The Myth of North America, in One Painting
Fascinating art history — a thoughtful close reading of a painting. Great example of multimodal journalism. How Benjamin West remade a bloody battle as a founding romance. NYTimes
Why Did Dial-Up Modems Make So Much Noise?
Screeeech . . . hisss . . . squaawk. These are familiar sounds to anyone who’s ever used dial-up internet or called BBSes. It seemed especially noisy late at night. Have you ever wondered why all that noise was necessary? And did you know you could have muted your noisy modem? Source: Why Did Dial-Up Modems Make So Much Noise?
Dr Jerz I think your microphone glitched
NASA finally makes contact with Voyager 2 after longest radio silence in 30 years
I was thrilled as a middle-schooler to stay up late watching PBS coverage of science types poring over printouts of the images arriving from Voyager 1 and 2’s visits to Jupiter and Saturn in 79-81, and visits to Uranus and Neptune in the late 80s. The Star Wars and Star Trek movie franchises were in high gear, Carl Sagan became a household name, and everywhere NASA was hyping how the…
R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) Full Play (via Zoom)
All 3 acts and the epilogue to R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) are now available on YouTube. I’ve loved this quirky play for almost 30 years. I’m thrilled that I got the chance to play Alquist, a humble builder who witnesses the Robot rebellion and its surprising aftermath. (I also designed the set backdrops in Blender 3D.) A story about a robot uprising is cliche now, but this Czech play coined…
