May 29, 2011
Cannot speak for all the rest
May 29, 2011
This video is a musical record of over three years worth of Type Ia supernova bursts, which are caused when white dwarf stars explode. University of Victoria astronomer Alex Parker and UC Santa Barbara’s Melissa Graham assigned each blast an instrument and musical note depending on its properties. The result is the “Supernova Sonata.”
The researchers made use of data from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, which detected 241 Type Ia supernovas between April 2003 and August 2006. The video shows each blast in chronological order, with each second of video corresponding to roughly two weeks of real time.
[i09]
May 19, 2011
Kraken Rum via @claesmogren. I have to get me some.
May 18, 2011
Credo
Some twenty years ago I plagiarized a pathetic essay by some clever IB student in a distant past and turned it into a credo that was required for my Theory of Knowledge class. I must have been seventeen or eighteen, and then as now I was nonchalantly trying my hardest to do as little as possible and still get ace grades. Mostly this involved panicked late night Word Perfect battles, noisy 8-dot matrix printouts, and a talent for making sense in writing. It didn’t usually involve copying someone else’s essay (just liberal citing), but this time there was something about that pecoral that inspired me into turning it into a haughty and anachronistic credo.
Did I really believe in it? I don’t know what I believed. The credo was full of vague but grand sounding ideas about freedom and responsibility. I can’t remember the details, but I do remember building a lot around a quote by some old philosopher - Locke? Hume? Something about not being able to be free when another man’s will can hinder yours. And then there was the witty sentence about there not being any need to feel terrorized by the laws of nature. Descriptive and prescriptive laws. Some rubbish like that. Lots of talk about freedom with a capital F.
So who’s essay should I copy now, twenty years later? I haven’t read any profound quotes lately, and being witty gets old real fast (just like myself).
A credo should begin with the words “I believe…” but the whole concept of trying to sum your beliefs up in a short and catchy essay seems like a very dated idea. In a postmodern world, confusion rather than belief is the mot du jour, and the grand narratives are dead so who cares anyway?
Feb 15, 2011
Back to the Future by Irina Werning. Check out the whole shebang.
Jan 18, 2011
The Two Handed Great Sword via robler, who is laughing so hard he can’t speak.
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This is some sort of blog where I post stuff that catches my interest. Sometimes, in a burst of creativity, I post some stuff I've made myself, but lately I've been mostly putting pretty things here.
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