Happy New Year’s Eve to you and yours.
Month: December 2013
Merry Christmas 2013
Merry Christmas to you and yours!
Thanks for stopping by, and to everyone that has.
Sunday Poem-Robert Hayden: Those Winter Sundays
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering,breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
From IBTimes Via Youtube: ‘NASA Mars Rover Finds Evidence Of Lake’
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It looks like Gale Crater has its advantages.
Research papers here. A summary of some of what’s been found so far:
‘Research suggests habitable conditions in the Yellowknife Bay area may have persisted for millions to tens of millions of years. During that time rivers and lakes probably appeared and disappeared. Even when the surface was dry, the subsurface likely was wet, as indicated by mineral veins deposited by underground water into fractures in the rock. The thickness of observed and inferred tiers of rock layers provides the basis for estimating long duration, and the discovery of a mineral energy source for underground microbes favors habitability throughout.’
You can also watch a 12/05/13 press briefing from JPL discussing those papers above. These rocks are much newer than the older wet period theorized.
They’re more focused on the search for organic carbon, now, within the environments they’ve discovered.
Via The Mars Science Laboratory At NASA: ”Mount Sharp’ On Mars Links Geology’s Past And Future’…Via Youtube: ‘The Challenges Of Getting To Mars: Selecting A Landing Site
NASA Via Youtube: December 21st, 2012 Mars Curiosity Rover Report
NASA Via Youtube: ‘The Martians: Launching Curiosity To Mars’…NASA Via Youtube: ‘Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity Rover) Mission Animation…
From HyperAllergic Via The New Criterion: ‘At the Internet Archive, Saving Data While Spurning the Cloud’
Brewster Kahle is building an Internet Archive which aims to offer universal access:
‘…a Library of Congress for the 21st century built through private philanthropy and sweat equity…’
…How libraries endure was on Kahle’s mind when I visited the Archive in San Francisco’s Richmond District earlier this year. “What happens to libraries is that they’re burned,” he said. “They are generally burned by governments. The Library of Congress, for instance, has already been burned once, by the Brits. So if that’s what happens, well, design for it, make copies.”
You can’t step in the same river twice, and much of our stored knowledge can be gone in the blink of an eye.
Cloud computing seems poised to shake things up, but backup plans are welcome, and Kahle seems motivated to think about where technology and library science are meeting. He discusses his scanning centers and bookmobiles which are getting books cheaply into the hands of people who may never have held them before:
Friday Quotation: Ralph Waldo Emerson
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.
The NY Times On Pascal Dangin: ‘The Image Chaser’
A follow-up on Dangin.
Technology changes awfully quickly.
As previously posted:
In the New Yorker, Dangin admits to having worked for Dove, applying some of his techniques (with heavy use of mathematics and computer graphics) to touch-up their photos. You know the kind.
Another Dove photo here.
Regardless of his motives, Dangin considers himself an artist and what he does a pursuit of aesthetics.
Selva-Real women in Hong Kong?
From Vanity Fair: ‘Reverse-Engineering A Genius (Has A Vermeer Mystery Been Solved?)
Just as optics revolutionized the sciences and the boundaries of human knowledge, from Galileo to Newton and onwards, Tim Jenison wonders if optics may have revolutionized the arts as well.
‘But still, exactly how did Vermeer do it? One day, in the bathtub, Jenison had a eureka moment: a mirror. If the lens focused its image onto a small, angled mirror, and the mirror was placed just between the painter’s eye and the canvas, by glancing back and forth he could copy that bit of image until the color and tone precisely matched the reflected bit of reality.’
Good Vermeer page here for a refresher on the Dutch master.
Penn & Teller helped make a documentary which has gotten good reviews, entitled ‘Tim’s Vermeer.‘
They discuss the project and Tim’s theory below (perhaps only the Girl With The Pearl Earring knows for sure if the painter used such a technique):
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Related On This Site: In The Mail: Vivian Maier
Goya, that modern, had to make a living from the royal family: Goya’s Colossus…Goya’s Fight With Cudgels…Goethe’s Color Theory: Artists And Thinkers…NASA Composite Image Of The Earth At Night…Beauty?…Garrett Mattingly On Machiavelli-The Prince: Political Science Or Political Satire?
Sunday Poem By James Merrill-‘A Renewal’
A Renewal
Having used every subterfuge
To shake you, lies, fatigue, or even that of passion,
Now I see no way but a clean break.
I add that I am willing to bear the guilt.
You nod assent. Autumn turns windy, huge,
A clear vase of dry leaves vibrating on and on.
We sit, watching. When I next speak
Love buries itself in me, up to the hilt.