Saturday 26 September 2009

Fibonacci at home...


The Fibonacci spiral (..see Broccoli by numbers in an earlier post..) is making a seasonal appearance in the garden..

Always a pleasure Leonardo..
The Sunflowers are nearly dropping in sequence..

..and the Sempervivum is just sitting in self satisfied algebra.

Monday 14 September 2009

Tables turn, slow but sure...

Tonight on Channel 4 News.. Professor Armand Le Roi discussed evolution with Jon Snow. The new film of Darwin's workings out prompts much bristling in some corners of understanding..

Listening to Le Roi terming the creationists as 'The forces of darkness' was a breath of minty fresh air.. There is a wind of change, sweeping across .. well, everywhere we hope. (You may have to start a different article and come back to the Darwin piece.. embedding Channel 4 video is a hit and miss affair..)

Saturday 12 September 2009

The tenants have gone..


Able to retrieve the nest from the eaves now the weather has finally rendered it obviously abandoned. It is possible to look at the structure close up and make comparisons, draw links and even source the original building suppliers...


An examination of the paper outer walls reveals colours that exactly match the fencepost below the nest. The to and fro of the builder wasps in the spring and early summer rendered the path between fence and wall a daily adventure.

The Dodecahedron

dodecahedron The Dodecahedron (DDH) is the pattern or axial arrangement used by the unit Flux, it is stackable hyperbolically and absolutely the most efficient way to pack space with the least amount of material (Properties of Energy & Matter


by James Clifford Cranwell 2/17/98 )


So far so good.. Wasps agree with physicists. Unbeknown to them, the physicists have extrapolated this property of the movement of energy and have suggested that the universe itself may depend upon a honeycomb structure. The wasp's universe already does.


C is a constant, as is this pattern. Without the simple rightness of the form, the Cern detector, 'Alice' would not function.


(A particle detector, yesterday)

Sunday 6 September 2009

District 9

Off to see this serious comment on apartheit with a nodding reference to 'Plan 9 from outer space'. I may critique later...
Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

Saturday 5 September 2009

With the naked eye..

I stretched the liquorice Leica's zoom capability to the limit and caught this outside a bar in Murcia.

This low tide moon in Whitley Bay derived from this...

....oil drum.

But these images of Titan...

and... an asteroid


are much closer to home.

Wednesday 2 September 2009

Well looky here!

I can keep my blog active from afar! All due to the innovations and connectivity allowed by Blackberry.

If my suspicions are confirmed, the technology won't be subject to Moore's Law.. We will.... Or is it just that I'm getting older and easier to impress?

test

Testing mobile blog entry. If this works, expect many adhoc entries!
Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

Tuesday 1 September 2009

Days of innocence and hope...

In my enthusiasm to loosly chart the progress of scientific thinking during the last century, I keep my eyes peeled for cheap periodicals...
A particularly rich vein is to be found in the popular press of the postwar era. The returning soldier's social circumstances forgotten, in favour of the excitement associated with scientific advance. War should be good for something!

I found this gem in a local antique fair...


I have searched in vain for examples of the small plastic figures that fell into breakfast bowls when Kellogs cereals were poured. They looked very much like these aspiring astronauts...


Innocence indeed....