Donna Johnson

Amazingly, the notion of a black hole was first posited in 1783, by the English natural philosopher John Michell. In a paper read before the Royal Society that November, he wrote:

Let us now suppose the particles of light to be attracted in the same manner as all other bodies with which we are acquainted; that is, by forces bearing the same proportion to their vis inertiae (or mass), of which there can be no reasonable doubt, gravitation being, as far as we know, or having any reason to believe, an universal law of nature. … [I]f the semi-diameter of a sphere of the same density as the Sun were to exceed that of the Sun in the proportion of 500 to 1, a body falling from an infinite height towards it, would have acquired at its surface greater velocity than that of light, and consequently supposing light to be attracted by the same force in proportion to its vis inertiae, with other bodies, all light emitted from such a body would be made to return towards it by its own proper gravity.

“From these quotations it is clear that Michell in 1783 understood many of the basic principles of black hole physics which are in daily use almost 200 years later,” writes Cambridge physicist Gary Gibbons. Indeed, Michell’s talent doomed him to obscurity: His breakthroughs were lost on his contemporaries and forgotten by the time the world could appreciate them. His notion of a “dark star” was rediscovered only in the 1970s. The American Physical Society says, “[H]e remains virtually unknown today, in part because he did little to develop and promote his own path-breaking ideas.”

(Gary Gibbons, “The Man Who Invented Black Holes,” New Scientist, June 28, 1979.) (Thanks, Alejandro.)

Actress Ilka Chase married Louis Calhern in 1926, but he divorced her the following year to marry Julia Hoyt.

Sorting through her possessions afterward, she discovered a set of engraved calling cards that she’d had printed with the name Mrs. Louis Calhern.

“They were the best cards — thin, flexible parchment, highly embossed — and it seemed a pity to waste them, and so I mailed the box to my successor,” she wrote later.

“But aware of Lou’s mercurial marital habits, I wrote on the top one, ‘Dear Julia, I hope these reach you in time.’

“I received no acknowledgment.”

(From Chase’s 1945 autobiography Past Imperfect.)

If there was ever a clip primed for a "change a lightbulb" joke it's this one. I'll take a stab at it.

How many drones does it take to change a lightbulb?

Just one but it goes on and on.

I'll be here all week. — Read the rest

The first motion picture to feature a live cat is believed to be this 1894 short in which French physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey drops an inverted feline to watch it land on its feet.

When the experiment was published in Nature in 1894, the editors wrote, “The expression of offended dignity shown by the cat at the end of the first series indicates a want of interest in scientific investigation.”

Stand-up comedy is one of my major passions. Stand-up is replete with styles and subgenres like any great art form. There are comedians that, while sparse on witty material, use their timing and rhythm to sell a bit, while other comics rely solely on their writing to fuel their performances. — Read the rest

Male side-blotched lizards compete for mates using a three-sided strategy that resembles a game of rock-paper-scissors. Orange-throated males, the strongest, don’t form strong pair bonds but establish large territories and fight blue-throated males outright for females. The blue-throated males, middle-sized, are less aggressive and tend to pair strongly with individual females. Yellow-throated males, the smallest, have a coloration that resembles that of females; this allows them to approach females in the territories of orange-throated males — though this won’t work with females that have formed strong pair bonds with blue-throated males.

So, broadly speaking, orange beats blue, blue beats yellow, and yellow beats orange, an equilibrium of sorts in which each variety has an advantage over another but not over the third.

Harvard’s Museum of Natural History owns a unique collection of botanical models made of glass, more than 800 startlingly realistic plants produced by the German father-and-son glassworking team Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka. They were commissioned by Professor George Lincoln Goodale to serve as aids in the teaching of botany, but their strikingly accurate detail leads many to regard them as works of art in themselves.

The modern naturalist Donald Schnell, who painstakingly deduced the mechanism by which the butterwort Pinguicula is pollinated, was astonished in 1997 to see the glass butterwort that the Blaschkas had prepared a century earlier: “One sculpture showed a bee entering the flower and a second showed the bee exiting, lifting the stigma apron as it did so,” just as he had hypothesized. “As far as I know Professor Goodale never published this information, nor did it seem to have been published by anyone back then, but the process was faithfully executed.”

This raises a question in aesthetics. If we find, say, the Blaschkas’ glass chicory flower beautiful, shouldn’t we find a live chicory flower equally beautiful? For the two are practically indistinguishable. Some will say yes, but others will insist that “there is an important difference … between perceiving a set of characteristics in an object and perceiving that same set of characteristics as natural to that object,” writes University of Washington philosopher Ronald Moore. “To perceive something as a product of nature is not to perceive one more thing about it; it is to change the way we perceive everything about it.”

(Ronald Moore, “Appreciating Natural Beauty as Natural,” Journal of Aesthetic Education 33:3 [Autumn 1999], 42-60.) (See Perspective.)

astriferous
adj. bearing or containing stars; starry

stelliferous
adj. filled with stars; starry

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.” — Richard Feynman

“A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.” — Samuel Johnson

“Read what interests you. If Scott does not interest you and Dickens does, drop Scott and read Dickens. You need not be any one’s enemy; but you need not be a friend with everybody. This is as true of books as of persons. For friendship some agreement in temperament is quite essential.” — Lyman Abbott

The nuts-and-bolt illusion, devised by American magician Jerry Andrus.

“I can fool you because you’re a human,” he once said. “You have a wonderful human mind that works no different from my human mind. Usually when we’re fooled, the mind hasn’t made a mistake. It’s come to the wrong conclusion for the right reason.”

“Squaring the Circle,” by the European art group Troika, exhibited at Los Angeles’ Kohn Gallery in 2013.

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The photo is priceless.

The video, I can't even.

“Lunar Module (Charlie) and Astronaut (Ellie) Costume 2019.”

From their proud parent:

With the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, Charlie and I had been reading about the Apollo 11 mission and Neil Armstrong -- and I cannot recommend the book "I am Neil Armstrong" highly enough.

Charlie (age 5) is the lunar module itself, and her little sister Ellie (age 2) is an astronaut.

Charlie enters the costume by crawling underneath and there is a pair of shoulder straps that she uses to lift the entire costume. The costume looks heavier than it is -- it's almost entirely made of foam and foamboard. The front hatch magnetically closes and magnetically stays open, and doubles as a candy sample input port. The ascent stage (top part) separates from the descent stage (bottom part with landing pads) as you'll see below.

Check out the embedded IMGUR gallery at the bottom of this blog post for the whole step-by-step, and lots more cute images of the kids.

Past costumes:

• 2017 Squid.

• 2018 Horseshoe Crab.

• 2018 (Ellie) Traffic Cone.

[SOURCE: IMGUR]

Lunar Module (Charlie) and Astronaut (Ellie) Costume 2019

Humans aren’t the only species that tend to move to a musical beat: Animals that mimic vocally (such as parrots and, here, a sulphur-crested cockatoo) bob their heads and move their feet. Animals that don’t mimic vocally don’t do this. So possibly our urge to move to music is a by-product of our tendency to mimic vocally — it’s a motor response to something we hear.

(Aniruddh D. Patel, et al., “Experimental Evidence for Synchronization to a Musical Beat in a Nonhuman Animal,” Current Biology 19:10 [2009], 827-830; Adena Schachner, et al., “Spontaneous Motor Entrainment to Music in Multiple Vocal Mimicking Species,” Current Biology 19:10 [2009], 831-836.)

"Run, Daniel, run!"

(via /u/TheNatureLover)

Enjoy this fine collection of Freudian slips uttered by news presenters.

Pontus Hugosson has style,

...and vertical video.

(Thanks, Scot!)

How did this driver know that he should back up? Sometimes, you can just tell from the way vehicles sit at an intersection that bad things are very likely to happen. And then they do.

My favorite leather motorcycle jacket was starting to feel stiff and dried out. I decided to try Obenauf's Heavy Duty LP leather treatement.

For years I've used Pecard motorcycle leather dressing on my favorite leather jacket. The jacket has only gotten more and more lovely. The longer I wear it the better and better the hide looks and feels. It gets a ton of compliments when I wear it, and so I maintain it. I also WEAR IT. There had been several thousand miles in summer sun since I'd last fed the leather more than sweat. The elbows were getting harder to bend. Leather gets stiff when dry. I had read a lot about Obenauf's Heavy Duty LP on INTERNET FORUMS so decided I ought to give it a try.

I also had a pair of new motorcycle boots on hand. They came advertised as "greased leather" and while the finish felt fantastic, I could tell the leather needed a lot of softening. It was hard a rock and they hurt my feet. I decided I'd start with the boots and if I trusted Obenauf's THEN I'd move on the treasured motorcycle jacket. I opened the jar and was unsurprised to see it resemble the familiar Pecard. Both are beeswax based but the Obenauf's is slightly thinner and seems to have a lower melting point. Just the heat I freely generate seemed to melt the wax very easily, at room temperature. I put a little on a cloth and the brand new boots absorbed the treatment as quickly as it went on. As the boots were already 'black' they simply absorbed the colorless Obenauf's and acquired a bit more of that matte oiled look, but didn't appreciably darken. I was able to easily work out a few fresh scuffs out of the toecaps as well. They leather didn't soften up but its really going to take a lot more breaking in. This will help and should add some additional waterproofing. I decided it was safe to move on the the jacket.

Compare the image above with this one from 2014 and see how the jacket has aged.

Obenauf's goes on much more smoothly and easily than the Pecard at the same temp. The jacket was done in about half the time I'd usually spend. The leather instantly had almost exactly the same feel as it does about 48 hrs of having put the Pecard on. Obenauf's absorbs and dries far more quickly, and with no buffing. I'd say the jacket had absorbed and dried to wearable about 18 hours after the application. That is pretty amazing, with Pecard I tend to need to wait a week and buff the jacket some.

Obenauf's also doesn't smell like a god damn tannery. The house didn't smell at all, let alone for 3-4 days.

I am not sure how long it'll last. I ususally get 4-6 months out of an application of Pecard. Obenauf looks and feels every bit as nice. The leather has taken on a very satin-y sheen and looks super soft. A lot of texture and character that had faded while dry came back to life. I look forward to showing it off.

We will see how long this application lasts. If it is several months, I think Obenauf is my go leather dressing.

Obenauf's Leather Heavy Duty Preservative via Amazon

Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang contains no commas. (“I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false.”)

Vanessa Place’s Dies: A Sentence is a single sentence of 120 pages.

Mathias Enard’s Zone is a single sentence of 517 pages.

Michel Thaler’s Le Train de Nulle Part contains no verbs. (“Quelle aubaine! Une place de libre, ou presque, dans ce compartiment. Une escale provisoire, pourquoi pas! Donc, ma nouvelle adresse dans ce train de nulle part: voiture 12, 3ème compartiment dans le sens de la marche. Encore une fois, pourquoi pas?”)

Christine Brooke-Rose’s Amalgamemnon is a “pragmatic lipogram” — all its verbs are conditional, future, subjunctive, etc., so that nothing is actually happening in the present: “I shall soon be quite redundant at last despite of all, as redundant as you after queue and as totally predictable, information-content zero.”

Adam Adams’ 2008 novel Unhooking a DD-Cup Bra Without Fumbling contains no Es.

My notes say that Iegor Gran’s Les Trois Vies de Lucie can be read straight through, recto pages only, or verso pages only, yielding three different stories, but I haven’t managed to find a copy to check.

Amazon Canada has awesome deals available now! Today, Thursday, November 2, 2017, the Amazon Canada deals include:

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The Amazon Canada offers are available now, while supplies last. Amazon has FREE shipping on orders over $35.

Click here to get the Amazon Canada today’s offers.

From reader Magnus Ehinger: A mouse has apparently opened a restaurant and nut store in Malmö, Sweden, just outside the Kebab House at the intersection of Bergsgatan and Almbacksgatan. The restaurant is called Il Topolino (the Italian name for Mickey Mouse), and the nut store next door is Noix de Vie (“nuts of life”).

The restaurant offers a variety of cheese and crackers, according to the tiny menu posted outside, and the nut store offers pistachios, almonds, and hazelnuts. Also arranged outside are a tiny bicycle and posters for mouse-related films (including Night of the Were-Rat).

No one knows who’s behind this — a group called Anonymouse posted images on an Instagram account as this project took shape, and recently left an update reading “Without spoiling too much we can tell you that we’re working on a new scene, and in 2017 you’re going to be able to see plenty more.”

More information, and photos, are here. (That’s an English translation — here’s the article in the original Swedish. Thanks, Magnus.)

Deece27 bought 4,000 random books from Books by The Foot and fastened them to the wall by nailing each one to the book underneath followed by two nails angled into the wall. Check out more images of the project here. (via r/DIY)

Bombers in World War I were typically manned by two crew members, a pilot and an observer. The pilot operated the forward machine gun and the observer the rear one, so they depended on one another for their survival. In addition, the two men would share the same hut or tent, eat their meals together, and often spend all their free time together. This closeness produced “some remarkable and amusing results,” writes Hubert Griffith in R.A.F. Occasions (1941):

There were pilots who took the precaution of teaching their observers to fly, with the primitive dual-control fitted to the R.E.8 of those days — and at least one couple who used to take over the controls almost indiscriminately from one another: there was the story that went round the mess, of Creaghan (the pilot) arriving down out of the air one day and accusing his observer of having made a bad landing, and of Vigers, the observer, in turn accusing Creaghan of having made a bad landing. It turned out on investigation that each of them had thought the other to be in control of the aircraft; that because of this neither of them, in fact, had been in control at all; and that, in the absence of any guiding authority, the machine had made a quite fairly creditable landing on her own.

Griffith writes, “It was, I suppose, the most personal relationship that ever existed.”

See sample pages from this book at Wink.

Walking through the children’s section of any given book store, this book will immediately catch your eye. The front cover has gears sticking out the side, and if you turn them, you can see one of our main characters moving up and down on a wheel and axel system. Open the book, and you’ll be treated to even more interactive illustration done in the book’s playful art style.

The plot of the story follows two friends who live in a zoo, Sloth and Sengi. After many years of living there, they have decided to escape using some simple machines. Along the way, they encounter many problems (as you can imagine would occur when a sloth and a variety of elephant shrew attempt to scale a zoo enclosure). Each page outlines a different type of machinery and invites the reader to learn about how each system functions. When Sloth and Sengi try and use an inclined plane to escape, the narrator demonstrates why it takes less effort to climb up an inclined plane than straight over the vertical fence. Later on, this idea of the inclined plane returns when Sloth and Sengi try and use a screw to escape. Probably my favorite section of the book involves the section on levers. The author outlines how a lever functions with an effort, a fulcrum, and a load. You can construct a lever from cardboard cut-outs in the book, and then use it to try and fling Sloth and Sengi over the fence of their enclosure, usually with more success than our main characters.

The art style is delightful, with playful, sketchy designs, and fold-out panels introducing new information. The various hijinks of the main characters are illustrated with humor and affection, giving the book a lively feel, and the interactive aspect of building machinery, moving gears, and sliding-out panels easily keeps the reader’s attention. Overall, an enjoyable read that demonstrates that one is never too old to want to fling a cardboard sloth over a fence using a basic knowledge of physics. – Julia Pillard

How Machines Work: Zoo Break!
by David Macaulay
DK Children
2015, 32 pages, 8.7 x 11.1 x 1.3 inches
$14 Buy a copy on Amazon

As with all Amazon deals, their prices can change very quickly. Especially if the item is in high demand. I also don’t have any control on their pricing. I post as soon as I catch the deal, but even so, the price could change quickly. Sorry to those of you who missed the really low price.

I think spiralizers are really neat and I’ve been seeing more and more recipes these days that use a spiralizer to serve the veggies!  My mom actually got one for her birthday and she’s made us delicious stirfrys and even zucchini ‘pasta’.

The Jumbl vegetable and fruit spiralizer happens to be on sale at Amazon.ca for only $18.99. (reg. $59.99) That makes it 68% off!  Here are some details:

The post Amazon.ca: Jumbl Vegetable & Fruit Spiralizer 68% off appeared first on Simply Frugal.

           

Comments

• As with all Amazon deals, their prices can change quickly. I'm ... by Taya K
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Most contemporary "kids music" sucks. However, my favorite reissue label Light In The Attic is releasing a killer children's vinyl compilation titled "This Record Belongs To______" that includes the likes of Shel Silverstein, Nina Simone, Donovan, Van Dyke Parks, Vashti Bunyan, Woody Guthrie, and many other musical greats, along with a storybook illustrated by the talented Jess Rotter. Read the rest

[Link]

Felix Kent’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.

A General Note:

I grew up in Los Angeles, in a household which many people would describe as New Age. A lot of things I believed then I no longer believe, or, more accurately, no longer believe are my business. However, certain habits of mind are ineradicable; one that I have been unable to eradicate is my desire to believe that the universe is sending me messages. These are my voyages. 

*

Scantron Tests

1985-1999

Divinatory Process: If little bubbles in consecutive questions form a diagonal line across all rows, good things (unspecified) are about to happen.

Reasons For Abandonment: No more multiple choice tests to take. Also, the temptation to deliberately blow questions unsettled me.

Field Notes: At some point all those tests moved from actual bubbles to little broken up brackets, which seems way less compelling from a fortune-telling standpoint.  

Math Homework

1985-1986

Divinatory Process: If 4 is next to 8, that’s good, because 4’s essential character is female and virtuous, while 8 is heroic and stalwart. If 3 is next to 8, that’s bad, because 3’s essential character is female and seductive. If 4 is next to 5, that’s bad, because 5 is a cad, who will seduce and abandon 4. 

Reasons For Abandonment: My math homework was taking too long. Also, the higher forms of math didn’t seem as suited for narrative purpose — even I couldn’t truly believe that long division had any kind of correspondence to a Jane Austen novel. 

Field Notes: Don’t allow your children to read Jane Austen when they are young; it will ruin their lives.

Dream Imagery

1992

Divinatory Process: One of my aunts went to a seminar, and told me that if I set an intention to have a certain thing in my dreams foretell something, it would do so. Okay, I said. She suggested that I use this technique. I said I wanted to use it find out when my period was going to start. I had just started getting my period and it was super-irregular and as a result there was maybe a certain amount of leakage. She seemed a little taken aback, but said that maybe I could use blood in my dreams as a symbol. It seemed like a good idea.

Reasons For Abandonment: It didn’t work at all, not even a little bit.

Dandelion Blowing

1993-1995

Divinatory Process: You close your eyes and you blow as hard as you can in the general direction of the dandelion while making a wish. If you blow all of the seed pods off, your wish will come true.

Reasons For Abandonment: Limited lung capacity meant I was always being told my wish would not come true. My mother lectured me on the annoyance of dandelions to a virtuous homeowner.

CD/iPod In Shuffle Mode

1993-Present

Divinatory Process: I don’t need to explain this; everyone does this, right?

Reasons For Abandonment: N/A

Field Notes: Sometimes now I’m too distracted to really pay attention, which makes me sad. Also, certain songs over time have acquired a patina, blurring their prognosticatory usefulness. Like, when George Michael’s “One More Try” comes on I am not just recalling its fateful appropriateness to my seventh grade dance, wherein a guy who had a crush on me was urged to ask me to dance by the guy I had a crush on, and did so, and confessed his love in the middle of the song and I rushed off the dance floor as a result, which was sad, but I am recalling all the times I thought about that dance, many of which were humorous and light-hearted in nature, and so it’s hard to say what the true meaning of the song is. Which is appropriate to how much muddier life becomes as one gets older, but when I’m looking for messages about the future, I don’t really want ambiguity and complexity.

Horoscope

1994-2000, 2006, 2012

Divinatory Process: Something about the stars.

Reasons For Abandonment: Often dull. Too easily verified. Too easily disproved. Or, worse, too vague to have any meaning. Too many people receiving the same message at once, which means I don’t feel special. Also Vanity Fair had the best horoscopes, but discontinued them. 

Field Notes: In times of stress, I totally revert to reading my horoscope, so this saga is by no means over.

Runes

1995-1997

Divinatory Process: Well, there are a lot of different patterns, but I always used the Celtic Cross.

Reasons For Abandonment: Too lame. Too goth, but not in a cool way, in a hippie way.  Also 1997 was a really great year, and so I felt like I didn’t need any comforting looks at the future. Which is funny, because that year my runes told me I could do no wrong, when all through high school, when I was miserable, they told me that I sucked. Accuracy is not necessarily what I’m looking for in my fortune-telling tools — hope is probably closer to the mark.

Pop Can Tab Pulling

1994-1995

Divinatory Process: You twist the tab of your can of soda pop back and forth while reciting the alphabet. The letter of the alphabet that the tab comes off on is the first initial of the person you will marry.

Reasons For Abandonment: Eventually I worked my way through the entire alphabet and lost faith in the process. Also, I was drinking fewer canned beverages.

Ordinary Playing Cards

1994-1995, 2000-2001

Divinatory Process: I used to know a really good card game where you used the number of letters in the name of your crush to find out if he or she loved you, but I don’t remember how it works anymore, which astonishes me.

Reasons For Abandonment: The first time because I went off to college and got busy, the second time because I had been living in a tiny tiny town and I had the most awesome friend and we would hang out in her living room or my living room and drink beer and eat Oreos and try out the names of every guy we could think of on this card game and then I moved away from her and it was too sad to even think about playing that game again.

Field Notes:  Drinking beer and eating Oreos and telling the future from playing cards with your best friend is awesome, and everyone should spend at least a year of their life doing so.

Tarot Cards

2000-present

Divinatory Process: Again, the Celtic Cross.  

Reasons For Abandonment: N/A

Field Notes: My tarot cards are really pretty, which makes me feel better about my insatiable desire to receive messages from the universe, a desire that is apparently not ever going away. Also, I tell myself that it’s not so much that I’m trying to tell the future, as much as it is that by looking at the patterns I am clarifying my current thinking.  But I’m still embarrassed by it, I’m not going to lie. Also, sometimes the patterns I see suggest that things are going to kind of suck for a while and that’s not so great. But there’s something about that process of stepping out of how things really are and peering into how things might be that I’m not willing to let go of, and probably never will be. That said, it’s a pretty good gauge of my emotional barometer how often I feel the need to plunge into the future. More than a couple of times a year spells trouble, which I suppose is a fortune-telling method all its own.

Read more Modes Of Divination I Have Used, 1977 To Present at The Toast.

Socks Studio has a short article and a bunch of photos of "The Toy."

“The Toy” was a self-assembly project made in 1951 by Charles and Ray Eames and sold by Sears, Roebuck and Co. This construction kit for children sums up the simplicity and playfulness of most of the Eames’ works. It comprised dowels with pierced ends, pipe cleaners and brightly colored panels (four square and four triangles) of plastic-coated resistant stiff paper. The pieces of “the Toy” came packed in a hexagonal tube and could be used to produce multiple structures, playhouses, theatres and shelters.

"The Toy" by Charles and Ray Eames (Via This Isn't Happiness)