Wednesday, 29 June 2011
Monday, 27 June 2011
Science and Technology
Treats from the Streets.
Found this booklet in a box outside the Scotland Russia Forum "Free but Donations welcome". Too good.
Friday, 24 June 2011
Friday, 10 June 2011
Being a Mollusc...
In short, there were no limitations to my thoughts, which weren't thoughts, after all, because I had no brain to think them; every cell on it's own though every thinkable thing all at once, not through images, since we had not images of any kind at our disposal, but simply in that indeterminate way of feeling oneself there, which did not prevent us from feeling ourselves equally there in some other way.It was a rich and free and contented condition, my condition at that time, quite the contrary of what you might think....A Desperation filled me, a desire not to do anything special, which would have been out of place, knowing that there was nothing special to do, or non special either, but to respond in some way...…The shell in this way was able to create visual image of shells, which are things very similar – as far as we know – to the shell itself, except that the shell is here, whereas the images of it are formed elsewhere, possibly on the retina. An image therefore presupposes a retina, which in turn presupposes a complex system stemming from an encephalon. So in producing the shell, I also produced its image - not one, of course, but many because with one shell you can make as many shell-images as you want – but only potential images because to form an image you need all the requisites I mentioned before: and encephalon with its optic ganglia, and an optic nerve to carry the vibrations from outside to inside, and this optic nerve, at the other extremity, ends in something made purposely to see what there is outside, namely the eye.…In short, I conceived of the eye-encephalon link as a kind of tunnel dug from the outside by the force of what was ready to become and image, rather than from within by the intention of picking up any old image.
Excerpts from The Spiral
The Complete Cosmicomics
Italo Calvino
Tuesday, 7 June 2011
Monday, 6 June 2011
Super-K
Super-Kamiokande neutrino observatory under Mount Kamioka in Japan.
"The observatory was designed to search for proton decay, study solar and atmospheric neutrinos, and keep watch for supernovas in the Milky Way Galaxy.
A neutrino interaction with the electrons or nuclei of water can produce a charged particle that moves faster than the speed of light in water. This creates a cone of light known as Cherenkov radiation, which is the optical equivalent to a sonic boom. The Cherenkov light is projected as a ring on the wall of the detector and recorded by the PMTs. Using the timing and charge information recorded by each PMT (photomultiplier tube), the interaction vertex, ring direction and flavor of the incoming neutrino is determined.
The ability of the Kamiokande experiment to observe the direction of electrons produced in solar neutrino interactions allowed experimenters to directly demonstrate for the first time that the sun was a source of neutrinos."
More information here and here.
Images courtesy of Kamioka Observatory, ICRR (Institute for Cosmic Ray Research), The University of Tokyo.
Note: Thanks to Katy for showing me these super cool brain nuggets.
Friday, 3 June 2011
Two places at once.
"Physicists are used to the idea that subatomic particles behave according to the bizarre rules of quantum mechanics, completely different to human-scale objects. In a breakthrough experiment, Aaron O'Connell has blurred that distinction by creating an object that is visible to the unaided eye, but provably in two places at the same time. In this talk he suggests an intriguing way of thinking about the result."
Monday, 23 May 2011
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
A Maze in Multiple Dimensions
A maze.
A fictional place made reality. A real place becoming fictional.
Looping and doubling.
Deja vu.
A parallel universe.
Maze at Traquair House.
March 2011
Tuesday, 10 May 2011
Mise-en-Abyme
From Daimler Galery lift in Berlin
Mise-en-Abyme.
From the French meaning "place into infinity"
Lift goes up and down several stories, and horizontally for ever.
Looking at Things only Bigger.
Photographs taken on 11/4/2011 using a Konus Digimax-90 telescope.
The Moon was half full.
The Moon Milk Gatherers
Now, you will ask me what in he world we went up on the Moon for; I'll explain to you. We went to collect the milk, with a big spoon and a bucket. Moon-milk was very thick, like a kind of cream cheese. It formed in the crevices between one scale and the next, through the fermentation of various bodies and substances of terrestrial origin which had flown up from the prairies and forests and lakes, as the Moon sailed over them. It was composed chiefly of vegetal juices, tadpoles, bitumen, lentils, honey, starch crystals, sturgeon eggs, moulds, pollens, gelatinous matter, worms, resins, pepper, mineral salts, combustion residue. You had only to dip the spoon under the scales that covered the Moon's scabby terrain, and you brought it out filled with that precious muck. Not in the pure state, obviously; there was a lot of refuse. In the fermentation (which took place as the Moon passed over the expanses of hot air above the deserts) not all the bodies melted; some remained stuck in it: fingernails and cartilage, bolts, sea horses, nuts and peduncles, shards of crockery, fish hooks, at times even a comb. So this paste, after it was collected, had to be refined, filtered. But that wasn't the difficulty: the hard part was transporting it down to Earth. This is how we did it: we hurled each spoonful into the air with both hands, using the spoon as a catapult. The cheese flew, and if we had thrown it hard enough, it stuck to the ceiling, I mean the surface of the sea. Once there, it floated, and it was easy enough to pull it into the boat.
Exerpt from The Distance of the Moon, The Complete Cosmicomics
Italo Calvino
Flight 6607
"Standing before costly objects of technological beauty, we may be tempted to reject the possibility of awe, for fear that we could grow stupid through admiration. We may feel at risk of becoming overimpressed by architecture and engineering, of being dumbstruck by the Bombardier trains that progress driverlessly between satellites or by the General Electrid GE90 engines that hang lightly off the composite wings of a Boeing 777 bound for Seoul.
And yet to refuse to be awed at all might in the end be merely another kind of foolishness. In a world full of chaos and irregularity, the terminal seemed a worthy and intriguing refuge of elegance and logic."
A Week at the Airport : A Heathrow Diary
Alain De Botton
Monday, 9 May 2011
MagISStra Mission
Monday, 2 May 2011
Gemini 6 and 7
Gemini 6 and 7 launched from earth to meet in space 257km above the earth.
Gemini 6 as seen by Gemini 7 (photograph)
December 15th, 1965
A Statement for a Semi-fictitious Organisation for People with Two Eyes.
Everything we see, we see twice. Everything is two images. Left eye, right eye. Our brains turn these two coincidental images into a single three dimensional image. Cover one eye and the world shifts.
The world around us is three dimensional. The world in film is two dimensional. So why should we want our two dimensional to be three dimensional?
When a 3D object leaps from the screen, your eyes turn slightly inwards to converge on it, but your lens stays focused on the light from the screen. This conflict can cause nausea. 1
Mars landers are fitted with stereoscopic cameras and therefore the images they send back can be used to make red/blue anaglyph 3D images. The phenomenal and the naff collide.
Concurrent. Synchronous. Coincident. Simultaneous. Blink.
“Two identical, adjacent, battery-operated clocks were initially set to the same time, but, with time, they will inevitably fall out of sync.” (see fig. 1)
A stereoscopic photograph of the sky taken on a clear day from planet earth. A three dimensional photograph of a blank surface that goes on forever. (see fig. 2)
Two stereoscopic photographs taken from an aeroplane flying at approximately thirty six thousand feet. One looking up and one looking down. (see fig. 3)
Everything is two images.
The world around us is three dimensional. The world in film is two dimensional. So why should we want our two dimensional to be three dimensional?
When a 3D object leaps from the screen, your eyes turn slightly inwards to converge on it, but your lens stays focused on the light from the screen. This conflict can cause nausea. 1
Mars landers are fitted with stereoscopic cameras and therefore the images they send back can be used to make red/blue anaglyph 3D images. The phenomenal and the naff collide.
Concurrent. Synchronous. Coincident. Simultaneous. Blink.
“Two identical, adjacent, battery-operated clocks were initially set to the same time, but, with time, they will inevitably fall out of sync.” (see fig. 1)
A stereoscopic photograph of the sky taken on a clear day from planet earth. A three dimensional photograph of a blank surface that goes on forever. (see fig. 2)
Two stereoscopic photographs taken from an aeroplane flying at approximately thirty six thousand feet. One looking up and one looking down. (see fig. 3)
Everything is two images.
Window Seats
The most important thing about these photographs, is that everybody has them.
A blogfull here...
And these were taken by my sister on her recent travels to so very far away...
A blogfull here...
And these were taken by my sister on her recent travels to so very far away...
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