barefoot in the sand or casimir effect

For this centenary year of the publication of the General Theory of Relativity, Dangerous Minds has nice remembrance of the visit, decades later, by the preeminent scientist, Albert Einstein, and how he came to acquire those sandals in the iconic, candid photographs.
Be sure to visit the link for the full account, but his hosts believed Einstein was inquiring after a pair of “sundials”—which has suggests some impenetrable, secret insight into time-dilation to me. It’s interesting that Einstein, after cementing his ideas, rejected (initially at least for some of the projected outcomes but was never a convert for others) the chief cosmological consequences of his model: Einstein rejected the notion of the Big Bang (der Urknall) and the expanding Universe, the figment of Black Holes (Schwarze Löcher) and Wormholes (Wurmlöcher—also known as an Einstein-Rosen Bridge) whose dynamics suggest the possibility of time-travel. We are reasonably sure that the former two phenomena exist—and have good reason to suspect, given the sceptic’s track-record, that the latter might be possible as well. Photographs themselves are like little fossilised increments of spacetime, allowing one to reach into the past. Given that cinema was emerging around the same time, I wonder if Einstein and other theatre audiences knew intuitively to apply their sense of flashback and foreshadowing to cutting to different scenes on the movie screen.

fakery and fraudulence

I’ve finally received my long-awaited love letter from the Office of Personnel Management informing me that the totality of personal information has been compromised in a targeted cyber-attack, with the private details of my family and associates as well.
“Our records also indicate that your fingerprints were likely compromised during the cyber intrusion. Federal experts believe the ability to misuse fingerprint data is currently limited. However, this could change over time as technology evolves…” As recompense, the correspondence encourages me to register in a sort of identity-theft monitoring and protection programme, but I don’t know if I’ll be signing up as there’s not much there to instil a sense of confidence in their stewardship of any more individual data. When bits and pieces are stolen, it seems that something so easily lost isn’t worth protecting to begin with but it’s getting really intimate when a whole comprehensive profile is exposed.

docomo or the queen’s english

As is my wont, I must have glossed over this rather disturbing announcement and I truly appreciate Bob Canada for reviving this discussion—thinking that the Word of the Year as nominated and elevated by the venerable institution of Oxford University Press was “emoji,” which I thought to be pedantically behind the times, and not an emoji.
Albeit their flagship OED aims to capture language as it is actually used and not prescribe how it ought to be—despite the authority that it enjoys, I am not sure what to make our language and lexicon when “Face with Tears of Joy”—which sounds like a title museum curators would give to distinguish a work with no name, is celebrated. What do you think? I certainly use the glyphs for punctuation, I guess at the expense of full-stops, but in general not for a whole thought. Maybe Oxford’s contender was chosen too because of the ambiguity that can be substituted and encoded and be assigned different signals and meanings—like the suggestive eggplant or nail-polish representing some hollow accomplishment or indifference or the agony of being pepper-sprayed here pictured.

5x5

eddie are you okay: catchy barrel-organ version of Smooth Criminal 

lol: ukiyo artists from Edo-era Japan also liked animal memes

planchette: a Ouija board furniture ensemble 

d³Ʃx²: dedicated Whovian reveals the Doctor’s true name

octave: gallery of very large musical instruments