On chauvinism

British art experts bemoan the "loss" of famous paintings to foreign purchasers. It seems that the government came up with £100,000,000 to purchase two Titian paintings, which leaves a bit strapped when they try to compete with private purchasers for other works.

It's a strange complaint, coming out of the country that still holds the Elgin Marbles, removed from Athens 200 years ago, and still commonly referred to by the name of the Brit who removed them. Do you believe in world heritage or don't you?

Via Global Museum

Friday photo

Bison in Midway Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park. March 2005

I like this shot for the loneliness and bleakness of the scene. It looks harsh, although you can easily tell that the snow isn't at all deep - as is typical of the geyser basins, where the same source that heats the water keeps the ground too warm to sustain deep snow for very long.

Perspective

Anne just sent me this:

Mascots should be cuddly, shouldn't they?

Purdue University is planning revisions for the Purdue Pete mascot, that sledehammer toting plastic head that stalks the sidelines at Boilermaker sporting events. According to athletic director Morgan Burke, this face scares little children*, so revision is in order. Besides, Burke says, "It's been 25 to 30 years since he got a makeover," and you know what that means: 80's hair! Egad.

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing Pete disappear, as I'm not fond of mascots anyway, except maybe the meanest Duck in the West. But if Pete is indeed getting a new look, maybe we'll be seeing something like this:

(Although that hardly constitutes an update, does it?)



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* Not that mascots have to be scary in order to frighten children. ESPN's Andy Katz received the following email over this issue: "In high school I worked as Bugs Bunny for the Warner Brothers Studio Store. Do you know how many children broke into tears when their parents brought them anywhere close to me? "

God for a day

Via Bad Astronomy, here's an awesome time-waster: model your own solar system!

Bad Astronomy's headline uses the phrase "destroyer of worlds" and that is the most frequent outcome when you first start tweaking parameters. Too much velocity and planetoids get flung into deep space; or collisions will wipe out one or more of your planetary bodies.* Fledgling gods need practice, too. Here are a couple of the more interesting systems I've generated so far.

In this one, the tiny blue body began as a moon of the heavy Planet Pink, but with a highly eccentric orbit. After a few circuits, its apogee fell at right angles to Pink's orbit, taking the Blue Moon so close to the sun that it was captured in the eccentric orbit that runs from the one o'clock position to seven o'clock. Not long after, the Pink skewed Blue's orbit again, this time into a more circular path. Since then, it's been pretty stable.


In this one, Blue's orbit around Pink also has high eccentricity, but is also smaller, so it doesn't get away. But the path is interesting: where the long axis of Blue's orbit lines up with Pink's orbital path, a curlicue path results, but at other positions it the loop disappears and Blue's path resembles a distorted sine curve.


Cool stuff, even better than Spirograph.


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* Unfortunately, collisions aren't modeled - the smaller body just disappears, rather than adding a fraction of its mass to the larger body and then bouncing off in some other direction.