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August is showing its cold side. It made me think of this poem:

I could compare you to a summer day -
No! Summer's beautiful, but full of doubt,
He smiles sweetly, but he'll never stay,
And Summer's cash is always running out.
He laughs with me, then he turns and burns,
He's cold for weeks, then he'll change his mind -

Fair? No, unfair! Unaware of my concerns,
Gorgeous? Sure, but stupid, random, blind.
Dear, when you say you'll stay, you always will,
And when you change, you always give a reason,
You're too fierce for time or death to kill!
How could I compare you to a season?

   You will shine, as constant as a star,
   When this poem is forgotten; most poems are.

I wonder what Romana Machado is up to these days... most of her online references are pretty old. She was profiled in an early Wired as a writer of encryption and Extropian who plans to live forever, or at least get frozen 'til she can be thawed out.

Great poem though.

Oddly enough I can search the second line up on Yahoo, but not Google. Wonder if it's slipping...

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Diagram of the Moment

--Diagram linked from a Slate piece on a "physics" explanation of why poor nations stay poor. The core ideas are that A. rich countries tend to have a nice diversity of industries and B. it's easier to switch from related industry to another, so if most of your wealth is in outlier industries such as oil, it's going to be harder to diversify.

Huh. I would have guessed "textiles" would be closer to "garments" than "metallurgy".