Month: December 2016

An unusual type of ballerina is coming to New York City’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Hippo Ballerina, a sculpture by Danish artist Bjørn Okholm Skaarup, is going to be placed across the street from the famous performance space this winter thanks to the city’s Art in the Parks program.

Adorned in a copper tutu and weighing over 2.5 tons, the mammalian sculpture is more than 15 feet tall, and will stand in Dante Park at the corner of Broadway and 64th Avenue.

The bronze hippo has a somewhat menacing air about her, perhaps to better fit in with New York’s other animal sculptures, like the famous Wall Street bull or the lions outside the New York Public Library. The piece’s design inspiration was a mash up of the Degas sculpture Little Dancer Aged Fourteen and the dancing hippopotami of Disney’s Fantasia.

She’ll be on view until the end of July 2017.

Ada Lovelace is widely considered to be the first computer programmer. She worked with Charles Babbage on his proto-computer designs, and translated an academic paper about Babbage’s Analytical Engine from French to English. In the process, she discovered errors in Babbage’s design, fixed them, and added a pile of new commentary in a series of notes that were longer than the original paper itself.

Among Lovelace’s contributions was “Note G.” In it, she wrote an algorithm intended to be implemented by the machine. This algorithm is what many consider to be the first computer program. She wrote:

We will terminate these Notes by following up in detail the steps through which the engine could compute the Numbers of Bernoulli, this being (in the form in which we shall deduce it) a rather complicated example of its powers. …

(And then it’s formulae all the way down.)

If you’ve ever been curious about what Lovelace did, or why she was such a strong mathematician, let this six-minute mini-biography be your guide:

If you’re curious about her translation of that paper, it’s online.

The future is looking bright for dissatisfied grocery shoppers. Earlier in December, Amazon unveiled their concept for a store with no checkout lines. Now inhabitat reports that an augmented reality supermarket designed by an MIT professor has opened in Milan.

The new high-tech location of Coop Italia, Italy’s largest supermarket chain, is designed to provide shoppers with up-to-date information about their purchases as they make them. When customers walk up to take a product from a table or shelf, they’ll activate motion sensors nearby. A screen above will then display facts about the item, including allergens, nutritional information, and tips for disposal.

The augmented reality grocery store concept is the brainchild of Carlo Ratti, a designer and director of the MIT Senseable City Lab. He debuted the prototype with his team from Carlo Ratti Associati at last year’s Milan World Expo.

Now the idea is ready for the real world, with over 6000 products filling 10,000 square feet of space. But in a press release, Ratti emphasizes that there’s still room for improvement:

“Today, this information reaches the consumer in a fragmented way. But in the near future, we will be able to discover everything there is to know about the apple we are looking at: the tree it grew on, the CO2 it produced, the chemical treatments it received, and its journey to the supermarket shelf.”

If you’re missing out on the high-tech shopping experience in Milan, there are plenty of ways to get your information before you enter the store: Here are some supermarket products to avoid if you’re looking to become a smarter shopper.

[h/t inhabitat]

It’s tough at the top. History is littered with thwarted monarchs, quashed queens, and unlucky emperors. Many leaders reached power only to have it snatched from their grasp after a very short time, consigning them to just a footnote in history. Whether due to illness, rebellion, murder, or mystery, the following unfortunate people enjoyed some of the shortest reigns in history.

1. SHORTEST-REIGNING POPE

Pope Urban VII died just 13 days after being appointed as pope, the shortest-ever papacy. When Sixtus V died in 1590, the conclave elected Cardinal Castagna as Pope Urban VII. Urban had a great reputation as a man of piety, prudence, and decency, and so the people were full of hope that Urban would be a wonderful pope. Indeed, in his first few days he had a list made of all the poor in Rome so that he might help them, gave extra cash to cardinals with insufficient means, and ordered the bakers of Rome to bake larger loaves and sell them more cheaply, covering any losses out of his own pocket. But after just a few days in office—and even before his papal coronation—Urban VII became gravely ill. After just 13 (highly successful) days, he died.

2. SHORTEST-REIGNING KING

The prize for the shortest-reigning king goes to Louis-Antoine of France, who very briefly became king in 1830 when his father Charles X abdicated. Louis-Antoine considered his position for 20 minutes before signing papers to confirm that he, too, was abdicating.

3. SHORTEST-REIGNING QUEEN

When the sickly son of Henry VIII, Edward VI, died, many influential Protestants feared the crown would pass to his Catholic half-sister, Mary. Edward VI had come to the throne at just 9 years old, and the powerful John Dudley, Earl of Warwick and later Duke of Northumberland, soon positioned himself as Edward’s effective regent. Fearing he was to lose control of the crown, Dudley plotted to have Lady Jane Grey, a cousin of Edward VI, put onto the throne. To ensure his place at court, he forced Jane to marry his son. Grey reportedly fainted when told she was queen. She went through the motions of monarchy, but lacked public support—and after just nine days, Mary and her large army took back the crown.

Many historians believe that Mary had intended to pardon her young cousin—it was obvious she had been but a pawn in other people’s power games—but Jane’s father foolishly took part in further rebellion. As a consequence, Jane became too much of a risk to live and was executed when she was just 16 years old.

RUNNER-UP: Berengaria of Castile was named Queen of Castile (in modern-day Spain) in 1217 when her brother Henry was killed in a freak accident—a tile blew off a roof and hit him in the head. Berengaria was the granddaughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine, famous for reigning as queen of both France and England in her lifetime and a force to be reckoned with, and Berengaria clearly had her grandmother’s wits. Instead of keeping the crown for herself, she abdicated after two months and 25 days in favor of her son Ferdinand, who was in line to become king of León. By sacrificing her own prospects in favor of her son’s, Berengaria ensured her son had an even greater legacy by ultimately unifying the kingdoms of León and Castile.

4. SHORTEST-REIGNING U.S. PRESIDENT

William Henry Harrison died after just a month in office in 1841. The 68-year-old was the ninth president of the United States and the oldest to become president, until Ronald Reagan took office at age 69 in 1981. Harrison insisted on making an extremely lengthy inauguration speech (the longest so far) in freezing conditions while foolishly shunning a hat or coat. He contracted pneumonia—or so historians long believed—and was dead within a month. Although the pneumonia diagnosis has long been accepted, more recent analysis has blamed enteric fever the president contracted as a result of the sewage-laced water in the White House.

RUNNER-UP: James Garfield, the 20th president of the United States, was shot by a disturbed man just over 100 days into his presidency. Garfield did not die immediately; he lingered on the edge of death for two and a half months as doctors tried, in vain, to locate the bullet lodged in his body, finally succumbing after six months and 15 days of his presidency. His death came not as a result of the bullet wound, but because of an infection caused by prolonged probing in the wound by doctors with unwashed hands.

5. SHORTEST-REIGNING EMPEROR

Although this category is made difficult in part by the number of self-proclaimed emperors in history, one reasonable candidate for the title of shortest reigning emperor is Napoleon II. He was named Emperor of France in title only when he was just 4 years old, after the defeat and abdication of his father, Napoleon, at Waterloo in 1815. The only legitimate son and heir of Napoleon, Napoleon II was never able to fulfill his promise—he reigned in absentia in exile with his mother in Austria for just 16 days before the French monarchy was (temporarily) restored with Louis XVIII. Napoleon II lived out his days in Austria, with the mollifying title of Duke of Reichstadt given to him, but sadly died from tuberculosis when he was just 21.

RUNNER-UP: Taichang was the 14th Ming Dynasty emperor, and came to power despite his father favoring a younger son for the post. Taichang was named emperor in 1620 and immediately got off to a good start, abolishing unpopular taxes and filling many posts left vacant by his father. But after just 10 days, he fell ill with diarrhea, suffering mightily for many days until a member of his court, Li Kezhou, gave him some red pills to cure his ailment. After taking one pill, Taichang declared that he felt much better, so he was encouraged to take another—but by the next morning, he was dead after serving just 29 days as emperor. The contents of the pills and the intentions of Li Kezhou have become something of a folk legend in China, known as the “Mystery of the Red Pills.”

Landing your first job after college can be a difficult, stressful process, and not many college graduates feel their university’s career services offices gave them the help and support they wanted, according to a Gallup poll spotted by The Atlantic. Only 16 percent of graduates of all ages (from the 1940s to the class of 2016) say their experience was “very helpful,” and only 27 percent say it was “helpful.” In total, about two in five graduates think visiting the career counselors at their school was useful. Another 16 percent found it “not at all helpful.”

Even if they had a good experience, students didn’t think career services really prepared them for the real world. “Graduates who visited their career services office are not much more likely than those who did not to believe their university prepared them well for life outside of college, to say their education was worth the cost and to recommend their university to others,” according to Gallup.

Recent college grads in the U.S. have an unemployment rate of 5.6 percent, and a 12.6 percent underemployment rate (meaning they might be working as a barista instead of putting that sociology degree to use at work). College career services have an important duty, then, to help students get jobs and launch careers, so it’s important that the experience be helpful.

The results are based on online surveys of 11,483 people with at least a bachelor’s degree between August and October of 2016.

[h/t The Atlantic]

Is it possible that murderous crustaceans have a softer side? A new video shows cannibalistic deep-sea crabs grooming one another the same way chimpanzees do.

Austinograea williamsi is not generally a snuggly critter. This pale, eyeless crab makes its home in the darkness near hydrothermal vents thousands of meters below the ocean’s surface. Its previous appearances on camera have all been a lot less aww-inspiring and a lot grislier, featuring feeding frenzies in which everyone eats everyone else’s legs.

But family members aren’t A. williamsi’s only food source. It also eats snails, anemones, and algae. Given the opportunity, it may also eat bacteria scraped off undersea surfaces. Researchers aboard the R/V Falkor believe that that may be what’s going on in this video they captured at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean thanks to a robotic submarine:

“He was literally grooming this smaller shell, just in the same way that you would see chimpanzees for instance picking bugs off of the hair of a mate,” Falkor biologist Amanda Bates told New Scientist.

Bates and her colleagues can’t say for sure why the crabs are doing it. Grooming may be a lazy way to score a snack, or it may be as much a social activity for crabs as it is for primates. Either way, Bates said, “it’s incredible to see that same type of behaviour in crabs that are 3,500 metres under the sea.”

[h/t New Scientist]

The 20-sided die you see above could have been built by ancient Egyptian Dungeons & Dragons players, but it wasn’t. Rather, it was made by an unknown craftsperson at some point between the second century B.C.E. and fourth century C.E.—a relic from an age when casting the dice often had higher stakes than hit points.

Made in the shape of an icosahedron (a polyhedron with 20 faces), the die is constructed out of serpentine, which ancient Egyptians often used for their amulets and vessels. The die could have been made during Egypt’s Macedonian period, during which it was a major center of Greek trade and culture, or during its later time as a Roman province, when Egypt kept its strong trade ties with Greece. That would explain the Greek letters carved into the faces of the die. 

Historians aren’t entirely sure why such dice exist, but it’s thought they were sometimes used for divination. The die could even be an example of an alphabet oracle—a text-based divination tool that could stand in for a flesh-and-blood oracle or seer when needed.

In an alphabet oracle, each letter of the Greek alphabet had a corresponding phrase that you could use to determine your fortune. One such alphabet oracle was found on an inscription discovered in the ancient city of Olympos. Although it’s thought that shards of pottery were used with that oracle, the process is just as doable with dice. Roll the Greek letter lambda, for example, and the oracle would tell you that “the one passing on the left bodes well for everything.” A zeta told you to “flee the very great storm, lest you be disabled in some way.”

Unfortunately, the die you see here didn’t come with a corresponding guidebook, so it’s impossible to know if it was associated with an oracle or not. Another possibility is that such dice were used for games. Ancient Egyptians are known to have used dice for senet, a popular board game thought to have been kind of like backgammon. The game has been found in the tombs of Egyptian royalty, and gameplay has been linked to the mythological Egyptian journey through the underworld.

The 20-sided die is far from the first of its kind, of course. Dice are thought to date back millennia, and the oldest known example was associated with a 3000-year-old board game of the ancient Near East called the Royal Game of Ur.

These days, 20-sided dice are most familiar to role-playing gamers. As games historian Jon Peterson writes, 20-sided dice became commercially available around the early 1970s—right when table gamers were beginning to recognize the need for dice that would allow for more outcomes and make games more realistic. Among those gamers was Gary Gygax, who ended up creating Dungeons & Dragons with Dave Arneson in 1974.

Ancient fortune-telling tool or remnant of a centuries-old D&D predecessor? You can visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and speculate for yourself—the die is on display in Gallery 138.