MetaFilter posts by vacapinta.
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"We've all been there: it's puzzle time, but once you dump out the pieces and start laying them flat, you realize you don't have enough space on your table. Join me as we use physics to find out HOW BIG A TABLE YOU NEED FOR YOUR JIGSAW PUZZLE?
TL;DR: an unassembled jigsaw puzzle takes up an area that is the square root of 3 times the area of the assembled puzzle, or about 1.7 times the assembled area. This is independent of the number of pieces."
posted on Dec-15-23 at 9:14 AM
"Bird Calls (1972, recorded in 1981) by Louise Lawler is a six-minute roll call in which the artist squawks, chirps, and warbles the names of twenty-eight of the leading artists of the time—not coincidentally, all men. Each name is subject to distortion and derision as it is transformed into an individual call. This powerful (and powerfully funny) piece, the artist’s only audio work, may seem anomalous in relation to the subtly acerbic photographs and ephemeral multiples for which she is now known...
posted on Oct-27-23 at 3:14 AM
Chronoscope World is a time machine to explore the history of the world by browsing maps dating back to 14th century B.C. More than 4,200 high-resolution maps can be displayed in a maps application on the correct geo location. You can just browse the world map or browse cities of the world.
Here's San Francisco with 4 historical maps overlaid on the current city.
Here’s Amsterdam with 10 historical maps. Hint: The slider on the right controls the transparency of the overlaid map.
The site also includes special projects such as mapping the travels of Alexander Humboldt
Want an overview? The site's creator made a short video.
posted on Apr-12-23 at 8:46 AM
Once a decade, the British Film Institute polls thousands of critics and directors to determine the best film of all time. Here is the newly-released critics list from 2022. The greatest film of all time? Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles No other film made by a woman has ever reached the top 10.
posted on Dec-2-22 at 5:35 AM
Here’s one way to start this story: Who is the uncredited man at the end of Rosemary’s baby?
Here’s another way:
On a spring night in Madrid in 2003, the Spanish photographer Paco Gómez got a call from his brother-in-law. He had seen a messy pile of discarded photos on Calle Pez, a street in the gentrifying neighborhood of Malasaña, close to where Gómez lived. His brother-in-law thought it was the kind of thing that would interest him. He was right: Gómez put on his shoes and hustled out the door of his apartment. … The photos contained something much stranger than mere unknown lives for Gómez to imagine his way into. In one, a man in ratty underwear stood in a bare room in a posture of crucifixion. In another, a statuesque teenage boy posed like a magazine heartthrob. In still another a woman with a lustrous ponytail stood before a Dalí-esque canvas of angels and demons. … Though he didn’t yet know it, Paco Goméz had just met the Modlins.
posted on Nov-7-22 at 3:42 AM
The 30-minute Russian animated film Tale of Tales has been more than once voted the greatest animated film of all time. Here it is with English subtitles, though they are not needed. The film is structured like a memory, and depicts war, love and dancing. One review site states "It is without precedent in cinema - maybe in all of art, because although it borrows heavily from literature and poetry, it does so in a final form that does not to any real extent resemble those media." The animator Yuri Norstein (also mefi previously) has stated that the film is about "simple concepts that give you the strength to live"
posted on Mar-23-22 at 4:43 AM
What is the history of chrononauts or hyperspace? What about fan fiction? Well, here’s the infodump.
A 2020 reboot of a project from the OED: The Science Fiction Dictionary.
posted on Jan-26-21 at 5:50 AM
Furnace and Fugue "brings to life in digital form an enigmatic seventeenth-century text, Michael Maier’s alchemical emblem book Atalanta fugiens. This intriguing and complex text from 1618 reinterprets Ovid’s legend of Atalanta as an alchemical allegory in a series of fifty emblems, each of which contains text, image, and a musical score for three voices. " A multimedia object from the 17th century. Links:
posted on Sep-29-20 at 7:04 AM
Majorana: Genius and Mystery
In the early twentieth century, in the years preceding World War II, the young physicist Ettore Majorana made several profound discoveries, including a relativistic wave equation that rivaled that of Paul Dirac and predicted a world of Majorana particles - and now it is believed that Majorana predicted the neutrino and much of its oddness. The impact of and controversy around his work haunts Physics to this day. Enrico Fermi considered him one of the most brilliant physicists of the age, a new Galileo or Newton.
But, in 1938, Majorana suddenly cleared out his bank account, boarded a ship and was never seen again. What happened to this young genius? Where did he go? It is an enduring mystery that has fascinated generations of journalists and writers and one which may have now been solved…
posted on Jun-7-20 at 2:48 AM
"The OJ 287 galaxy hosts one of the largest black holes ever found - over 18 billion times the mass of our Sun. Orbiting this behemoth is another black hole with about 150 million times the Sun's mass. Twice every 12 years, the smaller black hole crashes through the enormous disk of gas surrounding its larger companion, creating a flash of light brighter than a trillion stars - brighter, even, than the entire Milky Way galaxy. The light takes 3.5 billion years to reach Earth." Researchers are able to both predict and see this flash of light (NASA Press Release) (Here’s a video)
posted on Apr-29-20 at 1:28 AM
Dutch Golden Age Art Wasn’t All About White People. Here’s the Proof (NYTimes) On March 6, the Rembrandt House museum in Amsterdam opened an exhibition titled ‘Black in Rembrandt’s time’ The museum, like other museums around the world soon closed. But Mark Ponte walks us through a history of the black community in Amsterdam.(Twitter) And the museum has now put together a 12-minute documentary walking you through the exhibition (Dutch with English subtitles)
posted on Apr-16-20 at 1:02 PM
You know already that The Met is making a different opera available every night. But did you know that The Bayerische Staatsoper also has performances available? Or that the Dutch National Opera is also putting operas online daily? The Monnaie in Belgium has until April 19, placed several great performances online like its production of Frankenstein? Arte has added The Hamburg State Opera's Falstaff and others to its content. There are also many operas available for free at Opera.eu
Can’t keep up? The Guardian has a regularly updated page on classical music and opera. But music isn’t just something that used to happen. Watch these performances too from self-isolating orchestras such as this cello octet performing an Arvo Part arrangement.
posted on Apr-4-20 at 1:51 PM
Bart Van Camp has trapped (and released) 500 species of moths in his tiny garden in Flanders and made a poster out of it. He also wants you to see some of the thousands of tiny creatures he has seen in this small space. He also does gardens of other people, mainly politicians and naturalists, like Herman van Rompuy or Fredrik Sjoberg or George Monbiot. Some posters like the one for journalist Tine Hens include the number of moths as well.
Monbiot wrote in the Guardian "Two naturalists from Flanders, Bart Van Camp and Rollin Verlinde, asked if they could come to our tiny urban garden and set up a light trap. The results were a revelation... our failure to apprehend the ecology of darkness limits our understanding of the living world."
posted on Jan-16-20 at 5:38 AM
Nothing says Christmas in Mexico like Atole and Buñuelos, (Atole is a corn meal/masa hot drink and buñuelos are fried dough, dipped in sugary syrup with cinnamon) prepared here by Doña Angela from De Mi Rancho a Tu Cocina. Doña Angela (Youtube, FB, Insta) is a star, She started her channel only a few months ago, showing viewers how to make traditional Mexican recipes from her rustic kitchen in Michoacan, Mexico. She has millions of viewers and is beloved by Mexican media for her unpretentious grandmotherly vibe.
posted on Dec-4-19 at 8:43 AM
The United States of Mexican Food is a project by Eater and Gustavo Arellano about the wonderful varieties of Mexican food in the US that are uniquely American.
Welcome to the United States of Mexican Food: The canonical dishes of regional Mexican-American food, from ACP to hot tamales, plotted from California to Georgia
posted on Apr-23-19 at 11:58 AM
In 2011, there were brief, tantalizing articles about a model of San Francisco made in the 1940s. The model measured 40x40 feet and had detail down to individual houses, including their shape and color. And then no more was heard about this, until now...
posted on Sep-10-18 at 1:25 PM
"In February 1917 the SS Mendi, a First World War troopship, was carrying 802 men of the South African Native Labour Corps (SANLC), bound for the Western Front. Many had never seen the sea before. The men had signed up because they believed that, despite being oppressed by the white South African government, if they demonstrated loyalty to the British Empire, it would gain them a voice in their deeply divided land." so writes Historic England writing about one of the more tragic events in British history:
"On 21 February 1917, the British ship, the SS Mendi was sunk off the Isle of Wight. It was hit not by a German torpedo, but by another British ship, the Darro, in thick fog....The Darro made no attempt to rescue the men in the water, and the Mendi’s Royal Navy escort ship was able to find only a very few."
posted on Feb-17-17 at 10:18 AM
"The purpose of the European Tree of the Year is to highlight the significance of old trees in the natural and cultural heritage that deserves our care and protection. Unlike other contests, the European Tree of the Year doesn't focus on beauty, size or age but rather on the tree's story and its connection to people. We are looking for trees that have become a part of the wider community."
Get your votes in now for the 2017 European Tree of the year!
The current leader is The Brimmon Oak of Wales, a beloved tree that has been in a family for generations - although a fierce contender is an 800-year old Lime tree that guards a Czech village. Past winners include an Oak tree that lives in the middle of a football field in Estonia and an old Lime tree in Hungary which is said to protect the forest with its magic power.
posted on Feb-13-17 at 11:38 PM
While we have all been diverted by other things, Edward Snowden tweeted last week that "The UK has just legalized the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy. It goes farther than many autocracies."
He is referring to the Investigatory Powers Bill, also known as the Snooper's Charter, which has passed Parliament and is now set to become law in the UK. Here's a Wired overview.
ZDNet: "civil liberties groups have long criticized the bill, with some arguing that the law will let the UK government "document everything we do online". It's no wonder, because it basically does".
Guardian: Extreme surveillance' becomes UK law with barely a whimper
posted on Nov-23-16 at 4:59 AM
"In 2001, Belgian police called curators at one of London’s top museums and told them that two J.M.W. Turner paintings valued at $35 million had been recovered in a sting operation. Lost since 1994, the Tate Gallery scrambled to get a professional down to Antwerp to see them. Sitting at home in Berlin a few days later, Evgeni Posin was reading an article in the newspaper about two men arrested for trying to pass off the Turners as original. He knew immediately the paintings were fakes. How? Because he and his two brothers had painted them."
Evgeni Posin works with his two brothers Michail and Semyon in Berlin. They are originally from Russia. The three are the first family of Art Forgery.
posted on Nov-17-16 at 12:50 PM
If you have driven in the UK, perhaps you have been curious about those little brown signs with tempting drawings of castles or quirky attractions. Amanda Hone was.
"Whenever I was bored it became a bit of thing for me to jump in the car, drive in a random direction and when I spotted a brown sign I’d follow it and visit wherever I ended up, just for fun. I found myself at places I wouldn’t ever have thought of going to before; an otter and owl sanctuary, The National Motoring Museum, an ornate Indian maharajah’s well in the middle of a country village and heading underground into Cheddar’s caves, to name just a few of the early delights. "
What started off as a distraction became a dedicated hobby.
She tells us the 93 different brown signs in the UK.
The history of the brown tourist signs.
Her blog documents some of her quirkier discoveries.
If you want to know more, just Follow the Brown Signs....
posted on Sep-3-15 at 3:35 AM
The book An Incomplete History of the Art of Funerary Violin, published in 2006, tells, for the first time, the story of a lost art and one that was eventually supressed by the Church.
"During the Protestant revolution in Europe, a new kind of music emerged, one that ultimately sought to recognize the deceased and to individuate the sense of loss and grief. But the tradition was virtually wiped out by the Great Funerary Purges of the 1830s and 40s. Kriwaczek tells the fascinating story of this beautiful music, condemned by the Catholic Church for political as much as theological reasons, and of the mysterious Guild of Funerary Violinists that, yes, defends its secrets in our time."
The 220-page book is written in an academic tone and outlines the entire history of the Society along with biographies of some of its key figures - George Babcotte and Herr Hieronymous Gratchenfleiss and even Paganini.
posted on Feb-24-14 at 2:57 AM
The work of the statistician Joseph Chang in 1999 showed that it was almost certain that all Europeans are descended from Charlemagne. Now, a new genomic analysis of European populations titled The Geography of Recent Genetic Ancestry across Europe, shows that Chang was essentially right.
As the paper concludes "...so long as populations have mixed sufficiently, by 1,000 years ago everyone (who left descendants) would be an ancestor of every present-day European. Our results are therefore one of the first genomic demonstrations of the counterintuitive but necessary fact that all Europeans are genealogically related over very short time periods, and lends substantial support to models predicting close and ubiquitous common ancestry of all modern humans"
The paper is quite accessible and includes much more data about the interrelatedness of different European populations. But for those who have more questions, the authors have prepared a FAQ.
posted on Aug-27-13 at 12:44 AM
"Articulate Silences is a blog which focuses on the introduction of 20th and 21st century classical music to listeners wanting to investigate beyond popular music. Through a series of posts focussing on major pieces, as well as the occasional more obscure work, this blog attempts to act as a gentle entry point for further exploration and discovery of similar sounds."
posted on Sep-20-12 at 1:02 PM
Homeless Paintings of the Italian Renaissance.
"A particularly important nucleus of the [Harvard] Photograph Archive's collection consists of a group of images of Renaissance Italian paintings that Berenson famously classified as “homeless,” that is, works that were documented by a photograph but whose current location was unknown to him....Berenson published some of his photographs of artworks “without homes” with the express invitation and hope that their owners, public or private, might come forward and claim them as their own...It is in this spirit.. that we have developed the project to catalog, digitize and make available online the Photograph Archive’s images of "homeless" paintings by Italian artists between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries. By the project’s end--scheduled for the summer/fall of 2012--we will have published on the Internet records and images, often rare or unique, of around thirteen thousand pictures."
posted on Apr-15-12 at 5:23 AM
Helioviewer.org "is an open-source project for the visualization of solar and heliospheric data. The project is funded by ESA and NASA."
See also the Wiki and the JHelioviewer application.
Go back in time to prominent events (June 7, 2011 for example), create layers from different observatories and even create your own movies.
posted on Apr-11-12 at 11:51 PM
Nipples at the Met: "A database of all the nipples on view in the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art." Updated regularly
posted on Mar-22-12 at 12:18 AM
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a Harvard man through and through.
"From 1900-1904, young Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with his Groton chum Lathrop Brown, rented rooms in Westmorly Court, (now B-17 of Adams House) the newest and most luxurious building on Harvard's Gold Coast. Equipped with all the latest innovations – central heat, electricity, a modern "hygienic" bathroom – the suite contained over 600 sq. feet of living space spread over 4 rooms, with 14' ceilings, French doors, and a working fireplace. These spacious quarters, which were originally decorated in high Victorian style by FDR and his mother Sara have been recently restored to their pristine Gilded Age condition...
posted on Feb-13-12 at 5:11 AM
Sensory Maps is an attempt by Kate Mclean to chart the Taste, Views and Touch of Edinburgh. More details in this post on Edible Geography.
In the Victorian era, Edinburgh earned the nickname “Auld Reekie,”for its smog. Now, according to McClean’s map, it “emits a plethora of scents and smells; some particular to Edinburgh, some ubiquitous city aromas.” Among the latter are fish and chip shops and vomit, while the peculiar smell of the Macfarlan Smith opiate factory, the fishy pong of the penguin enclosure at the zoo, and the ammoniac stench of the boys’ toilets at South Morningside primary school are more city-specific, as is the way that the prevailing south-westerly winds distribute these smell combinations.
Also related, the Sheffield Smellwalk.
posted on Jan-7-12 at 3:39 AM
Cesaria Evora once described the music of Cape Verde, known as Morna, as "a lot of things…Some say it’s like the blues, or jazz. Others says it’s like Brazilian or African music, but no one really knows. Not even the old ones."
Although Evora's singing voice had attracted attention even when she was a small girl, she did not gain recognition until later in life when she performed in Paris and the French newspaper Le Monde proclaimed that she "belongs to the world nobility of bar singers." Cesaria Evora, known as the Barefoot Diva for performing without shoes, passed away today at the age of 70 in her native Cape Verde.
You can listen to Evora performing Miss Perfumado and Sodade online.
posted on Dec-17-11 at 12:36 PM
Woodchester Mansion is in many ways the perfect setting for a Haunted Mansion (flickr photos). A favorite of ghost-hunters, its not hard to see why. It is a neo-Gothic mansion whose construction was suddenly abandoned in the 1870's and it remains virtually untouched since then -- scattered Victorian tools, fireplaces hanging in mid-air, stone gargoyles.
It also sits by itself in a secluded valley, now owned by the National Trust, where cars are not allowed. Oh, also, did I mention the bats? As of July 2011, 181 adult bats and 91 babies were recorded living in the mansion's belfry. There's a bat-cam.
posted on Aug-9-11 at 6:19 AM
The Grant museum of zoology in London has been called "A restored Victorian treasure-house crammed with specimens from a bottle of preserved moles to extinct zebras and (just identified) the legs of a dodo. And all this was put together by the man that taught zoology to Charles Darwin"
The entire collection has been closed for almost a year as all 67,000 specimens were moved from a tiny (but charming) space to a new larger space.
The new Grant Museum and its reopening.
posted on Mar-15-11 at 8:01 AM
El Quijote Interactivo is a site from the Biblioteca Nacional de España displaying the 1605 edition of Miguel Cervantes' Don Quixote.
You can of course turn pages and zoom in and out. But, you can also search text, get a map of Don Quixote's travels, read associated books and expert commentaries, forward through 50 editions of the book, listen to music referenced by Don Quixote and, yes, share pages with your Facebook friends.
This Youtube video walks you through it.
posted on Oct-28-10 at 2:49 AM
The Wellcome Library Blog is the accompanying blog to London's Wellcome Collection.
Each post examines new acquisitions or existing holdings of this fascinating and eclectic collection. This week's post is about Graphic Medicine - the intersection of Graphic Novels and Medicine. Interesting posts in just the past few months include Japanese colour printing, Do the English really have bad teeth?, A hot night in Bengal, Murder - He telegraphed and a post on Early Cycling.
posted on Sep-30-10 at 4:25 AM
Flickr user Urtica posts pictures of elusive luna moths, surly bees, gregarious aphids, insect eggs, and of course beetles.
Most of these she finds in her backyard in Framingham, MA. She posts a new Bug picture every single day.
I give you Urtica's Bug of the Day!
posted on Jul-23-10 at 2:15 PM
In Sometimes Making Something leads to Nothing (video), the artist Francis Alys pushes a block of ice through Mexico City until it melts.
In When Faith Moves Mountains, (video) he convinces 500 Peruvian students to move a huge sand dune a few feet.
He walks through Mexico City waving a handgun and he drizzles green paint in Palestine.
Also, he walks into tornados (video).
The Tate Modern opens an exhibition on Francis Alys.
posted on Jul-4-10 at 3:22 AM
The Klencke Atlas of 1660 (video), the world's largest book.
Grayson Perry's Map of Nowhere (video)
Many more maps and videos at the BBC's The Beauty of Maps site.
Would you like to see these maps in person? The British Library has just opened their exhibition Magnificent Maps where you can see these among 80 treasures from their map collection, many never seen before.
posted on Apr-30-10 at 4:43 AM
The cartoonist Ronald Searle turns 90 today (March 3)! Hurrah for St. Trinians!.
The Cartoon Museum in London opens Searle's first-ever show in Britain. In this interview, Searle , at 90, recalls the bad girls of St Trinian's and his time as a prisoner-of-war and the abrupt leaving of his wife and children. Fleeing to France in 1961, he never returned. His archive was donated to the Willhelm Busch museum in Germany which is also holding a Searle exhibition.
posted on Mar-3-10 at 3:13 AM
If you're in London these days and are serious about your coffee, then you'll know what a Flat White is. It is part of the emerging coffee scene in London, host of 2010's World Barista Championship and home of last year's winner - Gwilym Davies. Here's a guide and map from London's TimeOut to the city's best coffee shops, many of them staffed by antipodean baristas.
Predictably, Starbucks in the UK wants a piece of the action.
posted on Feb-27-10 at 6:48 AM
As a recent New York Times article notes: "Mexicans, despite their reputation in Latin America for ultrapoliteness and formality, curse like sailors, a recent survey found. They use profanity when speaking with their friends, with their co-workers, with their spouses and even with their bosses and parents."
This then: Effective Swearing in D.F.: Towards a Manual of Communication for English Speakers visiting Mexico City
Because, remember: Hablar español sin caló es de hueva.
posted on Jan-25-10 at 4:57 AM
"Gripped by war, poverty and plague, the villagers of Oberammergau, in Bavaria, southern Germany vowed to put on a 'passion play' every ten years… That was back in 1633. They survived, and performed the first Oberammergau Passion Play in 1634. Ever since, their descendants have carried out that pledge. For the past four centuries the tradition has continued, every ten years. Only villagers have been allowed to take part. And that is what will happen yet again in 2010."
posted on Dec-9-09 at 6:53 AM
Eskimo Grasshoppers - French Children's books of the 1930's and 1940's.
Also, Cornebuse et Cie (1945). Also, Animaux domestiques articulés (1941). Also, Histoire de Perlette (1936) Also, gymnastique scolaire (1933).
And finally Baba Yaga (1932)
posted on Dec-1-09 at 5:18 AM
Drilling a Square Hole. Can a drill be constructed which makes square holes?
Previous attempts have focused on Reuleaux triangles (a shape of constant width - useful for manhole covers) - but these produce square holes with rounded edges.
However, in 1939, in an anonymous article in Mechanical World magazine, plans were published for a device which uses circular motion to make perfectly square holes.
In their new book, How Round is your Circle, John Bryant and Chris Sangwin, build and demonstrate this device (scroll down for a video of the working device).
posted on Aug-31-09 at 1:13 PM
An Armadillo running and sniffing
The Mole-Cam
Cow Staring at Cow.
These and many more at the Museum of Animal Perspectives, a site run and curated by Sam Easterson.
posted on Aug-27-09 at 4:31 AM
"My Quest for Corvo was started by accident one summer afternoon in 1925..." so begins A.J.A Symons book The Quest for Corvo, an experimental biography of the bizarre genius Baron Corvo, much admired by D.H. Lawrence and by Graham Greene among others.
Mention Baron Corvo and bookdealers get excited. Only 5 copies (proofs) of his Don Renato existed. Symons sold his copy to Cecil Woolf, another biographer of Baron Corvo. This copy was later bought by an American Donald Weeks who, after reading Symons book, left his job and moved to England to become part of the growing cult of Baron Corvo. He was said to have amassed an enormous collection of Corviana. Weeks died in 2003: "He died ... of natural causes... Because, however, he left no will nor details of next of kin, he was officially classed as a missing person. He was "no one".' The fate of his rare-book collection has been a source of speculation.
Last week, Leeds University announced that "The University of Leeds has acquired a collection of books and manuscripts relating to Baron Corvo, one of the most controversial English novelists of the early 20th Century." Previews of the catalog. As to what makes Corvo so fascinating, readers can discover for themselves.
posted on Aug-6-09 at 12:52 PM
"Loot the Baedeker I did, all the details of a time and place I had never been to, right down to the names of the diplomatic corps." - Thomas Pynchon from Slow Learner.
Baedeker's were the de facto travel guide for international men of leisure: "Baedeker’s publications, which covered most of Europe, became so popular that Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany was quoted as saying that he stationed himself at a particular palace window each noon because “It’s written in Baedeker that I watch the changing of the guard from that window, and the people have come to expect it.” Baedeker maps online. Baedeker books online.
Are the old ones the best ones?
posted on Mar-11-09 at 2:03 PM
"He was sentenced to death after the military coup in 1980, a few months later he was pardoned but put under house arrest. While under arrest, he began to write a collection of poems; the aim of which was to create portraits of all the people he had ever met in his life" [Maninbo, or Ten Thousand Lives]. To date, 26 volumes from the ongoing collection have been published. Meet Ko Un. Ex-Buddhist Monk and one of South Korea's greatest poets.
posted on Feb-25-09 at 8:17 AM
The year is 1932. Hitler is rising in power. Harold Urey announces the discovery of deuterium, a hydrogen isotope. James Chadwick discovers the neutron. Heisenberg receives the Nobel Prize for his work in Quantum physics. It is a miracle year in Physics, matched only by Einstein's advances in 1905. A few of the most brilliant physicists in the world decide to convene in Copenhagen and ... write a play! Written on the 100th anniversary of the death of Goethe, The Blegdamsvej Faust is a remarkable document from a turning point in Physics.
posted on Feb-17-09 at 2:31 PM
The Tiling Database. Browse some random patterns. Or narrow down your search here.
Looking for an ornament in the Alhambra? Or a spiral tiling? Or perhaps a Topkapi scroll?
posted on Jan-13-09 at 11:13 AM
"Two people emerged from the ship, a man and his wife. .. Mrs. Wise immediately called for a doctor to look after the woman... The husband and wife were shown to Room 8, where the woman's condition continued to deteriorate... Eventually, the husband summoned the doctor, hotel staff and even the owner’s wife to Room 8 to ask a very unusual request: He asked that everyone present swear an oath never to reveal their identities." So, begins and essentially ends Alexandria Virginia's mystery of the Female Stranger.
posted on Dec-4-08 at 5:23 AM
TL;DR: an unassembled jigsaw puzzle takes up an area that is the square root of 3 times the area of the assembled puzzle, or about 1.7 times the assembled area. This is independent of the number of pieces."
posted on Dec-15-23 at 9:14 AM
"Bird Calls (1972, recorded in 1981) by Louise Lawler is a six-minute roll call in which the artist squawks, chirps, and warbles the names of twenty-eight of the leading artists of the time—not coincidentally, all men. Each name is subject to distortion and derision as it is transformed into an individual call. This powerful (and powerfully funny) piece, the artist’s only audio work, may seem anomalous in relation to the subtly acerbic photographs and ephemeral multiples for which she is now known...
posted on Oct-27-23 at 3:14 AM
Chronoscope World is a time machine to explore the history of the world by browsing maps dating back to 14th century B.C. More than 4,200 high-resolution maps can be displayed in a maps application on the correct geo location. You can just browse the world map or browse cities of the world.
Here's San Francisco with 4 historical maps overlaid on the current city.
Here’s Amsterdam with 10 historical maps. Hint: The slider on the right controls the transparency of the overlaid map.
The site also includes special projects such as mapping the travels of Alexander Humboldt
Want an overview? The site's creator made a short video.
posted on Apr-12-23 at 8:46 AM
Once a decade, the British Film Institute polls thousands of critics and directors to determine the best film of all time. Here is the newly-released critics list from 2022. The greatest film of all time? Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles No other film made by a woman has ever reached the top 10.
posted on Dec-2-22 at 5:35 AM
Here’s one way to start this story: Who is the uncredited man at the end of Rosemary’s baby?
Here’s another way:
On a spring night in Madrid in 2003, the Spanish photographer Paco Gómez got a call from his brother-in-law. He had seen a messy pile of discarded photos on Calle Pez, a street in the gentrifying neighborhood of Malasaña, close to where Gómez lived. His brother-in-law thought it was the kind of thing that would interest him. He was right: Gómez put on his shoes and hustled out the door of his apartment. … The photos contained something much stranger than mere unknown lives for Gómez to imagine his way into. In one, a man in ratty underwear stood in a bare room in a posture of crucifixion. In another, a statuesque teenage boy posed like a magazine heartthrob. In still another a woman with a lustrous ponytail stood before a Dalí-esque canvas of angels and demons. … Though he didn’t yet know it, Paco Goméz had just met the Modlins.
posted on Nov-7-22 at 3:42 AM
The 30-minute Russian animated film Tale of Tales has been more than once voted the greatest animated film of all time. Here it is with English subtitles, though they are not needed. The film is structured like a memory, and depicts war, love and dancing. One review site states "It is without precedent in cinema - maybe in all of art, because although it borrows heavily from literature and poetry, it does so in a final form that does not to any real extent resemble those media." The animator Yuri Norstein (also mefi previously) has stated that the film is about "simple concepts that give you the strength to live"
posted on Mar-23-22 at 4:43 AM
What is the history of chrononauts or hyperspace? What about fan fiction? Well, here’s the infodump.
A 2020 reboot of a project from the OED: The Science Fiction Dictionary.
posted on Jan-26-21 at 5:50 AM
Furnace and Fugue "brings to life in digital form an enigmatic seventeenth-century text, Michael Maier’s alchemical emblem book Atalanta fugiens. This intriguing and complex text from 1618 reinterprets Ovid’s legend of Atalanta as an alchemical allegory in a series of fifty emblems, each of which contains text, image, and a musical score for three voices. " A multimedia object from the 17th century. Links:
- See and Listen to Emblem 1: If Boreas once expand his windy womb...
- Talk on Oct 21 from the Warburg Institute
posted on Sep-29-20 at 7:04 AM
Majorana: Genius and Mystery
In the early twentieth century, in the years preceding World War II, the young physicist Ettore Majorana made several profound discoveries, including a relativistic wave equation that rivaled that of Paul Dirac and predicted a world of Majorana particles - and now it is believed that Majorana predicted the neutrino and much of its oddness. The impact of and controversy around his work haunts Physics to this day. Enrico Fermi considered him one of the most brilliant physicists of the age, a new Galileo or Newton.
But, in 1938, Majorana suddenly cleared out his bank account, boarded a ship and was never seen again. What happened to this young genius? Where did he go? It is an enduring mystery that has fascinated generations of journalists and writers and one which may have now been solved…
posted on Jun-7-20 at 2:48 AM
"The OJ 287 galaxy hosts one of the largest black holes ever found - over 18 billion times the mass of our Sun. Orbiting this behemoth is another black hole with about 150 million times the Sun's mass. Twice every 12 years, the smaller black hole crashes through the enormous disk of gas surrounding its larger companion, creating a flash of light brighter than a trillion stars - brighter, even, than the entire Milky Way galaxy. The light takes 3.5 billion years to reach Earth." Researchers are able to both predict and see this flash of light (NASA Press Release) (Here’s a video)
posted on Apr-29-20 at 1:28 AM
Dutch Golden Age Art Wasn’t All About White People. Here’s the Proof (NYTimes) On March 6, the Rembrandt House museum in Amsterdam opened an exhibition titled ‘Black in Rembrandt’s time’ The museum, like other museums around the world soon closed. But Mark Ponte walks us through a history of the black community in Amsterdam.(Twitter) And the museum has now put together a 12-minute documentary walking you through the exhibition (Dutch with English subtitles)
posted on Apr-16-20 at 1:02 PM
You know already that The Met is making a different opera available every night. But did you know that The Bayerische Staatsoper also has performances available? Or that the Dutch National Opera is also putting operas online daily? The Monnaie in Belgium has until April 19, placed several great performances online like its production of Frankenstein? Arte has added The Hamburg State Opera's Falstaff and others to its content. There are also many operas available for free at Opera.eu
Can’t keep up? The Guardian has a regularly updated page on classical music and opera. But music isn’t just something that used to happen. Watch these performances too from self-isolating orchestras such as this cello octet performing an Arvo Part arrangement.
posted on Apr-4-20 at 1:51 PM
Bart Van Camp has trapped (and released) 500 species of moths in his tiny garden in Flanders and made a poster out of it. He also wants you to see some of the thousands of tiny creatures he has seen in this small space. He also does gardens of other people, mainly politicians and naturalists, like Herman van Rompuy or Fredrik Sjoberg or George Monbiot. Some posters like the one for journalist Tine Hens include the number of moths as well.
Monbiot wrote in the Guardian "Two naturalists from Flanders, Bart Van Camp and Rollin Verlinde, asked if they could come to our tiny urban garden and set up a light trap. The results were a revelation... our failure to apprehend the ecology of darkness limits our understanding of the living world."
posted on Jan-16-20 at 5:38 AM
Nothing says Christmas in Mexico like Atole and Buñuelos, (Atole is a corn meal/masa hot drink and buñuelos are fried dough, dipped in sugary syrup with cinnamon) prepared here by Doña Angela from De Mi Rancho a Tu Cocina. Doña Angela (Youtube, FB, Insta) is a star, She started her channel only a few months ago, showing viewers how to make traditional Mexican recipes from her rustic kitchen in Michoacan, Mexico. She has millions of viewers and is beloved by Mexican media for her unpretentious grandmotherly vibe.
posted on Dec-4-19 at 8:43 AM
The United States of Mexican Food is a project by Eater and Gustavo Arellano about the wonderful varieties of Mexican food in the US that are uniquely American.
Welcome to the United States of Mexican Food: The canonical dishes of regional Mexican-American food, from ACP to hot tamales, plotted from California to Georgia
posted on Apr-23-19 at 11:58 AM
In 2011, there were brief, tantalizing articles about a model of San Francisco made in the 1940s. The model measured 40x40 feet and had detail down to individual houses, including their shape and color. And then no more was heard about this, until now...
posted on Sep-10-18 at 1:25 PM
"In February 1917 the SS Mendi, a First World War troopship, was carrying 802 men of the South African Native Labour Corps (SANLC), bound for the Western Front. Many had never seen the sea before. The men had signed up because they believed that, despite being oppressed by the white South African government, if they demonstrated loyalty to the British Empire, it would gain them a voice in their deeply divided land." so writes Historic England writing about one of the more tragic events in British history:
"On 21 February 1917, the British ship, the SS Mendi was sunk off the Isle of Wight. It was hit not by a German torpedo, but by another British ship, the Darro, in thick fog....The Darro made no attempt to rescue the men in the water, and the Mendi’s Royal Navy escort ship was able to find only a very few."
posted on Feb-17-17 at 10:18 AM
"The purpose of the European Tree of the Year is to highlight the significance of old trees in the natural and cultural heritage that deserves our care and protection. Unlike other contests, the European Tree of the Year doesn't focus on beauty, size or age but rather on the tree's story and its connection to people. We are looking for trees that have become a part of the wider community."
Get your votes in now for the 2017 European Tree of the year!
The current leader is The Brimmon Oak of Wales, a beloved tree that has been in a family for generations - although a fierce contender is an 800-year old Lime tree that guards a Czech village. Past winners include an Oak tree that lives in the middle of a football field in Estonia and an old Lime tree in Hungary which is said to protect the forest with its magic power.
posted on Feb-13-17 at 11:38 PM
While we have all been diverted by other things, Edward Snowden tweeted last week that "The UK has just legalized the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy. It goes farther than many autocracies."
He is referring to the Investigatory Powers Bill, also known as the Snooper's Charter, which has passed Parliament and is now set to become law in the UK. Here's a Wired overview.
ZDNet: "civil liberties groups have long criticized the bill, with some arguing that the law will let the UK government "document everything we do online". It's no wonder, because it basically does".
Guardian: Extreme surveillance' becomes UK law with barely a whimper
posted on Nov-23-16 at 4:59 AM
"In 2001, Belgian police called curators at one of London’s top museums and told them that two J.M.W. Turner paintings valued at $35 million had been recovered in a sting operation. Lost since 1994, the Tate Gallery scrambled to get a professional down to Antwerp to see them. Sitting at home in Berlin a few days later, Evgeni Posin was reading an article in the newspaper about two men arrested for trying to pass off the Turners as original. He knew immediately the paintings were fakes. How? Because he and his two brothers had painted them."
Evgeni Posin works with his two brothers Michail and Semyon in Berlin. They are originally from Russia. The three are the first family of Art Forgery.
posted on Nov-17-16 at 12:50 PM
If you have driven in the UK, perhaps you have been curious about those little brown signs with tempting drawings of castles or quirky attractions. Amanda Hone was.
"Whenever I was bored it became a bit of thing for me to jump in the car, drive in a random direction and when I spotted a brown sign I’d follow it and visit wherever I ended up, just for fun. I found myself at places I wouldn’t ever have thought of going to before; an otter and owl sanctuary, The National Motoring Museum, an ornate Indian maharajah’s well in the middle of a country village and heading underground into Cheddar’s caves, to name just a few of the early delights. "
What started off as a distraction became a dedicated hobby.
She tells us the 93 different brown signs in the UK.
The history of the brown tourist signs.
Her blog documents some of her quirkier discoveries.
If you want to know more, just Follow the Brown Signs....
posted on Sep-3-15 at 3:35 AM
The book An Incomplete History of the Art of Funerary Violin, published in 2006, tells, for the first time, the story of a lost art and one that was eventually supressed by the Church.
"During the Protestant revolution in Europe, a new kind of music emerged, one that ultimately sought to recognize the deceased and to individuate the sense of loss and grief. But the tradition was virtually wiped out by the Great Funerary Purges of the 1830s and 40s. Kriwaczek tells the fascinating story of this beautiful music, condemned by the Catholic Church for political as much as theological reasons, and of the mysterious Guild of Funerary Violinists that, yes, defends its secrets in our time."
The 220-page book is written in an academic tone and outlines the entire history of the Society along with biographies of some of its key figures - George Babcotte and Herr Hieronymous Gratchenfleiss and even Paganini.
posted on Feb-24-14 at 2:57 AM
The work of the statistician Joseph Chang in 1999 showed that it was almost certain that all Europeans are descended from Charlemagne. Now, a new genomic analysis of European populations titled The Geography of Recent Genetic Ancestry across Europe, shows that Chang was essentially right.
As the paper concludes "...so long as populations have mixed sufficiently, by 1,000 years ago everyone (who left descendants) would be an ancestor of every present-day European. Our results are therefore one of the first genomic demonstrations of the counterintuitive but necessary fact that all Europeans are genealogically related over very short time periods, and lends substantial support to models predicting close and ubiquitous common ancestry of all modern humans"
The paper is quite accessible and includes much more data about the interrelatedness of different European populations. But for those who have more questions, the authors have prepared a FAQ.
posted on Aug-27-13 at 12:44 AM
"Articulate Silences is a blog which focuses on the introduction of 20th and 21st century classical music to listeners wanting to investigate beyond popular music. Through a series of posts focussing on major pieces, as well as the occasional more obscure work, this blog attempts to act as a gentle entry point for further exploration and discovery of similar sounds."
posted on Sep-20-12 at 1:02 PM
Homeless Paintings of the Italian Renaissance.
"A particularly important nucleus of the [Harvard] Photograph Archive's collection consists of a group of images of Renaissance Italian paintings that Berenson famously classified as “homeless,” that is, works that were documented by a photograph but whose current location was unknown to him....Berenson published some of his photographs of artworks “without homes” with the express invitation and hope that their owners, public or private, might come forward and claim them as their own...It is in this spirit.. that we have developed the project to catalog, digitize and make available online the Photograph Archive’s images of "homeless" paintings by Italian artists between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries. By the project’s end--scheduled for the summer/fall of 2012--we will have published on the Internet records and images, often rare or unique, of around thirteen thousand pictures."
posted on Apr-15-12 at 5:23 AM
Helioviewer.org "is an open-source project for the visualization of solar and heliospheric data. The project is funded by ESA and NASA."
See also the Wiki and the JHelioviewer application.
Go back in time to prominent events (June 7, 2011 for example), create layers from different observatories and even create your own movies.
posted on Apr-11-12 at 11:51 PM
Nipples at the Met: "A database of all the nipples on view in the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art." Updated regularly
posted on Mar-22-12 at 12:18 AM
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a Harvard man through and through.
"From 1900-1904, young Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with his Groton chum Lathrop Brown, rented rooms in Westmorly Court, (now B-17 of Adams House) the newest and most luxurious building on Harvard's Gold Coast. Equipped with all the latest innovations – central heat, electricity, a modern "hygienic" bathroom – the suite contained over 600 sq. feet of living space spread over 4 rooms, with 14' ceilings, French doors, and a working fireplace. These spacious quarters, which were originally decorated in high Victorian style by FDR and his mother Sara have been recently restored to their pristine Gilded Age condition...
posted on Feb-13-12 at 5:11 AM
Sensory Maps is an attempt by Kate Mclean to chart the Taste, Views and Touch of Edinburgh. More details in this post on Edible Geography.
In the Victorian era, Edinburgh earned the nickname “Auld Reekie,”for its smog. Now, according to McClean’s map, it “emits a plethora of scents and smells; some particular to Edinburgh, some ubiquitous city aromas.” Among the latter are fish and chip shops and vomit, while the peculiar smell of the Macfarlan Smith opiate factory, the fishy pong of the penguin enclosure at the zoo, and the ammoniac stench of the boys’ toilets at South Morningside primary school are more city-specific, as is the way that the prevailing south-westerly winds distribute these smell combinations.
Also related, the Sheffield Smellwalk.
posted on Jan-7-12 at 3:39 AM
Cesaria Evora once described the music of Cape Verde, known as Morna, as "a lot of things…Some say it’s like the blues, or jazz. Others says it’s like Brazilian or African music, but no one really knows. Not even the old ones."
Although Evora's singing voice had attracted attention even when she was a small girl, she did not gain recognition until later in life when she performed in Paris and the French newspaper Le Monde proclaimed that she "belongs to the world nobility of bar singers." Cesaria Evora, known as the Barefoot Diva for performing without shoes, passed away today at the age of 70 in her native Cape Verde.
You can listen to Evora performing Miss Perfumado and Sodade online.
posted on Dec-17-11 at 12:36 PM
Woodchester Mansion is in many ways the perfect setting for a Haunted Mansion (flickr photos). A favorite of ghost-hunters, its not hard to see why. It is a neo-Gothic mansion whose construction was suddenly abandoned in the 1870's and it remains virtually untouched since then -- scattered Victorian tools, fireplaces hanging in mid-air, stone gargoyles.
It also sits by itself in a secluded valley, now owned by the National Trust, where cars are not allowed. Oh, also, did I mention the bats? As of July 2011, 181 adult bats and 91 babies were recorded living in the mansion's belfry. There's a bat-cam.
posted on Aug-9-11 at 6:19 AM
The Grant museum of zoology in London has been called "A restored Victorian treasure-house crammed with specimens from a bottle of preserved moles to extinct zebras and (just identified) the legs of a dodo. And all this was put together by the man that taught zoology to Charles Darwin"
The entire collection has been closed for almost a year as all 67,000 specimens were moved from a tiny (but charming) space to a new larger space.
The new Grant Museum and its reopening.
posted on Mar-15-11 at 8:01 AM
El Quijote Interactivo is a site from the Biblioteca Nacional de España displaying the 1605 edition of Miguel Cervantes' Don Quixote.
You can of course turn pages and zoom in and out. But, you can also search text, get a map of Don Quixote's travels, read associated books and expert commentaries, forward through 50 editions of the book, listen to music referenced by Don Quixote and, yes, share pages with your Facebook friends.
This Youtube video walks you through it.
posted on Oct-28-10 at 2:49 AM
The Wellcome Library Blog is the accompanying blog to London's Wellcome Collection.
Each post examines new acquisitions or existing holdings of this fascinating and eclectic collection. This week's post is about Graphic Medicine - the intersection of Graphic Novels and Medicine. Interesting posts in just the past few months include Japanese colour printing, Do the English really have bad teeth?, A hot night in Bengal, Murder - He telegraphed and a post on Early Cycling.
posted on Sep-30-10 at 4:25 AM
Flickr user Urtica posts pictures of elusive luna moths, surly bees, gregarious aphids, insect eggs, and of course beetles.
Most of these she finds in her backyard in Framingham, MA. She posts a new Bug picture every single day.
I give you Urtica's Bug of the Day!
posted on Jul-23-10 at 2:15 PM
In Sometimes Making Something leads to Nothing (video), the artist Francis Alys pushes a block of ice through Mexico City until it melts.
In When Faith Moves Mountains, (video) he convinces 500 Peruvian students to move a huge sand dune a few feet.
He walks through Mexico City waving a handgun and he drizzles green paint in Palestine.
Also, he walks into tornados (video).
The Tate Modern opens an exhibition on Francis Alys.
posted on Jul-4-10 at 3:22 AM
The Klencke Atlas of 1660 (video), the world's largest book.
Grayson Perry's Map of Nowhere (video)
Many more maps and videos at the BBC's The Beauty of Maps site.
Would you like to see these maps in person? The British Library has just opened their exhibition Magnificent Maps where you can see these among 80 treasures from their map collection, many never seen before.
posted on Apr-30-10 at 4:43 AM
The cartoonist Ronald Searle turns 90 today (March 3)! Hurrah for St. Trinians!.
The Cartoon Museum in London opens Searle's first-ever show in Britain. In this interview, Searle , at 90, recalls the bad girls of St Trinian's and his time as a prisoner-of-war and the abrupt leaving of his wife and children. Fleeing to France in 1961, he never returned. His archive was donated to the Willhelm Busch museum in Germany which is also holding a Searle exhibition.
posted on Mar-3-10 at 3:13 AM
If you're in London these days and are serious about your coffee, then you'll know what a Flat White is. It is part of the emerging coffee scene in London, host of 2010's World Barista Championship and home of last year's winner - Gwilym Davies. Here's a guide and map from London's TimeOut to the city's best coffee shops, many of them staffed by antipodean baristas.
Predictably, Starbucks in the UK wants a piece of the action.
posted on Feb-27-10 at 6:48 AM
As a recent New York Times article notes: "Mexicans, despite their reputation in Latin America for ultrapoliteness and formality, curse like sailors, a recent survey found. They use profanity when speaking with their friends, with their co-workers, with their spouses and even with their bosses and parents."
This then: Effective Swearing in D.F.: Towards a Manual of Communication for English Speakers visiting Mexico City
Because, remember: Hablar español sin caló es de hueva.
posted on Jan-25-10 at 4:57 AM
"Gripped by war, poverty and plague, the villagers of Oberammergau, in Bavaria, southern Germany vowed to put on a 'passion play' every ten years… That was back in 1633. They survived, and performed the first Oberammergau Passion Play in 1634. Ever since, their descendants have carried out that pledge. For the past four centuries the tradition has continued, every ten years. Only villagers have been allowed to take part. And that is what will happen yet again in 2010."
posted on Dec-9-09 at 6:53 AM
Eskimo Grasshoppers - French Children's books of the 1930's and 1940's.
Also, Cornebuse et Cie (1945). Also, Animaux domestiques articulés (1941). Also, Histoire de Perlette (1936) Also, gymnastique scolaire (1933).
And finally Baba Yaga (1932)
posted on Dec-1-09 at 5:18 AM
Drilling a Square Hole. Can a drill be constructed which makes square holes?
Previous attempts have focused on Reuleaux triangles (a shape of constant width - useful for manhole covers) - but these produce square holes with rounded edges.
However, in 1939, in an anonymous article in Mechanical World magazine, plans were published for a device which uses circular motion to make perfectly square holes.
In their new book, How Round is your Circle, John Bryant and Chris Sangwin, build and demonstrate this device (scroll down for a video of the working device).
posted on Aug-31-09 at 1:13 PM
An Armadillo running and sniffing
The Mole-Cam
Cow Staring at Cow.
These and many more at the Museum of Animal Perspectives, a site run and curated by Sam Easterson.
posted on Aug-27-09 at 4:31 AM
"My Quest for Corvo was started by accident one summer afternoon in 1925..." so begins A.J.A Symons book The Quest for Corvo, an experimental biography of the bizarre genius Baron Corvo, much admired by D.H. Lawrence and by Graham Greene among others.
Mention Baron Corvo and bookdealers get excited. Only 5 copies (proofs) of his Don Renato existed. Symons sold his copy to Cecil Woolf, another biographer of Baron Corvo. This copy was later bought by an American Donald Weeks who, after reading Symons book, left his job and moved to England to become part of the growing cult of Baron Corvo. He was said to have amassed an enormous collection of Corviana. Weeks died in 2003: "He died ... of natural causes... Because, however, he left no will nor details of next of kin, he was officially classed as a missing person. He was "no one".' The fate of his rare-book collection has been a source of speculation.
Last week, Leeds University announced that "The University of Leeds has acquired a collection of books and manuscripts relating to Baron Corvo, one of the most controversial English novelists of the early 20th Century." Previews of the catalog. As to what makes Corvo so fascinating, readers can discover for themselves.
posted on Aug-6-09 at 12:52 PM
"Loot the Baedeker I did, all the details of a time and place I had never been to, right down to the names of the diplomatic corps." - Thomas Pynchon from Slow Learner.
Baedeker's were the de facto travel guide for international men of leisure: "Baedeker’s publications, which covered most of Europe, became so popular that Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany was quoted as saying that he stationed himself at a particular palace window each noon because “It’s written in Baedeker that I watch the changing of the guard from that window, and the people have come to expect it.” Baedeker maps online. Baedeker books online.
Are the old ones the best ones?
posted on Mar-11-09 at 2:03 PM
"He was sentenced to death after the military coup in 1980, a few months later he was pardoned but put under house arrest. While under arrest, he began to write a collection of poems; the aim of which was to create portraits of all the people he had ever met in his life" [Maninbo, or Ten Thousand Lives]. To date, 26 volumes from the ongoing collection have been published. Meet Ko Un. Ex-Buddhist Monk and one of South Korea's greatest poets.
posted on Feb-25-09 at 8:17 AM
The year is 1932. Hitler is rising in power. Harold Urey announces the discovery of deuterium, a hydrogen isotope. James Chadwick discovers the neutron. Heisenberg receives the Nobel Prize for his work in Quantum physics. It is a miracle year in Physics, matched only by Einstein's advances in 1905. A few of the most brilliant physicists in the world decide to convene in Copenhagen and ... write a play! Written on the 100th anniversary of the death of Goethe, The Blegdamsvej Faust is a remarkable document from a turning point in Physics.
posted on Feb-17-09 at 2:31 PM
The Tiling Database. Browse some random patterns. Or narrow down your search here.
Looking for an ornament in the Alhambra? Or a spiral tiling? Or perhaps a Topkapi scroll?
posted on Jan-13-09 at 11:13 AM
"Two people emerged from the ship, a man and his wife. .. Mrs. Wise immediately called for a doctor to look after the woman... The husband and wife were shown to Room 8, where the woman's condition continued to deteriorate... Eventually, the husband summoned the doctor, hotel staff and even the owner’s wife to Room 8 to ask a very unusual request: He asked that everyone present swear an oath never to reveal their identities." So, begins and essentially ends Alexandria Virginia's mystery of the Female Stranger.
posted on Dec-4-08 at 5:23 AM