via Boing Boing by Clive Thompson
Stanley Kubrick had a lot of trouble getting the right voice for HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. He initially used the Oscar-winning actor Martin Balsam, but his Bronx accent wound up making HAL sound "a little bit too colloquially American," as Kubrick later decided.
Continue reading
==============================
via the Guardian by Sarah Perry
This fictional account of the artist’s life at the court of Philip IV confirms its daring author’s extraordinary gifts
‘The painter is a rare fixed point’ … from Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez. Photograph: Museo Nacional del Prado
“Is the novel dead?” comes the plaintive cry every few years, like the sound of Rachel weeping for her children. Sometimes it is novelists asking, interviewed by critics of novels before a paying audience of novel-readers, for the purpose of marketing their own novels, which will be reviewed by fellow novelists, and piled high in establishments dedicated to the sale of novels. The novel is not dead, of course; but if the concerned reader were to examine contemporary literature’s body of work they would find, in Amy Sackville’s virtuoso new book Painter to the King, nothing short of a vital sign.
Continue reading
==============================
via the Big Think blog by Philip Perry
A soldier wearing a Knights Templar uniform. The double-barred Cross of Lorrain underneath is the symbol of Godfrey of Bouillon, a founder of the order. 1309. Credit: Getty Images.
What’s the truth about one of history’s most mythologized order of knights?
Founding of the Templars
The Knights Templar are one of the most mythologized groups in all of history. Rumors of their exploits and fate abound, still today, over 700 years after they walked the earth. For instance, there are theories that the Templars founded the modern banking industry, the Illuminati, or even the Freemasons. There’s even a myth that they discovered and spirited away the Holy Grail. This is the cup that supposedly held Christ’s blood during the Last Supper and of which, if one were to drink, they would be granted immortality. So what’s the truth about one of history’s most secretive order of knights?
Continue reading
==============================
via The National Archives Blog by Keith Mitchell
Photograph of Duke of Edinburgh, dated 1881 Catalogue ref: COPY 1/54
No other monarch has, arguably, had a bigger impact on the thrones of Europe than Queen Victoria. With her consort Prince Albert she had nine children – four princes and five Princesses – of which eight would sit on thrones across Europe. Victoria married her children into royal houses from Greece, Norway, Prussia, Romania, Russia, Spain and Sweden. On her death in 1901 she left four future sovereigns of the United Kingdom: Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII and George VI. The German Emperor Wilhelm II was grandson to Victoria and Albert; his mother was Victoria’s oldest child, the Princess Royal, Victoria. The Duke of Connaught, Prince Arthur, renounced his claim to the throne of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to later become the Governor General of Canada in 1911.
Continue reading
==============================
via the OUP blog by Christopher D. Johnson
SpaceX Dragon commercial cargo craft approaches the ISS by NASA. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Humanity is no longer just exploring outer space for the sake of leaving flags and footprints. On February 6, the SpaceX Corporation conducted a successful first flight of its Falcon Heavy rocket, capable of carrying 63,800 kg (140,700 lb) to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), a capability not seen since the Apollo era. As the rocket’s reusable stages can be refueled and reflown, this rocket is a significant innovation and not merely a return to past capabilities. And with swagger uncharacteristic of the current space industry, the Falcon Heavy carried a Tesla Roadster sports car complete with a dummy at the wheel and live-streamed the whole thing. It should be clear by now that the space world is changing.
SpaceX is not the only pioneer. A wide range of new actors are entering outer space, including startup companies and nations accessing space for the first time. In addition to traditional space activities, the modern space industry fully intends to expand humankind’s economic and scientific horizon by building, making, buying, selling, and (soon enough) living in outer space.
Continue reading
==============================
via the Guardian by Mark Carnall
How argonaut cephalopods evolved their own architecture to return to the open ocean
This image provided by the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium shows a female Argonaut, or paper nautilus, a species of cephalopod that was recently scooped out of the ocean off the California coast. Photograph: Gary Florin/AP
Cephalopod molluscs, the group of animals that includes octopuses, nautiluses, bobtail squid and cuttlefish amongst its living members, is a small but highly diverse group of animals. The group boasts ocean giants, colour and shape changing octopuses, luminous ink squirters, transparent deep sea squid, aquarium escape artists, animals that mimic other animals, giant eyed vampire squid and they’ve even conquered the air in species that fly, yes fly (Muramatsu et al. 2013).
Continue reading
==============================
via Boing Boing by Clive Thompson
Some new calculations suggest that a small red-dwarf star -- accompanied by a smaller brown dwarf -- flew so close to our solar system 70,000 years ago that it passed through the Oort Cloud.
Continue reading
==============================
via About History by Alcibiades
The battle of the Teutoburg Forest was between Germans and the Roman army in 9BC. German tribes marched through the Teutoburg Forest, destroying three Roman legions; and the Roman commander Quintilius Varus was killed. The battle led to the liberation of Germany from the Roman Empire and was the beginning of a long, drawn-out war between the Empire and the Germans. As a result, the German lands remained independent, and the Rhine became the border with the Roman Empire.
HISTORY
In the reign of the first Roman Emperor Augustus, his commander, the future emperor Tiberius, by the year 4 BC, had conquered Germany. from the Rhine to the Elbe.
In the year 5, the Imperial Province of Germany was founded. Five to six Roman legions were in the Rein camps, as well as in fortified camps inside Germany. Romans conducted court cases conducted by Roman lawyers under Roman law. It was supposed to control the population, impose taxes on it, and organize the conscription of Germans to the Roman army, as was done throughout the rest of the empire.
However, Rome feared a strong tribal alliance, formed under the leadership of Maroboduus, the king of the Marcomanni. Maroboduus avoided openly hostile acts against the Empire. But on the other hand, he did not form a union with Rome and gave shelter to enemies of the empire. In the 6th year, the Romans organized a military campaign against Maroboduus. Tiberius led five legions from the Danube to the north. When the armies of Tiberius attacked Maroboduus and approached his territory, an anti-Roman insurrection suddenly broke out in Pannonia and Dalmatia.
Continue reading
==============================
via Interesting Literature
On Longfellow’s glorious rain poem
The US poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82) is best-known for The Song of Hiawatha, and for growing a beard to hide the marks of a family tragedy, but he also wrote many other celebrated poems. And then there’s ‘The Rainy Day’, which isn’t numbered among his most famous. But it is one of the finest poems written about rain, so deserves a few words of analysis for that reason alone.
Continue reading
==============================
via the Big Think by Scotty Hendricks
As you live in our hyper-connected world, it may seem strange to realize that thousands of people still live in so-called uncontacted tribes, utterly cut off from modern civilization.
On July 1st, 2014 seven members of an Amazon tribe emerged from the jungle and made their first contact with the rest of the world—out of dire and tragic necessity. Despite 600 years of Portuguese-Brazilian history, this tribe only came out to interact with their new neighbors now, and we discover more things about uncontacted tribes all over the world every day—which is not necessarily a good thing.
Continue reading
No comments:
Post a Comment