APOD: Kona Galaxy Garden (2011 Jan 18)

[midnitewings]

WOW...so much work....I do some gardening myself tho not as much as i used to...this is stunning..patience, work and vision...and a whole new way of looking at the galaxy..

[neufer]

The Garden
by Andrew Marvell

How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the palm, the oak, or bays ;
And their uncessant labors see
Crowned from some single herb or tree,
Whose short and narrow-vergèd shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid ;
While all the flowers and trees do close
To weave the garlands of repose.

Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness :
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find ;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas ;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.

Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide :
There like a bird it sits and sings,
Then whets and combs its silver wings ;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.

Such was that happy garden-state,
While man there walked without a mate :
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
But 'twas beyond a mortal's share
To wander solitary there :
Two paradises 'twere in one
To live in Paradise alone.

How well the skillful gard'ner drew
Of flowers and herbs this dial new ;
Where from above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run ;
And, as it works, th' industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers!

[FrankTKO]

Haha, Art, you're the man. I still don't know if it's real or imaginary... but I enjoyed those maps

[neufer]

The Garden
by Andrew Marvell

How well the skillful gard'ner drew
Of flowers and herbs this dial new ;
Where from above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run ;
And, as it works, th' industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers!

Ground plan of the stellar & planetary co-ordinates on
the granite plinth supporting the Albert Einstein Zodiac
(located outside the National Academy of Sciences).
Circles represent the planets, the larger black spots,
represent the stars of first magnitude. The stellar
grouping to the extreme left represents the
constellation Canis major, with the star Sirius.

Zodiacs of Our Nation’s Capital

<<There are 23 zodiacs in public government buildings in Washington, D.C. and many more on monuments and room interiors. The National Academy of Science has a wonderful statue of Albert Einstein overlooking a granite horoscope of the actual chart for the statue’s dedication ceremony on April 22, 1979. The Academy building also has twelve bronze stylized zodiacal characters on the south entrance hall door.

Astrological motifs appear in the Library of Congress on a clock, painted tondos (a round painting or relief) on the ceiling and a splendid marble floor in the great hall.

The Federal Reserve Board building has a beautiful 1937 Steuben glass ceiling lamp depicting the zodiac, including a version of Virgo as the Virgin Mary.

President Garfield’s memorial statue has both astrological signs and planets on the pedestal. The Mellon Memorial fountain’s rim is decorated with all twelve signs, and the Dirksen Senate office building’s interior features zodiacal characters.

The first astrological reference in the capital was the Car of History, sculpted in 1819 for the Statuary Hall. Images of Sagittarius, Capricorn and Aquarius appear on the front of the winged chariot.>>

[owlice]

The Federal Reserve Board building has a beautiful 1937 Steuben glass ceiling lamp depicting the zodiac

It has two -- they are identical. They were designed by Sidney Waugh, who was a master glass artist for Steuben Glass. Though Tiffany has more name recognition, Waugh is definitely of the same tier. The zodiac depicted on these lamps is a design that Waugh used on a bowl designed for Steuben in 1935; his most famous work is probably the Gazelle Bowl, one of which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. (IIRC, a Denver museum also has one of these bowls; no doubt others do, too.)

The Mellon Memorial fountain’s rim is decorated with all twelve signs

Also designed by Waugh, who shares credit for designing the memorial itself.

I would refer to the zodiac as being astronomical rather than astrological, but maybe that's just me...

The National Academy of Science building (currently undergoing some construction) is lovely, as is the landscaping around it (so long as one likes the scent of boxwoods, which I do). I visit Einstein regularly; he's a favorite for large group photos, as people climb all over him. (He doesn't seem to mind.) I find the "star map" at his feet devilishly difficult to use, but then, it shows more than my eyes can see in the sky, so it's no wonder I find it hard to use. (I think the sculptor made Einstein's feet bigger than they needed to be; I trust that bothers me more than it does the esteemed physicist.)

To get back to Waugh, he also designed the eagles on the outside of the Federal Trade Commission building (a building more impressive on the outside than on the inside).

The Library of Congress -- the Jefferson building is the one referred to in the quote; there are several buildings -- is lovely and tours of it are available. (Just thought I'd let you know...)

[neufer]

(I think the sculptor made Einstein's feet bigger than they needed to be;
I trust that bothers me more than it does the esteemed physicist.)

Issue 23 Fruits Fall 2006
Feet of Genius
Christopher Turner

­On a Monday morning in the fall of 1952, Peter Hulit left his Princeton shoe store and walked the short distance to Albert Einstein’s home at 112 Mercer Street. Einstein’s secretary, Helen Dukas, had asked Hulit to make an emergency house call because Einstein was having a problem with sore feet. “This magnificent guy came down the stairs,” Hulit recalls, “smoking his pipe, and he whipped this folded piece of paper out of his pocket and said, ‘Zis is ze problem, Mr. Hulit.’”

---

When I visited Hulit, now 83, in his apartment on the outskirts of Princeton, he showed me the crumpled page, which he had asked the physicist to sign an­d date as a souvenir of their encounter. On it was Einstein’s quick sketch illustrating his foot problem and his design for a more comfortable shoe. Einstein wrote “representation of weight?” in an almost illegible hand above two doodles of his right foot. One footprint is labeled “bad” and shows how his weight is concentrated on his big toe and the outer edge of his foot, causing him pain. Another drawing, labeled “good,” shows Einstein’s solution: a shoe that allows a generous space around the foot so that the pressure could be more evenly distributed. Underneath this blueprint for his perfect shoe, Einstein has given a back elevation view—a leg, clad in a pair of shakily drawn trousers, shown resting snugly in an inelegant bowl of footwear.

During the early 1920s, Einstein and the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilárd designed refrigerators, filing over forty-five patents for a design that never made it off the assembly line. Did Einstein’s sketch represent his foray into shoe design?

Einstein led Hulit into his den, where he sat in an ornate, high-backed winged chair and offered up his feet. He was legendary for going sockless, and this occasion was no exception (you can still buy an odor-eating spray called “Albert Einstein—No More Smelly Shoes!”). Hulit found himself on his knees before Einstein, as if washing the feet of the great genius. “When you touched his feet,” Hulit recalls, “they were tender like a child’s, that skin texture; they were soft and easy.” It didn’t take a genius to diagnose the problem, however: “What really happened is that he had gained some weight in his older age and his feet changed size.”

Einstein was an outspoken pacifist, and he’d managed to avoid Swiss military service because of the very same flat and sweaty feet that were still troubling him. In July 1939, Szilárd had visited Einstein at his summer retreat on Long Island—not to design new household appliances, but to present Einstein with a moral dilemma that would force him to reconsider his commitment to non-violence. He told Einstein that scientists in Berlin were stockpiling uranium and experimenting with nuclear chain reactions that would enable them to create “extremely powerful bombs,” and he urged the scientist to write to President Roosevelt to encourage him to enter this deadly arms race. Einstein described his subsequent letter to Roosevelt, which initiated the Manhattan Project, as the “one great mistake in my life.”

That summer, Einstein went to the Rothman’s Department Store in Southold, Long Island, to buy some footwear: “Einstein came in and asked, did we sell sundials?” remembers the current owner, Robert Rothman, who was twelve at the time. “My father took him out to the backyard and showed him sundials. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, no. Sundials,’ and pointed to his feet.”

Six years later, when Einstein heard that President Truman had ordered bombs to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—causing the deaths of over 210,000 people—he is purported to have said, “If I had known they were going to do this, I would have become a shoemaker.” When Hulit received news of the atomic explosion he was serving as a corporal in the army, on his way to Burma after a long tour of duty in Europe. His boat was immediately diverted back to America. “We thought it was a great thing,” Hulit says of the bomb. “There was no remorse … remorse comes later.” After the war, he went to work in his father’s shoe store in Princeton.

For Einstein, cobbling was a fantasy alternative job, something earthy and grounded, at the furthest extreme from his cerebral world of abstract equations. He referred to his years working for the Swiss patent office (1902–1909) as his “cobbler’s trade”—it was undemanding work that gave him the thinking space to hatch the world-shattering ideas that he produced in his “Annus Mirabilis Papers” of 1905, which contained among other things the theory of relativity. He regretted leaving this position to take a job at the University of Berlin, where he felt that the constant pressure to produce new work led to “the temptation of superficial analysis.”

[owlice]

That summer, Einstein went to the Rothman’s Department Store in Southold, Long Island, to buy some footwear: “Einstein came in and asked, did we sell sundials?” remembers the current owner, Robert Rothman, who was twelve at the time. “My father took him out to the backyard and showed him sundials. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, no. Sundials,’ and pointed to his feet.”

Einstein at the National Academy of Science is sandal-shod.

[rstevenson]

(I think the sculptor made Einstein's feet bigger than they needed to be; I trust that bothers me more than it does the esteemed physicist.)

Sculptors routinely make feet and ankles proportionately larger than life. The simple reason: it looks better. Properly scaled to life, the feet and ankles look weak. You could find hundreds of examples around the Washington area, or anywhere else where there are heroic monuments. (But not the feet of mounted riders; in those cases it's the horse's ankles and hooves that would be scaled larger.)

"Soviet realism", on the other hand, tended to make everything except the head larger. Hmmmm, maybe the artists were saying something about the masses... ?

Rob

[owlice]

Thanks, Rob. In the case of the Einstein statue, I think it doesn't look better. Perhaps they needed to be proportionately larger than life, but for this statue, they just look ... big. Too large. His feet are not supporting him; they look as though they certainly could, and a whole 'nother him, too. I mean, really, look at this!

Click to view full size image

That's not foreshortening -- that's how big his feet really look when you are standing at the site looking at them!

ETA: Nice page about this monument

[rstevenson]

Good grief -- he looks like a Hobbit!

When it comes to representational sculpture of human beans I'm somewhat of a traditionalist. Meaning such scupture reached its peak with Rodin. As you can see with this Einstein statue, innovation is not necessarily a good thing.

Rob

[Beyond]

I think his feet look alright. The statue is bigger than life anyway, so why not the feet? I can really relate to his flat feet!

[neufer]

Good grief -- he looks like a Hobbit!

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[Chris Peterson]

When it comes to representational sculpture of human beans I'm somewhat of a traditionalist. Meaning such scupture reached its peak with Rodin. As you can see with this Einstein statue, innovation is not necessarily a good thing.

Rodin, of course, was noted for the incorporation of grotesquely large hands and feet in his figurative pieces. As was Michelangelo before him. Not exactly a new idea.

[owlice]

Good grief -- he looks like a Hobbit!

Made me lol here, Rob!

Rodin, of course, was noted for the incorporation of grotesquely large hands and feet in his figurative pieces. As was Michelangelo before him. Not exactly a new idea.

Not all of Rodin's pieces, though; many (probably most) do not have grotesquely large hands/feet.

[Chris Peterson]

Not all of Rodin's pieces, though; many (probably most) do not have grotesquely large hands/feet.

Certainly. Rodin's style changed substantially over his lifetime, and even in a given period he produced various styles. Just pointing out that there was nothing particularly modern or innovative about that aspect of the Einstein sculpture (which I happen to think is very nice).

[owlice]

Right. I don't think anyone was saying that the big feet of Berks' Einstein statue was innovative; indeed, Rob's comment about big feet on statues suggests otherwise. The size of the feet makes them the focal point of the statue, which doesn't seem quite sporting to me; if he'd been a podiatrist, or the statue was of Dr. Scholl, perhaps I'd think otherwise!

[Chris Peterson]

Right. I don't think anyone was saying that the big feet of Berks' Einstein statue was innovative; indeed, Rob's comment about big feet on statues suggests otherwise. The size of the feet makes them the focal point of the statue, which doesn't seem quite sporting to me; if he'd been a podiatrist, or the statue was of Dr. Scholl, perhaps I'd think otherwise!

Well, I've heard that foot fetishists are very common. A smart artist does consider his audience.

And isn't there some popular folklore about men with big feet having big brains? I'm sure it's something like that...

[owlice]

Chris!!!

: falls over laughing :

[neufer]

And isn't there some popular folklore about men with big feet having big brains?
I'm sure it's something like that...

"The brain of Edward H. Rulloff,
philologist and "criminal of superior intelligence,"
was removed after his death in 1871; in 1972,
it was still the second largest brain on record."

Parietal operculum is upper right of shaded area. Einstein had no parietal operculum in either hemisphere.

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The lateral sulcus (Sylvian fissure) in a normal brain. In Einstein's brain, this was truncated.

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<<Einstein's brain was removed within seven hours of his death. The brain has attracted attention because of Einstein's reputation for being one of the foremost geniuses of the 20th century, and apparent regularities or irregularities in the brain have been used to support various ideas about correlations in neuroanatomy with general or mathematical intelligence. Scientific studies have suggested that regions involved in speech and language are smaller, while regions involved with numerical and spatial processing are larger. Other studies have suggested an increased number of Glial cells in Einstein's brain.

Einstein's brain was removed, weighed and preserved by Thomas Stoltz Harvey. Harvey noticed immediately that Einstein had no parietal operculum in either hemisphere. Photographs of the brain show an enlarged Sylvian fissure; clearly Einstein's brain grew in an interesting way. In 1999, further analysis by a team at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada revealed that his parietal operculum region in the inferior frontal gyrus in the frontal lobe of the brain was vacant. Also absent was part of a bordering region called the lateral sulcus (Sylvian fissure). Researchers at McMaster University speculated that the vacancy may have enabled neurons in this part of his brain to communicate better. "This unusual brain anatomy...(missing part of the Sylvian fissure)... may explain why Einstein thought the way he did," said Professor Sandra Witelson who led the research published in The Lancet. This study was based on photographs of Einstein's brain made in 1955 by Dr. Harvey, and not direct examination of the brain. Einstein himself claimed that he thought visually rather than verbally.

Scientists are currently interested in the possibility that physical differences in brain structure could determine different abilities. One part of the operculum called Broca's area plays an important role in speech production. To compensate, the inferior parietal lobe was 15 percent wider than normal. The inferior parietal region is responsible for mathematical thought, visuospatial cognition, and imagery of movement.

In 1978, Einstein's brain was rediscovered in the possession of Dr. Harvey. The brain sections had been preserved in alcohol in 2 large mason jars within a cider box for over 20 years. [Carnac the Magnificent: "These envelopes have been hermetically sealed. They've been kept in a mayonnaise jar on Funk & Wagnalls' porch since noon today."]

In the 1980s, University of California, Berkeley professor Marian C. Diamond persuaded Thomas Harvey to give her samples of Einstein's brain. She compared the ratio of glial cells in Einstein's brain with that in the preserved brains of 11 men. (Glial cells provide support and nutrition in the brain, form myelin, and participate in signal transmission.) Einstein's brain had more glial cells relative to neurons in all areas studied, but only in the left inferior parietal area was the difference statistically significant. This area is part of the association cortex, regions of the brain responsible for incorporating and synthesizing information from multiple other brain regions.

Another brain to be preserved and discussed in a similar manner was that of the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss almost a hundred years earlier. His brain was studied by Rudolf Wagner who found its weight to be 1,492 grams and the cerebral area equal to 219,588 square millimeters. Also found were highly developed convolutions, which was suggested as the explanation of his genius. The brain of Edward H. Rulloff, philologist and "criminal of superior intelligence," was removed after his death in 1871; in 1972, it was still the second largest brain on record.>>

[Beyond]

Hmm... The Quotidian Quotationist did a 'brainy' post. I wonder if there's a connection As Quark the Ferengi would say about Einstein - He's got the lobes

[neufer]

Hmm... The Quotidian Quotationist did a 'brainy' post. I wonder if there's a connection

As Quark the Ferengi would say about Einstein - He's got the lobes

I plan on bequeathing my size 15½ clodhoppers to science.

They are to be hermetically sealed
in two large mayonnaise jars
to be kept on Funk & Wagnalls' porch.

<<The earlobe is composed of tough areolar and adipose (fatty) connective tissues, lacking the firmness and elasticity of the rest of the pinna. Since the earlobe does not contain cartilage it has a large blood supply and may help to warm the ears and maintain balance. However earlobes are not generally considered to have any major biological function. The earlobe contains many nerve endings, and for some people is an erogenous zone. Earlobes average about 2 cm long, and elongate slightly with age. Whether the earlobe is free or attached is a classic example of a simple genetic dominance relationship; freely hanging earlobes are the dominant allele and attached earlobes are recessive. Therefore, a person whose genes contain one allele for free earlobes and one for attached lobes will display the freely hanging lobe trait.

Earlobes are normally smooth, but occasionally exhibit creases. Creased earlobes are associated with genetic disorders, including Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome. Earlobe creases are also associated with an increased risk of heart attack and coronary heart disease; however, since earlobes become more creased with age, and older people are more likely to experience heart disease than younger people, age may account for the findings linking heart attack to earlobe creases.>>

[owlice]

: bites her fingers :

[BMAONE23]

When it comes to representational sculpture of human beans I'm somewhat of a traditionalist. Meaning such scupture reached its peak with Rodin. As you can see with this Einstein statue, innovation is not necessarily a good thing.

Rodin, of course, was noted for the incorporation of grotesquely large hands and feet in his figurative pieces. As was Michelangelo before him. Not exactly a new idea.

2419158785_d40c9ef5cf.jpg

Click to view full size image

Rodan (ラドン, Radon?) is a fictional Japanese mutated pterosaur introduced in Rodan, a 1956 release from Toho Studios, the company responsible for the Godzilla series. Like Godzilla and Anguirus, he is designed after a type of prehistoric reptile (the Japanese name "Radon" is a contraction of "pteranodon"). Radon is usually referred to as "Rodan" in the United States, possibly to avoid confusion with the atomic element Radon; any time his name is written in English in Japan, it is written as Rodan.

[neufer]

In the preface to his second nebula catalogue (1789), Herschel states:

• "This method of viewing the heavens seems to throw them into a new kind of light. They now are seen to resemble a luxuriant garden, which contains the greatest variety of productions, in different flourishing beds; and one advantage we may at least reap from it is, that we can, as it were, extend the range of our experience to an immense duration. For, to continue the simile I have borrowed from the vegetable kingdom, is it not almost the same thing, whether we live successively to witness the germination, blooming, foliage, fecundity, fading, withering, and corruption of a plant, or whether a vast number of specimens, selected from every stage through which the plant passes in the course of its existence, be brought at once to our view?"

[bystander]

The Model of the Universe
Centauri Dreams | Jon Lomberg | 2013 Aug 02

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The creator of the Galaxy Garden (Kona, Hawaii), Jon Lomberg is an artist working in many media whose work continues to resonate in the space community and the public at large. Centauri Dreams readers will know him as the designer of the cover for the Voyager Interstellar Record, which is soon to become the first human artwork to leave the Solar System. But they’ll also remember COSMOS, the series for which Jon served as chief artist. In fact, he worked as Carl Sagan’s principal artistic collaborator for many years, including key work on the film CONTACT. Here Jon extends his ideas on nature, art and astronomy to venues much larger than the Galaxy Garden itself, a proposal that would model our staggeringly beautiful cosmos. For more on the concept, be aware that Jon discussed these ideas in his talk at the recent Starship Century conference, a video of which is available.

Astronomy daunts us with its distances. One mind-numbing number after another, equally incomprehensible. Do you have a good sense of the difference between 40 million and 140 million? Such quantities are difficult to scale and difficult to grasp.

One of the hardest concepts to convey is the scale of the Universe. Here is a proposal for a new way to address this problem.

THE MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE is a Pacific-wide system of beautiful and well-crafted markers that place extragalactic objects in an enormous scale model the size of the planet. The three dimensional model is projected onto the surface of the Earth, with the center of the Earth representing the location of the Big Bang in some higher spatial dimension. The center of the projected model is the Milky Way Galaxy Garden in Captain Cook, Hawaii. Scaled to the Galaxy Garden, a model of the Universe would be about the size of the Pacific Ocean.

Markers showing individual objects can be purchased, donated, sponsored, or built by the host business or organization. An umbrella organization and its website will provide educational materials explaining the project and providing, for example, announcements as new markers are added to the model.

The Local Group of Galaxies are scattered in the few square miles surrounding the Galaxy Garden in Honaunau. The Virgo Supercluster extends 20 miles out from the Local Group—approximately the distance between the Galaxy Garden and Kona International Airport. So all the various parks, businesses, schools, and beaches could be the site for the varied galaxies of the Virgo Supercluster.

This presents an opportunity to turn all of West Hawaii into a cosmological model of the Virgo Supercluster. The entire Big Island maps nearby superclusters. Astrotourists can spend part of their holiday exploring the extragalactic environment and getting a real sense of the relative distances to objects that are otherwise just hazily “somewhere out there.”

More distant clusters and cosmological objects are located as shown on the accompanying designs. NOTE: The mapping is preliminary only to suggest the concept. ...