A notebook of useful things

Author: Ivan Debono (Page 5 of 8)

The Universe after the Big Bang

Scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies have created an Arepo simulation that has created the most accurate re-enactment of the universe to date.

 

DNA data storage

 

Writing the Book in DNA | Harvard Medical School

Writing the Book in DNA | HMS

 

700 terabtyes of data storage in 1 gram. George Church, the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and a founding core faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biomedical Engineering at Harvard University, and his team encoded the book, Continue reading

India is heading for Mars: it doesn’t need British aid money to pay the bills

India is heading for Mars: it doesn’t need British aid money to pay the bills - Telegraph

 

India is heading for Mars: it doesn’t need British aid money to pay the bills – Telegraph.

Foreign aid doesn’t help any poor countries – it just corrupts their governments

Visualising debt

Demonocracy is an interesting little site which provides graphics for visualising all those hard-to-visualise economic data. Here for instance are the trillions of dollars of debt owned by eleven of the world’s top debtor nations, stacked in 100-dollar bills.

Reverse-engineered jellyfish

A tissue-engineered jellyfish with biomimetic propulsion

Nature Biotechnology (2012) doi:10.1038/nbt.2269

Medusa and medusoid video Continue reading

Syria

 

On 7th March, US Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta, testifying before a Senate committee, declared that “it is not clear what constitutes the Syrian armed opposition – there has been no single unifying military alternative that can be recognized, appointed, or contacted”. He was right. Continue reading

The first drunken commentator

“The Fleet’s Lit Up!”

In 1937, the BBC were to cover the Illumination of the Fleet at the Spithead Royal Naval review with live commentary by Lt Cdr Thomas ‘Tommy’ Woodroffe. Pre-transmission naval hospitality had been lavish, and Woodroffe was already listing heavily to port, awash in pink gins.

What followed was a masterpiece. The full eloquence of his commentary is a monument to radio broadcasting, full of long gaps, repetition, vagueness, and sudden changes of tone from obsequious to aggressive, against the whistling crackle of vintage radio.

There’s nothing between us and heaven. Nothing at all.

At this point Woodroffe was faded out and replaced by music. He later denied being “lit up” himself, claiming to have been affected by the emotion of the occasion – possibly the first recorded example of broadcaster euphemism.

 

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2024 Ivan Debono

Theme by Anders NorénUp ↑