MarkH

Researchers from Texas State University have used forensic astronomy to uncover new details about Claude Monet's Étretat: Sunset — a stunning seascape that the impressionist master painted during a trip to the Normandy coast in 1883. Their findings, published in the February 2014 issue of the magazine Sky & Telescope, reveal the exact spot and time at which Monet painted the work, based on extensive fieldwork and astronomical data.

Led by astrophysicist Donald Olson, the team traveled to the cliffs of Normandy in 2012, where they used postcard-size replicas of Monet's works to identify the precise vantage point from which he painted Étretat: Sunset. Once they identified the location, they used planetary software to determine what a...

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Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO (5 May 1880 – 5 June 1963), was a British Army officer of Belgian and Irish descent. He served in the Boer War, First World War, and Second World War, was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and ear, survived a plane crash, tunneled out of a POW camp, and bit off his own fingers when a doctor refused to amputate them. He later said, "Frankly I had enjoyed the war." - Wikipedia (Thanks, Matthew!)

[Video Link] This is a good six-minute video that explains how transistors work. I liked the description of N- and P-type doping. (Via Adafruit)

By way of an afterwords on Monday's political blog entry, I'd just like to draw your attention to a worrying study that feeds into the issue of political failure modes. The Royal Statistical Society and Ipsos MORI commissioned a poll of public opinion on key social issues. Turns out that the British public are woefully misinformed:

* Teenage pregnancy: public discourse leads people to believe the level is 25 times higher than it actually is
* Crime: 58% don't realize that crime is actually falling
* Benefit fraud: most people think about 24% of social security payments are fraudulently claimed: the actual level of fraud is under 1%
* Foreign aid: more people think foreign aid is one of the top three budget items than the state pension (which accounts for ten times as much expenditure)
* Immigration: the average Brit thinks that 31% of the population are immigrants; even accounting for illegal immigration the figure is under 15%

Even assuming we can fix the damage inflicted on our democratic party system by the growth of the fourth party, how can we hope to elect governments that can engage constructively with actual social problems when the myths believed by the electorate deviate so wildly from the real picture? (And when those myths play so well in the mass media, because bad news makes for such good headlines?)