Rocks in Guilin Province, China

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Originally uploaded by allia80

Another in a long series of natural beauty shots in Guilin, China.

A good laugh this morning!

My sense of the lightly absurd was triggered this morning with this photo copied from File: A collection of unexpected photography.

The title especially caught my attention. I also like the angled perspective which plays off the angle of tilt of the image of an awry barn. I couldn’t help laughing. I like this kind of natural light humour!

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• Li Wei

The science of the moral sense

NY Times offers its readers much more than just news. This Sunday’s edition includes a piece by Stephen Pinker that makes the case that there is more to morality than religion and religious cant. In the last paragraph of this piece he writes:

Far from debunking morality, then, the science of the moral sense can advance it, by allowing us to see through the illusions that evolution and culture have saddled us with and to focus on goals we can share and defend. As Anton Chekhov wrote, “Man will become better when you show him what he is like.”

The mechanization of counting, or an early version of computing

On this day (1889/1/8) from Wikipedia:

Electronic tabulation of statistical data

Being urged by John Shaw Billings^[2], Herman Hollerith developed a mechanism for reading to make electrical connections to trigger a counter to record one more of each value. The key idea (due to Billings), however, was that all personal data could be coded numerically. Hollerith saw that if the numbers could then be punched in specified locations, the now familiar rows and columns, on the cards, the cards could be counted or sorted mechanically. On January 8, 1889, he was issued U.S. Patent 395,782 , claim 2 of which reads:

The herein-described method of compiling statistics, which consists in recording separate statistical items pertaining to the individual by holes or combinations of holes punched in sheets of electrically non-conducting material, and bearing a specific relation to each other and to a standard, and then counting or tallying such statistical items separately or in combination by means of mechanical counters operated by electro-magnets the circuits through which are controlled by the perforated sheets, substantially as and for the purpose set forth.

And now I use my iMac, a 20th century artifact, to write and archive this piece of historical information, which I read a few minutes ago on a 21st century information artifact, Wikipedia.

I can still remember a short assignment I had in the early winter of 1960 to assist in the installation of an IBM electromechanical punch card reading automated tabulator in an old machine shop in Brockville ON. This speed reduced tabulator was replacing a semi-mechanical tabulator, whose underlying techonology was not too far removed from the Counting, Tabulating, Recording devices invented and developed by Hollerith et al.

The taste of coffee

Image via Wikipedia

For simple circumstantial reasons I haven’t had a cupa the past three mornings. It’s not that I am following some odd New Years resolution, nor is it because I ran out of the grounds. I just didn’t bother making the stuff with my cheap french press doodad.

As I sort of savoured my cupa this morning, I mused about the taste of coffee that I experience and even miss from time to time. I have never been a great coffee drinker, but one of the taste experiences of my life was savouring an “authentic” espresso in the sun at a trattoria in Rome before getting on the train from Rome to Milan on fine spring morning in 1984. It may have been the occasion, or the taste of real espresso with a tasty pastry on the side, or even the sense of well being I had at that moment, but I have never forgotten that taste experience.

The taste of coffee for me doesn’t seem as existentially satisfying as a glass of wine or of good draft ale. Drinking wine is a fun experience for me, wherever and whenever it happens. That’s not the way I feel about drinking coffee, but I do miss the taste experience of my cupa when I don’t have it for a while.

Image via Wikipedia

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On this day in 1933 construction of the Golden Gate Bridge began

It was opened for public use in May 1937 with an official gesture from FDR, the US President of the day.

I have driven across it once travelling north on a return trip to Vancouver in 2000. And earlier in 1997, I sailed under it in a rented 44 ft. sailboat holding the helm.

It’s an indelible image of San Francisco. It’s called Golden Gate because that is the name of the 400 ft wide stretch of water separating Marin County Peninsula from San Francisco itself. No doubt this name had something to do with the 49er Gold Rushers who came to San Francisco by boat.

On this day, Jan 5, in 1895, the Capt. Dreyfus was stripped of his rank in the French Army in a public ceremony in France after being found guilty of spying for the German government on thin and false evidence.

Then in 1972 Pres Nixon announced launching of the space shuttle program.

Momentous happenings indeed!