Showing posts with label van Gogh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label van Gogh. Show all posts

Friday, September 13, 2013

13/9/2013: WLASze Part 1: Weekend Links on Arts, Sciences and zero economics

Due to time constraints of tomorrow's TEDx talks (http://www.tedxdublin.com/), this is a shorter version of WLASze: Weekend Links on Arts, Sciences and zero economics. More to follow in part 2 later, so enjoy the eclectic mix…


Let's start with the truly 'first' for humanity. This week, Nasa announced that "Voyager 1 has entered interstellar space. The NASA spacecraft, which rose from Earth on a September morning 36 years ago, has traveled farther than anyone, or anything, in history".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHsdOU9biAU&feature=youtu.be
Read about it here: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/
What a fantastic achievement. A long leap for a piece of by-now-outdated technology, and a giant laps for mankind!


The taxonomy of space traversed by Voyager 1 is explained here: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA17460 with a handy graphic. And here is the hero itself, as spotted by earth-based radio telescopes back On February 21, 2013,


For large numbers lovers: the spacecraft, launched in 1977, is currently nearly 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) away from the sun. The picture shows Voyager 1 at 11.5 billion miles (18.5 billion kilometers) away. This was the stuff that Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (who's 156th birthday will come September 17th), Hermann Oberth and Robert H. Goddard dreamed about.


Skies, space, time still fascinate us today. On a smaller scale of achievement, but stunningly beautifully executed, here are the Ethereal Landscape Photo Manipulations by Polish photographer, Michal Karcz:
http://emorfes.com/2013/09/08/ethereal-landscape-photo-manipulations-by-michal-karcz/
His website: http://www.michalkarcz.com/
Of space:


And time:



While on concept of time, here's a shot from the past - a long mis-identified van Gogh
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/arts/design/new-van-gogh-painting-discovered-in-amsterdam.html?_r=0&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1378732079-VxsU8Azzq08ccDgxBuLvEw
All handy-dandy, art prices etc, but The Onion take is as usual - priceless (yes, the discovery is significant enough to make it into The Onion)…
http://www.theonion.com/articles/heartless-dutch-curators-put-deranged-scrawlings-o,33803/
Here are two highest resolution images I could find:





From things filling us with wonder and amazement to dumbing down. The former are of art, the latter is of science… or rather the study of humanity... even worse, humanity linked to politics (now the standard is set at absolute zero):
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/09/new-study-politics-makes-you-innumerate
Absolutely fascinating, until you recognise that majority of economists are mathematically more numerate and politically more dogmatic than your average educated person. Which, of course, just confirms the study results... by not even being an exception to the rule…