Here’s a Stravinsky piece I had never heard until today, and I think it’s now my favorite of his, after a couple of listens. More info at The Guardian and Wikipedia.

“The setting of Psalm 150 in the finale is the most original movement in the symphony. It’s a contrast between two kinds of time, and two wildly differentiated sorts of music: the slow, circling sighs and breathtaking evocation of static, infinite timelessness that you hear at the start of the movement, and fast, violent shock of the music that comes next. There’s an animal ferocity in this faster music: Stravinsky’s vision of praising God takes in desperation and even savagery.”

YouTube video

http://wondermark.com/c1152/

This evening I’ve been trying to understand better the position & movement of things in the sky (which I find pretty much baffling and insanely complex), and ran across this really lovely time-lapse video of the night sky, shot from a pristine location in Chile:

The blog was a bit outdated technically (having not been updated for a year). I’ve updated versions, and commenting will now be turned on for new posts.

Rattt Kinggg promo photo, 1985. Via LiarTownUSA

“…while we know that reading to a young child is associated with good outcomes, there is only limited understanding of what the mechanism might be. Two new studies examine the unexpectedly complex interactions that happen when you put a small child on your lap and open a picture book.”

New York Times

I’m on my second read of an extremely important and interesting paper from James Hansen (former head of NASA’s Goddard Institute) and a number of other respected climatologists. The ambitious paper argues that a previously unidentified feedback may cause the ice sheets of Antarctica to melt much faster than previously thought, leading to several meters of sea level rise, possibly in the next 50 years (depending on the details of the feedback). For those who don’t want to take on the full paper, there are interesting articles from the Washington Post and New York Times on it, and a new article on the open peer review it’s undergone. It remains to be seen whether further research will confirm Hansen et al’s hypothesis, but it’ll be interesting to follow, because the consequences are enormous if they’re correct.

So I’ve pretty much stopped posting here for the last few months. Anyone missed it?

The only thing I really miss is having a better, more searchable record of cool stuff I come across, which was half the point of this blog from the beginning.

[Charles Stross being thoughtful as usual on a subject I think is pretty important. -egg]

I don’t need to tell you about the global surveillance disclosures of 2013 to the present—it’s no exaggeration to call them the biggest secret intelligence leak in history, a monumental gaffe from the perspective of the espionage-industrial complex and a security officer’s worst nightmare.

But it occurs to me that it’s worth pointing out that the NSA set themselves up for it by preventing the early internet specifications from including transport layer encryption.

…

via The Snowden leaks; a meta-narrative – Charlie’s Diary.

Hey readers of this blog,

Sorry things have been so low-traffic lately. Partly that’s because I’ve been really insanely busy with the Geothermophone, but also I’ve been less motivated lately to post here. I hope that I’ll feel more motivated again in time, but it could be that this blog will dribble off gradually.

If you’re a reader and would like it to continue, feel free to drop me a line saying so; I’ll likely be more motivated if I get a sense that people are actually reading it.

<3

egg