Opium Jug from Poe's Sister's Foster Family

This Chinese opium jug was used by the Mackenzies, the Richmond family that fostered Poe's sister, Rosalie Mackenzie Poe, after her mother's death in 1811. Rosalie Poe lived with her foster mother, Mrs. Jane Scott Mackenzie, until the latter's death in 1865 and was a frequent guest at the homes of various Mackenzie relatives until her death in 1874. This piece was part of a collection of Mackenzie family items the Poe Museum purchased from Mackenize descendant, Edward Byrd Armistead, in 1998.

In Edgar Allan Poe's day, opium was a readily available painkiller, but, in spite of rumors to the contrary, Poe was not addicted to the drug and did not write under its influence. In the words of Poe's acquaintance, Thomas Dunn English, allegations of Poe's opium habit are "a baseless slander." Read More »

Galileo's Middle Finger

It is a remarkable bit of irony, the finger: venerated, kept in a shrine, subjected to the same treatment as a saintly relic. But this finger belonged to no saint. It is the long bony finger of an enemy of the church, a heretic.

As with a fine wine, it took some years for Galileo’s finger to age into something worth snapping off his skeletal hand. The finger was removed by one Anton Francesco Gori on March 12, 1737, 95 years after Galileo’s death. Passed around for a couple hundred years it finally came to rest in the Florence History of Science Museum.

In 2009 two more fingers and a tooth belonging to Galileo were discovered at an auction. The spare parts had disappeared in 1905, not seen for 100 years. But then the purchaser was able to deduce their origin, and has returned them to the Science Museum where they match a detailed description from when they were last seen. Read More »

HIC QUEM CRETICUS EDIT. DAEDALUS EST LABERINTHUS. DE QUO NULLUS VADERE. QUIVIT QUI FUIT INTUS. NI THESEUS GRATIS ADRIANE. STAMINE JUTUS

Labyrinth on the portico of Lucca Cathedral.

Name the Rosetta mission's landing site – competition entry form

ESA and its Rosetta mission partners are seeking a name for the site, currently identified as Site J, where lander Philae will touch down on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 12 November 2014.

Members of the public are invited to propose a name, and be in with a chance to follow the landing live from ESA's mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany on 12 November.

The rules are simple: you can propose any name you like, but it must not be the name of a person. You must also provide a short (up to 200 words) description as to why you have selected this name. You may enter in any European language; please indicate which language your proposal is written in.

http://sci.esa.int/rosetta-competition/

Orchanical Apparition
by Nathan Vieland

Nuclear fusion energy in a decade?
Lockheed Martin takes investors for a ride.

PALMDALE, Calif., Oct. 15, 2014 – The Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] Skunk Works® team is working on a new compact fusion reactor (CFR) that can be developed and deployed in as little as ten years. Currently, there are several patents pending that cover their approach.

While fusion itself is not new, the Skunk Works has built on more than 60 years of fusion research and investment to develop an approach that offers a significant reduction in size compared to mainstream efforts.

“Our compact fusion concept combines several alternative magnetic confinement approaches, taking the best parts of each, and offers a 90 percent size reduction over previous concepts,” said Tom McGuire, compact fusion lead for the Skunk Works’ Revolutionary Technology Programs. “The smaller size will allow us to design, build and test the CFR in less than a year.” Read More »

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau
ATSB Transport Safety Report
MH370 – Flight Path Analysis Update
AE-2014-054
8 October 2014

Quote: '"Extrapolating paths and limiting the southern boundary by the MRC intersection with the 7th arc provides an area between approximately 33.5°S and 38.3°S at 0019 (7th arc)." (i.e.: covering both, http://archimedes.soup.io/post/467527777/ and http://archimedes.soup.io/post/472966517/)

The Search for MH370
by Chris Ashton, Alan Shuster Bruce, Gary Colledge, and Mark Dickinson (all from Inmarsat)

The Journal of Navigation, ©The Royal Institute of Navigation,
22 pages. Published online: 08 Oktober 2014, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S037346331400068X

Abstract
At 17:22 UTC on 7th March 2014 Malaysian Airlinesflight MH370 carrying 239 passengers and crew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing lost contact with Air Traffic Control and was subsequently reported missing. Over the following days an extensive air and sea search was made around the last reported location of the aircraft in the Gulf of Thailand without success. Subsequent analysis of signals transmitted by the aircraft’s satellite communications terminal to Inmarsat’s 3F1 IndianOceanRegion satellite indicated that the aircraft continued tofly for several hours after loss of contact, resulting in the search moving to the southern Indian Ocean. This paper presents an analysis of the satellite signals that resulted in the change of search area. Read More »

"The Riot Club"
(UK, September 19, 2014, directed by Lone Scherfig, starring Sam Claflin, Max Irons, & al.)

[...] Der Verfasser gesteht, selber sogar Mitglied einer Dining Society gewesen zu sein, des Claret Club, der sich aus Studenten seines Colleges, Trinity, rekrutierte. Leider handelte es sich dabei um eine Veranstaltung von erschreckend harmlosem, ja fast schon biederem Charakter. [...] Die Abende endeten an der Mauer des Nachbarcolleges Balliol mit einem in die Nacht gehauchten Lied:

I'm a bastard, I'm a bastard / I'm a bastard, yes I am / But I rather be a bastard / Than a bloody Balliol man!

Leser und Zuschauer werden es nicht wahrhaben wollen: Kauzige Rituale dieser Art sind weder der Erbhof eines verschwindend geringen Anteils von Sprösslingen aus der Oberschicht noch der Zeitvertreib rechtskonservativer Burschenschaftler deutscher Prägung. Sie verführen normale Kinder aus der Mittelschicht, aus denen die Universität mehrheitlich besteht, sich die Kostüme des Ancien Régime überzustreifen, bevor sie dieses infrage stellen. Read More »

Creation of life in the primordial soup
by Zakariya al-Qazwini, 1203-1283 CE.

(Adjâ’ib al-makhlûqât wa gharâ’ib al mawdjûdât / Marvels of Creatures and the Strange Things Existing. Bibliothèque de Bordeaux, Ms 1130)

Location of the Paradise (in modern Kurdistan).
Augustin Calmet: Dictionnaire historique de la bible. Paris 1722.

Le diverse et artificiose machine del capitano Agostino Ramelli, Paris 1588.

(Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 1121460)

Aristoteles und Phyllis by Bartholomeus Spranger and Jan I. Sadeler (engraver), late 16th century CE. „Nil studium, nil sacra valent Conanima Vatum / Consilium Sapiens ni pietate regat.“

(Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, graph-a1-2381a)

Cord Meyer Jr., president of United World Federalists, Inc., visiting physicist Albert Einstein at his home in Princeton, NJ, to discuss Russia's attitude toward world government.
(Photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1948.)

Angels turning the world on its axis,
from Matfres Eymengau de Beziers: Breviari d’amor, c.1300 CE.
(Bibliothèque nationale de France, ark:/12148/btv1b6000961g)

German paper airplane enthusiast and tinkerer Dieter Michael Krone demonstrates the prototype for his latest invention, a bazooka-looking gun (made mostly from 3D printed parts) that rapidly folds and shoots small paper airplanes.

Hawk Takes Down a Drone

[...] His position collapsed quickly as his counterplay dried up and he lost two pawns. He soon resigned.
____________
This is the final chess column to run in The New York Times.

Sketchify
This is a plaything written in Node to make pencil-sketches out of images.

BBC: Why South Koreans are fleeing the country's biggest social network (10 October 2014)

"[...] The exodus has proved a boon for another chat app - Telegram Messenger - an encrypted messaging service based in Germany, with no servers in South Korea. The company behind the app, founded by the same people that created Vkontakte, Russia's largest social network, says 1.5 million new South Korean users have signed up for the service in the last seven days.

Unlike Kakao Talk, Telegram Messenger offers a "secret chat" option, using end-to-end encryption. The technology means the company is unable to decrypt any of the messages itself, so couldn't hand over information about its users, even if requested.

One South Korean newspaper reports that Kakao defectors have developed a wry greeting when finding each other on Telegram, saying simply: "Welcome to exile." Read More »