Weight or Flight?
I saw the movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly a few weeks ago and I’m still thinking about it — a sign for me of good movie. It is about the unfortunate stroke of Jean Dominique Bauby, the editor of French Elle, which left him paralyzed and with “locked-in” syndrome at age 43 — unable to move except for his left eyelid. His speech therapist devised a way for him to communicate by blinking his eye when a certain letter was spoken as she ran down a list of most commonly used letters. Once the letter was established, she could guess what word he was trying to say and…
Teddy Roosevelt
There’s art in performing and talent in performing well, as my friend Joe Wiegand does impersonating Teddy Roosevelt. We saw him during a live performance on President’s Day, February 18, 2007 at the Lyceum in Alexandria, VA. In the spirit of Independence Day and since he’s on tour celebrating T.R.’s 150th birthday, I thought I’d post this clip. Joe does such an amazing job portraying T.R., not only in appearance but down to his mannerisms and speech inflection. He’s entertaining and humorous and makes learning history — about T.R. and his presidency — fun. I have another movie that he sent from when he was in New Orleans, but I…
Scientific “flow”
Advances in science can help art, as discussed in the last post, and art can be seen in science, as viewed in these pictures of microscopic movement of fluid studied by Melissa Green of Princeton’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. The first set of pictures show turbulence. The first image shows movement looking down a channel and the second image shows movement looking from the side of a channel. This final picture shows an example of vortex — in trying to determine where it starts and ends by following particle trajectories in a contour parameter plot. These pictures would make cool wall art in and of themselves.
