New article on my History of Computing site: Elisha Kally’s water flow calculator, a sophisticated network calculator based on the Hazen-Williams formula. This ingenious slide rule can calculate flows and hydraulic head losses in complicated networks comprising up to six different pipes, all at once. Check it out!
I saw the… whatever… below in Hackney, London, and can’t resist sharing it with you. Is this a weird whatever-it-is or what? 🙂
The intense pressure of natural selection has given us many magnificent examples of optimized design in nature. Here is a lovely case: the dentition of Heterodontus Portusjacksoni, the Port Jackson shark. I saw these jaws at a nature museum and just had to snap a photo… This shark has unusual teeth – none of the … Read more
Children in Oregon can enjoy giant redwood forests… but here in the holy land a semi-arid climate and millennia of human abuse force us to make do with less. Still, the humble grasses, weeds, wildflowers and thorny shrubs that we do have make an exuberant comeback every spring; and they remind me of an unforgettable … Read more
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (1906-1992) was one of the legendary pioneers of computing in the 20th century; among other achievements she had written the first compiler. Here is a well-known photo of her with some colleagues at the console of a Univac-1 computer back in 1957. And whenever I see this photo, I am reminded … Read more
Most food products have nutrition information labels that tell you in minute detail what they contain, from calorie count to milligrams of Sodium. All very edifying, to be sure, but boooring! So the other day I saw this box of cookies, and below the logo of the English Cake bakery it says – in Hebrew … Read more
I’ve already addressed pedestrian crossing signals in Germany, but here’s a truly surprising one, which I sighted in Munich. So what does it mean? One can imagine what the intended usage is, but if one were to believe the images literally, this signal tells you when it’s OK to do acrobatic stunts on your bike … Read more
Everyone knows that sport fans can get violent in their excitement… there is even a Wikipedia article listing violent spectator incidents in sports. This being an aspect of human nature, it is not surprising that the custom of berating and clobbering the opposite team’s supporters goes back to earlier times. Still, I was quite amused … Read more
The Herman Miller Aeron chair is a well known design icon with its unconventional appearance, its ventilated mesh fabric and its level of comfort (only rivalled, naturally, by its price tag). And of course, there are countless clones that emulate its mesh and looks at a lower cost. How far this copycat trend has gone … Read more
Egypt today has its problems, but a few millennia ago the land along the Nile was a center of power, technology and culture. We all know of its monumental achievements in architecture; what is less widely known is that the Egyptians had a very advanced medical knowledge. So what do you do, if a worker … Read more
