equilateral-curve heptagon

As part of an ongoing series to recognise significant contributions to the sciences and humanities in UK coinage, the Royal Mint is issued a commem-orative fifty pence piece with a reverse honouring the late Professor Stephen Hawking, with the seven-sided coin depicting one of his most important formulations—aside that is from making astrophysics accessible and increasing general literacy and numeracy—that the conservation of information is not a constant and dissipates as does an aging black hole.

the world situation in 1970

The intrepid team at Muckrock debriefs us regarding the Central Intelligence Agency’s geopolitical assessment and projections and how that narrative was packaged and presented to Nixon and Kissinger—previously.
Facing the fact that universal goodwill and wartime capital were finite and fickle things, notwithstanding the country’s already demonstrable bad behaviour on the world stage—the CIA was more prone to rely on soft power and was willing to factor in the proliferation of soft drink sales, American music and cinema in its quiver of statecraft and as a measure of diplomatic success. When told, however, that cooler heads would prevail in Eastern Europe and that tensions would settle, Nixon asked instead what could be done to sew more chaos and discontent in the region—proposing a recalibration of Radio Free Europe.

outro music

Via Dave Log Version 3, we are treated to the sign-off, closedown message that HBO sent to its viewers to thank them for their patronage and to bid them a goodnight from 1975 to 1981. I quite like how there’s a responsible ritual portrayed to divide the broadcasting day from overnight (I was never up so late) and reinforces that we ought to have a routine and regard for our respective bedtimes.

hurdling the language-barrier

Via Nag on the Lake, we are privileged with a preview of the pictogram set from graphic desiger Masaaki Hiromura for the 2020 Tokyo Games. The artist, back in 2004, famously exhibited his Kitasenju—rebus symbols (below) to stimulate both hemispheres of the brain and focus one’s attention. These Gestalt sports symbols conveying athletes in action have a long tradition, first created in response to the growing international character of participants and spectators and each Olympiad gets their own bespoke signage.
This current offering is nearly as visually compelling, captivating and reflective of a certain vernacular of place and venue as Lance Wyman’s iconography (the transport connection is worth considering) for the 1968 Mexico City Games. Much more to explore at the links above.

the creeping devil

A native of Baja California, we find ourselves acquainted with another succulent uniquely sessile in its motility. Colonies of the species Stenocereis Eruca grow recumbently and live up to their common nomenclature as they advance across the desert floor, growing from one terminus, up to a metre and a half per year, as the tail end dies, disintegrates and re-fertilises the sandy soil as it deposits a trail behind. Learn more about the cactus’ distinctive lifecycle at the link above.

signal-to-noise ratio

Mathematical modelling on the part of a research team at Boston University have produced a muting, sound muffling device (really more of a function than a gadget) that deflects virtually all unwanted acoustic smog back towards its source, instead of absorbing it—the usual method of dealing with errant noises.
The sound is channelled from its source along a tube where it’s silenced on the other end by this echoing ring with no membrane to obscure the view (or non-carrier-wave flow of air) back and beyond and could be scaled up or down to make offices, apartments and other shared spaces a bit more tranquil and adjustable, perhaps even as earplugs. As much as I’d like to be able to press a mute button sometimes and relish my peace and quiet, I’m a little afraid we’d grow overly sensitive to the general din of background noise, cushioned by our filters, and we’d wither without them.

www

While working at CERN, having helped established the world’s then largest networked node of computers, Tim Berners-Lee (previously here and here) recognised the opportunity to merge hypertext with their internet, in efforts to make his job easier and more transparent for his collaborators.
On this day in 1989, he submitted his proposal to the laboratory’s communications office, whose abstract contained the concept of the world-wide web, later distributed and received as “vague but exciting,” the abstract linking disparate but already existing technologies in ways no one else had though to beforehand. The image is the coat of arms for the British Computer Society—of which Berners-Lee is a distinguished fellow, and was founded in 1956 as a professional body and learned association for the advancement of computer science, receiving a royal charter in 1984.