Sounds of the sun [Article]

Robert Alexander is a sonification expert. I had no idea what that meant, so I looked to this Wikipedia entry to understand it a bit more. Essentially, it is converting data into sound to interpret it (forget for now the philosophical implications of that statement). Alexander has created sounds & symphonies from data that NASA collected of the Sun’s radiation, its rotation, & of its Solar flares.

For the reading List, I’m on my own & so are you [Book review]

In the last six months or so of reading his blog, Jesse Kornbluth has earned my respect & admiration for the stuff he shares as Headbutler, a job he does with aplomb (I mentally picture him as a modern day Jeeves!). He shares an exercpt of Judy Resnick’s book “I’m On My Own and So Are You: Financial Security for Women”.

Repairing the rungs on the ladder [Article]

This Economist article paints a rather glum picture of meritocracy – or rather, the paradox of meritocracy. The apparent benefit of globalisation and all those other fancy nomenclatures, was that money would flow to merit, rather than connections, as it had in the past. What is happening, at least in America as this article states, is that the clever rich are turning themselves into an entrenched elitist.  Education is at the centre of this transformation.  No point spending your live to reach the top of the ladder, only to find it leaning against the wrong wall?

Printing food in space? [Article, Video]

3D-printing is all around us. This futuristic technology, that has been around over two decades, is only now showing up in the mainstream. Additive printing, as it is scientifically called, is explained in this educative 10 minute video, if you’ve not seen it yet (I expect not, since it has had only 743 views at the time I’m typing this). The applications of this technology are incredibly diverse – as this team at Cornell University demonstrates, but using it to “print” meals for astronauts.  Agree or not with the concept, 3D printing shops will be as ubiquitous as the corner “photocopying” shop used to be in my not so long past.

Drawing is Thinking [Book Review]

Alberto Cairo refers to the masterpiece book by Rudolf Arnheim, Visual Thinking, in a book review: 
Our entire educational system continues to be based on the study of words and numbers. In kindergarten, to be sure, our youngsters learn by seeing and handling handsome shapes, and invent their own shapes on paper or in clay by thinking through perceiving. But with the first grade or elementary school the senses begin to lose educational status. More and more the arts are considered as a training in agreeable skills, as entertainment and mental release. As the ruling disciplines stress more rigorously the study of words and numbers, their kinship with the arts is increasingly obscured, and the arts are reduced to a desirable supplement. (…) The arts are neglected because they are based on perception, and perception is disdained because it is not assumed to involve thought.