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Octopus

2010-09-01T02:10:26Z

Just an amusing old illustration of an octopus by Ulisse Aldrovandi, a 16th century Bolognese naturalist. (source)

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Ejection Seats and Low Altitudes

2010-08-31T14:12:05Z

I for one am disappointed that they removed the EXIF data from the photos

Pilot Capt. Brian Bews ejects as his a CF-18 fighter jet plummets to the ground during a practice flight at the Lethbridge County Airport on Friday, July 23 for the weekend airshow in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. "He is alive and we believe right now that his injuries are non-life-threatening," Canadian Forces Capt. Nicole Meszaros told CBC News.

It's worth seeing the rest of the pictures...

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Book Review: The History of Christian Thought

2010-08-29T19:56:53Z

Hill, Jonathan. The History of Christian Thought. Downers Grove, Il: InterVarsity Press. 2003.

This book is a survey of Christian Thought, but more of Christian thinkers. It is a history of the important theologians and writers who influenced Christianity, from the early Greek fathers to the end of the 20th Century(although it covers up to the late 20th C, it doesn't cover many specific thinkers past the 1970s). Interspersed are short essays on the larger philosophical and political movements of the time, to provide a context for the religious thinking.

Despite, or perhaps because of the publisher, there is not much really said about the modern fundamentalist evangelical movement, but the coverage of the early fathers is quite good, explaining some of the earliest stages of the evolution of doctrine like the trinity. One thing I am not able to judge is whether any important people were omitted, but it seems all the names I recognize were included.

One critical flaw in the book is a failure of editing. There are multiple errors I caught in the text, including a paragraph that was printed twice, on pp. 102-103. There is a more underlying flaw, and that is the way the sections on schools of philosophy, cities or other background information. These are inset at gray boxes, which is a fine way to separate them from the text, but are simply dropped in the text, sometimes interrupting a sentence for 2 entire pages. It is quite distracting, you either interrupt the topic at hand, or jump ahead and then jump back, neither being quite satisfactory.

Though the book is not footnoted at all, there is a good "further readings" section at the end, with both general purpose titles and more specific titles by category. There is also a short glossary and an index, though a short cross reference of thinker to timeperiod would have been nice.

All told a good introduction to the foundational theologians of Christianity and though it doesn't quite delve into the current generation of thinkers, it provides a basis for understanding the evolution of Christianity that led to them. A second edition, with some of the editorial issues remedied would be quite an excellent book

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Don't pretend you've never dreamed the dream

2010-08-25T19:20:37Z

Prosecutors say a drunken Utah mortgage company employee opened fire on the firm's computer server, then called police and told officers someone stole his .45-caliber weapon and shot the server.

(source)

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Piaget to Drink

2010-08-22T19:46:58Z

Piaget has put together a collection of cocktail-inspired cocktail rings. I'm particularly a fan of the slice of lime on the Mojito and the straw, set with diamonds of course, in the "Blue Ocean" In their facebook app for the collection (sigh) they've even included recipes, which I've transcribed here ('s' in the recipe means shot).

Ref. G34LP200 Mojito Inspiration
18-carat white gold ring set with 182 brilliant-cut diamonds (approx 1.57 ct), 1 cushion-cut green tourmaline (approx 24.56 ct) 1 carved citrine (approx. 3 ct), 16 round-cut tsavorites (approx. 1.56 ct),120 round-cut emeralds (approx. 1.01 ct), 8 marquise-cut emeralds (approx. 0.61 ct)
3 s white rum
12 mint leaves
1 s sugarcane juice
1 lime
club soda
Put mint leaves, crushed ice and lime juice in a tall glass. Pour the rum over it and top with club soda

Ref. G34LP300 Whisky On The Rocks Inspiration
18-carat yellow gold ring set with 100 brilliant-cut diamonds (approx 0.83 ct),1 cushion-cut citrine (approx 27 ct) and 2 carved quartz ( approx 2.64 ct)
Even they don't bother with a recipe for this

Ref. G34LP400 White Tonic Inspiration
18-carat white gold ring set with 44 brilliant-cut diamonds (approx 1.56 ct), 1 round-cut bead peridot (approx 7.22 ct)
4 s Vermouth
3.5 s Lemon Juice
1t sugar
olive
mix vermouth, sugar and lemon juice directly in glass with a spoon, garnish with a dusting of sugar and olive

Ref. G34LP500 Blue Ocean Inspiration
18-carat white gold ring set with 122 brilliant-cut diamonds (approx 0.9 ct), 1 cushion-cut blue topaz (approx 37.5 ct), 1 bead cornaline (approx 1.43 ct)
1 s vodka
1 s blue Curacao
3 s grapefruit juice
Shake with ice and strain into glass, garnish with a cherry

Ref. G34LP700 Blueberry Daiquiri Inspiration
18-carat white gold ring set with 121 brilliant-cut diamonds (approx 0.89 ct), 1 cushion-cut amethyst (approx 35 ct), 30 brilliant-cut pink sapphires (approx 0.31 ct), 1 cabochon-cut ruby (approx 0.04 ct)
3 s blueberry schnapps
1 s white rum
1 s lime juice
2 s simple syrup
Mix in a blender and serve in a chilled glass, garnish with blueberries on a toothpick

Ref. G34LP800 Cosmopolitan Inspiration
18-carat white gold ring set with 197 brilliant-cut diamonds (approx 3.07 ct), 1 cushion-cut pink rubellite (approx 15 ct) and 1 carved citrine (approx 3 ct)
1 s Vodka
1 s Orange Liquor
1 s Cranberry Juice
1/2 s Lime juice
shake with ice and serve with a lime twist.

All photos from PuristsPro, all recipes from Piaget's Facebook page
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Piaget's Mooning You

2010-08-22T19:11:53Z

Every year for the past few years there has been an auction of watches to benefit research into Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, the Only Watch Auction. The idea is that a bunch of companies donate watches, unique in some way, to the auction, and they're sold, with all proceeds donated. Sometimes the watches are truly unique, sometimes they are a variant on a production model (red dials seem to be popular as red is the color of Monaco, where the auction is held) and sometimes they are simply the first of a numbered edition.
In 2009 Piaget's contribution was a variant on their Emperador Coussin moonphase watch. As 2009 was the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, they modified the lunar display to be a more realistic lunar surface and added an engraving of Neil Armstrong's bootprint. The moon on this model is made of 18kt white god that has been reticulated, a process that causes the thin surface of the material to melt, flow a bit and then crumple on itself when it cooled. There are still traces of the oxidization that is a side effect of this on the outer edges of the moon.

Here is the full dial

And a closeup showing more detail of the moonphase

Both photos are mine.

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Sifis Stavroulakis Jewellery

2010-08-20T01:42:45Z

Sifis Stavroulakis is a Greek jeweler who has been based in Chania, Crete since 1990. He works in 18k gold (always yellow) and silver. He frequently reticulates (a process for creating a "crumpled" looking surface through the careful melting of the surface layer) the silver and oxidizes, or in other ways, colors it.

From his website, here are some samples. First some broaches, Sifis seems to be fond of animal and plant forms, so here are some of each. (For all the images below, from his website, click through for a larger version)

The final broach is abstract, though clearly organic in form. It is set with diamonds in an old-fashioned cut known as the Rose cut, which renders the stone almost without fire.

The use of the vegetal forms is not limited to the broaches, but appears as necklace-pendents as well

The following ring is particularly interesting, it takes a common Roman form, the bezel set, barely polished aquamarine, and gives it an interesting modern twist with the square form to the body of the ring

There is also a series of small sculptures of plants in his collection, reminiscent in form of Faberge's flowers but that will have to wait for another post

Chung, Chung

2010-08-11T20:55:43Z

These are Their Stories was an exhibit in LA that ran from July 24-30 of this year at the Gallery Meltdown (part of Meltdown Comics). The idea was to illustrate the one-sentence summary of a Law and Order, and a bunch of artists took part.

I particularly liked RADIATION KILLS A TORMENTED SCIENTIST by Lacy McCune, but they are all worth a look.
(via)
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Queen Bean the First

2010-08-10T03:04:50Z

From a current campaign for the Eurostar to London

The rest of the campaign is not quite as strange, but amusing

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I am the Center of the Universe

2010-08-03T00:59:10Z

Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence.

- David Foster Wallace from his commencement speech at Kenyon University, 2005. Retrieved from Webarchive, since the original seems to be gone

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Night Spiders

2010-07-30T00:39:43Z

Last night I did some experimenting with off-camera flash and a spiderweb

And a closer shot in BW

More are available

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Lightning

2010-07-29T00:52:28Z

From Tom Warner and ZT Research comes some video of Lightning at approx 9000 frames per second. That works out to .4 second in the 90 second clip

Besides high-speed work, they also have some excellent time-lapse video.

From a different source comes the night illumination photographed by An-My Lê in "29 Palms: Night Operations III"

(from)

In this photograph of night artillery practice in Twenty-Nine Palms, CA each line is the path of a shell in flight.

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A different sort of pin-up

2010-07-26T01:02:22Z

When your business is selling high-resolution LCD displays to doctors for medical imaging, you use a different approach to the time-worn "promotional pin-up calendar"

Some of them maybe not safe for some workplaces, but see all 12 months of Eizo goodness

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Book Review: Sin: a History

2010-07-25T20:05:28Z

Anderson, Gary A. Sin: a History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2009

Sin traces the evolution of the Jewish concept of sin from the 1st Temple through the Roman period and then in early Christian conceptions, focusing somewhat on the east. The final bit is a somewhat unusual digression on St. Anselm of Canterbury, an 11th Century philosopher. The overarching idea is that the way a religion thinks of an abstract idea, like sin, can be explored through the metaphors they use for it.

The first bit of the book traces the evolution of the metaphor from one of a burden one must bear into the Second Temple idea of a debt, which must be repaid. Then the ideas surrounding the repayment of debt are explored, including the borrowing against a heavenly treasury built up by one's charity as well as that of the preceding generations.

Anderson's chapters on early Christian thought draw strongly from contemporary Aramaic texts, working from the idea that it was probably Jesus' native tongue. He then provides an interesting, and compelling answer to the question "How did Jesus' death on the cross actually redeem mankind from sin?", one which is not really explained by early Christian dogma the way that other foundational concepts are (The divine/humane nature for eg.). There is also some comparison between the writers of the early Christian east and the contemporary writers of the Talmud concluding with the importance of the specific act of almsgiving for repayment of the debt of sin.

Overall it is a complex, but well argued book. Though Anderson takes care to try and make it available to the layperson, some knowledge of the Bible as well as textual criticism is useful. I was only a bit disappointed that he didn't explore the concept of sin as polluting the land, in the laws of murder and the cities of refuge.

Jerusalem 1, part 2

2010-07-22T22:44:08Z

From Christopher Rollstone comes more information about the Jerusalem 1 fragment (previously referenced). I recommend the entire article though I've excerpted a few salient points:

The clay from which the tablet was made matches the soil of Jerusalem, so the tablet was probably made locally
The signs use partially match several tablets from the Amarna corpus that come from King Abdi-Heba of Jerusalem, but there are a number of differences

Even more interesting is a brief note from John Huehnergard, probably one of the most well known current Akkadian scholars:

An additional factor is that the reading of line 2 as tab-ša 'you are' is problematic. The traces of the signs as copied don't conform well to the reading. If the tablet was written in Amarna Canaano-Akkadian (which is not certain given the fragmentary state of the text), the reading is also unlikely grammatically: all examples of the verb bašû listed in the Knudtzon glossary are based on the durative ibašši, none on the preterite ibši; further, 1st- and 2nd-person forms of bašû in such Amarna texts are what are called mixed forms: the base is the durative ibašši but the person is marked by suffixes, as in i-ba-ša-ta 'you are' in EA 73:40. So I doubt that line two has a form meaning 'you are'; and that leaves us even less on which to judge what type of text it is.

So basically we are sure it's a tablet, pretty sure it is from the late bronze-age and from Jerusalem, and not sure of much else...

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