Vivid blue creatures with sparkling bioluminescence… not just the province of expensive special effects in sci-fi movies. Here in earth’s own oceans you can find the lovely Corynactis viridis:
You can read more about this intriguing little organism (and see other beautiful videos of sea creatures) at the blog of Morphologic Studios – a “scientific art endeavor.”
[via @Vimeo]
A Heroic Corpse
On April 30, 1943, the body of Glyndwr Michael, disguised as Major William Martin of the Royal Marines, was dropped into the sea off Huelva on the Spanish coast. In his briefcase were letters, meticulously faked by British intelligence officers to give the impression that the Allies intended to attack Greece, and not Sicily.
So begins the remarkable story of “Operation Mincemeat” – an amazingly complicated and surprisingly successful operation by MI5. After finding a suitable”volunteer” from the among the vagrants’ corpses in a London morgue, operatives created a detailed back story and a convincing set of personal effects and letters. A submarine deposited “Major Martin” a mile from shore with his attache case. Many twists and turns followed, even after the Germans took the bait. Here’s a thorough-seeming Wikipedia page on the operation.
The operation is detailed in a new book by Ben Macintyre which will be released in the U.S. in May 2010. The Times [UK] has been publishing lengthy and fascinating excerpts [part I; part II].
This segment from a documentary film about photographer Sally Mann focuses on her use of 19th Century technology to capture haunting images of Civil War battlefields. Appropriately spooky.
But Mann’s comments about photographic technique inspire greater respect for Matthew Brady and other period practitioners… they struggled mightily to avoid the “imperfections” Mann regard as stylish postmodern flourishes.
* Welcome new readers from Instapundit and elsewhere! The New Modern will be launching in earnest soon, so please consider subscribing to our mailing list or our RSS feed (or following us on Twitter or Facebook) to see more along the lines of this post as we get rolling. Thanks. -Andrew Hazlett
[Via @GreatDismal and @Charlie_Athanas]
This video clip is from What Remains – a 2005 documentary about Sally Mann’s work and family. Her book of photographs of the same title is available from Amazon.
“Haiti” by Arcade Fire – A passionate 2007 performance at Rock En Seine in Paris.
Some Haiti earthquake relief donation links:
From Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, a performance of “Yanzi (Swallow Song)” – a Chinese folk song, Kazakh in origin… “Please do not forget your promise and change your heart.”
See more of these wonderful 18th-Century illustrations (and much more) at the intriguing blog BibliOdyssey.
Bannerman’s Castle was already an enigmatic ruin in the middle of the Hudson River, a dreamy landmark for passing train travelers and a passionate cause for preservationists.
But then in the silence of last Saturday night, a large chunk of history suddenly disappeared when the castle’s stone, brick and cement sighed under a century’s weight of weather. Overnight, two-thirds of the eastern tower was gone, as well as one-third of the adjacent southern wall, leaving a gaping hole and concern over how to stop the crumbling.
Read more: nytimes.com
[via @marklamster]
Science!
We need more science writing like this… Kurt Andersen’s appreciative essay in Vanity Fair about the Large Hadron Collider:
The believe-it-or-not superlatives are so extreme and Tom Swiftian they make you smile. The L.H.C. is not merely the world’s largest particle accelerator but the largest machine ever built. At the center of just one of the four main experimental stations installed around its circumference, and not even the biggest of the four, is a magnet that generates a magnetic field 100,000 times as strong as Earth’s. And because the super-conducting, super-colliding guts of the collider must be cooled by 120 tons of liquid helium, inside the machine it’s one degree colder than outer space, thus making the L.H.C. the coldest place in the universe.
Read more of Kurt Anderson’s exciting interpretation at Vanity Fair.
