Archive for May, 2010
Calculating “dip”
When reading a sextant, you must account for the height of your eye above sea level (known as “dip”). This is done by calculated at 0.98 x square root of (height of eye above sea level in meters x 3.28)
Geological time survey
A wonderful illustration of Geological Time created by Joseph Graham, William Newman, and John Stacy of the US Geological Survey. Available as a poster.
Click image above for full-size.
Animations of marbles
Aricebo message
00000010101010000000000 00101000001010000000100 10001000100010010110010 10101010101010100100100 00000000000000000000000 00000000000011000000000 00000000001101000000000 00000000001101000000000 00000000010101000000000 00000000011111000000000 00000000000000000000000 11000011100011000011000 10000000000000110010000 11010001100011000011010 11111011111011111011111 00000000000000000000000 00010000000000000000010 00000000000000000000000 00001000000000000000001 11111000000000000011111 00000000000000000000000 11000011000011100011000 10000000100000000010000 11010000110001110011010 11111011111011111011111 00000000000000000000000 00010000001100000000010 00000000001100000000000 00001000001100000000001 11111000001100000011111 00000000001100000000000 00100000000100000000100 00010000001100000001000 00001100001100000010000 00000011000100001100000 00000000001100110000000 00000011000100001100000 00001100001100000010000 00010000001000000001000 00100000001100000000100 01000000001100000000100 01000000000100000001000 00100000001000000010000 00010000000000001100000 00001100000000110000000 00100011101011000000000 00100000001000000000000 00100000111110000000000 00100001011101001011011 00000010011100100111111 10111000011100000110111 00000000010100000111011 00100000010100000111111 00100000010100000110000 00100000110110000000000 00000000000000000000000 00111000001000000000000 00111010100010101010101 00111000000000101010100 00000000000000101000000 00000000111110000000000 00000011111111100000000 00001110000000111000000 00011000000000001100000 00110100000000010110000 01100110000000110011000 01000101000001010001000 01000100100010010001000 00000100010100010000000 00000100001000010000000 00000100000000010000000 00000001001010000000000 01111001111101001111000The Arecibo message, which seems quite indecipherable to me. I would like to hear a vocalization of this where the 0′s are read as “oo” and the 1′s as “ee”.
Paintings Without Paintings #1-3
Photographs of paintings with the painting itself cut out, leaving only a border of wall:
Light through blinds on ceiling
Sextants are sexy
An eBay search for “sextant” (a traditional tool used for nautical navigation) is apparently related to things like “sexytrash”, whatever that is. I think that tools like this are sexy, but not the kind eBay thinks.
US strategy in Afghanistan and water current
Above is a diagram, released by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in late 2009, showing the “surge” strategy for Afghanistan. Primarily criticized as a demonstration of how complex (read: impenetrable) our strategy for Afghanistan is (and I certainly find it difficult-to-impossible to decipher, when seen at the small scale above it has a certain water-current quality.
Perhaps like this drawing by DaVinci, which I love as a kind of early data visualization (not to mention amazing drawing):
Image via: MSNBC (thanks for the tip, Aaron)
Click on image above for full-size
Wooden Buddha sculpture with hidden objects
An x-ray of a wooden sculpture of Dainichi Nyorai (or Vairocana) from the 1190′s. It gets better:
X-rays reveal that three dedicatory objects have remained sealed inside the hollow torso of the wood figure for 800 years. The three interior objects–all potent Buddhist symbols associated with memorials–are tied together with a bronze wire. They comprise a large wood placard with a finial in the shape of a five-element pagoda (or gorin-to, literally “five-wheel pagoda”), a small crystal gorin-to and a crystal gem shaped as a round ball emulating a lotus bud mounted on a bronze lotus pedestal. The gorin-to shape is unique to Japan and came into fashion in the late twelfth century as a grave marker; its five parts correspond to the five elements–earth, water, fire, wind and space. The wooden plaque is likely to be inscribed with the date of the dedication and the name of the temple or donor, as well as that of the sculptor. The x-ray shows that the plaque is suspended at the center of the interior of the sculpture from bronze wire stretched from either side of the interior chest cavity through a hole drilled in the plaque. The crystal ball (shingachirin), placed in the approximate position of the heart, represents the spirit of the sculpture.
This sold in 2008 at Christies for $14,377,000. There’s a catalog out there somewhere with much better images.
Being in the world is making a world
“According to Santiago’s theory, cognition is not a representation of an independent, pregiven world but rather a bringing forth of the world. What is brought forth by a particular organism in the process of living is not the world but a world, one that is always dependent on the organism’s structure.”
Fritjof Capra, “Web of Life“, pg. 270
[ thanks Angeles! ]
