Author Archives: Andrea

Still unsolved after 47 years

Die Zeit 22/2018: “Die habe ich gesehen”. “Seit fünf Jahrzehnten ist die Identität einer geheimnisvollen Toten unbekannt. Doch jetzt gibt es eine neue Spur: Die Aussage eines norwegischen Fischers.” Von Tanja Stelzer.

Die Zeit 03/2018: Die Tote aus dem Isdal. “1970 wurde in Norwegen eine Frauenleiche gefunden: Verbrannt, entstellt, mit rätselhaftem Gepäck. Bis heute ist unklar, wer sie war. Eine Verrückte? Eine Agentin? Die Polizei ermittelt jetzt wieder. Neue Spuren weisen nach Deutschland.” Von Tanja Stelzer.

Der erwähnte Podcast findet sich hier – in englischer Sprache:

BBC: Death in Ice Valley. “An unidentified body. Who was she? Why hasn’t she been missed? A BBC World Service and NRK original podcast, investigating a mystery unsolved for almost half a century.”

It’s also available via iTunes, and you can listen to the first episode (with illustrations) here (31:50min).

See also The Independent: Death in Ice Valley: The new true crime podcast that’s the BBC’s answer to Serial. “It is hoped listeners will help solve the mysterious death of a Norwegian woman in 1970 outside Bergen, in this innovative podcast take on Nordic noir.”

More links in this MetaFilter thread: “Ich komme bald”. I especially recommend this article from the BBC:

BBC News: Isdal Woman: The mystery death haunting Norway for 46 years. By Helier Cheungm BBC News, Bergen. Published on 13 May 2017.

“I think of myself not as an astronaut who paints, but as an artist who was once an astronaut.“

The New York Times: Alan Bean, 4th Person to Walk on the Moon, Dies at 86.

“Alan Bean, who became the fourth man to walk on the moon and turned to painting years later to tell the story of NASA’s Apollo missions as they began receding into history, died on Saturday at Houston Methodist Hospital. He was 86.

His death was announced by his family in a statement released by NASA.

Mr. Bean stepped onto the lunar surface preceded by Pete Conrad, the mission commander of their Apollo 12 flight, in November 1969, four months after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first lunar explorers.

The flight of Apollo 12, while thrilling in its own right, was not nearly as dramatic as the pioneering mission of Apollo 11, but it resulted in a more extensive exploration of the moon.

Mr. Bean returned to space in July 1973, when he commanded a three-man flight to the orbiting space research station Skylab, the forerunner of the International Space Station. The astronauts on that mission spent 59 days in space, a record at the time.”

ars technica: Alan Bean, the fourth human to walk on the Moon, has died. “Bean loved being an astronaut. He may have loved being an artist more.”

I’m just now watching an interview with Alan Bean in two parts from 2011. (YouTube, ca. 40min altogether)

See also MeFi obit thread.

It’s a spherical video in a mathematically triplified space with symmetry in space-time

Vihart: Peace for Triple Piano. (YouTube 3D video, 4:15min)

This has got to be one of the most amazing things done with a 3D camera I’ve ever seen. Pro tip: Watch this in fullscreen mode on your phone so you can look around by moving the entire phone, and use headphones to get the full 3D sound effect as well.

Make sure to also watch

Henry Segerman: The Making of “Peace for Triple Piano”. (YouTube video, 13:52min including a “flat” version of the above 3D video).

In this video Vi Hart and Henry Sergerman explain how the video works: how they made one grand piano and one Vi look like three, but one Henry look like only two at the same time.

Vi writes a little more about this project on her weblog: Vihart.com: Peace for Triple Piano.

(This was published back in February, but I only now realized that the RSS feed of this YouTube channel stopped working.)

“Are you sure there isn’t something else we could calculate?”

XKCD What if: Earth-Moon Fire Pole. “My son (5y) asked me today: If there were a kind of a fireman’s pole from the Moon down to the Earth, how long would it take to slide all the way from the Moon to the Earth? – Ramon Schönborn, Germany”

I loved this and am tempted to use it in one of my next physics lessons…

Link via MetaFilter.

GDPR – DSGVO

Usual content below – Weblog weiter unten

Tomorrow the General Data Protection Regulation will be implemented. I had to make some changes to this weblog because of this. You should see a notification about cookies as well as information about data storage and handling when posting comments. The old theme I’ve been using for years and years didn’t seem to be able to cope with some of the updates, so I decided to go for a whole new look. I might still tinker with it during the next few days, but then again I might not.

Please let me know if you run into any problems or see something that doesn’t work, or if you have any general comments or tips for me. Thanks!

Morgen tritt die Datenschutz-Grundverordnung in Kraft. Deshalb musste ich einige Änderungen an diesem Weblog vornehmen. Leser sollten jetzt eine Benachrichtigung über das Speichern von Cookies bekommen und außerdem beim Kommentieren über Datenspeicherung und -verarbeitung in Kenntnis gesetzt werden. Das alte Layout, das ich seit Jahren verwendet habe, kam mit einigen dieser Aktualisierungen nicht zurecht, daher habe ich kurzerhand ein ganz neues gewählt, an dem ich vielleicht in den nächsten Tagen noch ein wenig herumbasteln werde.

Über Hinweise, falls etwas nicht funktioniert oder nicht so aussieht, wie es sollte, sowie für generelle Tipps und Vorschläge zum Design oder zum Datenschutz freue ich mich. Danke!