I can barely remember yesterday.
January 28th, 2012
the solid, comfortable ugliness of the nineteenth century
George Orwell wrote a short essay on his favourite pub…
My favourite public-house, the Moon Under Water, is only two minutes from a bus stop, but it is on a side-street, and drunks and rowdies never seem to find their way there, even on Saturday nights.
Its clientele, though fairly large, consists mostly of “regulars” who occupy the same chair every evening and go there for conversation as much as for the beer.
If you are asked why you favour a particular public-house, it would seem natural to put the beer first, but the thing that most appeals to me about the Moon Under Water is what people call its “atmosphere.”
To begin with, its whole architecture and fittings are uncompromisingly Victorian. It has no glass-topped tables or other modern miseries, and, on the other hand, no sham roof-beams, ingle-nooks or plastic panels masquerading as oak. The grained woodwork, the ornamental mirrors behind the bar, the cast-iron fireplaces, the florid ceiling stained dark yellow by tobacco-smoke, the stuffed bull’s head over the mantelpiece —everything has the solid, comfortable ugliness of the nineteenth century.
Read further here. There’s an interesting note at the end.
January 18th, 2012
google brain visualized
Search by Image, Recursively, Transparent PNG, #1 from kingcosmonaut3000 on Vimeo.
Very neat. Via kottke:
This is mesmerizing: using Google Image Search and starting with a transparent image, this video cycles through each subsequent related image, over 2900 in all.
It gets more interesting the longer it goes on. It’s like watching a visualisation of the neural connections of a cyborg. Or something.
January 8th, 2012
the impracticality of infinite information
I discovered the pictured device — a note-taking machine invented by one Vincentius Placcius — via a nice opinion piece on the BBC website about how we have dealt with information overload up until today.
In 1689 a professor at the University of Hamburg with a passion for new technologies, unveiled a device for managing information overload – a purpose-built mahogany cabinet designed to hold and organise several thousand hand-written notes taken by an individual reader from the books they were reading.
Along the back of the cabinet were narrow vertical posts, each headed by a letter of the alphabet. Running the length of each post was a sequence of brass plates engraved with alphabetised headings designed to capture topics of particular interest to the reader, each heading furnished with a metal hook, to which slips of paper containing information extracted from the owner’s reading were to be attached, ready to be retrieved for re-use at a moment’s notice.
It is not clear whether this rather cumbersome piece of equipment caught on (though apparently the philosopher Leibniz owned one) but the impetus behind it is obvious.
Sounds like a glorious object, no matter how impractical… I want one.
The danger today is rather that we are reluctant to let go of any information garnered from however recondite a source. Every historian knows that no narrative will be intelligible to a reader if it includes all the detail the author amassed in the course of their research. A clear thread has to be teased from the mass of available evidence, to focus, direct and ultimately give meaning to what has been assembled for analysis. Daring to discard is as crucial as safe-guarding, for effective knowledge management and transmission today.
There is all too little danger of the knowledge currently accumulating in floods – multiply-owned, stored and captured – being lost. Rather, if we are going to make sense for posterity of today’s information-saturated present, one of the things we will have to learn to do is decide how to prune the evidence, and ultimately, what to forget.
Addendum: Here’s an interesting article about the Belgian intellectual of the early 20th century Paul Otlet, and his approach to the same problem. Thanks Arnaudt!
December 16th, 2011
read this then take a short break
Surprisingly interesting to learn how our eyes interact with computer screens…
The human focusing system responds very well to images that have well-defined edges with good contrast between the background and any letters and symbols. The eyes react very well to most printed material that consists of solid black letters on a white background. The eyes react very differently to electronically generated characters than to printed characters on a page. Characters displayed on a computer screen or video display terminal (VDT) are made up of many, many small dots or pixels. Pixels are the result of an electron beam striking the phospor-coated rear surface of the screen. Each pixel is brightest in the center, with the brightness decreasing toward the outer edges. When a light meter with a very small aperture is passed across a pixel, with the light amplitude being charted against the horizontal location, the pixel shows a bell-shaped curve (Gaussian), while the same light amplitude graph of a printed character forms an almost perfect square wave.
The eyes have a very hard time focusing on the pixel characters. They focus on the plane of the computer screen, but cannot sustain that focus. They focus on the screen and relax to a point behind the screen, called the Resting Point of Accommodation (RPA) or dark focus. The RPA is different for every individual, but for almost everyone, it is further away than the working distance to the computer. The working distance is the distance from the computer user’s eyes to the front of the screen. So, the eyes are constantly relaxing to the RPA, and then straining to refocus on the screen. It is similar to raising the arm in a position like when volunteering for something or voting by hand and pumping the fist open and closed 40,000 times. The raised arm would get tired, let alone the hand, which symbolizes the focusing that the eyes must do in an 8 hour day. The following diagram illustrates this:
More here.
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December 16th, 2011
love at first bite
Photo: David Paul/Mark Norman.
Neatorama has a round-up of the most bizarre mating mechanisms in the animal kingdom. That of the Anglerfish seems so impossibly beyond our reality that it’s spine-chilling and awe-inspiring at once…
Anglerfish, a deep sea fish named for the spiny appendage on its head that it uses as bait to “fish” its prey, has an unusual mating habit. As it spends its time in the bottom of the ocean, finding a mate is a problem – but the species solved this evolutionary challenge beautifully.
At first, scientists were perplexed because they’ve never caught a male anglerfish. Also, all female anglerfish have a lump on their body that looks like a parasite. Only later did scientists discover that the lump is the remain of the male fish.
The tiny male anglerfish are born without any digestive system, so once they hatch, they have to find a female quickly. When a male finds a female, he quickly bites her body and releases an enzyme that digests his skin and her body to fuse the two in an eternal embrace. The male then wastes away, becoming nothing but a lump on the female anglerfish’s body!
When the female is ready to spawn, her “male appendage” is there, ready to release sperms to fertilize her egg.
More at Neatorama
December 11th, 2011
yeti farmers/farming yetis
The yeti crab is self-sufficient beyond belief when it comes to it’s dietary requirements.
The bristles that cover the crab’s claws and body are coated in gardens of symbiotic bacteria, which derive energy from the inorganic gases of the seeps. The crab eats the bacteria, using comb-like mouthparts to harvest them from its bristles (see a video of this on our YouTube Channel).
The bacteria in K. puravida gardens are closely related to species that live in other cold seeps and hot hydrothermal vents all over the world. “It looks like the bacteria may use the seeps as stepping stones, to create this global connected population that consumes the energy coming out of seeps and vents,” says Thurber.
Thurber thinks that K. puravida waves its claws to actively farm its bacterial gardens: movements stir up the water around the bacteria, ensuring that fresh supplies of oxygen and sulphide wash over them and helping them to grow. “This ‘dance’ is extraordinary and comical,” says Van Dover. “We’ve never seen this strategy before.”
More at Nature
December 4th, 2011
forgone chaos
An interview with Rem Koolhaas in De Standaard. Lots of interesting ideas about architecture, filmmaking, East/West philosophies and the individual, celebrity…
Dat alles zo geregeld is, dat geldt toch vooral voor het welvarende westerse deel van de wereld?
‘Dat is zo. Dat is het bijzondere van mijn vroege ervaringen in Indonesië. Je hebt al jong ervaren hoe er in andere delen van de wereld geleefd wordt. Het was een chaos en dat was vanzelfsprekend. Daar werd verder geen oordeel over geveld. Ik heb tot mijn twaalfde op zes verschillende scholen gezeten. Nu zou het bijna als een misdaad worden gezien, maar mij heeft het veel gebracht. Talent voor organisatie, openstaan voor mogelijkheden, gretigheid voor het nieuwe.’
Verlangt u terug naar die chaos?
‘Ik lijd niet aan nostalgie.’
Wat voor jongen was u op de middelbare school?
‘Een van de vreemde dingen is dat ik door mijn ervaring in Azië niet zo aan mezelf denk als een ik. Het is niet dat ik de vraag wil ontvluchten. Het is meer dat ik geen westers persoon ben met een duidelijk afgebakend ik.’
‘Toen ik op de middelbare school zat, las ik alles van Dostojevski. Ik begon in film geïnteresseerd te raken, in kunst. School was bijzaak.’
Het individuele is te belangrijk in dit deel van de wereld?
‘Het is niet productief. Het is een obstakel om, eh, de manier waarop ik architect ben en bouw… (Hij tekent met een blauwe balpen vierkantjes op een vel papier.) Het is niet mijn ik dat bouwt en waar anderen dan een relatie mee moeten hebben. Het is: een vormeloze massa die iets wil bereiken en waar ik een onderdeel van ben. Dat heb ik aan Indonesië overgehouden. Ik zag al snel dat die opstelling me grote vrijheden gaf. De openheid, het permanent rekening houden met de andere kant. Ik ben vroeg doordrongen geraakt van het feit dat het Westen niet alles is.’
Waarom ging u in 1972 naar New York?
Opeens monter: ‘Ik had het gevoel dat er met New York iets te doen viel. Ik was geïnteresseerd in moderne architectuur en in Europa waren er vooral manifesten, geen realiseringen. In de VS, of in elk geval in New York, was het andersom: geen manifesten, wel realiseringen. Maar zoals ik dat nu zeg, zo had ik het toen nog niet doorgrond. Er was alleen dat gevoel dat ik daar iets kon doen.’
Hoe is het om ‘stararchitect’ te zijn?
‘Mensen kunnen zich niet meer voorstellen dat een normaal persoon de rol van architect kan vervullen. Ze willen dat je een celebrity bent. Vervolgens is iedere poging tot echte communicatie gedoemd om te mislukken.’
Waarom willen mensen dat?‘Het is een effect van de markteconomie. Belangstelling voor ideeën heeft plaatsgemaakt voor aanbidding van roem.’
Wilt u dat dan ook het liefst als architect: kunnen doen wat u wilt?
‘Nee. Ik geloof in de tegendruk van de opdrachtgever. Dat meen ik oprecht. Door tegenstand kom je tot betere dingen. Of door samenwerking. Je kunt dit vak niet doen zonder dat andere mensen willen wat jij wilt.’
More here. Thanks Arnaud for the heads-up. The last point reminds me of this quote from Panamarenko.
December 4th, 2011
pintle and gudgeon
There’s a name for this rudder’s type of hinge. Part 2 is a pintle and part 3 is a gudgeon. Gee thanks, wikipedia.
November 24th, 2011
nature invents stem cel treatment…
Scientists are devoting countless research hours to treatments based on embryonic stem cells, differentiating these blank-slate cells from embryos into brain cells, light-sensing retinal cells, blood cells, and more to replace damaged or destroyed tissues in the body. Now, a new study in mice shows such that nature has arrived at just such a solution, too: When a pregnant mouse has a heart attack, her fetus donates some of its stem cells to help rebuild the damaged heart tissue.
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November 24th, 2011
formation of brinicle, brine icicle, caught on film
The BBC has caught a spectacular undersea phenomenon on film. Watch the video on the BBC website.
The science behind the phenomenon:
Dr Mark Brandon Polar oceanographer, The Open University
Freezing sea water doesn’t make ice like the stuff you grow in your freezer. Instead of a solid dense lump, it is more like a seawater-soaked sponge with a tiny network of brine channels within it.
In winter, the air temperature above the sea ice can be below -20C, whereas the sea water is only about -1.9C. Heat flows from the warmer sea up to the very cold air, forming new ice from the bottom. The salt in this newly formed ice is concentrated and pushed into the brine channels. And because it is very cold and salty, it is denser than the water beneath.
The result is the brine sinks in a descending plume. But as this extremely cold brine leaves the sea ice, it freezes the relatively fresh seawater it comes in contact with. This forms a fragile tube of ice around the descending plume, which grows into what has been called a brinicle.
Brinicles are found in both the Arctic and the Antarctic, but it has to be relatively calm for them to grow as long as the ones the Frozen Planet team observed.
November 23rd, 2011
come off it
From a talk by Alan Watts. Shame about the strings added in the background.
November 17th, 2011
ISS HD
The International Space Station has a nice camera on board these days… View fullscreen.
Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König.
Another (see previous post) impressive time-lapse video found via kottke.
November 17th, 2011
365 skies
(watch fullscreen)
A camera installed on the roof of the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco captured an image of the sky every 10 seconds. From these images, I created a mosaic of time-lapse movies, each showing a single day. The days are arranged in chronological order. My intent was to reveal the patterns of light and weather over the course of a year.
A simple experiment that is almost profound to watch unfold. My favourite part is the way the sunrises and sunsets flood in and out.
Ken Murphy’s “A History of The Sky” (via kottke).
November 17th, 2011
life on the inside
So far the Catalogue of Life has indexed over 1,368,009 species and the latest edition features a database from Jeya Kathirithamby of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology detailing Strepsiptera, a strange order of parasitic insect.
Strepsiptera are endoparasites – they live inside their host – with almost all females spending their entire lives inside the body of other insects and males emerging as free-living adults to mate before they die, just five or six hours later.
‘The females are totally endoparasitic for their entire life history (except in one family) and all that is visible of an adult female is an extruded cephalothorax,’ Jeya tells me. ‘The female is nothing more than a “bag of eggs”, having lost all structures such as eyes, antennae, mouthparts, legs, wings and external genitalia any other insect would possess.
‘This dramatic difference between male and female makes Strepsiptera interesting model organisms for studying such aspects as mating and reproduction.’
Jeya is a world authority on these parasites where males and females can have such different lives that they even choose entirely different hosts:
‘There is a family where the males parasitize ants and the females parasitize grasshoppers, crickets or mantids. Due to the extreme sexual dimorphism and dual hosts, the sexes could not be matched until recently. We have achieved this using molecular data.’
Surprisingly, although Strepsiptera can infect and live inside the host insect for almost its entire life, the host seems unaffected and can even have its lifespan extended.
More on Physorg: Parasite lives ‘double life’