Saturday, December 16, 2006

The Science! of Spy vs. Spy
The plot thickens: spylink. Also, here's a nice article about the science! behind the "Spy vs. Spy" saga: polonium-210. There's quite the opportunity to scoff at Russian protestations of innocence if you read all the way to the bottom. Polonium may have been named by Madame Curie after her native Poland, but what the name brings to my mind is Polonius, the father of Ophelia and Laertes in Hamlet. The death of a man who worked for the KGB and thus, it could be argued, died the death he deserved; a pioneering, diminutive Polish-French scientist who defied the archaic social mores of her era; and the immortal works of William Shakespeare, one with which I am particularly familiar due to an excessive concentration on Tom Stoppard's not clever enough Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in 12th grade AP English. The world is a many splendored place if only one takes the time to forge awkward connections between unrelated topics and then ascribes indefensible significant to those false bonds.

Science!

This is how my mind works when it is nearly six o'clock in the morning and sleep has eluded me all night.

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