http://www.xefer.com/ en-us 2011-11-17T09:08:30-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://www.xefer.com/2011/11/Asgard Even though I probably know better, I can't help but view the Arctic romantically. So, while some of the hooting, "extreme sport" carrying-on in this clip from The Asgard Project is a bit annoying, the visuals look great: The... 263@http://www.xefer.com/ 2011-11-17T09:08:30-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2011/10/swell My friend Cory Ericson's debut novel, "Swell" is finally (!) available today. The publisher has put together a pretty comprehensive web site with all the details here. It has been receiving some great press, but this comment from the... 262@http://www.xefer.com/ 2011-10-25T08:40:02-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2011/10/lunar-arctic-circle Is there such a thing as a “lunar” Arctic Circle? The short answer is “yes”, though it is a much more dynamic one than the more familiar solar Arctic Circle. Unlike most moons, the orbit of our Moon is... 261@http://www.xefer.com/ 2011-10-10T13:32:07-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/2011/09/260 "A priest refused to bury the body of a usurer, one of his parishioners, who had died without making restitution. Since the dead usurer's friends were very insistent, the priest yielded to their pressure and said, 'Let us put... 260@http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/ 2011-09-12T08:17:32-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2011/05/wikipedia There was an idea floating around that continuously following the first link of any Wikipedia article will eventually lead to "Philosophy." 1 This sounded like a reasonable assertion, one that makes a certain amount of sense in retrospect: any... 259@http://www.xefer.com/ 2011-05-31T19:25:38-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2011/05/head While the title of this book focuses on the evolution of the head, it is much more than that. The first half lays the groundwork with discussions of embryonic development, descriptions of the inter-related systems that make up the... 258@http://www.xefer.com/ 2011-05-15T15:07:50-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2011/05/louisa-fletcher I came across this now-forgotten story in the New York Times achieves recently. It has some personal interest mostly because of its brief intersection with my home town: BANKER'S DAUGHTER FLEES IN OVERALLS Fisherman Says She Cut Hair BOSTON,... 257@http://www.xefer.com/ 2011-05-08T13:20:38-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2011/03/remote-islands This book is an interesting artifact - I hesitate to call it an "atlas" at all, though that is very much the form it takes. In reality it is more a manifestation of the author's own love of geography,... 256@http://www.xefer.com/ 2011-03-19T16:10:32-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2011/02/siamese This short book by the Norwegian author Stig Sæterbakken is a darkly comic novel about the interior life of an elderly couple, Edwin and Erna Mortens, trapped together by their own neuroses and physical ailments. Edwin, who has become... 255@http://www.xefer.com/ 2011-02-20T17:00:56-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2010/12/northern-supremacy Following the trail of a few footnotes in the fascinating book "The Future History of the Arctic" by Charles Emmerson, led to some interesting papers: Early twentieth century anthropologists built on the ideas of climatic determinism developed by Yale... 254@http://www.xefer.com/ 2010-12-27T12:42:05-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2010/12/vatican-city Someone recently put together an interesting infographic bringing attention to the (perhaps) unexpected relative size of Africa in comparison to a group of countries. Click for full-sized image I've always been interested in the extremes of scale, so I... 253@http://www.xefer.com/ 2010-12-23T20:21:18-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2010/11/thaler THALER'S QUESTION The flat earth and geocentric world are examples of wrong scientific beliefs that were held for long periods. Can you name your favorite example and for extra credit why it was believed to be true? For years it... 252@http://www.xefer.com/ 2010-11-23T09:27:18-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2010/10/global-warming Here are a few stories I picked up over the last few weeks that highlight changing conditions in the North. Lake Forms on Top of West Iceland Glacier A lake has formed in the top crater of the glacier... 251@http://www.xefer.com/ 2010-10-19T16:29:54-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2010/10/barnes-ice-cap A high resolution image of the Barnes Ice Cap on Baffin Island from NASA. This is an East (top) to West (botton) strip directly through the center of the ice cap. Notice the clamshell-like ripples through the surface. These... 250@http://www.xefer.com/ 2010-10-12T12:57:45-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2010/10/lorem-ipsum Google Translate now supports Latin, and I think they slipped in a joke. They knew that the first chunk of text anyone would try is some standard "lorem ipsum" text. Doing that, the first words are translated as "Hello... 249@http://www.xefer.com/ 2010-10-01T16:49:12-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2010/09/lunar-land-bridge The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team recently released pictures of the first natural land bridge ever discovered on the moon: While the scale is relatively small, it nevertheless proves the existence of an artifact that scientists had speculated on for... 248@http://www.xefer.com/ 2010-09-18T10:24:14-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2010/09/gesualdo No one explores personal obsession - both its provocations and manifestations - quite like Warner Herzog. Herzog's 1995 "documentary" on the life and art of composer Carlo Gesualdo, "Death in Five Voices" has recently been released on DVD. Herzog's... 246@http://www.xefer.com/ 2010-09-04T08:56:27-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2010/07/game-of-life SixFootTallRabbit just put together a very nice implementation of Conway's Game of Life using HTML 5's canvas element as seen here. Having put together a maze generator using HTML 4, I was certain an equally as aesthetically pleasing Game... 247@http://www.xefer.com/ 2010-07-11T22:30:36-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/2010/06/245 Now that anyone is free to print whatever they wish, they often disregard that which is best and instead write, merely for the sake of entertainment, what would best be forgotten, or, better still be erased from all books. Niccolò... 245@http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/ 2010-06-07T14:54:57-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2010/04/footnote I finally read War and Peace - a great book of course, but one minor bit of self-censorship on Tolstoy's part caught my eye. The context is just before the Battle of Krasnoi as the Russian army is about... 244@http://www.xefer.com/ 2010-04-26T20:21:13-05:00