Posts Tagged ‘BBC’
Teach your children well…
Your correspondent is headed again across the Dateline (where he loses all track of what day it actually is), thus (R)D will be in abeyance until March 9 or 10, when “service” will resume again.
In the meantime, a message from the past to the future…
In 1959, philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic Bertrand Russell appeared on the BBC interview program Face-to-Face. As the program came to its final two minutes, he was asked a valedictory question: “What would you tell a generation living 1,000 years from now about the life you’ve lived and the lessons you’ve learned?”…
[TotH to Open Culture]
As we do our level best to take good advice, we might recall that it was on this date in 1611 (81 years before the beginning of a case Russell might have cited, the Salem Witch Trials, on this date in 1692) that John Pell was born. An English mathematician of accomplishment, he is perhaps most remembered for having introduced the “division sign”– the obelus: a short line with dots above and below– into use in English. It was first used in German by Johann Rahn in 1659 in Teutsche Algebra; Pell’s translation brought the symbol to English-speaking mathematicians. Indeed, Pell was an important influence on Rahn, and edited his book– so may well have been, many scholars believe, the originator of the symbol for this use. (In any case the symbol wasn’t new to them: the obelus [derived from the word for “roasting spit” in Greek] had already been used to mark passages in writings that were considered dubious, corrupt or spurious…. a use that surely seems only too familiar to legions of second and third grade math students.)
John Pell (source)
So many books! So little time!…
Daniel Rourke– a contributor to the terrific Three Quarks Daily, and proprietor of the equally-nifty MachineMacine— reminds us that the problems of coping with information overload are nothing new…
Agostino Ramelli’s Rotary Reader
In 1588, the Italian Engineer Agostino Ramelli described a novel invention to facilitate the reading of multiple books at once:
A beautiful and ingenious machine, which is very useful and convenient to every person who takes pleasure in study, especially those who are suffering from indisposition or are subject to gout: for with this sort of machine a man can see and read a great quantity of books, without moving his place: besides, it has this fine convenience, which is, of occupying a little space in the place where it is set, as any person of understanding can appreciate from the drawing.
The precursor, no doubt, to internet surfing… Gout beget Carpal Tunnel Syndrome beget Muscle Atrophy beget Internet Addiction Disorder. Will mankind stop at nothing in the pursuit of pure information?!?
As we meditate on multi-tasking, we might wish an admiring and grateful Happy Birthday to one of the most accomplished multi-taskers of all time, the mathematician, biologist, historian of science, literary critic, poet and inventor Jacob Bronowski; he was born on this date in 1908. Bronowski is probably best remembered as the writer (and host) of the epochal 1973 BBC television documentary series (and accompanying book), The Ascent of Man (the title of which was a play on the title of Darwin’s second book on evolution, The Descent of Man)… the thirteen-part series (which is available at libraries, on DVD, or Netflix), a survey of the history of science– from rock tools to relativity– and its place in civilizations, is still an extraordinary treat.
Pictures worth a million words…
In his great opus De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium published shortly before his death in 1543, Copernicus takes 405 pages of words, numbers and equations to explain his heliocentric theory. But it is the diagram that he draws at the beginning of the book that captures in a simple image his revolutionary new idea: it is the Sun that is at the centre of the Solar System, not the Earth.
A diagram has the power to create a whole new visual language to navigate a scientific idea. Isaac Newton’s optics diagrams [Opticks, 1704] for example transform light into geometry. By representing light as lines, Newton is able to use mathematics and geometry to predict the behaviour of light. It was a revolutionary idea.
Mathematicians had been struggling with the idea of the square root of minus one. There seemed to be no number on the number line whose square was negative. Experts knew that if such a number existed it would transform their subject. But where was this number? It was a picture drawn independently by three mathematicians at the beginning of the 19th Century that brought these numbers to life. Called the Argand diagram after one of its creators, this picture… was a potent tool in manipulating these new numbers [Imaginary Numbers] since the geometry of the diagram reflected the underlying algebra of the numbers they depicted.
Although better known for her contributions to nursing, Florence Nightingale’s greatest achievements were mathematical. She was the first to use the idea of a pie chart to represent data. Nightingale’s diagrams were designed to highlight deaths in the Crimea. She had discovered that the majority of deaths in the Crimea were due to poor sanitation rather than casualties in battle. She wanted to persuade government of the need for better hygiene in hospitals. She realised though that just looking at the numbers was unlikely to impress ministers. But once those numbers were translated into a picture – her “Diagram of the Causes of Mortality in the Army in the East” – the message could not be ignored.
Read more (and find links to enlarged versions of the images above) at BBC.com, in “Diagrams that Changed the World,” a teaser for new BBC TV series, Marcus du Sautoy’s six-part The Beauty of Diagrams (on air now, and available via iPlayer to readers in the U.K… and readers with VPNs that can terminate in the U.K.)
As we marvel at the power of pictures, we might recall that it was on this date in 1997 that eight planets in our Solar System lined up from West to East– beginning with Pluto, followed by Mercury, Mars, Venus, Uranus, Neptune, Saturn and Jupiter, with a crescent moon alongside– in a rare alignment visible from Earth. Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn were visible to the naked eye; the small blue dots that are Uranus and Neptune, with binoculars. Pluto was visible only by telescope (but has subsequently been demoted from “planet” anyway…). The planets also aligned in May 2000, but too close to the sun to be visible from Earth.
Readers who missed it have a long wait for the reprise: it will be at least another 100 years before so many planets will be so close and so visible.
Let’s go to the tape…
From Iri5, on Flickr, “Ghost in the Machine“…
In this series I showcase a number of portraits of musicians made out of recycled cassette tape with original cassette. Also included are portraits made from old film and reels. The idea comes from a philosopher’s (Ryle) description of how your spirit lives in your body. I imagine we are all, like cassettes, thoughts wrapped up in awkward packaging. : )
As we refrain from hitting rewind, we might might wish a happy birthday to John Charles Walsham Reith, 1st Baron Reith, KT, GCVO, GBE, CB, TD, PC, the first Director General of the British Broadcasting Corporation; he was born on this date in 1889.
Reith oversaw the establishment of the BBC, building it to avoid the extremities of the systems he saw growing in the United States to his West and in the Soviet union to his East. The principles he encouraged, which have come to be know as “Reithianism” include an equal consideration of all viewpoints, probity, universality and a commitment to public service.
It was a measure of his seriousness (and of his proper upbringing) that he required all radio news readers broadcasting from the dinner hour on to wear black tie though they could not, of course, be seen– to dress otherwise would be disrespectful both to the other performers on the air (also in evening dress) and to the audiences into whose homes the voices were going.
The Director General (source)
The Jury is In: This Year’s Coolest April Fool’s Gag…
From Moog Music (Bob Moog’s legacy company):
MF-401 Auto De-tune
$799.00Do the vocals on your favorite song sound like a vocoded chipmunk? Yes(?). Did you use extreme auto-tune settings in the sensitive ballad you wrote for your girlfriend, who then dumped you because, as Jay Z said, “Auto-tune is Dead”. Never fear, you can now recapture the emotive intensity of your original vocal performance complete with the off-kilter, yet somewhat charming intonation for which you are known.
Introducing Moog Music’s MF-401 Auto De-tune, featuring Authentic Vocal Imperfection(tm) technology, even a T-Pain vocal can be restored to its complete original character, scrubbing the pitch correction and leaving the untreated vocal in all its wavering sharp or flat glory. Results may vary, and Moog Music in no way bears responsibility for discomfort or irritation caused by the use of the MF-401.
Shipping begins April 1, 2010
(For background, see “All That Glitters…,” “Auto-Tuning the Cosmos…,” and “Auto-Tuning Infomercials…“)
As we rethink our panini preferences, we might recall that it was on this date 1959 that The Coasters’ single “Charlie Brown” was banned by the BBC because it refers to “throwin’ spitballs.” The ban lasted 2 weeks. “Young Blood,” “Yakety Yak,” “Poison Ivy,” and other Coasters’ hits were deemed less threatening to the morals of young Britons, and were spared ostracism.
Happy National Chocolate Mousse Day!
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