Back in 2004 the Cassini probe discovered a tiny, previously unnoticed moon that was designated Saturn XXXII before being given the name Methone.
Such are the orbital mechanics of the Saturn system and Cassini's orbital trajectory that it's taken nearly eight years for the probe to get close enough to take a high resolution image of Methone. It's been worth the wait.
What an odd looking moon.
Nico Muhly on working with the New York City Ballet's orchestra:
The City Ballet orchestra is funny to me: they're kind of the Most Entrenched orchestra in terms of unionization in New York, I'd say. They are also a sort of national treasure: New York is, and always should be, I think, a place that does dance with live orchestral music because it is fabulous. There is not a thing better, in fact, than going to see that Nutcracker. I remember a few years ago I supported, as a member of the musicians' union, their contract renegotiation, which argued, I had thought, that they should be allowed to miss a rehearsal for something like Nutcracker, which they've played ninety million times before, as long as they hired a substitute for themselves, and came back and played the show. This is, fundamentally fair; while the dancers need to relearn the piece afresh each year on their bodies, the music for that piece hasn't changed around in a century or two. I'm not sure if this approach is quite right for a new piece, though; the practical reality of the situation is that every time I looked into the pit it was Totally Different Human Beings playing major roles. The concertmaster and many of the strings remained the same, and we sort of built up a rapport, and those who stayed around got really comfortable with the piece, which is the fun (and perhaps the point?) of rehearsal. Between the the first rehearsal and the first show, we had like three different English horn players? The principal second violin – a big part in this piece! – shuffled around, the harpist (also important) was different. It's a strange universe, orchestral musicians; I'm not sure I'd like to play a show for which I hadn't been at a rehearsal. I do like the idea, in a weird, abstract sense, of writing music in which any one participant can hand over her part to another person, like a relay race…although that isn't quite what I had intended in this piece! City Ballet employed a very good trick which is that they have one arts administrator who is so lovely and friendly one feels terrible cussing him out about Nancy Drew and the Case of That's Totally Not The Same English Horn, and then somebody else who's actually more in charge who is a Person Invisible, as in, secret doorways and smoke, and hallways of mirrors, with whom one never quite gets a proper audience. If I write another ballet for them, which I really hope I will, I'll make the orchestral parts deliberately modular, or maybe even change them each day, so there's a sense of always being somebody else's substitute. It's like that dream where you turn up expected to give a talk about something you don't fully grasp; sometime there arises a gorgeous spontaneity, perhaps even more gorgeous than what would have resulted through months of preparation.
[Via Snarkmarket]
Dan Hill on the joys of Helsinki's Restaurant Day:
Ravintolapäivä is "Restaurant Day" [...] After starting in Helsinki a year ago, Ravintolapäivä's role is to suggest "a food carnival when anyone can open a restaurant for a day".
Which it is, although this doesn't quite describe the genesis of the event, which came out of frustration with the effort required to set up a restaurant in Helsinki, of the kind that is open for more than a single day. [...]
Today, though, the sun was shining, the streets were full, and that frustration was long forgotten, given the explosion of invention on offer. [...]
For instance, our first stop this morning was for breakfast served from a little wicker basket lowered from a first floor window into the group of waiting customers below. Euros are stuffed in the basket, and up it goes. You shout up your order. Breakfast comes back.
The string had a menu attached, featuring egg and bacon, or eggs benedict, in home-baked English muffins (both hot bacon sandwiches and English muffins are extremely difficult to come by in Helsinki.) This is, again, not exactly within the law, but if this is considered a problem, then I believe the saying is the law is an ass. [...]
The Norwegian night sky depicted in Tommy Eliassen's Side by side is just spectacular.
[Via Bad Astronomy]
An iPod docking station mimicking a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey. In Lego.
[Via Daring Fireball]
Teachers Dancing Behind Students. Every bit as dorky-yet-adorable as it sounds.
Scott Hanselman on 15 old people icons that don't make sense anymore.
A couple of his selections are spurious, I think. For example, it's true that referring to a group of options of which you can only activate one as 'radio buttons' may be archaic, but how many end users even use that term for those controls? I think they mostly know what control behaviour they signify, which is far more important for all of us, young and old alike.
Similarly with some of the others: it may be that an icon of a screen with 'rabbit ears' is referring to a dying bit of technology, but the form still distinguishes it nicely from an icon for a computer display. I don't think that replacing the TV set icon with, say, the letters 'TV' would be much of a step forward.
I'm sure that 30 years from now several of the icons listed will have been transformed or shifted in their meaning, but I wouldn't like to bet which ones. I think a number of them will stick around until the underlying concepts have been rendered obsolete. Perhaps one day we won't ever cut/copy/paste so we won't need all those clipboard-and-scissors icon sets. Not any time soon, though.
[Via delicious.com/Qwghlm]
Andy Baio has been looking into how difficult it is to post a cover song on YouTube and stay within the law:
We all break laws. Every day, millions of people jaywalk, download music, and drive above the speed limit. Some laws are obscure, others are inconvenient, and others are just fun to break.
There are millions of cover songs on YouTube, with around 12,000 new covers uploaded in the last 24 hours. Nearly 40,000 people covered "Rolling in the Deep," 11,000 took on "Pumped Up Kicks," 6,000 were inspired by "Somebody That I Used to Know."
Until recently, all but a sliver were illegal, considered infringement under current copyright law. Nearly all were non-commercial, created out of love by fans of the source material, with no negative impact on the market value of the original.
This is creativity criminalized, quite possibly the most popular creative act that's against the law. [...]
Baio reports that YouTube negotiated a blanket license with the National Music Publishers Association last year that potentially covers the rights held by thousands of publishers. Unfortunately, as the NMPA doesn't publish a list of which publishers and songs are covered the existence of the agreement it is of no real help to an amateur musician who would like to protect themselves by ensuring that they stick to tracks covered by the agreement.1
Basically, a user has to decide if they're willing to upload their performance and risk losing their YouTube account if they're branded a copyright infringer once too often. Which is ridiculous, but (IMHO) not just the fault of the music industry. Presumably YouTube know which publishers and songs are covered by the NMPA agreement: once their software identifies an upload as a cover version, presumably it could flag up for the user that their track doesn't appear to be covered by the NMPA license and give them a chance to take it down immediately or confirm that they hold some form of license. But that would put YouTube in a position where they might share liability with the user if it turned out they didn't hold a license, so it's much better not to ask too closely about the tracks being uploaded, keep everyone in the dark and leave it all on the user if the publishers take exception to what's been uploaded.
Ridiculous.
Junaid Chundrigar's animation Disassembled goes beyond the cast of a certain current blockbuster, featuring all sorts of non-Avengers. I loved the … um … cartoonish nature of Thor's encounter with Loki1 and the sight of Venom trying to enjoy an ice cream. Good work, strongly recommended.
[Via MetaFilter]
The flight of a Space Shuttle as seen from a Solid Rocket Booster. I've posted links to this sort of film before, but in this film instead of providing a musical accompaniment to the SRB's descent, Skywalker Sound1 enhanced the sound from the SRB-mounted cameras; stark, bright images and the sound of a rocket tumbling from the upper atmosphere combine to mesmerising effect.2
[Via More Words, Deeper Hole]
Welcome to Life. The ultimate in End User License Agreements.
[Via jwz]
Walt Disney's Taxi Driver. Watch it soon, before it catches the attention of the lawyers whose clients either don't know or don't care about Fair Use.
[Via Waxy.org/links]
In the midst of a discussion on the merits of Marvel's The Avengers Assemble, fridgepunk came up with the greatest idea I've read in a long time:1
The important thing to take away from the Avengers is that the studios have an example to point to that shows that having five movie prologues that lead up to the eventual Big group movie totally works as an approach.
Roll on the Machine Man, Captain Marvel, Elsa Bloodstone: Monster Hunter, Boom Boom and Captain ☠☠☠☠ movies that lead into the inevitable Nextwave movie.
The Doctor Who theme as played on eight floppy disk drives.
[Via The Great Escapism]
Technology Review publisher Jason Pontin learned the hard way that Apps weren't the future of publishing after all:
[...] Tablets and smart phones seemed to promise a return to simpler days. Digital replicas of print newspapers and magazines (which could be read inside Web browsers or proprietary software like Adobe PDF readers) had never been popular with readers; but publishers reasoned that replicas were unpleasant to read on desktop computers and laptops.
The forms of tablets and smart phones were a little like a magazine or newspaper. Couldn't publishers delight readers by delivering something similar to existing digital replicas, suitably enhanced with interactive features, which would run in applications on tablets and smart phones? [...]
Here's hoping that the magazine's solution – transitioning to an enhanced web site built to accommodate all sorts of screen sizes, complete with an RSS feed to let users keep track of all the content they publish – ends up netting them enough income to keep publishing.
[Via Scripting News]
Jon Snow sets Rupert Murdoch straight about 'social decay'.
Mark Lukach profiles Roman Mars, creator of the truly excellent 99% Invisible podcast.
Roman seems to particularly delight in explanations of why you haven't heard of the object in the first place. Take, for example, an episode Roman collaborated on with writer Jon Mooallem. The two examined two children's toys, the teddy bear, and the billy possum; yes, the billy possum. Thanks to Teddy Roosevelt, the origin of the teddy bear is of course legendary. What you may not have known is the origin of the other toy, the billy possum, which is linked to Roosevelt's successor, William Taft. After a political dinner in the South, at which he ate homecooked possum, Taft supporters introduced the next president with his own children's toy, named the Billy Possum. Since he was going to follow in Roosevelt's footsteps as president, he needed a stuffed animal to accompany him. Which is ridiculous. And now the teddy bear lives on as a cherished children's toy, while the billy possum has faded into obscurity. Why? It's with questions like these that 99% Invisible's at its most fun. Roman and Jon conclude that the billy possum doll faded into obscurity because of the toy's lackluster origin story. Because honestly, who wants to play with a toy inspired by a president devouring a cooked possum?
Lukach notes that the radio version of the show is required to stick to a four and a half minute running time. I knew that the podcast was derived from a public radio show, but I hadn't fully appreciated that the podcast always acted as an extended edition of the radio version. I can't say that I've ever listened to the podcast and felt that it outstayed its' welcome, so I'm all for the extra little flourishes that make the podcast a different entity from the parent show. It's short enough to be easy to find room for, and long enough to intrigue the listener.
Seeing a new episode of 99% Invisible pop up on my iPod Touch is always good news: I know that I'm guaranteed to learn something new in the course of my 12 minute walk from the Metro station to the office.