And now, some pictures from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich:
The statue of Major General James Wolfe, Conquerer of Canada, hero of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, has a pigeon on its head.
Would you stand in line for 45 minutes to take this picture on the Prime Meridian?
Or would you just step back a couple feet before the line queue and do something like this instead?
The Octagon Room, part of the original observatory. This was the one built more for show and the impressing of high-ranking visitors, rather than sparse utility and functionality.
The Time Ball, indicating how it is presently not 1 pm.
Well, you know how Sundays work now. Here's the past week's mathematics blog posts:
- Reading the Comics, August 10, 2015: How People Think Edition, mathematically-themed comic strips that rely more than usual (I think) on human psychology.
- At The Home Field, about the neat coincidence that happened in baseball the other day.
- Reading the Comics, August 14, 2015: Name-Dropping Edition, so called as a bunch of concepts are mentioned but not explained and yet used as a joke anyway.
- Original Problem! Expanding Galaxies and Rates of Change, reblogging a little calculus problem inspired by the expansion of galaxies.
Trivia: In 1883 the Strasbourg city fathers held a dedication ceremony for the new railroad station's lights. When the switch was turned on, rather than the 1,200 Edison bulbs lighting, there was a terrible explosion that blew out a wall. Kaiser William I was in attendance. (The German government, not unfairly, refused to accept the power plant, or pay for it, until considerable reworking was done.) Source: Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World, Jill Jonnes.
Currently Reading: Capitulation, 1945: The Story Of The Dönitz Regime, Marlis G Steinart. Translator Richard Barry.