more than 95 theses
a commonplace book by ayjay
consumer alert: No words of my own are used to make this tumblelog. Well, hardly any. Because, as it says above, this is a commonplace book, not a blog. Sometimes I post at The American Scene, and sometimes I tweet.
I am grateful to live in the Age of Pixar. I really am.
Michael Kenna, via Monoscope
![Taipei 101 includes a 728-ton sphere locked in a net of thick steel cables hung way up toward the top of the building. This secret, Piranesian moment of inner geometry effectively acts as a pendulum or counterweight – a damper – for the motions of earthquakes. As earthquake waves pass up through the structure, the ball remains all but stationary; its inertia helps to counteract the movements of the building around it, thus “dampening” the earthquake. [BLDGBlog; original photo here]](http://media.tumblr.com/1MfGe5umUap3zwhqx4f5tpLO_400.jpg)
Taipei 101 includes a 728-ton sphere locked in a net of thick steel cables hung way up toward the top of the building. This secret, Piranesian moment of inner geometry effectively acts as a pendulum or counterweight – a damper – for the motions of earthquakes. As earthquake waves pass up through the structure, the ball remains all but stationary; its inertia helps to counteract the movements of the building around it, thus “dampening” the earthquake. [BLDGBlog; original photo here]
world unlikely to end immediately
Physicists around the world are waiting with excitement as the final preparations for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) take place in advance of the start of operations this summer. Others, however, are much less enthused, as they worry about the prospects for cataclysmic forces to be released through the exotic forms of matter that will appear in the debris of the collisions that take place within the LHC’s detectors. Those worries sparked a lawsuit intended to block the LHC’s operation. Physicists are aware of the concerns, however, and CERN sponsored a safety report back in 2003. Now, with final preparations for operation under way, they’ve issued a followup safety evaluation, updated in light of the progress physics has made in the intervening time. The report’s conclusion is that, if the LHC were capable of destroying the earth, nature would have beaten us to the punch.
[here]
