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| xkcd |
Quantum Spookiness
Whole Lotta Led
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| from The Verge |
Along with the deluxe version of their first three albums, the group has released a new video of WLL. Honey, you know you need it!: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/videos/watch-led-zeppelins-new-video-for-whole-lotta-love-20140527
Manhattanhenge (May 29)!
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| Neil DeGrasse Tyson |
Twice a year in that magical place called Manhattan, the sun sets exactly along the cross streets of the city (story, video): http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/why-do-we-love-manhattanhenge-so-much/371841/
More information about the phenomenon, from the incomparable Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who actually coined the term: http://www.amnh.org/our-research/hayden-planetarium/resources/manhattanhenge
Just Because: 'The Future of the Mind' (Part 1)
Dr. Sperry, after detailed studies of split-brain patients, finally concluded that there could be two distinct minds operating in a single brain. He wrote that each hemisphere is "indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering, reasoning, willing, and emoting, all at a characteristically human level, and ... both the left and right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even in mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run along in parallel."
When I interviewed Dr. Michael Gazzaniga of the University of California, Santa Barbara, an authority on split-brain patients, I asked him how experiments can be done to test this theory. There are a variety of ways to communicate separately to each
Sensoring Fashion
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| Suzanne Lee grows fabric from bacteria. screen shot |
Places of Poverty, of Potential
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| Mississippi's Golden Triangle |
The Art of Verbal War
As the Tongue Trips
English is a funny language. I remember repeating that to my son many times when he was little and trying to make sense of it. Sometimes ~ quite often, actually ~ it just doesn't make sense, and that's all that can be said for it. This is for anyone who doubts the veracity of that statement (with thanks to Tanya, who thought this poem had my name written all over it!): www.tickld.com/funny/t/824613
Geeks, Weirdos, and Dweebs, Oh, My
Didn't you always wonder where these words came from? Here to enlighten us, this bit from wisegeek.com:
The word "geek" is thought to come from the German word geck which refers to a fool. The modern definition of "geek" typically is a slang term for a person who is socially awkward or has excessive interest in technology. From the 18th century through the early 20th century, however, "geek" was a term that referred to performers in circus acts. For example, traveling circuses in Austro-Hungary would use the word "geek" in
The word "geek" is thought to come from the German word geck which refers to a fool. The modern definition of "geek" typically is a slang term for a person who is socially awkward or has excessive interest in technology. From the 18th century through the early 20th century, however, "geek" was a term that referred to performers in circus acts. For example, traveling circuses in Austro-Hungary would use the word "geek" in
Many Wars Ago
Hard to believe World War I started 100 years ago, but there you have it. It was the beginning of "modern warfare" in so many ways. from delanceyplace.com:
Today's selection -- from A World Undone: The Story of the Great War 1914 to 1918 by
G.J. Meyer. World leaders in 1914 did not understand how powerful their
armies had become and how much destruction they would cause. In the
centuries before the 1800s, world population had grown at a snail's
pace. But between 1870 and the beginning of the first World War, the
population of Europe had increased by 100,000,000, more than the total
world population before 1650, the result of a technological revolution
that improved life spans. But this technological revolution also
produced unprecedented weaponry, and thus World War I
unleashed destruction that would kill 8.5 million and wound in excess of
20 million more, many times the casualties of all the Napoleonic wars combined. As the war started, a young and naive Winston Churchill, then
First Lord of the Admiralty, could not contain his excitement:
"Russia's
general mobilization ... called up the Russian reserves -- a staggering
total of four million men, enough to frighten any nation on earth. ...
"This
was war on a truly new scale; the army with which Wellington defeated
Napoleon at Waterloo had totaled sixty thousand men. ...
"The
Germans ... hauled into Belgium ... two new kinds of monster artillery:
305 Skoda siege mortars ... plus an almost unimaginably huge 420
howitzer ... produced by Germany's Krupp steelworks, [that] weighed
seventy-five tons and had to be transported by rail in five sections and
set in concrete before going into action.
"Among the holders of high office, one man at least did not share the
sense of glum foreboding: the ebullient ... young Winston Churchill ...
he wrote to Prime Minister Asquith's wife ... 'I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment, and yet -- I can't help it -- I enjoy every second of it.' "
A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918
Author: G.J. Meyer
Publisher: Delacorte Press a division of Random House
Copyright 2006 by G.J. Meyer
Pages 74, 77, 127, 133 |
In the Beginning
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| one writer and his notebook KW |
Author Lawrence Norfolk, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and the Budapest Festival Prize for Literature, shares his notebook process and the importance of journals in a writer's creative life. They are, he says, "an act of triage on the world outside": http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-27468949
thisismypassword (notreally)
This is the second time in as many months that a friend has emailed to let me know my account has been hacked. So, once again, I changed my password. That was three days ago, and I've already forgotten the new one ... and the old one. I hit the "I can't remember my password" button more than the "shift" key these days, or at least that's how it feels. So when I saw this story on how to remember passwords, with a sidebar on the best passwords, I hit that button immediately (story, video): http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-26969276
The Antagonizing Amendment
And while we're on the subject, this came in from wisegeek.com:
About 37% of US households had a gun in early 2013, one study found. Nearly one-fourth of the adults who were surveyed reported that they personally owned a gun, and about 13% claimed it was owned by another person in the household. The US has the highest number of owned guns and the highest per-capita rate of gun ownership in the world. In
And Every Tear's a Waterfall
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| onion tears Rose-Lynn Fisher, Craig Krull Gallery |
All tears, apparently, are not created equal, as proved in these black-and-white photographs by Rose-Lynn Fisher. "I started this project ... during a period of copious tears," she explains, "amid lots of change and loss ~ so I had a surplus of raw material." She had used microscopes before, to highlight the details of honeybees, and wondered what a dried tear would look like. "Eventually, I started wondering ~ would a tear of grief look any different than a tear of joy? And how would they compare to, say, an onion tear?": http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-microscopic-structures-of-dried-human-tears-180947766/?no-ist
The Trouble With Trees
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| Białowieża, the last large primeval forest in Europe KW |
A Drop in the Bucket Would Be Good
The comparison remains apt, for as some parts of the country are literally under water, others are desiccating under layers of the same dust Steinbeck wrote about. (Reader comments at the end of the story are fascinating and eye-opening): http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/05/140516-dust-bowl-drought-oklahoma-panhandle-food/
Hard Drive
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| a particularly harrowing intersection, at Wilshire and Veteran Los Angeles Times |
In a Word
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| Brendan McCartan |
If you had to choose a word or phrase that encapsulated your era, what would it be? One lexicographer (and, it must be noted, he's British, so some of his thoughts don't quite translate on our side of the pond but are interesting nonetheless) shares his choices, from "outasite" to "diss" to "one sandwich short of a picnic": http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27405988
Some Like it Small
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| Delta Shelter, Washington, Olson Kundig Architects |
The Language of Morality
An interesting study finds that when people who speak more than one language are presented with a moral dilemma, their solution depends on the language in which the problem is presented: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/04/29/using-a-foreign-language-could-affect-moral-judgement/#.U3cL1S-5bgc
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