WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Let’s Review 133: From Tardigrades to Wabi-Sabi
byVanderleunonNovember 1, 2018
The Morning Rant Hi, there. Perhaps many of you don’t know me. I’m what your scientists have called a tardigrade. Pretty creepy looking, aren’t I? You can click on me if you’d like to see a larger version. I’d be a lot more frightening if I were the size of, say, your dog, but actually, those of my kind are water creatures who only grow to just over 1 mm, on average. So we’re real tiny. But here’s the kicker: we’re almost impossible to kill. We can also withstand temperatures from just above absolute zero to well above the boiling point of water. We can cope with ridiculous amounts of pressure and radiation, and we can live for more than 10 years without food or water. We can even survive the hard vacuum of outer space. So go ahead and kill each other with wars are nuclear bombs and the like, but we’ll still be around. Even if this planet gets a courtesy call from the Sweet Meteor of Death and all living things are completely wiped out, we’ll still be here. And we’ll still be voting for Democrats.
“I curse Tretia Maria and her life and mind and memory and liver and lungs mixed up together, and her words, thoughts, and memory; thus may she be unable to speak what things are concealed, nor be able…nor….”We Will Curse You
The Sad, Sad Culture of Progressivism The disease of progressivism is now widespread, though probably not the majority position some imagine it to be. It has infected all classes, from cynical elites who wish to placate the last shriveled remnants of their consciences to the cynical poor who wish to be made unpoor by a government willing to pick pockets on their behalf.
A Fuckbonnet For Our Time. – But by the hand of God, you and the people running your shop are the most ahistorical, smegmatically incompetent and fuckstumbling stewards of an essential informational resource since, well, since Wall Street analysts and their slobbering chain-newspaper fetch-monkeys drove mainstream journalism into a ditch. My god, you tech boys suck at just about anything but tech. It is remarkable, really, and fascinating to me that you can be so good at the hardware and so deadbrained lethal with morality and ethos.
When you dig through the tax forms of the various not-for profit operations used by Conservative Inc., you find that their stars are living lifestyles that would make the people who read them faint. Jonah Goldberg is a great example. He’s gets 200 large from the National Review Institute. He gets a similar figure from American Enterprise. Then he has a cable deal from Fox. He writes books that no one reads, but the not-for-profit system buys these books in bulk. Add it all up and he lives like royalty for doing very little. Kept Men | The Z Blog
Wabi-Sabi and Beautifully Imperfect Japanese Ceramics In order to translate and understand the term, itâs easiest to separate wabi-sabi into two words. While âwabiâ refers to the beauty found in asymmetric and unbalanced items, âsabiâ describes the beauty of aging and celebrates the impermanence of life through the passage of time. Although the philosophy can be appreciated in many aspects of life, few things capture the essence of wabi-sabi better than Japanese pottery, where the most treasured pieces are often cracked, patinated, or even incomplete.
I always figured those critters would have to learn to vote Democrat all over again.
Due to, you know……tardigrade amnesia.
pbirdNovember 1, 2018, 12:48 PM
Lack is well named.
Schill McGuffinNovember 1, 2018, 1:10 PM
Tardigrades are essentially unchanged for millions of years, and are the ultimate in self-sufficiency. It’s hard to imagine what appeal the Democrats would hold for them.
Fuckbonnet! You are suave! – said in Dennis Hopper voice.
More of him, for sure.
Art Contrarian? So, we can have modern ceramics, and prose, but nor visuals? I call bullshit.
Carry on.
Teri PittmanNovember 1, 2018, 2:13 PM
I like that artist’s work. And I’m within driving range of Maryhill. I just might play hooky from work and head out there.
VanderleunNovember 1, 2018, 3:57 PM
If you do report back. I’ve always like going to the quirky unusual museum at Maryhill.
GrizzlyNovember 1, 2018, 6:43 PM
I found the article on the Mercator projection to be remarkably ignorant. Oh, I did learn that Mercator invented it in 1569 — I didn’t realize it was that early — but the article describes the map as inaccurate, erroneous, and incorrect, none of which is true. And while it may be true that, “[…] many critics have said that the Mercator projection is a visual representation of Eurocentricity and historic colonialism, as Africa and South America appear much smaller than they actually are”, viewing the map as a symbol of Eurocentricity or colonialism is either a sign of a paranoid mind or someone just bullshitting for political points.
As any cartographer worth his salt will tell you, there are many different kinds of maps, each of which serves a different kind of purpose. If your purpose is purely to have the areas of the parts of the paper representing each country be proportional to the actual surface area of the respective country on the earth, then it is true that the Mercator projection fails miserably for that purpose. But that hardly makes the Mercator projection “wrong”. You wouldn’t declare a hammer to be wrong or a poor workman’s tool just because it is not useful for driving screws.
The article completely fails to mention the purpose for which the Mercator projection was created, which is surprising since even Wikipedia lays this out in the first paragraph of its article on the projection. Mercator’s projection is what mathematicians call a conformal mapping. Simply put, straight lines on the map correspond precisely to great circles on the more-or-less spherical earth, no matter at which angle you draw them. And great circles on the earth represent the shortest paths “as the crow flies”, between points on the earth. This is why the map was created, and why the map is still used to this day in navigation. It’s a task that the Equal Earth Projection touted by the article fails at miserably, but then it was never designed for that task.
I suppose I should not be surprised at the vapidity of the article. Technical matters, even those as mundane as maps, seem to be elusive to so many “journalists” who are assigned to the science/tech beat.
Grizzly: get some. When will they realize that maps are diverse in type and style. Alas, the paper map is becoming a thing of the past, but then reason is also.
pbirdNovember 1, 2018, 10:46 PM
Thanks for that Grizzly. I didn’t know that at all.
Dr. JayNovember 2, 2018, 4:31 AM
Rosencrantz: I don’t believe in it anyway.
Guildenstern: What?
Rosencrantz: England.
Guildenstern: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, then?
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
Green Pants Interior by Klahn
Who Am I? by Carl Sandburg
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Duty, Beauty, Liberty, Country, Honor, Family, Faith — Plus a few simple easy to follow rules for guys
Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea
They thought great thoughts about liberty
Poets wrote down words that did fit
Writers wrote books
Thinkers thought about it
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
Many’s the road I have walked upon
Many’s the hour between dusk and dawn
Many’s the time
Many’s the mile
I see it all now
Through the eyes of a child
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
And close your eyes
Leave it all for a while
Leave the world
And your worries behind
You will build on whatever is real
And wake up each day
To a new waking dream
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Change, change come over
Change come over
Talkin’ about a change
Change, change
Change come over, now
Change, change, change come over
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
The Morning Rant Hi, there. Perhaps many of you don’t know me. I’m what your scientists have called a tardigrade. Pretty creepy looking, aren’t I? You can click on me if you’d like to see a larger version. I’d be a lot more frightening if I were the size of, say, your dog, but actually, those of my kind are water creatures who only grow to just over 1 mm, on average. So we’re real tiny. But here’s the kicker: we’re almost impossible to kill. We can also withstand temperatures from just above absolute zero to well above the boiling point of water. We can cope with ridiculous amounts of pressure and radiation, and we can live for more than 10 years without food or water. We can even survive the hard vacuum of outer space. So go ahead and kill each other with wars are nuclear bombs and the like, but we’ll still be around. Even if this planet gets a courtesy call from the Sweet Meteor of Death and all living things are completely wiped out, we’ll still be here. And we’ll still be voting for Democrats.
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
I always figured those critters would have to learn to vote Democrat all over again.
Due to, you know……tardigrade amnesia.
Lack is well named.
Tardigrades are essentially unchanged for millions of years, and are the ultimate in self-sufficiency. It’s hard to imagine what appeal the Democrats would hold for them.
Fuckbonnet! You are suave! – said in Dennis Hopper voice.
More of him, for sure.
Art Contrarian? So, we can have modern ceramics, and prose, but nor visuals? I call bullshit.
Carry on.
I like that artist’s work. And I’m within driving range of Maryhill. I just might play hooky from work and head out there.
If you do report back. I’ve always like going to the quirky unusual museum at Maryhill.
I found the article on the Mercator projection to be remarkably ignorant. Oh, I did learn that Mercator invented it in 1569 — I didn’t realize it was that early — but the article describes the map as inaccurate, erroneous, and incorrect, none of which is true. And while it may be true that, “[…] many critics have said that the Mercator projection is a visual representation of Eurocentricity and historic colonialism, as Africa and South America appear much smaller than they actually are”, viewing the map as a symbol of Eurocentricity or colonialism is either a sign of a paranoid mind or someone just bullshitting for political points.
As any cartographer worth his salt will tell you, there are many different kinds of maps, each of which serves a different kind of purpose. If your purpose is purely to have the areas of the parts of the paper representing each country be proportional to the actual surface area of the respective country on the earth, then it is true that the Mercator projection fails miserably for that purpose. But that hardly makes the Mercator projection “wrong”. You wouldn’t declare a hammer to be wrong or a poor workman’s tool just because it is not useful for driving screws.
The article completely fails to mention the purpose for which the Mercator projection was created, which is surprising since even Wikipedia lays this out in the first paragraph of its article on the projection. Mercator’s projection is what mathematicians call a conformal mapping. Simply put, straight lines on the map correspond precisely to great circles on the more-or-less spherical earth, no matter at which angle you draw them. And great circles on the earth represent the shortest paths “as the crow flies”, between points on the earth. This is why the map was created, and why the map is still used to this day in navigation. It’s a task that the Equal Earth Projection touted by the article fails at miserably, but then it was never designed for that task.
I suppose I should not be surprised at the vapidity of the article. Technical matters, even those as mundane as maps, seem to be elusive to so many “journalists” who are assigned to the science/tech beat.
Grizzly: get some. When will they realize that maps are diverse in type and style. Alas, the paper map is becoming a thing of the past, but then reason is also.
Thanks for that Grizzly. I didn’t know that at all.
Rosencrantz: I don’t believe in it anyway.
Guildenstern: What?
Rosencrantz: England.
Guildenstern: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, then?
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead