Friday 10 April 2015

Trivia (should have been 17 January)

Louisville Wharfboat: 1905
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
Louisville Wharfboat: 1905
Circa 1905
“Ohio River levee at Louisville, Kentucky”
Note the “U.S. Life Saving Station”
8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
View original post

==========================================
Martin weaves more magic in a welcome trip to Westeros
via 3 Quarks Daily by Neela Debnath in The Independent

From the Dawn Age all the way through to the Glorious Reign, every entry is like embarking on a new journey through Martin's world.
Continue reading

==========================================
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
What is an author?
Think again, Barthes. The author is not dead. He is tweeting, Facebooking, YouTubing. And that’s a problem for critics of contemporary literature… more

==========================================
AbeBooks' 50 Most Expensive Sales of 2014
via AbeBooks.co.uk
This is the only end-of-year list that places Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone next to Das Kapital, and a postcard from Ghandi next to the works of Voltaire. Discover the most expensive books and ephemera sold by booksellers on the AbeBooks marketplace during 2014.
Continue reading

==========================================
Why be rational (or payday in Wonderland)?
via OUP Blog by Michael Allingham
Please find below a pastiche of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that illustrates what it means to choose rationally.
Please read the whole thing – it really is great fun.
http://blog.oup.com/2014/11/choice-theory-wonderland-vsi/

==========================================
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
On Walter Pitts
How a wealthy, wild-bearded philosopher-poet and a shy, homeless runaway determined how the mind knows what it knows… more

==========================================
Ants And Us
via 3 Quarks Daily by JM Ledgard in Intelligent Life
They work together, share food and send their elders into battle to protect the young. And the world authority on them thinks they have a lot to teach us. J.M. Ledgard goes to Harvard to discuss ants, and more, with E.O. Wilson
Continue reading

==========================================
Mesmerizing rebuild of a mechanical Fourier calculator
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
Albert Michelson's harmonic analyzer -- a 19th century mechanical calculator that can do Fourier analysis with just gears, springs and levers -- was found at the University of Illinois, and then lovingly restored by a trio of makers who lavishly documented it in a book (free PDF / paperback / hardcover) and a mesmerizing video series.


==========================================
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Leonard Bernstein
“Whatever the music means, it is not the story,” said Leonard Bernstein. Except that his music is fundamentally story time… more

==========================================
How the Enigma code-machines worked
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
With the release of the Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game, interest in the Enigma cipher used by the Axis powers and broken by Turing and the exiled Polish mathematicians at Bletchley Park has been revived.
Continue reading

No comments: