Cynical-C Blog

From The Glenn Gould Chair Project:

The third piano player to enter into the legend of “piano players with their own chair” was Glenn Gould. It all began in 1953, around a list of requirements that, as we can retrospectively imagine, was very demanding:

* The seat had to be lower than usual and precisely adjustable;
* The backrest needed to be almost right-angled with the seat so that Gould could stay forward instead of sliding back. This is quite different from standard piano chairs, which have their backrest slightly rear leaning (average 7°).
* Finally, the chair needed to be light, strong, easily folding, and easily transportable so that it could travel around the world for concert performances and studio recordings.

Glenn Gould’s father, Bert Gould, found a partial answer to these many requirements by taking a model that was quite common: a foldable chair for card players. He artfully modified the seat height by cutting off ten centimetres from every leg. He then screwed into each leg a jack made of belt idler “eye to eye”.

(via Metafilter)

Give me a good cool grave rather than the furnace of Jehovah’s wrath. I
pray the angel of the resurrection to let me sleep. Gabriel, do not
blow! Let me alone! If, when the grave bursts, and I am not to meet
the faces that have been my sunshine in this life, let me sleep.
Rather than that this doctrine of endless punishment should be
true, I would gladly see the fabric of our civilization crumbling
fall to unmeaning chaos and to formless dust, where oblivion broods
and even memory forgets. I would rather that the blind Samson of
some imprisoned force, released by chance, should so wreck and
strand the mighty world that man in stress and strain of want and
fear should shudderingly crawl back to savage and barbaric night.
I would rather that every planet should in its orbit wheel a barren
star!

Robert Green Ingersoll – “Orthodoxy”(1884)

Melissa from Shakesville is keeping a list of sexist remarks against Hillary made by the media, blogs, etc… It’s a comprehensive list with 76 items (and counting) which I fear doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.

From Damn Interesting:

In 1940, some of the German commanders who were overseeing the push into France began to receive seemingly random reports of soldiers having been killed with broad-head arrows or hacked with a English Claymore. Effective enough weapons it would seem, but archaic even in that day and age. They likely could have guessed the bowman was an English soldier, but they couldn’t have appreciated these as the calling card of the rabid eccentric, Captain Jack Churchill.

In another attack Mad Jack and one of his enlisted men managed to sneak up on a pair of German sentries making rounds. He leapt at them, sword in hand and shouted, “haende hoch!” The Germans obeyed by dropping weapons and raising their hands. One sentry was taken back to camp while the other had Jack’s belt wrapped round his throat, and together they continued the rounds. At each guard post his prisoner would say something to lull the guards into complacency, then a mustached-mad-man with a sword would jump out and order them to drop their arms. All in all, the two Brits rounded up forty-two prisoners that night.

And from his Wiki entry comes this gem:

Eccentric until the end, Churchill would toss his briefcase out of the window of the commuter train he rode home every day. Passengers and conductors were shocked because they didn’t know he was throwing the luggage into his own backyard as the train passed by. It saved him the trouble of carrying it all the way home from the station.

Few houses are abandoned and allowed to be taken over by vegetation. However, in parts of the south including the city of Atlanta those that are, are susceptible to being engulfed by kudzu. Some make interesting natural sculptures. Here are 40 buildings and old houses in 52 images which are visible from highways and streets in Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina.

From the European Space Agency:

Between the launch of Sputnik on 4 October 1957 and 1 January 2008, approximately 4600 launches have placed some 6000 satellites into orbit, of which about 400 are travelling beyond geostationary orbit or on interplanetary trajectories.

Today, it is estimated that only 800 satellites are operational – roughly 45 percent of these are both in LEO and GEO. Space debris comprise the ever-increasing amount of inactive space hardware in orbit around the Earth as well as fragments of spacecraft that have broken up, exploded or otherwise become abandoned. About 50 percent of all trackable objects are due to in-orbit explosion events (about 200) or collision events (less than 10).

(via Delicious Ghost)

Wired compares flying vs. driving to St. Louis from Boston:

We all love to bash the airlines, it’s easy and fun. But here’s something that usually doesn’t make the headlines: When you sit down and really do the math, flying has a lot going for it. Compared with driving, it’s safer, faster, cheaper and cleaner.

Let’s say I’m heading from Boston to St. Louis to visit my grandfather. It’s a 1,038-mile trip, and I need to decide whether I’m going to fly or drive my 2002 Volkswagen Jetta. If I had the time, here are some of the things I might consider:

(via Reason)

(via Radmila)

From Dwindling in Unbelief:

Here is a list of massacres from the Bible, in ascending order by the number of victims. The list includes only those with a single killer where the number of victims is specified.

1. Elisha (with help from God) sent two bears to kill 42 children for making fun of his bald head. 2 Kings 2:22-23

2. Abimelech killed 69 of his brothers on a stone. Judges 9:5

3. Elijah (and God) burned to death 102 religious leaders in a prayer contest. 2 Kings 1:10-12

…