Заметки

What you get if you cross Brubeck’s Take Five with Bach’s Prelude in C minor (BWV 999 — that’s why Club Nine)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7iP1SsN2Sk

It might someone of you will find it useful to know that “Siri, delete all my alarms” exists

Reading “Life’s edge”. I liked Carl Zimmer’s “She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity” and could not stop myself from buying his new work. As the book’s name says, “Life’s edge” is about what life is, and why scientists have struggled to draw its boundaries.

(Side note… I bought this book after returning another one, which appeared to be not interesting. It turned out that books are returnable in Barnes and Noble, 30 days after the purchase)

So, what I want to say is… there is an interesting story with which the book begins. That story is about John Butler Burke, a physicist at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, who performed experiments in which he introduced a radium salt into the sterilized beef broth. The result was the creation of lifelike forms that he called radiobes. These radiobes started out as small spots, some less than a micrometer across and barely visible under Burke’s microscope. These spots gradually grew and changed shape over a period of a few days, developing internal structures that made them resemble bacteria. Burke came to believe that these forms were not quite alive but existed somewhere on the border of living and nonliving. They were perhaps evidence of an ancestor to life, one that predated the earliest life forms.

That was happening in far 1904. Interesting that his theory had surged in popularity so that he quickly stopped continuing his research and instead he started giving public lectures which helped to monetize his popularity.

Excited newspaper headlines were proclaiming that Burke had found the “Secret of Life,” but skepticism from scientists came quickly. Another Cavendish-trained physicist, W. A. Douglas Rudge, repeated the experiment and concluded that the radiobes were sulfate precipitates and therefore purely physical. By the time Burke published a book in 1906 summarizing his work, he was widely dismissed as a physicist with a weak knowledge of biology.

Interesting that both Burke’s radiobes and Burke himself have not earned even a Wikipedia page. The story of radiobes is hardly covered on the Internet. While Burke went wrong, he did so in an attempt to make sense of life itself, and it is quite surprising for me to see him virtually unmentioned.

A link to his book is in the comments.

Из России уходит Гарри Поттер

“Как сообщает издание TJ, крупнейшие российские продавцы электронных книг ЛитРес и MyBook c 8 апреля уберут из доступа всю серию романов Джоан Роулинг про Гарри Поттера. В обоих магазинах сказали, что убрать книги из продажи им велел правообладатель.”

Вспомнился Сплин

https://youtu.be/FlP4RVbQMpg

Look at the Tesla plant recently launched in Germany. That’s fantastic!

P.S. There is an old Soviet joke about AvtoVAZ, a Soviet automobile manufacturing company which had been producing for decades a car called Zhiguli, which was a ruggedized version of the Fiat 124, and which became notorious for poor quality, was one day bought by Mercedes. The whole plant was rebuilt, all processes were repaired, new equipment was installed, and the new assembly line was eventually launched and —

Bam! The same Zhigulis left the gate. WTF? All equipment was carefully inspected, many components were replaced, the whole assembly line was replaced with brand-new. The plant reopened and —

Bam! The same Zhigulis came out again! Half of the personnel had been let go. Then thousands of specialists came from Germany to replace them. Everything was carefully inspected again. The shiny assembly line restarted, and the first assembled machines left the gate.

WTF?! The same Zhigulis rolled off the assembly line.

A former chief engineer and a former director look at the plant from the nearby hill.

“I told you beforehand that the entire place was cursed, and what you responded to me? That my hands grew out of my ass, yeah?”

Original:

Купила компания Мерседес завод АвтоВАЗ. Перенастроили производство, запускают конвейер. . . Бац! на выходе Жигули!

Демонтируют оборудование, пригнали новое из Германии, установили, наладили, запускают. ! ! ! снова Жигули!

Увольняют нахрен весь персонал завода, привозят работников из Германии, налаживают, проверяют, запускают. СЦУКО! На выходе вновь – Жигули!

Около завода холм, на нём отдыхают гл. инженер и директор завода (оба с приставкой Экс.. Смотрят на всё это. Инженер директору:

– А я тебе говорил – место проклятое! ! ! А то всё “руки из жопы, руки из жопы”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-4yOx1CnXE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-4yOx1CnXE

Насущное:

Чтобы наверняка попасть в цель, сперва выстрели, а потом, куда бы ты ни попал, назови это целью. — Ashleigh Brilliant

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target. — Ashleigh Brilliant