I was quite struck some years ago, 2014 it must have been, by an analysis of the design of the original starship Enterprise that showed how it relied heavily on the “Golden Ratio,” the artistic proportion of 1.618. And how I realized that all the later iterations of the Enterprise betrayed that aesthetic.
The Golden Number, Gary Meisner, 2 May 2014: Phi in the 23rd Century – Design of Star Trek’s USS Enterprise.
Feeling a bit under the weather today — temperature up about a degree, and sleepy — so I’ll just post a couple links without comment.
First for today, a blast from the past. From 2009.
This is a song from Les Miz, which we watched on PBS last week. Susan Boyle. Watch the clip above from the beginning, until at least about 1:15 when she starts singing, and see the judges’ reactions. It’s priceless. This is the best part of the show. And later see the backstage crew, essentially saying, or gesturing, “we told you so!”
Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin, 6 Jun 2022: Most Americans don’t accept the mass slaughter of children. Why does the GOP?
We heard a version of this last night on PBS. The song was written for this singer, Colm Wilkinson. More versions here.
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One more article about the mass shootings of late, because this takes an abstract look at the subject — it’s not about the subject, but about how we think about the subject.
Claimed for knowledge that came first; claimed by those in power to preserve their status.
This is a 2020 book by a writer I had never heard of, until reading a pre-publication review in PW of his 2022 book How the World Really Works, which was just published in May. Smil is something of a polymath, author of over 40 books on history, energy, public policy, etc., including tomes like Energy and Civilization: A History (2018) and Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made (2021). Big picture stuff, the sort of books I like, though I’ll wait to read his new one before ordering any others.
Skeptical Inquirer, Jason Rosenhouse, May/June 2022 issue: The Failures of Mathematical Anti-Evolutionism
And commenting on it,
Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution is True, 2 June 2022: The intellectual vacuity of mathematical arguments against evolution
