davidthompson

Anak Krakatau

Or Child of Krakatoa. June, 2009. Photograph by Marco Fulle.

 

Via. Related.

Reheated (5)

For newcomers, three more items from the archives.

Freeloading and Snobbery. 

Arts establishment claims to be “suppressed,” sneers at the little people, demands free money.

I’m not convinced that the reduction of taxpayer subsidy for loss-making plays qualifies as “suppression.” And reluctant taxpayers please take note: Despite all the years of providing handouts, you’re now on the side of the oppressor.

Womanier Stuff.

The comedic potential of Women’s Studies newsgroups.

As a result of all this “questioning” and “confronting” of logic perhaps we can look forward to the first feminist computer, which will presumably operate on more “wholistic” non-logical principles. If such a device could be built, I’m confident it would generate answers that are ideologically agreeable, if not actually correct.

Exposure.

Atom bombs and Moon landings. The photographic essays of Michael Light.

One incidental detail… illuminates the unique comic potential of practical nuclear physics. Ted Taylor was a miniaturisation expert involved in many of the early atmospheric experiments. On June 5th, 1952, during the test explosion of a 14 kiloton device in the Nevada Desert, Taylor used a parabolic mirror to focus the bomb’s glare and light his cigarette.

Poke about in the greatest hits.

The Whale That Exploded

No, seriously. See for yourselves. 

I quote:

In January 2004, the carcass of a 50-ton sperm whale explodes in a Taiwanese city centre. [National Geographic Channel] examines the physics and the biology of this 100,000-pound animal whose body was destroyed by its own internal forces. On the way to Tainan University for research, the whale exploded due to volatile gas build up in the abdomen.

At this point, further comment seems unwise. It would only lead to jokes involving the ending of Watchmen and “volatile gas build-ups.”

Elsewhere (11)

Oliver Kamm on the inversions of being “progressive”:

Notions once considered reactionary, even extreme, have insinuated themselves into the mainstream of right-thinking (that is, left-thinking) social idealism. When you encountered someone of professed left-of-centre opinions, you used to be able to draw broad but important, and generally reliable, inferences about what these entailed. They included, at a minimum, commitments to secularism, freedom of expression, individual liberty against collective authority, women’s rights, homosexual equality and the combating of xenophobia. Times have changed. Now these stances are unusual, even heterodox. […]

When, last year, suicide bombers attacked the Danish Embassy in Pakistan, killing six people and wounding more than 20, a Danish journalist writing for The Guardian commented that the attack was “of course, indefensible, but it raises questions about the wisdom of the much-debated cartoons and Danish reactions to Muslim wrath.”

(For more on the Guardian journalist in question and his “of course, but” manoeuvre, see, for instance, this.) 

The “of course, but” formulation is worse than a dreary cliché. It indicates a liberalism evacuated of content. Those who prize social unity and order will tend to believe that people’s deepest feelings and beliefs should be accorded respect. But respect for ideas is never an entitlement. It depends on their intellectual resilience in public debate. No free society can treat people’s deepest beliefs as sacrosanct. They are fair game for hostile and derisive criticism. That is how knowledge advances. […]

No one has a right to the protection of feelings. If politics concerns itself with mental states, there is no limit to how far legislation can intrude on people’s lives. The task of progressive politics is to protect liberty, not least by attacking the accumulation of bad ideas. Yet to many on the Left, the individual, inquiring mind is of far less importance than the representation of designated groups.

The Missing Music

Colliding Particles is a series of short films by Mike Paterson following a team of physicists at the Large Hadron Collider. The latest film, Problems, covers helium mishaps, staring at blackboards and the search for missing music.

Via Coudal.

Planetary Bling

Images of Saturn, its ring system and its moons.

See also: Saturn’s vortex. 

Insights

Further to Nick Veasey’s x-ray photographs, here’s another collection of radiological images, taken by medical student Satre Stuelke using a CT scanner. Colours denote the various densities within the objects being probed. 

   

There are short films too. Related.

They’re Gaining On Us (2)

A while ago, I noted this development:

No fewer than 22 times, researchers documented wild chimpanzees on an African savanna fashioning sticks into ‘spears’ to hunt small primates... In each case a chimpanzee modified a branch by breaking off one or two ends and, frequently, using its teeth to sharpen the stick. The ape then jabbed the spear into hollows in tree trunks where bush babies sleep... Anthropologist and study co-author Paco Bertolani witnessed... a chimpanzee successfully extract a bush baby with a spear.

Now, via Dr Westerhaus, comes more news from the animal kingdom:

A male chimpanzee in a Swedish zoo planned hundreds of stone-throwing attacks on zoo visitors, according to researchers. Keepers at Furuvik Zoo found that the chimp collected and stored stones that he would later use as missiles. Further, the chimp learned to recognise how and when parts of his concrete enclosure could be pulled apart to fashion further projectiles.

The findings are reported in the journal Current Biology. There has been scant evidence in previous research that animals can plan for future events. Crucial to the current study is the fact that Santino, a chimpanzee at the zoo in the city north of Stockholm, collected the stones in a calm state, prior to the zoo opening in the morning. The launching of the stones occurred hours later - during dominance displays to zoo visitors - with Santino in an “agitated” state. This suggests that Santino was anticipating a future mental state - an ability that has been difficult to definitively prove in animals.

I know. If they learn to make fire, we’re screwed.

Eavesdropping

Dr Westerhaus alerts us to the Museum of Retro Technology and in particular this gallery of sound mirrors and acoustic location devices, used to detect enemy aircraft prior to the development of radar.

 

Related, and a little more discreet: Concealed hearing devices of the 19th century, including the amplifying vase and the acoustic beard.

Inauguration, From Above

Obama’s inauguration has been covered at tremendous length elsewhere, but it would seem a tad churlish if I neglected it entirely. Here are two images of the proceedings taken by the GeoEye-1 satellite at around 11am EDT yesterday from a height of 423 miles. Click to enlarge.