Travel Happy on your Holidays!

I wish...

Merry Xmas / Feliz Natal 2014

Annie Jump Cannon, Astronomer

1863 - 1941

Annie Jump Cannon was the eldest of three daughters to shipbuilder and state senator Wilson Cannon, and his second wife Mary Jump. It was Annie’s mother who encouraged her interest in astronomy, teaching her the constellations. Annie went on to study physics and astronomy at Wellesley, one of the top academic schools for women in the US. Annie did not take to the cold winter climate and on one occassion was striken with scarlet fever that rendered her almost completely deaf. She graduated in 1884 with a degree in physics and returned home, but grew restless with the limited career options open to women. Her hearing loss made it difficult to socialise, although she made a trip to Europe to photograph the solar eclipse in 1892.  She returned home and in 1894 her mother died. She eventually reapproached her teachers at Wellesley and took graduate courses there in astronomy. She also learnt about spectroscopy and photography. In order to gain access to a better telescope she enrolled at Radcliffe Women’s College at Harvard, which gace her access to the Harvard College Observatory.

In 1896 she joined the Harvard College Observatory women under director Edward Pickering and by 1907 she had received an M.A. from Wellesley. Her role, like the other women there, was to reduce data and carry out astronomical observations. In particular, Pickering’s interest lay in obtaining optical spectra of thousands of stars and to index and classify them by their spectra. This analysis was begun by Nettie Farrar and contined by Williamina Fleming, who devised a classification system with 22 classes. The work was continued by Antonia Maury who invented her own system. Finally Annie Cannon took over, and applied her own scheme which resulted in the famous OBAFGKM classification which is still used today. The ordering of the letters of Fleming’s original system were rearranged by Cannon into order of decreasing surface temperature. Cannon classified the most stars in a lifetime than anyone else has ever achieved, around 350,000, published in Draper catalogues. She could classify three stars a minute just by looking at their spectral patterns, and using a magnifying glass could classify stars down to 9th magnitude, around 16 times fainter than the human eye can see. She also published catalogues of variable stars, including 300 that she had discovered herself.  At this time, women astronomers were paid 25 cents a day, much less than the secretatries at Harvard were paid.
Her career spanned more than forty years and she received many "firsts", including the first recipient of an honorary doctorate from Oxford and the first woman elected an officer of the American Astronomical Society. At Harvard she became the Curator of Astronomical Photographs after Fleming, but it wasn’t until 1938, just two years before her retirement, that she obtained a regular Harvard appointment as William C. Bond Astronomer. She also received the Henry Draper Medal which only one other female has won, she shared it with a male colleague. She was also listed as one of the 12 greatest living american women by the National League of Women Voters.

There is now the Annie Cannon Prize, awarded to women astronomers who have made outstanding contributions in astronomy.

She is an Astronomer website

An Anthology of Mythical Creatures

from Reginald D. Laniger

 

Caliban, tattooed

From The Word Made Flesh - O Verbo se fez Carne

Excerpt from Caliban’s soliloquy in “The Tempest”

"Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.”

Heroínas - Hall of Heroes from film and TV

by Scott Park

Lost in Translation, Illustrated

by Ella Frances Sanders.

Our Portuguese noun Saudade, obviously, but also the Italian verb Commuovere that we share.

MythConceptions, Debunked - thx to Information is Beautiful :)

A - the literary alphabet of Grant Snider

Dog breeds, or the Art of Lili Chin

Lili Chin

Language Tree... and Cats! or The Wonder of Stand Still Stay Silent

The Wonder of Stand Still Stay Silent

One liners

(I am a) Passenger

Interrnational Translators Day 2014

An event taking place in New Zealand, no less :)

And



But Blessed Be the Translators

Literary Love and Lust

The Portuguese Man O' War

Guacamoleeeee

Translating Novels, by Tom Gauld - spot on!

BUT

Reading Books, by Tom Gauld

It was just like this in college... (apart from wikipedia, there was no internet...) (oops, I'm old!)

(a) History of the printed word

RIP Genius

Robin Williams (1951 - 2014)

Women Directors in Hollywood

And God Said, “Let There Be Dinosaurs!”

Sam Weiner for McSweeneys

Let there be light! Let there be Heaven and Earth! Let there be mortal souls created in Mine own image, gifted with reason and free will… in a bit.

First, let there be a bunch of giant fucking monsters everywhere!

In My infinite wisdom, I know that populating Earth with millions of Godzillas will be awesome. Humongous monsters with silly little arms! Tiny monsters that hunt in packs! Monsters covered in bulletproof plates with spikes for tails and ocean monsters and flying monsters that terrorize the skies and HOLY SHIT THIS WILL BE VERY FUCKING COOL.

Using the divine power of My words, I shall bring into Creation gigantic reptiles with no brains. They won’t be able to think at all! Just fight all the time!

“Oh, no look out! There’s a T. Rex!” one dinosaur will go.

“Fuck that. I look like a dragon and spit poison out of my mouth!” says another.

I AM TALKING A HUNDRED MILLION YEARS OF WATCHING DINOSAUR FIGHTS FROM HEAVEN!

I shall be an active God. Sometimes I’ll pick up two of the dinosaurs, one in each hand, and just smash them into each other, like, “Smash! Smash! Oh, what dinosaur’s going to win?” Then I’ll drop one and grab a pterodactyl out of the sky, and he’ll dive-bomb the one in my other hand and be all like, “Zooooom! Ssssshblamm!”

And should My righteous interest in watching beast battles 24/7 wane (not likely), I’ll just flick an asteroid at Earth, blot out the sun with dust, wait 65 million years, then breath life into a bunch of Adams and Eves. Ugh, I’m already dreading it. These humans are going to be wanting stuff from Me all the time and never biting each other’s necks off with razor-sharp demon teeth for My amusement.

On the flip side, I’m sure the humans will really enjoy looking at the dinosaurs’ bones in museums.

Universe, let there be monsters! And, lo, they are good!

…

I have got to stop talking to Myself. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only absolute, indivisible, and incomparable theistic being in the whole universe. Maybe it’s time I create Myself a…Mrs. God?

No time! Gotta finish My perfect universe by creating eight other empty, worthless planets with nothing on them at all. Now back to My castle on the moon to watch fifty raptors team up to kill a stegosaurus!

Mandela Day