I have been unconscionably sappy these past two weeks and more; it started with a vague, private semi-resolution, in the early days of February, to post either something good or something giving every day until Valentine's Day - and whilst I didn't quite succeed (I am an inveterate crank), the spirit of it has stayed with me. Admittedly, these-such heights are usually, as in this case, the flip-side of emotional downers, but there's a certain sublime sweetness to these moments of optimism such that I'm loath to question them. I keep wanting to compose a post - outside my head, and in words that other human beings will actually understand - about interconnectedness, and what we all owe each other as members of a species that has concepts like 'beauty' and 'poetry' and 'love', but I tend to find that Alan Moore has usually done it for me. And that's part of it, too:

The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.
- The History Boys

See what I did there? (I haven't seen The History Boys, film or play; perhaps I should. History, too, holds my heart and tells me these things.)

A thought for the day: scientists, like Patrick O'Brian's esteemed Dr. Maturin, used to be known as 'philosophers'. Here is the double helix of DNA, the secret code of life itself; here is Hermes' caduceus and the rod of the healer-god Asklepios, set in stone before the birth of Christ, and symbols of alchemy and the medical profession since the middle of the last millennium. The Milky Way is twice the size we thought it was, and Oxford is taking three years to study whether belief in the divine is a basic part of man's make-up. I wonder why the two need be such different things.