Melissa Schriek: Dutch photographer, portraits, outdoor in cities; catalogue Schauspiel FFM

Ambient Isolation

Ambient Isolation - Global Sound Project. Ambient recordings from the Lockdown in Spring 2020. Compilation and interview with Al Sirkett at Tonebenderspodcast.

Étude cinégraphique sur une arabesque by Germaine Dulac (1929)

Germaine Dulac (1882-1942), French filmmaker, Impressionist and Surrealist; best known for her Impressionist film, La Souriante Madame Beudet ("The Smiling Madam Beudet", 1922/23), and her Surrealist experiment, La Coquille et le Clergyman ("The Seashell and the Clergyman", 1928).

xkcd

Webcomic: xkcd, updates every Monday, Wednesday and Friday

Pi Approximation

  Pi approximation (Archimedes, 3rd century BCE):    ²²³⁄₇₁ < π <  ²²⁄₇

Anagrams

Anagram generator at Wordsmith.org. English and other languages. Can select maximum number of words in each created anagram.


Anagram solver at Wordplays.com. Finds partials.

Struck by Mallets

Musical instruments:

• Xylophone: wooden bars
• Marimba: wooden bars w/ resonators
• Vibraphone: metal bars, resonators, rotating butterfly valve on top of resonator to generate vibrato
• Steel Pan: metal pan

 

Melody and Harmony

Melodically is horizontally, harmonically is vertically.

Madrigal

A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition composed of the Renaissance or early Baroque. The number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six. In the madrigal, the composer attempted to express the emotion contained in each line (and sometimes individual words) of a celebrated poem.

The Genesis song 'Entangled' from the album 'A Trick Of The Tail ' (1976) contains the line: 'Madrigal music is playing, voices can faintly be heard'.

Earth Timlapses by Alexander Gerst

Alexander Gerst (b. 1976) is a German ESA astronaut and geophysicist. He resided on the International Space Station (ISS) from May to November 2014.

Tim Berners-Lee

Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee (b. 1955): British computer scientist. Inventor of the WWW. Proposed an information management system in Mar 1989, implemented the first successful communication between an HTTP client and server via the Internet in Nov 1989. Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Knighted in 2004 by Queen Elizabeth II for his pioneering work.

Double Flute

A double flute is a wind instrument with two resonant pipes or tubes played simultaneously. Aulos (Greek) or tibia (Latin) were ancient Greek double flutes played in tragic performances, and are sometimes depicted in art.

 

A video by Erik the Flutemaker shows how the double flute is played.

Faster Reading

Boston-based start-up company Spritz wants to change the way people read and make communication faster, easier, and more effective. The company focuses on faster reading. Several other reading techniques already exist that attempt to increase reading speeds, such as skimming (not reading every word), avoiding sub-vocalization (talking to yourself while reading) and enlarging the peripheral span (reading an entire page at a time by mental “snapshot”).

While reading normally, the eye seeks a certain point within the word, called the 'Optimal Recognition Point' (ORP). For each new word, the eyes must find the ORP, which takes a significant amount of time. Spritz makes use of ORPs, as the text is presented individually word by word at high speeds (250 to 700 words per minute) without changing the position of the ORP. Therefore, the eyes do not have to move from word to word, allowing faster reading.

Interesting article on a possible future of books at the Washington Post (2014-03-19).

Research paper by M. Brysbaert and T. Nazir termed 'Visual constraints on written word recognition: Evidence from the optimal viewing position effect' (2005).

Music for Relaxation

Music: Quiet music for relaxation at Relaxdaily.net, including some videos on YouTube.

FactCheck.org

FactCheck.org is a nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. Says to monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases. Currently focusses especially on Obamacare.

Man and Nature

Paradox: Man is part of Mother Nature, despite being profoundly incompatible with her.

'Round Midnight (1986)

Movie (YT): 'Round Midnight (1986). w/ Dexter Gordon (Dale Turner), François Cluzet (Francis Borler), Gabrielle Haker (Berangere), Sandra Reaves-Phillips (Buttercup), Lonette McKee (Darcey Leigh), Christine Pascal (Sylvie), Herbie Hancock (Eddie Wayne), Bobby Hutcherson (Ace). Directed by Bertrand Tavernier. Jazz film based on the lives of pianist Bud Powell and saxophonist Lester Young. The fictional tenorist Dale Turner, who is a musical genius but also an alcoholic, meets jazz fan Francis Borler, who helps him to stay on track. Won an Academy Award Won for Best Music, Original Score (Herbie Hancock). The music for this film was entirely recorded on the set. In real life, Francis was the French author Francis Paudras, who had befriended Powell during his Paris expatriate days and told the story in the memoir/biography 'Dance of the Infidels'. Paints a moving picture of the life of a jazz musician in the early sixties. Acting and dialogs of Dexter Gordon are superb. Music is breathtaking, peaking in the performance of 'How long has this been going on' with Lonette McKee and Dexter Gordon. Overall rating 8 out of 10.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

Movie: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012). w/ Ian McKellen (Gandalf), Martin Freeman (Bilbo), Richard Armitage (Thorin). Directed by Peter Jackson. Bilbo Baggins, under the guidance of Gandalf, sets out on a journey to the Lonely Mountain with a group of Dwarves to reclaim their stolen mountain home. Prequel to Lord of the Rings. Shows how Bilbo found the ring. Story too slow. Overall much weaker that LOTR movies, drags on at times. Overall rating 5 out of 10.

The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch

Informative BBC documentary on the famous painting 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' (between 1490 and 1510) by Hieronymus Bosch (ca. 1450–1516) with some interpretations.

Mittsommernachts-Sex-Komödie

Theater: Burgtheater Wien: Eine Mittsommernachts-Sex-Komödie (A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy) directed Matthias Hartmann. Written by Woody Allen. w/ Esmée Liliane Amuat, Martin Schwab, Roland Koch, Sunnyi Melles, Michael Maertens, Dorothee Hartinger. Comedy. A couple with marriage problems is visited by friends over the weekend, swapping partners and developing a story of sex, love and disappointment. Boring story, predictable plot. Acting okay. Overall rating 3 out of 10.

Newton's Laws

Sir Isaac Newton's three laws of motion were first compiled in his work Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica and published in 1687:

• First law: If there is no net force on an object, then its velocity is constant. The object is either at rest (if its velocity is equal to zero), or it moves with constant speed in a single direction
• Second law: The acceleration a of a body is parallel and directly proportional to the net force F acting on the body, is in the direction of the net force, and is inversely proportional to the mass m of the body, i.e., F = m*a.
• Third law: When a first body exerts a force F1 on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force F2 = −F1 on the first body. This means that F1 and F2 are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. Actio = Reactio.

Kepler's Laws

Johannes Kepler's laws of planetary motion:

1. 1. The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci, i.e. planetary orbits are not circluar but eliptical
2. 2. A line joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time, i.e. motion of the planet is faster when closer to the sun
3. 3. The square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit. Captures the relationship between the distance of planets from the Sun, and their orbital periods

Kepler published his first two laws in 1609, having found them by analyzing the astronomical observations of Tycho Brahe. Kepler published the third law in 1619.

Eric Weisstein's World of Science

Eric Weisstein's World of Science contains entries on Astronomy, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, and Biographies.

Kepler's Defense of Tycho against Ursus

History of Astronomy: Kepler's Defense of Tycho against Ursus by Edward Rosen, Popular Astronomy, Vol. 54, p.405, 1946. In 1595, the inexperienced Kepler had written a flattering letter to Nicholas Reimers (who called himself Ursus (the bear)), then Imperial Mathematician to Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor in Prague. In 1597, Reimers issued his De astronomicis hypothesibus, with its venomous attack on Tycho Brahe. He incorporated Kepler’s letter in it without Kepler’s knowledge or consent, thereby unscrupulously making it appear that in his duel with Tycho he was supported by Kepler. Kepler himself had by now become renowned through publication of his Cosmographic Mystery. Reimers died in mid-August 1600. In October 1600, Kepler, at the request of Tycho, began composing a rebuttal of Reimers works (A Defense of Tycho against Ursus (Apologia Tychonis contra Ursum)), but it remained unpublished by the time of Tycho's death (24. October 1601). In the end, Kepler's Defense of Tycho was found among his unpublished manuscripts by Christian Frisch, who edited Kepler’s collected works, and put it in print for the first time in 1858. More on Kepler at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is a Digital Library portal for researchers in Astronomy and Physics, operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) under a NASA grant. ADS maintains three bibliographic databases containing more than 9.9 million records: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Physics, and arXiv e-prints. Its main body of data consists of searchable bibliographic records and full-text scans of much of the astronomical literature that can be browsed or searched via our full-text search interface.