Marilyn Monroe and James Joyce

Saw this Eva Arnold photo of Marilyn Monroe reading 'Ulysses':

Which then lead me to this awesome short clip on Joyce:

(via Open Culture)

Mars Showcase

Wow!  Amazing footage from the European Space Agency


(Via Io9)

Cool Animation: "Why Do I Study Physics?"

Cool animation on physics...

Why Do I Study Physics? (2013) from Xiangjun Shi on Vimeo.

(via io9)

DIY electronics

At some point I think I would like to dabble in some DIY electronic projects.  Mitch Altman at Cornfield Electronics put together this nice PDF comic on how to solder.

(found via boingboing.net)

Search Escalates for Key to Why Matter Exists

I like the idea that while I am trying to figure out what to eat for breakfast others are asking the bigger questions, like...  'why is there something rather than nothing in the universe?'.  Actually, I sometimes do ask myself that while eating my cereal and trying to figure out why I do what I do.   Some light reading from Quanta magazine.

"According to the Standard Model of particle physics, the universe should be empty. Matter and antimatter, which are identical except for their opposite electric charges, seem to be produced in equal parts during particle interactions and decays. However, matter and antimatter instantly annihilate each other upon contact, and so equal amounts of each would have meant a wholesale annihilation of both shortly after the Big Bang. The existence of galaxies, planets and people illustrates that somehow, a small surplus of matter survived this canceling process. If that hadn’t happened, “the universe would be void,” Schönert said. “It would be very, very boring for us, who would not exist.”"

Read the rest of the article here: Search escalates for Key to Why Matter Exists.  
(via grahamhancock.com)  

Russell Brand on Newsnight

Pale Blue Dot - The Carl Sagan Series

I think I have posted versions of this before, but I like this edit...




(via IO9)

Superman 75th Anniversary Animated Short

(via i09)

Rock and Roll

 

Who is watching the watchmen?

See the post below for see an entertaining use of the mass transmittal of data and then watch this video for a hilarious spoof on where the limitations of such technology lie.  Of course these companies have nothing but our best interests at heart and would never compromise those interests by implementing such zany applications for this new and liberating technology.



(full disclosure:  I own an I phone)

Foursquare data looks pretty cool.

I found these very mesmerizing.  The swarming of some horde into the belly of a great beast and then out again.  The hive mind...  Not sure exactly, but I am fascinated.

"Foursquare has gathered a year’s worth of check-in data from all over the world and made it into these cool time-lapse maps of the activity in major cities." (via wired.com) Check out the rest. 

This Garden Kills Fascists

Sadly, I can't take credit for that title, but it is awesome.  I got it here.

Variations on a Theme - Indra's Net

I have been studying American Literature lately (and again I guess, since I kind of majored in English in college) and have just finished a series of lectures on Ralph Waldo Emerson...

One of the lectures was based on his essay, Circles and has a very similar premise as Indra's Net.  Read this for yourself and let me know what you think.

"THE EYE is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary picture is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world. St. Augustine described the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere and its circumference nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading the copious sense of this first of forms. One moral we have already deduced in considering the circular or compensatory character of every human action. Another analogy we shall now trace, that every action admits of being outdone. Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens."

something large, something small, and something else

Something rather large and mind boggling:


via (deepastronomy.com)

Something rather small and mind boggling:

A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics

"Physicists have discovered a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality..."

"...The amplituhedron looks like an intricate, multifaceted jewel in higher dimensions. Encoded in its volume are the most basic features of reality that can be calculated, “scattering amplitudes,” which represent the likelihood that a certain set of particles will turn into certain other particles upon colliding. These numbers are what particle physicists calculate and test to high precision at particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland."

Read more.

 Which kind of made me think of Inra's net. 

"Francis Harold Cook describes the metaphor of Indra's net from the perspective of the Huayan school in the book Hua-Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra:
Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering "like" stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring." (via wikipedia).

Sound Observation from a Sci-Fi Genius

‘A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve an equation, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.’~ Robert A. Heinlein

You might know Heinlein from such works as:

"Stranger in a Strange Land"
"Starship Troopers"
"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"