January 2009
-
Inauguration Day
·
“President Barack Obama.” What a wonderful thing to be able to write. (Left: The Official Portrait; right: Courtesy Shepard Fairey and Obey Giant) Not to mention the sound of “Former President Bush”, which we’ve been waiting most of a decade for. Now we just have to learn or remember how to shake off the constant…
-
Hitsville USA!
·
Happy 50th Birthday to Motown! I visited the original Motown studios in Detroit once, now a museum, but preserved more or less as it was in the 60s before the company moved to LA. As soon as you walked in, it was obvious this had been just about the coolest place on the planet for…
-
Bayesian Inference in the NY Times
·
In today’s Sunday NY Times Magazine, there’s a long article by psychologist Steven Pinker, on “Personal Genomics”, the growing ability for individuals to get information about their genetic inheritance. He discusses the evolution of psychological traits versus intelligence, and highlights the complicated interaction amongst genes, and between genes and society. But what caught my eye…
-
Blast!
Although the big satellites get most of the press, a lot of astronomy is done from balloons, huge mylar bubbles that can carry a gondola up to about 120,000 feet over the earth — more than 22 miles or 32 km. That’s high enough that much of the atmospheric contamination is gone, but a lot…
-
Cold War Modern
·
I went to the excellent Cold War Modern exhibit at the V&A museum, a very specific take on what’s usually called in Britain the “postwar” period, concentrating on design and art from 1945 to 1970. Muscle-flexing propaganda from Moscow (and to a lesser extent from Washington), nuclear nightmares, the space race, the successful revolutions against…
Search
Recent Posts
Categories
- Academia (64)
- Art (57)
- Blog (1)
- Miscellanea (103)
- Music (71)
- Net (63)
- News (28)
- Politics (110)
- Science (333)
- Uncategorized (4)