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Month: January 2024

Greece finally pays tribute to Iannis Xenakis

January 28, 2024 by sergneri Leave a Comment

Greece finally pays tribute to Iannis Xenakis (The Guardian 01/28/2024) “Few cultural figures were as important in the second half of the century,” said Katerina Gregos, the artistic director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens (EMST). “Xenakis was not just a polymath, a visionary, a true cosmopolitan, he was a mathematician, civil … [Read more…]

Posted in: Faits Divers, History, Modern Music, Obituaries, Photography, Politics Tagged: architect, author, avant-garde music, civil engineer, Composer, draftsman, electronic musi, Iannis Xenakis, Le Corbusier, mathematician, music theorist

The Worlds I See by Dr. Fei Fei Li

January 27, 2024 by sergneri Leave a Comment

The Worlds I See by Dr. Fei Fei Li, borrowed from my local library after a two month wait in the queue. This is a “Moment of Lift” book which supports “publishing original nonfiction by visionaries working to unlock a more equal world for women and girls.” I didn’t know this until I had finished … [Read more…]

Posted in: Ethical and green living, Future of Work, IT Failures, Politics, Racism, Science, Thinking about, What I Read Tagged: AI, AI4ALL, artificial intelligence, computer vision, Dr. Fei Fei Li, Fei Fei Li, ImageNet, John Etchemendy, Olga Russakovsky, Stanford, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI

The Double Helix by James D. Watson

January 27, 2024 by sergneri Leave a Comment

While at the library earlier this week to return Dr. Fei Fei Li’s book, I stumbled across another science memoir, this one The Double Helix by James D. Watson. It is a very easy read, fast paced, on topic, and rather funny in many ways. He tells on how, by working with chemists of various … [Read more…]

Posted in: History, Science, What I Read Tagged: 1968, Dorothy Hodgkin, Francis Crick, Jack Dunitz, James D. Watson, Leslie Orgel, Linus Pauling, Maurice Wilkins, Max Delbrück, Max Perutz, Raymond Gosling, Rosalind Franklin, Salvador Luria, Sir Lawrence Bragg, Sydney Brenner, The Double Helix

“Soiled Doves” & Highway Robbery

January 23, 2024 by sergneri Leave a Comment

Elko Independent, 18 March 1871 — Nevada Items: A few days since a couple of “soiled doves” arrived in town from Carson, in search of a member of the late Legislature, claiming that he owed them $200. The individual in question circumvented them by getting on the engine of the western-bound train and running to … [Read more…]

Posted in: California Newspaper Archive, Faits Divers, History Tagged: 1871, Carson City, Elko Independant, Ely Nevada, Ely Record, Fontier News, Highway Robbery, Nevada, six-shooters, Soiled Doves, Wild West

Human ‘behavioural crisis’ at root of climate breakdown, say scientists

January 13, 2024 by sergneri Leave a Comment

Place holder for The Guardian article “Human ‘behavioural crisis’ at root of climate breakdown, say scientists”   “We’ve socially engineered ourselves the way we geoengineered the planet,” says Joseph Merz, lead author of a new paper which proposes that climate breakdown is a symptom of ecological overshoot, which in turn is caused by the deliberate … [Read more…]

Posted in: Climate Change, Environment, Ethical and green living, Faits Divers, Feminism, Finanace, Future of Work, IT Failures, Pandemic, Politics, Racism, Science, the Anthropocene, Thinking about Tagged: behavioural, carbon emissions, climate breakdown, climate change, consuming, consumption, crisis, geoengineered, large families, neuropsychology, norms, Population, renewable energy, social signalling, waste

how Vienna became the world’s most livable city

January 10, 2024 by sergneri Leave a Comment

Place marker for this Guardian article on the city owned communal buildings, January 10, 2024. how Vienna became the world’s most livable city  

Posted in: Climate Change, Environment, Ethical and green living, Finanace, Politics, the Anthropocene, Thinking about Tagged: accommodation, affordable, apartments, architecture, Austrian, buildings, communal, communal buildings, deregulation, Gemeindebauten, housing stock, Karl Marx-Hof, landlord, landlords, private rentals, renters, social housing, Theodor Körner-Hof, urban renewal, Vienna

Transatlantic slavery continued for years after 1867

January 4, 2024 by sergneri Leave a Comment

In The Guardian, an essay on recent findings of historian Hannah Durkin showing the arrival of slave ships in Cuba as late as 1872. Historians have generally assumed that the transatlantic slave trade ended in 1867, but it actually continued into the following decade, according to new research. Dr Hannah Durkin, an historian and former … [Read more…]

Posted in: History, Racism, Sea Stories, Slavery, Thinking about Tagged: 1867, 1872, Angola, barracoon, Benin, Cuba, Dr Hannah Durkin, Ouidah, slave ships, Slavery, Spain, Transatlantic slavery

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