( via / via )

From the 35mm rushes.

"The white chrysanthemum
is disguised by the first frost.
If I wanted to pick one
I could find it only by chance."

–Oshikochi no Mitsune (tr Rexroth?)

   White chrysanthemums,
lost amidst the handiwork
   of this first snowfall:
if i tried to pick one i
could find it only by chance.

   le ninbistcima
lei blabi mi mipri .i
   ganai mi lebna
djica gi go facki fi
pale xrula gi funca

(The new-ice-weather hides the white ones from me. If i wanted to take, i only by luck could find one of the flowers.)

A history of the Jargon File.

"It was a vital and personal fact to him, though only a historical truth to me, that this hereditary war of the Big-endians and Little-endians had been conducted by our own immediate forefathers." --Such is Life. This kind of surprised me. But--"The adjective endian has its origin in the writings of 18th century Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift. In the 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels, he portrays the conflict between sects of Lilliputians divided into those breaking the shell of a boiled egg from the big end or from the little end" (Wikipedia "Endianness"). Which was borrowed for computerese... I think it does sort of make sense for the year-month-day (Big-endian: China, Japan, & the ISO) & day-month-year (Little-endian: most other countries) ways of writing dates, with the USA (Middle-endian) being the odd man out.

The Strange World of Gavin Bryars. (via feuilleton)