Planetary Thinking

San Francisco car drivers fight back!

ivanmladek — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 17:48:36 +0000

After getting close to 8 parking tickets I have started fighting back after a suggestion from an ingenious blog:

http://disqus.com/forums/thedailyasker/3_parking_tickets_3_askings_let_the_games_begin/trackback/

I have 8 pending requests for review with the SFMTA citation review centre and am determined to fight each and every one of them to court.

ReOrient Theatre

ivanmladek — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:10:58 +0000

This weekend Laura and I went to see the Arabic-American Theatre Festival ReOrient, which presented three one act plays about the contemporary human condition in Afghanistan, the US, Iran and Israel. Three very piercing insights into the multitude of human suffering, nationalism, hatred and religion provided little respite. I found myself thoroughly exhausted after the performance and it took me a few days to breathe this off.

Photography of Monica Denevan

ivanmladek — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:36:40 +0000

Yesterday I went for the SF Open Studios and saw a breathtaking photography exhibit by Monica Denevan, who photographed the human form during her trips to Burma.

The sheer technical brilliance, original composition and seamless blending of the human form into the environment was truly exceptional and she provides a welcome relief from the more pastoral works presented by other photographers at the Open Studios.

On a completely different level were the dreamy and somewhat haunting photographs of Pep Ventosa, who collages hundreds of singular snapshots of one scene into phantasmagoric and psychedellic creations, almost alter egos of the original scene. Shown here is my personal favourite – The Road to Monument Valley.

My second Triathlon

ivanmladek — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:02:27 +0000

NASA Kepler satellite discovers phase variations of HAT-P-7 planet

ivanmladek — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 06:59:54 +0000

NASA has recently announced that they discovered phase variations in the light curve of the transiting planet HAT-P-7. As was reported in the Science magazine the amazingly precise light curve shows both the transit of the planet as well as its occultation, when the planet hides behind the star. The light curve is here:

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/aug/HQ_09_180_Kepler_First_light.html

The really good news is that the precision of detection of the secondary eclipse is enough to detect a transiting Solar – Earth analogue around a 12th magnitude star. So the race is on! Will Kepler find and confirm the first transiting Earth?

Mountaintop removal in West Virginia

ivanmladek — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 06:17:20 +0000

Today I stumbled upon this video documenting the wholesale destruction of entire mountains in West Virginia to get coal cheaply into our grid. Pretty sickening stuff.

Suzuki Hayabusa here we go

ivanmladek — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 04:43:21 +0000

My life so far has been dominated by crazy and sometimes bad ideas: go to India for a year and teach, go start a PhD in America or go to Burningman to mount and audio-visual tent. In retrospect a lot of these ideas seem a bit suspect to say the least. So here is another idea:

In a couple of years I will get Suzuki Hayabusa, so far the fastest production motorbike in the world, lower it, put some turbo on it and go race at Bonneville Salt Flats as I saw two weeks ago. Here are some pictures that I took:

Bonneville Speed Week 2009

ivanmladek — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 19:55:11 +0000

Telescope ver 1.0

ivanmladek — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 01:05:00 +0000

Today we went to the Franklin Institute in Philladelphia to see the Medici exhibition of rennaisance astronomy and surveying instruments. The sheer range of gold plated amazing gadgetry on display proved intoxicating. The entire exhibit was topped off by the original of Galileo’s telescope, secretly photographed below:

The astrolabes, armillary spheres and sextants were augmented with mechanical calculators, cosine and sine machines and protractors. Hmmm, what a joy to see scientific positivism materialized.

St. John’s Bible at the Walter’s art Museum

ivanmladek — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 02:01:05 +0000

Today I saw a truly astounding exhibition at the Walter’s Art Museum in Baltimore, close to where I live, which depicted a new illuminated rendition of the celebrated text of the St. John’s Bible.

As the Baltimore Sun noted

At a time when books can be written and distributed to millions by high-speed computer, there is no earthly reason why anyone would need to spend $5.5 million to create an illuminated manuscript of the Catholic Bible, featuring calligraphy applied by hand on calfskin parchment and other bookmaking methods dating back to the Middle Ages.

As a complete atheist I was pleasantly surprise how the stunning images and hand lettered large print seamelssly blend into an impressive whole that almost leaps out of the page. It has been a long time since I saw anythingnearly as impressive as this.