SIGGRAPH

SIGGRAPH is next week. I’m not going to make it this year. We’re going to be on vacation. It’s in New Orleans this year too, which is one of the nicer venues.

Here’s the trailer for the animation festival.

And more importantly, the final program is here.

You can find links to most of the papers here. A number of them look pretty good. You might enjoy this one about deformable meshes. This paper on fluids has some interesting stuff in it. It reminds me a little bit of some stuff I worked on at Exa years ago. Bilateral filters have been used for some really interesting work recently. Here’s a paper on accelerating them using Kd trees. One warning, if you have a problem with shots, you might want to stay away from this one.

The graphics hardware conference is gone this year. It got combined with the interactive ray tracing symposium to form the High-Performance Graphics conference.

Congress Speaks

Since the presidential election, there’s been a lot of action on making it easier for the public to get information about what the government is doing.

For examples, check out Data.gov, Sunlight Labs, and Subsidyscope.

But here’s one I hadn’t seen before that’s pretty fun. It’s call Congress Speaks.

It lets you pick two members of the 110th congress and get detailed information about what they’ve been saying. Well, detailed in the sense of actual word counts and statistical information.

I’m not sure it’s actually useful, but it is cute and fun.

Go check it out.

Little Boxes

I just finished reading The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton. It’s an interesting exploration of what makes good architecture work, and why so much architecture doesn’t work.

The last chapter is really poignant. It’s about the process by which open land gets replaced by cheesy, cookie cutter, poorly designed houses. As he says:

A development which spoils ten square miles of countryside will be the work of a few people neither particularly sinful nor malevolent. They may be called Derek or Malcolm, Hubert or Shigera, they may love golf and animals, and yet, in a few weeks, they can put in motion plans which will substantially ruin a landscape for 300 years or more.

He says that we owe it to ourselves to insist that when a developer wipes out a field or woodlot, that they put in enough effort in the architecture to make the result more valuable than what was wiped out.

It isn’t clear to me how something like this is more valuable than the turkey habitat that preceded it.

As de Botton says, the developer would answer with

… a familiar and apparently invincible argument that such houses have always sold rapidly and in great quantities.

He doesn’t think that argument cuts it. He thinks that we need to teach people that they should expect more out of the architecture that surrounds them.

As another philosopher once said:

But actually, the boxes actually aren’t small these days. They’re really, really big. They still seem to be made of the same stuff though.

A History Lesson (Because I feel like it)

Rome was once one of the largest empires ever to have existed. (Title of the largest goes to the mongols) This was brought about by the legions, and upheld by the Civil Service system established by Augustus. Today I will focus on the legions and when I come back from Aruba I will focus on the civil service system.
The legions could be marching while carrying all of their equipment, and then ready to fight in 30 seconds. This meant that if they encountered an enemy host they could form up before the enemy reached them. This is what made them such an effective fighting force.

In this picture there are two novice legionaries sparring, with one of them learning how a shield can be used other than for blocking. However, this would not have been employed historically, as the wall formed by the shields was the key to a maniple's (a maniple is an individual fighting force, its name derived from the latin manus "hand", so literally "a handful") success, and if a force survived even something like that the offending officer could be demoted or even discharged. The reason this would not work was because the barbarians would use longer weapons that could reach past an outstretched shield.

Broiled Fish with Red Pepper-Orange vinaigrette

This is another recipe that sounded good from the Boston Globe Magazine article of a few weeks ago. We got another nice cod from the CSF today, so while the recipe suggested striped bass I decided to try it with cod. I really liked the sweetness of the oranges along with the roasted peppers.
Broiled Cod with Red Pepper and Orange vinaigrette
2 large oranges
1 cup roasted red peppers (we got fresh roasted peppers from Wilson Farms, but the ones in a jar would work fine too)
2 large or 3-4 small garlic cloves (I like lots of garlic, you can use less)
2 tsp fresh thyme
2 Tbsp cider vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
1.5 lbs cod fillets
couple teaspoons of Northwoods seasoning from Penzeys

Finely grate a couple of teaspoons of zest from the oranges (the original recipe called for 4 teaspoons, but Tom thought the zest was too overpowering, so I would scale back next time). Add the zest to a food processor or blender along with half the peppers, thyme, vinegar, 3/4 tsp salt and pepper. Turn on the food processor to puree the ingredients and drop the garlic cloves in while running to chop them up. Stop and scrape down the sides at least once. Then, again while running, slowly pour in about a 1/4 cup of oil (I wasn't really measuring, just went until it looked good). Set aside the sauce.

Segment the oranges (no skin or membranes) and put the segments into a bowl. Slice the remaining red peppers and add to the bowl with the oranges.

Turn on your broiler to high. Lightly oil a pan and set the fish on it skin side down. Sprinkle the fillets with Northwoods seasoning (or something else you like), and broil until cooked through (ours took 10 minutes). To serve drizzle some of the sauce over the fillet, top with some of the orange segments and peppers and serve immediately.

This made enough sauce that we'll probably have it with the whiting we'll be having tomorrow night as well.

Ferrari 458

The new Ferrari is coming soon. It is called the 458 Italia it is the replacement of the 430. It looks like the 430 combined somewhat with the Enzo. Top Gear has recorded the sound listen to it on the website. There is one weird thing above the headlights are slots that confuse me. There are three exhaust pipes designed to make it look like the f40 which also had three exhaust pipes.

Cod with Tomato-Bacon vinaigrette

Ok, as far as our family is concerned anything you add bacon to has got to be good... Spinach cooked with Bacon - yum. Pasta with bacon - mmm, mmm. Pizza with bacon - you bet. Ok, maybe not ice cream. This is based on a recipe that was in the Boston Globe magazine a few weeks ago.

Roasted Cod with Tomato-Bacon Vinaigrette
1 pint grape tomatoes, quartered
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp sugar
6 or so slices of bacon
1 dried hot pepper, crushed
1/2 tsp ground cumin
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 1/2 Tbsp vinegar (red wine, or cider)
2Tbsp olive oil (extra virgin)
1.5lb cod fillets
1/2 cup bread crumbs - I used panko

Mix the tomatoes with salt, pepper and sugar and let rest a few minutes to draw out the juices. Meanwhile, fry the bacon until the fat is rendered and the bacon is golden and crispy. Remove the bacon to a paper towel to drain, and break into pieces when it's cooled. Add 1-2 Tbsp of the bacon fat to the tomatoes, and discard the rest. To the tomato mixture add the cumin, garlic, vinegar and more salt and pepper to taste. Mix those ingredients, then stir in 2 Tbsp olive oil. Now it's time to get the fish ready.

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Brush the fish fillets with a little melted butter or olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs over the top and then bake until cooked through (about 10 minutes per inch of thickness). I think our cod took about 10 minutes.

At the last minute stir the vinaigrette to recombine and add the bacon - if you add the bacon earlier it gets soggy. Serve the cod with some of the tomato-bacon vinaigrette over the top.

Since I was going to have the oven nice and hot I took the opportunity to roast potatoes and beets (separately not together) as side dishes. Toss the veggies in olive oil along with some fresh herbs, sliced onions, salt and pepper then roast at 425 for 35-45 minutes.

Band Concert, July 28

Another band concert last night. It was a beautiful night for it, and the band sounded great …

… but Tom and Pete spent most of the concert way in the back, whittling.

Synchronous Objects

Go check out this interesting dance piece.

It’s a performance of William Forsythe’s One Flat Thing, reproduced  with visual annotations added using a graphics package called Field. It was done by Norah Zuniga Shaw.

Mauna Kea

When we were in Hawai’i two years ago, we went up to the top of Mauna Kea. It’s an amazing place. Standing on the barren cinder cone while breathing the thin air at more that 13,000 feet. If you look down, you see the tops of the clouds. If you look up, you see a dark, indigo sky.

And all around you are these amazing observatories.

From left to right, that’s the CFHT, the Gemini, and the University of Hawai’i telescopes. Note that the primary mirror of the UofH telescope is about the same size as the one in the Hubble, but it looks like a baby up here.

If you look the other way, you’ll see these:

That’s the Subaru and the pair of giant Kecks. And that’s only about half of the telescopes that are scattered around the top of the mountain.

Well, these are going to be joined by a real monster soon. Check out this conceptual image of the new TMT.

 
It’s primary will be about 3 times the width of the ones in the Keck telescopes.

This next picture gives you an idea of why all of these telescopes are here. Be sure to click through to see the full res version at APOD.

And finally here’s a really neat time lapse video shot from Mauna Kea during last year’s lunar eclipse.

Shadow In Shadow from Alex Mukensnable on Vimeo.

Spore Internals

This is the sort of thing that usually goes in my work blog, but the kids are both big fans of Spore, so I’m going to post it here instead.

Chris Hecker has written up a nice, short overview of various design decisions they made during the implementation. Lots of good discussion about efficiency/performance tradeoffs in things like metaball triangulation and texture atlas creation.

I’m also going to add a link here to Ned Batchelder’s post on the steganography in Spore’s image output.

Math Midway

Glen Whitney is trying to create a museum of mathematics. There have been articles about the project recently in the New Yorker, Gelf magazine, and the Daily News. His website for the project is here. Their first traveling exhibition is called the Math Midway.

1984

I was going through some old boxes today and found a calendar I’d had in 1984. One notable difference from our calendars these days is how little is written in on any given month. However a few items of importance are written in. Apparently the main thing that I needed to keep track of in those days was job interviews. At the end of February I visited Knoware, a small start up developing PC software in Cambridge.  March seems to have been my busiest month with visits to Teradyne on the 9th, BBN Labs on the 5th, and Intermetrics on the 23rd. I ended up joining Intermetrics and working there for 18 years if you count the various companies after mergers. Things could have been very different if I’d gone to Knoware a startup that closed within 12 months of when I spoke to them.

15

Tom turned 15 yesterday. It was pretty low key because he’d already had a party with his friends at the end of school.

In a bit of an O Henry moment, he got a nice dock for the iPod he hadn’t told anybody he’d lost.

DayJams (week 3)

This is the diagram for a five string bass I have plans for if I ever end up with the time and money available to create it. The fingerboard would be made from a purple wood and it would only have 12 frets. It would have 3 pickups and the strings would go through the body at the end. The inlays would be several 3 leaf clovers a 4 leaf clover and a large one of leaves and intertwining vines. The jack for the cable would be at a better angle designed to reduce wear on it.

In this picture the different parts are circled in different colors. The dark blue is the strap, the light blue is where the strings enter the body, the green is the pickups (they pick up the motion of the strings and change it into electrical signals), the red is the neck section without frets, which would be a massive inlay.

On a different note, I performed my second and last dayjams song, which, despite my past predictions, was a full nine minutes long in the studio version. The style of the song is almost impossible to define, as we had a funk section, with another section being reminiscent of "Message In A Bottle" by The Police.

My second band left to right. Matt M, Kenny WL, Sara R, Me, Chris R, Jeremy W, and obscured but not forgotten on drums, Christopher S.

Chimp Grooming and Dunbar’s Number

Chimpanzees congregate in groups called troupes and exhibit a behavior called grooming. Two chimps sit next to each other and one of them picks dirt and bugs out of the other one’s hair. This behavior helps build relationships between members of the troupe and it helps keep the high ranking males calm.

Humans are very closely related to chimps. The differences in our genetic make up is tiny. You would expect to see similar behavior in humans, and you do.

Humans congregate in groups called companies and exhibit a behavior called meetings. A small group of humans goes into a small room and show each other PowerPoint slides for an hour or so. This behavior helps build relationships between members of the company and it helps keep the high ranking members of the company calm.

The problem with both of these behaviors is that they don’t scale well as the size of the troupe/company increases.  This is why chimpanzee troupes typically don’t exceed 40 or 50.

In the various primate species there is a correlation between this maximum troupe size and the volume of the neocortex .

In 1992, Robin Dunbar used this correlation to compute an estimate for the maximum troupe size in humans. This is known as Dunbar’s number, and it is roughly 150.

So that obviously means that the size of humans companies shouldn’t exceed roughly 150 members. Is that what we see in practice? Unfortunately, no. So what should we expect to see when company size exceeds Dunbar’s number? Basically we would expect to see the company break into subgroups just as chimp troupes do. And that is exactly what we do see. Whenever I’ve been at a company which grew past about 150 or 200 members, you would see members of different subgroups (e.g. development, marketing, sales) refer to each other as them, and actively compete with each other. A similar phenomena occurs when the company grows to the point where a single group (e.g. development) exceeds Dunbar’s number.

At least, that’s my experience. What have you seen in your field studies?

5 Dangerous Things for Kids

Gever Tulley (of Tinkering School) gave a talk at TED a couple of years ago about five dangerous things you should let your kids do. He doesn’t have his own kids, but we do, and we highly recommend his list.

Here’s the short version:

1. Play with fire
2. Own a pocket knife
3. Throw a spear
4. Take something apart
5. Break the DMCA (or drive a car)

We’ve been trying to practice all of these with our kids.

Seeing his talk again reminded me of this warning label we saw on a box the other day.

It doesn’t have any text with it, but our interpretation was that it is trying to say that this box is not for the storage of babies. Maybe I’m wrong though.

Jae Ha

Jae Ha, one of my fraternity brothers from school, was in town this week. He’s staying at Curt’s so a bunch of us got together over there tonight to catch up and talk about old times.

That’s Jae on the left, followed by Shawn, Jeff, me, Curt, and Joe. Joe DeRosa was there too, but he snuck out before Chris took the picture. Rebecca and Mary were also missed in the photo, and all of the kids were off playing on the GameCube all night. It was really great to see everybody again.

Rich Boys’ Toys

You’ve probably heard of Tom Perkins. He owns the world’s largest sailboat, the Maltese Falcon:

Which can now apparently be yours at a bargain price.

Now he’s got a new toy. Check out his new submarine. You can find more info on it here.

Larry Ellison has a new toy too. It’s known as DOGzilla, and it’s going to be competing in the mess that is what has become of the America’s Cup in recent years.

But, of course, Peter and I think that none of these expensive toys really compare to the Glickenhaus Ferrari:

Spinners

This is something we made tonight. It came from an idea I had for a scratch project but did not ever actually use, and now we wrote it in Processing.




Source code: spinners



Built with Processing

It's gotta be the shoes

We (Tom and Peter) got new shoes called FiveFingers from Vibram which are unlike any other type of shoe you have probably ever seen before. They have separate sections for each of your toes and they also have cuts in the bottom to allow for added flexibility and so that when the shoe bends the cuts open and provide add traction, so when you are running flat out you have better turning and acceleration capabilities. These were created because running in bare feet is supposed to be good for them unless you step on glass or something. These are for imitating bare feet while still keeping your foot uncut.

Tom wears them everyday and thinks they're absolutely amazing and the best shoes he has ever worn. Peter thinks he hasn't worn them as much as Tom so he hasn't had time to get a solid opinion but he still likes them quite a bit so far.

This is a video from wired.com, and it is better at explaining how they work than we are.

Ursonate

Ursonate is a sound poem written by Kurt Schwitters in the 20’s.

This is a great performance of it by Jaap Blonk with really cool visuals by Golan Levin.

Golan also did The Secret Lives of Numbers.

Portrait of an Eagle

Have you seen this picture from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter?

That little white dot casting the big shadow is the bottom half of the LEM that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed in 40 years ago today. Isn’t that neat? It was taken with this camera from an altitude of about 30 miles.

They’ve released photos of the other Apollo landing sites too. I really like this one of the Apollo 14 landing site.

You can actually see the marks the astronauts left when they were walking around! That was the mission where Alan Shepard hit a couple of golf balls.

The trick to these pictures is that they were taken when the sun was very low in the sky at each landing site. This emphasizes the details.

Go check out all of the pictures at full resolution here.

Tadpoles: The Saga Begins

A week or two ago we found a lot of tadpoles and decided to bring a few home. We brought home 50 tadpoles and they are very interesting

This is where we found our tadpoles for the first time it is a video of them milling about. It was a crowded quagmire near Bowman School. We brought them home in a bucket.

Turns out we also had for the first diurnal course (day) what we thought was a predacious diving beetle nymph but it bit the dust. We fueled the tadpoles on lettuce. and they grew very fast we got them on the 11th and they are very fun to dabble with.

We liberated 30 of them yesterday and we've got 20 left. We left the ones we released by a stream near our house.

Beef Stroganoff

This is a family favorite recipe. It also happens to be the first thing I cooked for Mike when we were first dating. I originally copied the recipe down into a spiral notebook from one of my mother's Better Homes & Gardens cookbooks between freshman and sophomore years at college. That page is now faded. You can hardly read the writing. Parts of it have been washed out by spills, and the page as a whole has fallen out of the notebook. Maybe it's time to write the recipe down somewhere a little more permanent.

Beef Stroganoff
1 lb beef sirloin tips, cut into thin slices (as if for a stir fry)
olive oil or butter
1 onion, sliced (I like to use vidalias when they're in season)
1-3 cloves garlic, crushed
3oz can sliced mushrooms (or fresh, but saute them in butter first)
flour for dredging
salt & pepper
2 Tbsp flour
1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp tomato paste
1/2 tsp sweet hungarian paprika (optional)
12-14 oz beef stock (or boullion)
1-1.5 cups sour cream
1/4 cup white wine

Heat a large skillet over medium high heat, and add a tablespoon or so of olive oil or butter. Dredge the slices of beef in flour mixed with salt and pepper, then place them in the skillet. When they have browned on one side flip to the other side. When browned on the second side remove them to a plate. Cook the beef in batches. Don't over cook, the beef will get simmered in the sauce later, so it's fine for it to be just barely browned at this point. After cooking the beef add a tablespoon more oil or butter to the pan and saute the onions and garlic. When the onions start to soften add the mushrooms. Saute until the onions are translucent, or even a little browned.

Push the onion etc to one side and melt a tablespoon of butter in the pan mixing it with the 2 tablespoons of butter to create a roux. Stir in the tablespoon of tomato paste (and the paprika if you're using it). Then add the beef stock and stir everything until it bubbles and thickens. Return the beef to the pan. Reduce the heat to low and add the white wine. Then mix it the sour cream, and warm over low heat. High heat will cause the sauce to separate.

Serve over buttered egg noodles.

I don't think the tomato paste does anything other than impart a nice pink color to the the sauce. Without it, it would be kind of grey. In fact I seem to remember a meal my mother made when I was a child. It was kind of grey and smelled a bit odd. I remember not wanting to eat it, but being convinced by my parents to just try one bite. With some trepidation I took a bite, and it really was good. Many years later I wondered if that dish was simply a stroganoff without the tomato paste.

Playing Hooky

Chris & I took the day off and went hiking up Great Blue Hill. It was a beautiful day. Sunny, about 88 degrees. The blueberries were ripe and we met a couple of deer on the trail.

We went up the steep (east) side, so we were pretty hot by the time we got to the top.

That’s the old kite shed in the picture. About a hundred years ago, they used to fly a giant kite carrying weather instruments from the top of the hill.

Here’s a picture of the observatory itself. It’s still operating.

We ran into several groups of kids at Eliot tower, but most of the trails were pretty quiet today.

Pan Fried Whiting

In addition to the two flounder we also got ten whiting this week for our CSF. Here they are before the cleaning etc. With this many fish we decided to keep it pretty simple and just fry them - whole! If they look a little misshapen it's because they had been gorging themselves on sandeels, but I won't go into details here.

Pan Fried Whiting
mess-o-whiting cleaned and scaled, heads, tails and fins removed, otherwise intact
cornmeal (about a half cup)
flour (about a third cup)
garlic powder, generous teaspoon
dash of cayenne pepper
ancho chili powder, about a teaspoon
salt & pepper
2-3 eggs beaten with a little milk
oil for frying
sliced lemon

Mix all dry ingredients together in a shallow dish. Beat eggs with milk in another shallow bowl. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. When oil is rippling, dip fish first in egg mixture, then in cornmeal mixture. Place into the hot oil. Continue with other fishes. After 4-5 minutes flip fish to the other side. Cook another 3-4 minutes. When they're done, drain them on some paper towels. Serve with lemon wedges.

Notes: As this was the first time I didn't want to overwhelm it with the spices. However, I think it could have used more garlic, cayenne, salt and pepper in the cornmeal mixture.

These roasted potatoes went well with the fish.

Roasted Sliced Potatoes
1 lb red potatoes, sliced (a mandoline is great for this part)
1 Tbsp dried onions
2 tsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground pepper
2-3 tbsp olive oil
1-2 tsp ancho chili powder
1/2 tsp smoked paprika (optional)
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Mix sliced potatoes with other ingredients until well coated. Spread the potatoes out on a cookie tray and bake for 30-40 minutes. Turn them over about halfway through cooking.

It Was 40 Years Ago Today

Liftoff!

This is the cover of the scrapbook I put together that summer when I was 10.

I clipped articles out of the newspaper every morning and pasted them into this scrapbook.

We were at our camp on Lake Champlain this week. One of the rules of camp was no TV. This was the one year that rule was broken. We had a little black & white television we watched every step of the mission on.

It seems like yesterday to me, and the kids think of it as ancient history. Of course, it was only 42 years before Apollo 11 that Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic.

Cape Ann Fresh Catch - Week 4 Flounder

So after 3 weeks of cod, we got something different this week: yellowtail flounder and whiting. Not only did we get the two beautiful flounder you see here, but we also got ten (yes ten!) whiting. To add to the adventure, none of the fishes were cleaned, so this week I also got to learn how to clean fish. While it would probably have been easier to keep the flounder whole and bake it, I decided to go ahead and fillet it. I definitely would not have tried this without my nice new (and very sharp) filleting knife. It wasn't as bad as I thought and came out pretty well. To cook the flounder I poached it in milk and served it with egg noodles and peas in a mustard butter sauce. I would definitely try poaching again - the fish came out very tender, and the sauce was great. BUT trying to do all of it the same night as prepping the fish was a bit much.

Flounder poached in Milk with Noodles and Mustard Butter Sauce
1lb flounder fillets
2 cups milk
8oz egg noodles
10 oz frozen petite peas
salt & freshly ground pepper
Mustard Butter Sauce (below)
The fish cooks very fast, so you really want to get started with everything else. Start a large pot of salted water for the noodles. Put the frozen peas in the collander you'll use to drain the noodles and rinse with hot water to defrost them. Assuming that you made the mustard sauce in advance - warm it in a small pan over very low heat. When the noodles are cooked, drain them over the peas. Then toss the noodles and peas with some of the mustard sauce.

While the noodles are cooking season the fish with salt and pepper on both sides. You can fold the fillets into thirds to have everything fit in the pan easier. When the noodles are almost done, add the milk to a large skillet along with 6 cups of water and a generous 2 teaspoons of salt. Bring the milk to a simmer, then add the fillets and turn the heat down to low. Cook over low eat for 3-5 minutes (depending on thickness). Turn the fillets over, turn off the heat and let them sit in the milk for a minute to finish cooking. Put some noodles on a plate, top with some fish and drizzle a little more sauce over the top and you're good to go.

Mustard Butter Sauce
Ok, this is a variation on a Beurre Blanc (video) with a couple of spoonfuls of mustard whisked in at the end.
1/2 cup chopped shallots
3/4 cup liquid (water, or white wine & vinegar, or stock)
1 stick chilled unsalted butter cut into 8 pieces
1-2 Tbsp coarse dijon mustard (or mix of smooth and grainy)
Cook the shallots in the liquid until it has reduced to about 1/4 cup. Turn off the heat and whisk in the butter a couple of pieces at a time to create an emulsion. For a smoother sauce blend the sauce with an immersion blender, or strain through a strainer before adding the mustard. This sauce does have a tendency to separate when reheated - you can re-emulsify it with the immersion blender, or just whisk in another tablespoon of cold butter.

This is based on a recipe for Turbot in Fish without a Doubt by Moonen and Finamore. It would work for most mild white fish such as cod, sole or fluke as well.

Coder Girl

We ran into this music video by Dale Chase on YouTube today. We all thought it was pretty good.

It’s nice to see someone write hiphop about girls who do the sort of things the girls who we know like to do.

The Big Picture: Apollo 11

The Big Picture is the Boston Globe’s photoblog. It’s really wonderful. They often have some great collections of photos. For example, today they have this collection of photos from the Apollo 11 mission.

Crocosmia

Here’s another interesting flower from our garden:

It’s called crocosmia. I don’t think it’s really supposed to be hardy in our zone (zone 6), but our plant has consistently returned year after year putting out these spectacular red blooms. I think it’s because it’s planted in a sheltered corner against a south facing wall, so it’s able to survive the winters.

Angels & Demons

I kind of enjoyed The DaVinci Code. It seemed to be an above average airport book. So I went back and tried to read Angels & Demons. I think I only got about 10 pages into that one before I had to throw it away. The utter nonsense about what CERN is like and what goes on there drove me nuts. Now that it’s being made into a movie, CERN has had to put together a webpage responding to this nonsense.

There’s an interesting article in Salon about what this type of popular misrepresentation of science does to the public’s understanding of scientific issues.

Of course, a lot of people in the Catholic community probably had similar feelings about how The DaVinci Code represented their church.

We Choose the Moon

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, the JFK library has put together a neat website. It presents data from the mission in real time, but with a 40 year delay. It’s pretty cool, but quite a change from the little black and white TV we actually watched it on at the time.

Go check it out here.

Tall Ships

The tall ships were in Boston this week. We went down to see them this afternoon.

They had large ships from all over the world.

That’s the Sagres from Portugal in front and the Capitan Mircea from Romania in back.

And smaller ships from closer to home.

 

That’s the schooner American Eagle from Maine.

It was a beautiful summer day in Boston. Lots of people were out enjoying the scene along the new harborwalk.

Everybody had a great time.

That’s Peter and Chris on the Cisne Branco from Brazil.

Micro Mini Car Day

Today we went to Micro Mini Car day at the Larz Anderson museum. It’s a really fun event where owners of tiny cars get together and show them off to the public. Unlike a lot of car shows, these cars are on the move all day giving out rides to anyone who wants them.

That’s our neighbor Jon. He and his wife Gini had two cars in the show; this 2CV and a tiny Subaru.

There were lots of fun little cars, like this Isetta.

And this wonderful Fiat Cinquecento that had been painted in taxi regalia. Both are owned by Wendy Costa, the artist who has been creating all the artwork for this event for the last eight years.  It won first place in the mini car category.

The kids all had a great time. Here they are riding with Charles Gould (the event organizer) in a Mini Moke.