via ResearchBuss: Firehose: Elizabeth Landau at smithsonianmag.com
The first pictures of the sky were taken on glass photographic plates, and these treasured artefacts can still help scientists make discoveries today
/https://public-media.si-cdn.com/filer/fd/18/fd18e6cc-bc00-4874-bdfc-6cb3043dffaa/gamle_fotografiske_glasplader31-1280-1.jpg)
A photographic plate of the 1919 total solar eclipse, taken by Andrew Claude de la Cherois Crommelin and Charles Rundle Davidson during an expedition to Sobral, Brazil. The 1919 eclipse was used by Arthur Eddington, who observed it from the island of Principe off the west coast of Africa, to provide the first experimental evidence of Einstein's theory of relativity. (Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen)
Three stories beneath the telescope dome at the Hale Solar Laboratory in Pasadena, California, a rusty spiral staircase marks the top of a nearly 80-foot-deep pit, concealed by a wooden trapdoor in the basement floor. At the bottom lies a grating meant to split light into a rainbow to allow scientists to study the makeup of the sun. The building’s current owners dare not descend, deterred by the lack of oxygen and impenetrable darkness below.
Continue reading
==============================
via Arts and Letters Daily: Jesse Russell in CRB Digital from The Claremont Institute
French historian Michel Pastoureau, whose Blue: The History of a Color has just been re-released to English-speaking audiences, is one of our age’s great librarians of civilisation. On its surface, Blue is a dull exercise in scholarly record keeping – but in fact, it is an exhilarating and richly informing book on how the European peoples from the Iron Age until today have decorated themselves and their cultural artefacts with the colour blue.
Pastoureau argues that the colour blue is both a naturally occurring phenomenon and a complex cultural construct which is “first and foremost a social phenomenon.” His impressive scholarly narrative does not fall prey to postmodernism’s worse excesses; Blue offers a coherent raison d’être behind Western history, no matter how that story is coloured.
Continue reading
==============================
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
(image: Unding Jami)
Scientists have identified what is likely one of the world's tallest trees, a 330.7-foot (100.8 meter) yellow meranti tree in the rainforest on the island of Borneo. They spotted the tree growing in the Malaysian state of Sabah during an aerial laser scan of the forest. The rainforest is protected yet Yellow meranti trees are are highly endangered because they're relentlessly chopped down in other parts of Borneo for construction use. To accurately measure the tree, arborist Unding Jami of the South East Asia Rainforest Research Partnership climbed it with a tape measure in hand.
Continue reading
==============================
via Interesting Literature
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle pays homage to the master of English comic fiction
Saki’s short stories have everything going for them. For one, they’re short: a few years before Virginia Woolf penned her series of very short sketches about modern life, such as ‘A Haunted House’, ‘The Mark on the Wall’, and ‘Kew Gardens’, Saki – no modernist, but decidedly modern – had reduced the short story form to three pages which contained everything the story needed to contain, with no filler but more wit per page than just about any other English writer, with the possible exception of P. G. Wodehouse (who must have been influenced by Saki). He’s also good on two things which it’s difficult to be good on, as the late Christopher Hitchens observed: children and animals. A number of Saki’s stories touch upon the weird or macabre, while others settle for making us laugh. Many manage both.
Continue reading
==============================
Here are 7 often-overlooked World Heritage Sites, each with its own history.
via the Big Think blog by Matt Davis
- UNESCO World Heritage Sites are locations of high value to humanity, either for their cultural, historical, or natural significance.
- Some are even designated as World Heritage Sites because humans don't go there at all, while others have felt the effects of too much human influence.
- These 7 UNESCO World Heritage Sites each represent an overlooked or at-risk facet of humanity's collective cultural heritage.
Taller Buddha of Bamyan before 2001 (via Wikipedia)
The other sites are:
2. Petra (been there, got the photos)
3. The Rock Islands
4. Hampi
5. Samarra
6. Gough and Inaccessible Islands
7. The Everglades National Park
Read about these places for yourself
==============================
via Ancient Origins by Sarah P Young
Snow White, one of the Disney Stories, possibly has origins in a German folktale. (Geagea / Public Domain )
Many of us grew up watching Disney movies and their tales of fairy princesses and evil queens are undeniably a part of the modern zeitgeist.
Some of the movies are original to Disney, but at their core most Disney movies are inspired by ancient folklore. Snow White, Cinderella, and The Little Mermaid were all inspired by European fairytales, for example. But not every story has been adapted from sources like the Brothers Grimm – some of them are even based on real historical events and figures.
Continue reading
==============================
via The Royal Society – The Repository by Rupert Baker
Of all the portraits adorning the walls of the Royal Society’s home in Carlton House Terrace, this one is possibly my favourite:
Astronomer, supernova-spotter, alchemist, instrument-maker, Kepler’s mentor, keeper of a clairvoyant dwarf and a pet elk that died after drinking too much beer and falling down the stairs, the Danish nobleman Tycho Brahe was certainly quite a character. You’ll doubtless have spotted something rather curious about that face, too: his famous metal nose, made after he lost the original in a swordfight in the dark with his cousin, following an argument over who was the better mathematician.
Continue reading
==============================
via Boing Boing by Rusty Blazenhoff
"I met a gin soaked bar-room queen" in... Budapest?
Australian personality Greg Grainger is backed up by the Graingerettes, a group of women all decked out in traditional Hungarian dress, in this rousing cover of the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women." It was recorded sometime in 1990 and was downloaded from on old VHS tape.
==============================
via Interesting Literature
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews a dystopian novel about a new religion
Toxic masculinity. Patriarchy. Incel. Words like these are all over the internet of late, describing a perceived rise in misogynistic behaviours and attitudes among young men growing up in Britain, America, and elsewhere. Coupled with this is the worryingly small percentage of people – women as well as men – who self-identify as ‘feminists’ (just 7% of Britons, according to one survey). Could the Utopian dream of gender equality, which appeared to be making some headway as the millennium came into sight, be retreating ever further into the distance?
Continue reading
No comments:
Post a Comment