Life in a Northern Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. B.M.A.T.C., and Etruscan typewriter erasers. Blogged by David Gorsline.
|
Luigi Di Serio picks the top 15 skylines of the world. (Thanks to Gothamist.) posted: 8:04:53 PM |
|
When you have to time a run-through to the hundredth of a second, and you can't be bothered to sync your watch with your phone: the solar-powered Casio Pathfinder PAW1200. Gotta get me one of these.
The PAW1200 series will pick up time calibration signals transmitted from Mainflingen (Germany), Rugby (England), Fort Collins (Colorado), Fukushima (Japan), and Fukuoka (also Japan). The radius of the time signals are large enough that all of North America, Japan, and Eastern [Western?] Europe are well covered. The watch knows the frequency to listen on (and what time zone you're in) by your selected home city. It will attempt to calibrate up to six times each day starting a midnight, and again every hour until it succeeds.
(Thanks to robot wisdom.) posted: 7:50:23 PM |
|
Once again, George Bush claims that he is above the law. He is wrong about that.
When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers [and] ... that, despite the law's requirements, he could withhold the information if he decided that disclosure would "impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties."
(Thanks to wood s lot.) posted: 7:28:41 PM |
|
There's a special place at the center of the Hirshhorn's exhibition of photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948): in a darkened arc of the museum, thirteen of Sugimoto's large (3'x4') black and white seascapes are hung. They're mounted directly on the wall without matting, and each is lit precisely with a shuttered spotlight so that it seems to float in the darkness. The composition of each of the seascapes, from locations around the world, is the same: dark water below, pale sky above, the horizon line exactly cutting the image in halves. The water is calm but never completely still; it is scumbled with ripples but not frothed with whitecaps. Sometimes the horizon is smudged with fog, or an overcast sun throws blurry highlights on the water. Benches are generously provided in the gallery, set well away from the photographs. As viewers pass by the images, it's as if we were in a monochrome aquarium. Or a chapel of Mark Rothkos in silver halide. posted: 1:36:17 PM |
|
Donald G. McNeil, Jr. reports on dracunculiasis, a particularly nasty disease of the third world, more commonly known as Guinea worm. The story is part of a series on diseases eradicated in the developed world that stubbornly persist in poor countries. posted: 1:12:04 PM |
 D. Gorsline, Proprietor
   
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
