Throwback Thursday | The Rapid of Hope and Life of an Amazonian Boom-Town | The Appendix
“Many of Cachuela’s visitors, rich and poor alike, came to be treated at the Hospital Francisco Suárez. It was one of Suárez’s largest projects. He recruited doctors from Switzerland and Germany and imported the most technologically advanced medical equipment available from Europe and the United States. According to local lore, the hospital was the first in Bolivia to have an X-Ray machine. Millionaires flew in on seaplanes from Rio de Janeiro to be treated there. Locals also still proudly recount stories about themselves or their family members having been treated at the hospital by the famous German, Dr. Pablo Schweitzer.”
Tempest Anderson: Pioneer of Volcano Photography | The Public Domain Review
“For Tempest Anderson, pioneering new techniques of ophthalmic surgery and inventing photographic equipment was not enough. He decided that his ‘limited leisure’ time could not be filled with reading, writing or socialising, he sought to occupy himself with something more exciting: volcanology. For him, it was a branch of science that did not have too much literature and had the ‘advantage of offering exercise in the open air’: he saw the sides of volcanoes not as dangerous but ‘picturesque’”.
Throwback Thursday | Space Cadets and Rat Utopias | The Appendix
“As the years passed, new concerns crept into the Space Cadets’ conversations: nuclear annihilation, birth control, racial integration, communism, computers, the “problem of ulcers and coronaries in terms of social climbing in suburbia.” At one session, the group discussed The Fund for the Republic’s Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions’ 1960 report, Community of Fear, which imagined a future cave-dwelling society living in cities dug underground to escape the hazards of nuclear war. The Space Cadets wondered: Would there still be social anxiety underground?”
The Aesthetic Beauty of Math | the Paris Review
“He was vacationing in Finland when the war broke out, and he tried to lay low in Helsinki but was arrested and returned to France, where he sat in jail during the spring of 1940, awaiting trial for desertion. While there, he took some consolation from the fact that jail allowed him to work undisturbed, as well as to read novels and write letters, in particular letters to his sister, Simone Weil, who was also remarkably talented, a philosopher and spiritual thinker.
Though her brother’s incarceration infuriated her, Simone saw an opportunity. “
Throwback Thursday |1900-1930: The years of driving dangerously | The Detroit News
“Soon thousands of cars jammed Detroit streets, driven by inexperienced drivers. The city would lead the nation in managing this chaotic, enormous problem:
■ Detroit was the first city to use stop signs, lane markings, one-way streets and traffic signals.
■Detroit was among the first to have a police squad dedicated to traffic control, and second to New York City in creating a judicial court for traffic violations.
■The city drew national attention for using a tennis court line painting device to mark pedestrian crossing areas, safety zones and parking spaces.”
Music of the Squares | The Public Domain Review
“The fact that we derive pleasure from hearing certain concordant intervals, that derive from what is known as the overtone series, for Hay demonstrates that nature and humanity are governed by the same principles.3 He takes this further: the physiological affinity between seeing and hearing means that these laws extend not only into music but into the visual world too.4 After all, he observes, “the eye and the ear are various in their modes of receiving impressions; yet the sensorium is but one, and the mind by which these impressions are perceived and appreciated is also characterised by unity.”5Since both sight and hearing are processed by the mind, they should be governed by similar principles.”
How an Ancient Indian Art Utilizes Mathematics, Mythology, and Rice | Atlas Obscura
“Mathematicians and computer scientists have keenly studied the kōlam. The kōlam is “an unusual example of the expression of mathematical ideas in a cultural setting,” writes Marcia Ascher, a professor emerita of Mathematics at Ithaca College. Citing her ethnomathematical research (a field of study combining anthropology and mathematics), Nagarajan adds that “The kōlam is one of the few embedded indigenous traditions that have contributed to the western mathematical tradition.”
"So grand and dreary" | First Encounters | Saguaro
Joseph Bertony: the spy who helped mastermind the Sydney Opera House | BBC
“He was a brilliant mathematician," Ms Pitt says. "He did those 30,000 hand-rendered mathematical equations in six months, which is a very short period of time - and that's all he did. He would eat, breathe and sleep the Sydney Opera House."
Untold History of AI / IEEE Spectrum
A fascinating look back at the history of Artificial Intelligence (AI) development. I find it very suitable for those of us who benefit ( or not) from AI advances without having a deep knowledge of how it actually is done. I’m linking to part 4 that focuses on work and vision of J.C.R. Licklider (1915-1990). If of interest, read parts 1 -3 and stay tuned for the next ones.
“In a 1960 paper entitled “Man-Machine Symbiosis,” Licklider spelled out his idea. “The hope is that in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today.”
People once downloaded games from the radio / amusingplanet.com
“In the early 1980s, engineers over at the Dutch broadcasting organization Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS) had this fantastic idea of distributing computer programs over the radio. Because programs and data were stored on audio cassettes, it was possible for these data cassettes to be played back on a cassette player, and the resulting audio—which sounds very much like a dial-up modem—was broadcasted over the radio waves. Listeners recorded the audio onto cassettes and loaded the programs into their computers. The radio program named “Hobbyscoop” became wildly popular. They even developed a new format called BASICODE to ensure maximum compatibility between different personal computers that were available at the time.”
Audubon's Haiti | The Public Domain Review
“Les Cayes was a little more than 600 nautical miles away, both remote and achingly close — just like the flamingoes he had been able to catch only in his art and not with his gun. Despite the immediate pull of the resplendent bird in the foreground, painted from a skin obtained in the Caribbean, it is this distance that still resonates, the fading figures in the back leading our gaze over the flats and out, across the ocean to where it all began, Haiti.”
Taxidermy/Arstechnica
“That's not to say Director Erin Derham hasn't made an effective film—quite the opposite. She identified an ideal topic for this type of documentary and executed it to perfection. As someone who has never even held a gun, I found the whole thing engaging. Taxidermy turns out to boast a fascinating history, the current ways to make a living felt unexpected, and the personalities and visuals within Stuffed can be downright charming.”