the best out of a Tuesday. You know those people who live for the weekends? They’re wishing their life away. You have to find something worth living for or else you’ll look back and realize you’ve wasted your life away.”

— Drew Marvin, English Teacher (via thatkindofwoman)

for yesterday’s @guardian review

BILL WATTERSON - “A Cartoonist’s Advice”

Some snow scenes in Claude Monet’s paintings.

And these guys are still around too, swooshing through the yard and landing gently as they do wherever there is a promise of food. I see more couple photos on the booth now, and the males are seemingly starting to squabble. First one shows the beautiful subtle back colours of the female.

the origin of Carol of the Bells, ukrainian folk song Shchedrik

Muscovite | KAl2(AlSi3O10)(OH)2

The earliest names attributable to muscovite include Muscovy Glass, Cat Silver, and Lapis Specularis (stone mirror); these names appearing in texts in the seventeenth century and before. The stand-alone name 'Muscovite' was used as early as 1794 by Johann Gottfried Schmeisser in his System of Mineralogy and is derived from the term "Muscovy glass," which was in common use by that time. Muscovy Province in Russia yielded sheet mica for a variety of uses. Muscovite and sometimes similar species were earlier called mica (Phillips and Kersey, 1706), glimmer (Phillips and Kersey, 1706), and isinglass (1747 according to OED) but all of these terms are still in use to some degree.

Ben Bova published Jupiter in 2000. The storyline involves huge aliens swimming in its depths, that he termed leviathans, with a follow-up book titled Leviathans of Jupiter. If you'd like to read what a scifi master thinks of our solar system, try his Grand Tour series.

It wrinkles my brain that Jupiter’s moon Europa has oceans that are sixty miles deep, while Earth’s oceans only reach seven miles deep at most. I’m willing to bet good money that there’s life in Europa’s oceans. Like five bucks. You hear me, NASA? I bet you five bucks that there’s life on Europa… Now that there’s money and reputation on the line, I bet they send a mission there real quick.