Web Nuggets Five

I really enjoy the idea of zeppelin travel, though I have never actually been in one.  It seems slow and relaxing.  So, while I daydream about floating around the world, here is Web Nuggets Number Five for you: 

An Airship the Size of a Football Field Could Revolutionize Travel - Smithsonianmag.com

"A new fuel-efficient airship, capable of carrying up to 50 tons, can stay aloft for weeks and can land just about anywhere"

(credit: Chris Baldwin)

Super resolution atom by atom laser machining - Kurzweilai.net 
"Australian researchers have discovered how to use laser light to pick apart a substance atom by atom, allowing for creating new nanoscale diamond devices."  

30 Cult Movies that Absolutely Everybody Must See - i09.com

Golden Age Comics from the Digital Comic Museum - OpenCulture.com
The Digital Comic Museum offers free access to hundreds of pre-1959 comic books, uploaded by users who often offer historical research and commentary alongside high-quality scans.

The site’s moderators and administrators are particularly careful to avoid posting non-public-domain comics (a complicated designation, as described in this forum thread). The resulting archive is devoid of many familiar comic-book characters, like those from Marvel, D.C., or Disney.

On the other hand, because of this restriction, the archive offers an interesting window into the themes of lesser-known comics in the Golden Age—romance, Westerns, combat, crime, supernatural and horror. The covers of the romance comics are great examples of popular art.

“A human being is part of the whole called by us ‘universe’, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. “ (Albert Einstein, 1954)

Web Nuggets 4

How Ancient Alexandria Became an Intellectual Center - Wired Science

"They had to start from scratch. Alexandria was a brand-new city with a population consisting most of soldiers and sailors of the Ptolemies’ armed forces, bureaucrats and clerks of their administration, and the mixed bag of traders, businessmen, craftsman [sic], swindlers, and whatnot, who see opportunity in, as it were, a fresh playing field. Intellectuals had to be blandished into coming to a place that to all outward appearances was a cultural wasteland."  

Can't find a time machine to go back to Ancient Alexandria?  Looking for something closer to home to read?  Check out openlibrary.org 

Gravitational Waves and Inflation explained by PHD comics.  

 (via I09)

A few posts on Art.  

The Guardian had an article titled "The 10 Greatest works of art ever".  Pretty tough list to put together.  Though I do enjoy this one:

(Chauvet Cave Paintins (c 30,000 years ago)

BoingBoing.net had this great picture of some London Street Art. 

(photo: Jason Weisberger)

Huffington Post had an article on 'The Gorgeous History of Tattoos, From 1900 to Present". 

"The mind is an endless train weaving its way through the landscape of reality.

But who made the train tracks and where is the conductor?”

From the book ‘Sex, Drugs, Einstein, and Elves: Sushi, Psychedelics, Parallel Universes, and the Quest for Transcendence’ by Clifford A. Pickover

When I Die...If I Live That Long

Time was, when quoting Ed Abbey would have automatically had you labeled as a "radical."  His particular style of environmentalism and his method of delivery was misinterpreted as a form of "ecoterrorism" and Abbey himself was derided as an eco-terrorist.  He does have a lot to say about the world, civilization, nature and culture and he uses his deadpan brusque style saying it.  There is no doubt that he was a character, the likes of which are becoming fewer and fewer as our civilization becomes more and more homogenized and technobrainwashed.

This is a great clip of Abbey back in the Arches National Park, the land that he loved and worked for so long.  This was 1985.  It would be fascinating, if he was still alive, to hear what he'd have to say about the state of our environment and our supposed leaders of today.  My guess is he would not be thrilled, but he'd be smug knowing that this is all temporary and in the end, nature is going to win.  Sadly he didn't live long enough.

 

Here are some more Ed Abbey quotes about things:

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.

No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.

Counterpart to the knee-jerk liberal is the new knee-pad conservative, always groveling before the rich and powerful.

The earth is not a mechanism but an organism, a being with its own life and its own reasons, where the support and sustenance of the human animal is incidental. If man in his newfound power and vanity persists in the attempt to remake the planet in his own image, he will succeed only in destroying himself — not the planet. The earth will survive our most ingenious folly.

There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some. Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who's always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting. You have time to observe the details. The utopian technologists foresee a future for us in which distance is annihilated and anyone can transport himself anywhere, instantly. Big deal, Buckminster. To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.

One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am — a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.

Terrence McKenna Quotes

A bit long and a bit tough to read a video, but some pretty awesome quotes.

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