Poem of the Day XIV

The Invention of Fractions
by Jessica Goodfellow from A Pilgrim's Guide to Chaos in the Heartland

God himself made the whole numbers: everything else
is the work of man.

—Leopold Kronnecker

God created the whole numbers:
the first born, the seventh seal,
Ten Commandments etched in stone,
the Twelve Tribes of Israel —
Ten we've already lost —
forty days and forty nights,
Saul's ten thousand and David's ten thousand.
'Be of one heart and one mind' —
the whole numbers, the counting numbers.

It took humankind to need less than this;
to invent fractions, percentages, decimals.
Only humankind could need the concepts
of splintering and dividing,
of things lost or broken,
of settling for the part instead of the whole.

Only humankind could find the whole numbers,
infinite as they are, to be wanting;
though given a limitless supply,
we still had no way
to measure what we keep
in our many-chambered hearts.

© Concrete Wolf Chapbook Series

News in Review III

A Solution for the Climate Crises

Paul Hellyer, a former Canadian defense minister, has a unique solution to the climate crises:

"I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation ... that could be a way to save our planet."

Apparently Hellyer believes that governents around the world have large amounts of knowledge culled from researching UFO crashes and wants us to put it into practice.

I suppose the government cover up of intelligent life is the real inconvenient truth...

The Ups and Downs of Life on the Road

The article linked to above has a first sentence that rivals "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" and "Call me Ishamel". It is most certainly the greatest first sentence ever recorded in a news article:

"A jazz musician was injured Friday after jumping from a burning motor home driven by a one-time roller skating stripper from Lodi."

I get goose bumps everytime I read it.

(hat tip: Tom)