Butterfly maker, Wheeler - broken - John Wheeler and Edward Lorentz died this week.

April 19th, 2008 · comment or link to (permalink)

John Wheeler was a collaborator of Einstein who brought General Relativity out of ‘relative’ obscurity, and searched for a unified field theory. He dies in the same year that a major experimental milestone this search, the Large Hadron Collider, is switched on. There is a long interview of Wheeler preserved for prosperity on the fabulous People’s Archive. In this segment, after the link, he talks about coining the term ‘Black Hole’.

Edward Lorentz was the father of Chaos Theory, the person who discovered, the ‘Butterfly Effect’, hugely complex and unpredictable behaviors that appeared when the results of very simple ‘toy’ mathematical models of weather patterns were fed back into themselves. I can’t find a single video of Lorentz, unfortunately.

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42 Hour Film of Buckminster Fuller

February 19th, 2008 · 3 comments or link to (permalink)

This has to be the most extreme example of what Smashing Telly set out to promote, the antithesis of ‘moronic 30 second dog on skateboard’ clips, this is 42 hours of gloriously intelligent video.

With people not much older than Fuller, like George Orwell, having not a single audio or video recording of themselves in existence, Buckminster Fuller fans can consider themselves lucky that such a film legacy exists.

In 1975 Buckminster Fuller recorded these sessions entitled ‘Everything I know’, in Philadelphia. This is the first film in the series, the entire set is available at the Wiki below.

1 hr 19 min 59 sec

conversationswithbuckypbwiki.com

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Drum Improvisations - Baby Dodds

February 6th, 2008 · 1 comment or link to (permalink)

Self indulgence week closes with a drum roll. This excellent solo from Baby Dodds in 1946.

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C.S. Lewis Lectures on the Novels of Charles Williams

February 6th, 2008 · comment or link to (permalink)

Lewis is on the right. He pronounces almost every vowel as a diphthong, something that is heard only among very old English aristocrats, these days.

I’m sure Lewis would be turning in his grave if he knew that he was a hero of the contemporary Christian right.

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Silent Film of Nietzsche accompanied by unnecessary music and moustache.

February 6th, 2008 · comment or link to (permalink)

nietzsche

Nietsche is dead, God is not. Sadly.

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