Chekov's Gun

Driving With Dominic in the Southern Province We See Hints of the Circus

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:35:20 -0700

The tattered Hungarian tent

A man washing a trumpet
at a roadside tap

Children in the trees,

one falling
into the grip of another

—Michael Ondaatje

natgeofound: A wrapped juvenile camel rides between packs on a...

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:06:08 -0700

natgeofound:

A wrapped juvenile camel rides between packs on a camel’s back in Western Australia, December 1916.
Photograph by C. P. Scott, National Geographic

folhadespaulo: Fantasiada, menina interage com cangurus em...

Sun, 19 May 2013 12:42:21 -0700

folhadespaulo:

Fantasiada, menina interage com cangurus em parque na Austrália; veja mais fotos: http://folha.com/131372 (Foto: Carters News/The Grosby Group)

Photo

Thu, 09 May 2013 22:10:24 -0700

wnycradiolab: atlasobscura: Delivering a dinosaur to the...

Mon, 06 May 2013 11:12:42 -0700

wnycradiolab:

atlasobscura:

Delivering a dinosaur to the Boston Museum of Science - Arthur Pollock - 1984

It kills me that I didn’t get to witness this.

Some days you’re the helicopter, some days you’re the dinosaur

Photo

Fri, 03 May 2013 08:45:48 -0700

natgeofound: Girls eat large swirls of cotton candy in...

Thu, 02 May 2013 20:19:56 -0700

natgeofound:

Girls eat large swirls of cotton candy in Copenhagen, Denmark, January 1963.
Photograph by Gilbert M. Grosvenor, National Geographic

xplanes: 1954 (via) Fooooosh!

Thu, 02 May 2013 20:17:36 -0700

xplanes:

1954 (via)

Fooooosh!

theangelofhistory: Book cover, Geologie für Jederman by Prof....

Thu, 02 May 2013 20:04:55 -0700

theangelofhistory:

Book cover, Geologie für Jederman by Prof. Dr. Kurd v. Bülow (1974)

Geology for Everyone!

funny-gifs-videos: oyun oyna

Thu, 02 May 2013 19:47:29 -0700

funny-gifs-videos:

oyun oyna

"Situations simply do not yield to the most likely structures of the mind. A ‘self-addressed..."

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:19:55 -0700

“Situations simply do not yield to the most likely structures of the mind. A ‘self-addressed envelope,’ if you are inclined to brood, raises deep questions of identity. Such an envelope, immutably itself, is always precisely where it belongs.”

- Speedboat, Renata Adler

The school was run by Communists, although few parents were aware of that. The grades ran from one...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 19:42:12 -0700

The school was run by Communists, although few parents were aware of that. The grades ran from one to twelve. The younger children slept throughout the year on a screened-in open porch that was thought, in wintertime, to confer immunities. There were sixteen double-decker beds on the porch, and one single bed, near the door, for the child who was held to be the most disturbed in any given year. Late at night, the oldest told horror stories. Later still, the most disturbed child would bang her head against the bedpost in her sleep, or cry, or speak in no known language, whatever the disturbance that year was. Before dawn, the rest leaped wildly from top bunk to top bunk, sometimes single file, sometimes racing, sometimes three leapers side by side at a single time. Once or twice in those years, somebody crashed and broke a leg.

We voted constantly on everything—issues and offices of every kind. We were expected at every age to have an opinion on all matters, political matters in particular. Although pressure from the teachers that year was clearly for Wallace (Henry, not George), the teachers restrained themselves—nominally because they valued our independent judgment, actually because they lived in dread of our petitions. We fired a housemother by petition. We voted in fifth-grade physics that half a pound of feathers weighed more than half a pound of steel. We were adamant. Knowledge itself was a democracy. We studied fanatically. We were as competitive as only a child state can be. We voted to stone the girl who banged her head—not because she banged her head, but because she was so fat and furtive and whining all the time. She lost a loafer running across the athletic field. None of the stones hit. We were too uncoordinated and too young to throw accurately across the distance we had also, in all fairness, voted for. The space-time continuum became clear to us with that event. So, perhaps, did the quality of mercy, after all. We did not vote to fire the shop teacher, although we wanted to. We planed and sawed and used the lathe and soldered, making Christmas presents for our families, Christmas in all wildly progressive schools was celebrated with obsessional gravity. In one year’s holy pageant, a girl’s hair caught fire, from a candle held reverently by the boy behind. A father leaped to the balcony and put the fire out. Parents were allowed to visit every other Sunday, and for pageants and plays.

—Speedboat, Renata Adler

deepseafauna: jtotheizzoe: Into the Abyss: Incredible...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 10:55:16 -0700

deepseafauna:

jtotheizzoe:

Into the Abyss: Incredible Shrinking Cups

Marine biologists and ocean scientists are somewhat of a tribe unto themselves. They spend weeks and months in cramped conditions aboard research vessels, doing science that’s a bit unlike any other science, and drinking enough to make Jack Sparrow proud. So it’s perfectly natural that their tribe would have some unique customs.

I discovered one of those today: Sending styrofoam cups to the bottom of the ocean as souvenirs.

When exploring deep ocean trenches and thermal vents, it’s usually a robot or a high-tech manned submersible doing the dirty work. The Cayman trough (where the top cup went) is home to some of the world’s deepest hydrothermal vents. At around 5,000 meters deep, the cup experiences nearly 500 times the pressure we experience at sea level. And since styrofoam is a foam made of air pockets inside a hydrocarbon polymer, it compresses under the added weight!

The bottom cup began as a normal-sized drinking utensil. But after it went to the bottom of the Mariana Trench (the world’s deepest point), it returned the size of a ketchup packet. The pressure down there is about a thousand times higher than at the surface!

It reminds me of a song …

(Squashed cups via Southern Fried Science and imgur)

Featuring the artistic stylings of your googly-eyed host.