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November 27, 2009
"Modern societies have tended to take science for granted as a way of knowing, ordering and controlling the world. Everything was subject to science, but science itself largely escaped scrutiny. This situation has changed dramatically in recent years. Historians, sociologists, philosophers and sometimes scientists themselves have begun to ask fundamental questions about how the institution of science is structured and how it knows what it knows."
How to Think About Science is a 24-part series from CBC Radio's
Ideas, featuring interviews with
Steven Shapin,
Ian Hacking,
Bruno Latour, and others. The streaming audio links on the show's website seem to be out of commission, but direct links to all of the episodes can be found
here.
posted by bewilderbeast at 7:35 PM PST - 78 comments
The Donald Sterling Rule "Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling lives by his own rules. And the only one that matters, apparently, is this:
all bad deeds go unpunished. Over the last six years, nearly two dozen L.A. residents have sued Sterling for engaging in racist housing practices and Jim Crow-style bigotry. In a 2003 deposition, the 76-year-old real estate mogul admitted to paying a former employee to have sex with him in an elevator. Three years ago, the U.S. government charged him with "willful" mistreatment of African-American and Latino tenants, and earlier this month, he agreed to pay the Dept. of Justice nearly $3 million to settle a federal racial-discrimination housing lawsuit, the largest award ever for a case of its kind." So why, asks California's
Tenants Together,
has the NBA said nothing about Sterling's less than sterling behavior?
[more inside]
posted by ocherdraco at 5:28 PM PST - 27 comments
Montréal Mirabel Airport was opened in 1975 at the cost of $2 billion adjusted. Ultimately its tarmac and runway areas alone were to take up 70 km
2 (27 mi
2) of space and would have made it the world's largest airport. The airport never got any busier than Boise Airport is today, and the passenger terminals are now abandoned shells (
slideshow). A key
factor in the failure was that for 22 years authorities banned all international flights from the much-closer, thriving Dorval Airport, heavily used by locals and business travellers. It didn't help that Montreal was already sliding into decline in the 1970s due to the growth of the Great Lakes and Toronto-based economies and uncertainties about Quebec's
political climate. Montreal is no stranger to alleged boondoggles:
Olympic Stadium, half-finished during the 1976 Summer Games, spiralled
$1 billion over budget.
posted by crapmatic at 12:47 PM PST - 46 comments
Budd Boetticher,
Randolph Scott, and the remarkable
Ranown Cycle of Westerns. "Boetticher is one of the most fascinating unrecognized talents in the American cinema...Constructed partly as allegorical Odysseys and partly as floating poker games where every character took turns at bluffing about his hand until the final showdown, Boetticher's Westerns expressed a weary serenity and moral certitude that was contrary to the more neurotic approaches of other directors on this neglected level of the cinema." -
Andrew Sarris. Hero to the French New wave and early subject of Cahiers du Cinema auteur theory, Boetticher's films are true treasures of American cinema. Martin Scorsese on
Ride Lonesome and
The Tall T: Clint Eastwood on
Comanche Station: Taylor Hackford on
Buchanan Rides Alone and
Decision at Sundown.
[more inside]
posted by vronsky at 11:28 AM PST - 14 comments
Hadji Muhiddin Piri Ibn Hadji Mehmed, ( 1465–1554/5) was an Ottoman-Turkish Admiral, Privateer, Geographer and Cartographer more commonly known as Piri Reis. In 1521 he finished his
Kitab-I Bahriye or Book of Navigation
This is an exquisite C17th - C18th revised and expanded version.
(
scroll down and click the icons which can then be magnified. )
Marvel at the gold leaf and coloring of the map of the
Bay of Salonica
or the wonderful
map of Rhodes.
(
click addittional information button below map to get further information.)
However Piri Reis
is more famously known for this map dated 1513 which is one of the oldest surviving maps to show the Americas. In the
marginalia are the accounts of the pioneer seamen who have taken part in the discovery of the places shown on the map.
Piri Reis at The
Map Room
and
wiki
and
related.
posted by adamvasco at 11:04 AM PST - 6 comments
Just ease on into one of the most laid-back grooves to ever weave its way through a New Orleans junkyard, and join the procession as the estimable Dr. John is led through the rusting automobiles on a
mule. After that, you'll be ready to enter the Inner Sanctum of Deep Mystic Hoodoo, with the good Doctor as your intoning, night tripping guide through the
Zu Zu Mamou hallucinations. You won't be the same, afterwards...
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:06 AM PST - 22 comments
