Hi everyone. It seems that someone decided I wasn’t posting here often enough (e.g., not at all) and politely helped me out by posting a link to some scammy work-from-home site. Just for the record: I have no affiliation with the unnamed person who wants you to pay $5 to find out how to make money off Google.
… but if you try it and it’s for real, I hope you’ll consider cutting me a cheque.
Amidst all the other coverage of the Japanese earthquakes (The Big Picture has great photography, as always) this brief news item from the National Post caught my attention:
Initial results out of Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology show that the 8.9-magnitude earthquake that rattled Japan Friday shifted the earth’s rotation axis by about 25 centimeters.
And from the Vancouver Sun:
Japan’s coast is said to have permanently shifted 2.4 meters.
Relative to Earth’s size, of course, these changes are minute. But they still give an awesome sense of the magnitude of the quake.
A poignant article from the New York Times on the loneliest whale in the world:
The animal is called the 52 hertz whale because it makes a distinctive stream of sounds at around that basso profundo frequency, just above the lowest note on a tuba… Its sonic signature is clearly that of a whale, but nothing like the normal voice of the giant blue or the next biggest species, the fin, or any other whale, for that matter.
The article is from 2004, but it seems that the whale is still around today, still singing the same wrong tune.
Can humans use echolocation? Apparently yes:
The first thing Daniel Kish does, when I pull up to his tidy gray bungalow in Long Beach, California, is make fun of my driving. “You’re going to leave it that far from the curb?” he asks. He’s standing on his stoop, a good 10 paces from my car. I glance behind me as I walk up to him. I am, indeed, parked about a foot and a half from the curb.
… He knew my car was poorly parked because he produced a brief, sharp click with his tongue. The sound waves he created traveled at a speed of more than 1,000 feet per second, bounced off every object around him, and returned to his ears at the same rate, though vastly decreased in volume.
Amazing to read about. I cannot imagine what this would be like.
You know how when you’re young you misunderstand words sometimes? This is probably the most amusing example I’ve ever heard of.
When I was young my father said to me:
“Knowledge is Power…Francis Bacon”
I understood it as “Knowledge is power, France is Bacon”.
For more than a decade I wondered over the meaning of the second part and what was the surreal linkage between the two? If I said the quote to someone, “Knowledge is power, France is Bacon” they nodded knowingly. Or someone might say, “Knowledge is power” and I’d finish the quote “France is Bacon” and they wouldn’t look at me like I’d said something very odd but thoughtfully agree. I did ask a teacher what did “Knowledge is power, France is bacon” meant and got a full 10 minute explanation of the Knowledge is power bit but nothing on “France is bacon”. When I prompted further explanation by saying “France is Bacon?” in a questioning tone I just got a “yes”. at 12 I didn’t have the confidence to press it further. I just accepted it as something I’d never understand.
For math nerds like me, or those who just want to check out a cool animation. The author writes:
When I got to Calc II, I realized my fuzzy memory of trig was making certain integration techniques a struggle. I decided to make re-learning trigonometry a personal project.
Trigonometry has never been my favorite either, but if I could just memorize this one entire web page I’d probably enjoy it a bit more.
A good article dealing with some common misconceptions about laser technology.
When I tell people that I zap things with lasers, I can almost see the mental images flickering behind their eyes […] I hate to burst your bubble, but working with lasers, although very cool, is not as showy as most sci-fi depictions.
The section about the potential use of lasers as weapons is even more pointed—
3. Lasers as weapons
They’re really not that great.
—but he later links to this (impractical) idea: shooting mosquitoes out of the sky with lasers. I guess if you hold the target very still it might work.
Speaking of sheet music, I get a lot of it at IMSLP, the International Music Score Library Project. It’s a great database of public domain sheet music, both high-quality scans and computer-typeset sheets.
They have almost any work that’s in the public domain, although a few questionably PD composers (Rachmaninoff, for example) are currently blocked while they figure out their legal issues. Other than that, it’s a great resource.
I have had this movement of Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata (played here by the incomparable Wilhelm Kempff) in my head almost incessantly for the last few days. It is quite beautiful, and as a bonus, it is relatively easy to play.
Musicologists debate whether or not this sonata was inspired by Mozart’s piano sonata K. 457, but having listened to both I can say that Mozart offers nothing to compare with Beethoven’s gift for melody. This is one piece that confirms my theory that not all sad melodies are necessarily in minor keys; it is without question the saddest A-flat major composition I’ve ever heard.
A new website put together by my friend Kenneth:
Reformed Resource.net is your source for Biblical analysis of contemporary issues from a Reformed Christian Perspective.
They have a great list of article sources—Dr. David Murray, Rev. Jerrold Lewis, and The Messenger are just a few of them.
