Stupendous Shuttle Scenes

I am a big fan of space research, and space travel.  So allow me a brief foray outside the usual topics of this blog, and watch this.  Full screen, at high definition, if you can.



Pretty amazing.  It's incredible to think that even after detachment from the shuttle and fuel tank (and after they have ceased to produce thrust) the boosters gain an additional 13 miles of altitude. Truly awesome.

(ᔥ i09)

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The Intersection

It may interest you to know that I have a Bachelor's degree in Studio Art.

Art and Science have never seemed to be separate to me, a position held by some quite respectable minds over the years.  In my view, both are ultimately about applying a process of experimentation and refinement to a problem, until a solution is arrived upon.  Over time, others build on that work, and expand it into a deeper understanding of the world.  

That process and the blurry division of Art from Science sometimes pops up in a very elegant fashion.
Take, for instance, this:

I haven't yet looked into the actual apparatus, but I can make some educated guesses.  The "tone-arm" of the turntable is set to slowly track in across the slice of tree.  Instead of a stylus, it has a high magnification digital camera (hence the very bright light).  The image is then treated as raw sound data and fed into a sampler, where it triggers a piano sample.  Variation in the ring produce different notes: dark areas such as old injuries or burns produce bass notes.  Lighter areas produce higher notes.  The distance between them determines the timing, hence the cacophony of notes produced by the second "album", which is much more tightly grained. The width of the features may determine the sustain of the note.  

I quite like it, as it transforms the events in a tree's life into a music of sorts; the thin darker rings at the end of the growing season and impending senescence contrast with the light spring wood, injuries pop out any time they occur, and uneventful periods of even, continuous growth are silent.

(tip o' the hat to friend and cultural maven Theremina)

A brief poem-like observation, about crows

The crows roosted outside my office window in Bloomington tonight. 
They called and scolded and begged each other, high up in the cold trees. 

And when they seemed settled, for reasons known only to them, 
hundreds would suddenly leap into the air, silent except for the rush of black wings.

c. 1625–50 / 
Anonymous 
Japanese Artist 
SEATTLE ASIAN ART MUSEUM

For Science: Fountain Pens

I've decide that I would launch a series on this here blog, which I am titling "For Science", drawing on a popular meme (and I am very fond of Portal myself).  In this series of indeterminate duration and frequency, I'm going to write about things that I think are useful for scientific use, and beyond.

This time, the subject matter is fountain pens.  Yes, fountain pens.  That probably seems like a rather odd topic, so allow me to give a brief diversionary explanation.  On Christmas, I was somewhat unexpectedly gifted with a vintage Parker 51 fountain pen (it's a very dark green, basically this pen). It's a lovely bit of work, and considered the greatest fountain pen of all time by many.  It is also not a cheap thing, and wasn't even when new.

And having a fountain pen, for the first time in my life, got me to thinking about how we write, and what we write with.  I have long held up the plastic water bottle as the ironic symbol of modern civilization.  It is made out of a material that lasts essentially forever, is filled with something we can get for almost free, and is intended to be used only once.  And then thrown away.  The standard ballpoint pen is remarkably similar.  Intended to be cheap, convenient and inconsequential to lose, and yet made of immortal materials.

I began to wonder how many hundreds of pens I had bought or borrowed, and then lost or thrown away over the course of my life. Estimates put the number of pens thrown away by Americans per year north of 1 billion.  That's pretty terrible.  I had recently attempted to only buy pens I could get refills for, but found that the refills were often hard to come by, and that the pens themselves were often no great shakes.  The idea of having a few well crafted and durable pens that I might use from here until I no longer need to write had never really occurred to me. Until I was given this Parker.

Amusing Corvid Antics

I have had crows on the brain, of late.  They have been roosting en masse not to far from my house for several weeks now, and I have been watching their roosting antics on my way too and from the office.  If things go well this weekend, I might do a more substantial post on my those crows.

But for now, allow me to share with you this video of a hooded crow (Corvus cornix), doing the sort of thing that makes us pay so much attention to corvids generally.