Britt's Blog

I’ve been listening a lot to Natalie Merchant’s Leave Your Sleep, an album of children’s poetry (as in, poetry written for, not by, children) beautifully set to music.

Also, I may be falling in love with Joseph Leyendecker.

In the spirit of celebrating random connections, I give you, The Equestrienne:

Read.

Listen.

Look.

But why’s that big rock in the way?

Asteroids… vermin of the skies. *grumble grumble*

Mauna Kea has kept popping onto my radar for some reason. I’ve never been… Maybe I should start proposing for IRTF or Keck time.

I just listened to this old ep: Aloha Astronomy from Are We Alone, the SETI podcast.

And saw this on Facebook. It really captures the flavor life on an observing run. “You can close the dome any time you like, but you can never leave…”

I now know what I want done with my remains.

I want to be made into a box of pencils. Distribute these pencils to my colleagues.

Derive away, ladies and gentlemen. Derive away.

Also, feel free to give them to your students to use when taking the Physics GRE.

If you are not listening to RadioLab, why the heck not?

A recent episode The New Normal, encapsulates all that is awesome about RadioLab. Here we have some very sciencey animal behavior stuff, plus genetics of artificial selection, and then a very touching human interest story about a transgendered movie theater owner who becomes mayor of a conservative Colorado town, and to top it off a rumination on how we became human.

Awesome.

Via Unclutter, a story from a Duke University grad student who lives in a van.

This of course recalls the story shared on Car Talk by a young woman who discovered her beau, a Stanford medical student, was also living in a van. The story had a happy ending, and the two of them piled into the van for a road trip across the continent. [Unfortunately, the links to Car Talk show summaries are for memory-jogging purposes only, because, unlike every other public radio program in existence, Car Talk not only does not have a free archive, only their "top rated" episodes are available for pay from Audible.com. Get on the stick, Tom and Ray!]

All I can say, is thank goodness I picked science as a career. Science grad students are typically supported through assistantships, don’t pay tuition, and get a large enough stipend to afford a modest apartment of some sort.

Also, I don’t think these shenanigans would have worked in northern climes. If there’s a grad student at UW Madison living in a van at the current temperature of -2°F, I’d recommend dropping out and finding gainful employment.

(Via.)

_{For sticklers: No, this is not the actual TORNADO! event card. Some liberties were taken.}

(When exactly did I become such an art enthusiast? )

Check out the work of Ji Lee, creative director at Google Creative Lab.

Do not miss:

• Encaptionating advertisements
• The revolved alphabet
• Some good, old-fashioned rhebus-style wordplay
• The Redundant Clock. (Want.)
• The Lamp Calendar. (Want more.)

Via Unclutter, who, bless their collective heart, doesn’t seem to get it.

Check out this video of “starships.” As I watched, I started at “um, okay, this is kind of cheap and obvious,” around the corner of, “hmmm, it is really well done, though,” to feeling myself being sucked into the illusion. Some of the best stuff is in the middle and end.

More videos available from the artist.

As usual, this comes via Metafilter.

I really can’t describe this first video better than Metafilter’s geoff:

“Monks on Segways, with fire on the top of their heads, playing “Lightning” by Philip Glass.” Although possibly it should be mentioned that one of the monks has a banjo.

goeff also kindly reminds us of Philip Glass on Sesame Street. I remember being utterly transfixed by this as a child before I knew who Philip Glass was, of course. This may explain something about my Akhnaten obsession, although I hadn’t remembered the Sesame Street piece before now!

If you have seen the Watchmen, you may recall Dr. Manhatten’s theme, which is “Pruit Igoe & Prophecies” from Koyaanisqatsi.