Ein Leitbild meiner Jugend, jetzt vom Kölner Regierungspräsidenten geehrt (siehe Telepolis). Toll. Und ein Trakt des Kölner Regierungspräsidiums soll nach den Edelweißpiraten benannt werden. Ahaha.

Die Seite über Meister Eckhart und seine Zeit. Eine beachtliche assoziative Geschichtssammlung.Mit E-Texten.

snowcrystals.com — “Your online guide to snowflakes, snow crystals, and other ice phenomena”.

Während meiner Schulzeit haben mich die Schriften von Konrad Lorenz sehr beeinflusst. Anfangs vor allem die populären, später auch die abstrakteren. Jetzt wäre er 100 Jahre alt geworden. Nun ja. Nationalsozialistische Verstrickungen nicht vergessen.

Zum Geburtstag in der Frankfurter Rundschau.

p. s. Dazu auch Caroline Fetscher im Tagesspiegel. “Wer nicht mitdenkt in dieser großen Gesellschaft der Welt, verpasst womöglich eine entscheidende Phase ihrer ‘frühen Prägung’.” Das ist Blödsinn.

Sea Dragons by Richard Ellis (University Press of Kansas, 2003).

In the days when dinosaurs dominated the earth, their marine counterparts—every bit as big and ferocious—reigned supreme in prehistoric seas. In this entrancing book, Richard Ellis, one of the world’s foremost writers on the denizens of the deep, takes us back to the Mesozoic era to resurrect the fascinating lives of these giant seagoing reptiles.

Working from the fossil record, Ellis explores the natural history of these fierce predators, speculates on their habits, and tells how they eventually became extinct—or did they?
(read more)

The Principles of Life by Tibor Ganti (Oxford University Press, 2003 &mdash first published 1971 in Budapest).

Professor Gánti offers a radically novel approach. Based on his theory of fluid (chemical) automata, he shows that all living systems are organized as program controlled, self-reproducing fluid automata and proposes the simplest such construction-the chemoton-as the minimum model of life. In this volume, the logical train of thought is presented in a clear and easily understandable manner for the beginning student and professional scientist alike. The first part provides an overview of the general idea; the second applies the chemoton model to the biogenesis of life; the third part develops the chemoton model into a general theory of the living state and the living world for the natural sciences.
(see Oxford University Press)

in the New Scientist. (mostly boring)

“Die Einsiedlerspinne Loxosceles reclusa für ist Menschen gefährlich und bildet große Populationen in städtischen Habitaten in ganz Zentralnordamerika — mehr als 2 000 dieser Spinnen wurden in einem einzigen Haus in Kansas beobachtet. Was fressen diese Spinnen, um solche Zahlen zu erreichen und zu erhalten?”

Die Antwort steht in Nature.

Und hier ist das Blog dagegen. Verlinken! Das ist ein Befehl, denn wir wollen wieder kebo 11!

Hier lang. (via kebo11)

Orwell on writing by by Jeffrey Meyers in The NewCriterion:

Fond of making political prophecies and honestly willing to admit his mistakes, Orwell urged readers to keep a diary—as Winston Smith does in the novel—not only to recover and preserve the past, but also to maintain an accurate perspective on the truth: “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle. One thing that helps towards it is to keep a diary, or, at any rate, to keep some kind of record of one’s opinions about important events. Otherwise, when some particularly absurd belief is exploded by events, one may simply forget that one ever held it.”

Eugene Fields Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac als E-Text im Electronic Text Center der University of Virginia Library. (via inetbib)

Ein ganzes Buch über die Relativitätstheorie im Volltext. (via Der Schockwellenreiter).

But who is the author? The domain mathpages.com at least belongs to Kevin Brown. From th epreface:

This book examines the evolution of the principle of relativity in its classical, special, and general incarnations, both from a technical and a historical perspective, with the aim of showing how it has repeatedly inspired advances in our understanding of the physical world.

Remember Hooks law? Robert Hook also was a hero of self-experiment:

Under the volume of work, Hooke began having headaches, dizzy spells and insomnia, all of which he treated in the same spirit as his other scientific work, experimenting with self-medication and diligently recording his results. Page after page of his diary records copious doses of sal ammoniac, purges, opiates. Sometimes the effects were great - clarity, freshness, revival, sharp thinking. Often the side effects were terrible — sickness, double vision, near-delusions. These too he treated as symptoms, upping the drugs continually.

From a review of a new biography in The Guardian ( The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London by Lisa Jardine, HarperCollins 2003) (via SciTech Daily)