Smiley

A Penny for My Thoughts?
by Maureen Dowd

“If an online newspaper in Pasadena, Calif., can outsource coverage to India, I wonder how long can it be before some guy in Bangalore is writing my column….”

— New York Times teaser for a column of Sunday, November 30, 2008 (St. Andrew’s Day)

DH News Service, Bangalore, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2008:

“Monday evening had a pleasant surprise in store for sky-watchers as the night sky sported a smiley, in the form of a crescent moon flanked by two bright planets Jupiter and Venus…”

Meanwhile, at National Geographic:

Jupiter, Venus, Moon Make “Frown”

A Midrash for Maureen:

“The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth,
    from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown,
    the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes
    and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but
    apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some
    bringer of that joy….”

Related material on Pasadena:
Happy birthday, R. P. Dilworth.

Related material on India:
The Shining of May 29 (2002) and
A Well-Known Theorem (2005).

“Sometimes a line of mathematical research extending through decades can be thought of as one long conversation in which many mathematicians take part. This is fortunately true at present….”

— Barry Mazur in 2000 as quoted today at the University of St. Andrews