orrery or keeping up appearances

Recognising elegance in simplicity—though the push to preserve the conceit that the Earth was at the centre of the Universe, convoluted as it is, displays a lot of genius and endured, placating our egocentrism for fifteen hundred years. Contrary to appearances, Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria, in contriving his model, even acknowledged himself in his introductory remarks that it would be far more straightforward if we orbited around the Sun.
Possibly astronomers and mathematicians of the time even derived a heliocentric arrangement, as a purely academic (if not heretical) pursuit. Insistence that the heavenly spheres must sweep out perfect circles—rather than degenerate ellipses, also was a major contributing factor in the overall refusal of the public and the scientific community to entertain any other sort of cosmology. Revolutionary as it was, the sun-centred solar system of Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei and despite the hard slog for acceptance, though ostensibly still true and accurate enough (when it’s not rocket-science), did not reign long itself before being toppled by Johannes Kepler, whose keen perception of the motion of planets—as the expression of gravity—displaced the Sun too, realising that it is not our star that leads in the waltz of planets. The principle of Ockham’s Razor does usually hold and these animations certainly impart a lesson in perceptive and relation but I wonder what else we might not be seeing for our clouded biases.

winterval or delogistics

It’s always a little sad to finally be packing up the Christmas decorations and decorously escorting the tree to the tree graveyard. We bid the ornaments a fond adieu until next year. With all that science can give us, however, one would think that they at least could genetically engineer Angels’ Hair (tinsel) to mature in that tatty green basket grass in time for Easter—or the municipal Christmas tree to shed down to a ready Maypole.  Maybe that’s how it used to be done.

6x6

nxnw: striking storyboard illustrations for Alfred Hitchcock films, from Everlasting Blort

baby grand: enjoy the musical stylings of this virtuoso of the toy piano

minifig: get a LEGO head made in your likeness

chewie lewis and the news: clever series of Star Wars album cover remixes—Rebel Rebel is my favourite

barons of industry: an appreciation of the bold and post-modern artwork of Fortune magazine

allemande, promenade: dinosaurs probably performed elaborate mating-dances like birds do—it would be funny to see a tyrannosaurus hoedown

sands of time

This wholly natural occurrence seems rather incredulous (especially if we were to encounter such a formation on Mars) but this “scratch circle” (Scharrkreise) happens when in windy wintertime a dry reed of dune grass is allowed to sweep out a perfect circle unimpeded, pivoting around its bent stalk.