To every Tel Avivian, there comes a day where one says to oneself, “I shall never be cold again*”. This is it.

* At least until October, that is.

The Mercator projection is named after... Gerard de Kremer. “Mercator” is the Latinized version of his name, not the one he was born with.

Yet another story about someone thinking they saw the face of Jesus... this time on a pizza.

Folks, why do you assume you know what Jesus (or the Virgin Mary) looked like?

Yay for light at 7pm!

There’s often an obvious explanation for things. The strange tack in vocal style apparent in the third book was actually not a tack at all, but a different ship, so to say. That audiobook was read by someone else! Back to Patrick Tull in book 4, The Mauritius Command, and all’s well.

The solar system barycenter can sometimes be outside the body of the Sun, up to about a solar diameter from its center.

Pretty interesting piece in HaAretz about Danny Shechtman, who nearly thirty years ago discovered a form of crystal that was believed to be impossible at the time. For a while he was thought to be a crank and his career was in danger; Linus Pauling at a conference reportedly harshly attacked his research with “there are no quasi-crystals, only ( Read more... )

I’m “rereading” the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian. The quotes are there because this time, I’m using the audiobook version, narrated by Patrick Tull. This rendition has received praises, and I thought it just the thing for a long plane ride (I was right). I’ve reached book three, H.M.S. Surprise, and noticed something peculiar ( Read more... )

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Can't all be fascists, I tell myself after the kid asks where Tel Hee street is.