climate change policy, science, and activism; photography; cartography and mapmaking
At Massey College today a magnificent new sculpture was unveiled in the quad: a bronze cast of birch branches made by Camilla Geary-Martin.
The artwork is dedicated in part to Ursula Franklin — a remarkable Senior Fellow of the College — as well as the late Boris Stoicheff.
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has been returning some exciting data, after a long flight through the solar system:
This documentary provides illuminating background on the mission: The Year of Pluto.
It is much to be hoped that the New Horizons craft will be able to observe other Kuiper belt objects.
Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, Colin Powell, George Shultz, and others make the case for global nuclear disarmament: Nuclear Tipping Point.
The first industrial revolution, centered in Flanders, happened almost entirely because of the arrival from the Arab world of a new, horizontal loom, equipped with foot pedals to lift the warps. This innovation left the weaver’s hands free to throw the shuttle back and forth, which made weaving much faster and more profitable and, above all, made possible the production of long pieces of cloth. Because of their centuries of experience in working wool, the Flemish were the best weavers in thirteenth-century Europe. Flemish cloth was sold everywhere in the known world, and its manufacturers went from the East Indies to the Baltic to obtain their dyes, and to the mines of the Middle East for the alum which was used to fix the dye so as to make their colors fast.
Burke, James. The Pinball Effect: How Renaissance Water Gardens Made the Carburetor Possible. 1996. p.80 (paperback)