Brian Swimme on what happens when human societies confront situations for which we do not have a deep narrative: The point is that we haven’t been prepared to understand what an extinction event is. We’ve had all these great teachers. We’ve had tremendously intelligent people, going back through time, but you can look, for example, through all the sutras or Plato’s dialogues, and they never talk about an extinction. As a matter of fact, I don’t think that Plato or the Buddha were even capable of imagining an extinction. First of all, at that time we weren’t aware of evolution. …
A haunting instrumental from guitarist Cam Butler. Butler is one third of a Melbourne based trio called Silver Ray. This track is from a self-titled album he released into the public domain. I’ll send this one out to Dave. mp3: Cam Butler – Lonely World
So it says here that 38 is, among other things notable because: 38! – 1 yields 523022617466601111760007224100074291199999999, which is a factorial prime. There is no answer to the equation φ(x) = 38, making 38 a nontotient. 38 is the sum of the squares of the first three primes. 37 and 38 are the first pair of consecutive positive integers not divisible by any of their digits. 38 is the largest even number which cannot be written as the sum of two odd composite numbers. Also, it’s the number of games played by each team in the English Premiership, the atomic …
Blogging live from an Open Space at the University of British Columbia. It’s a beautiful day here on Point Grey in Vancouver and most of the groups are working outside. With a garden and a view like that, who could blame them? More photos here.
That’s Hang (pronounced “hung”), a beautiful contemporary steel hand drum. I played one last summer and they are gorgeous. Today, thanks to a great post at the Soundroots blog I discovered some great recordings of the hang, including some beauties from Alan Tower. Enjoy! mp3: Alan Tower – This Idea Can Save the Planet