"Twitter" in 1803: The Finger of Contempt

Twitter: 1803 style

Now where did I put my 👉Finger of Contempt? https://t.co/Y1yoNVLMtm

(h/t David Blau)

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) March 24, 2021

Amazing Sculptures from Tightly-Rolled Newspapers

These are incredible!

Japanese Artist Tightly Rolls Newspaper To Create Incredibly Realistic Animal Sculptures https://t.co/wgxGL3848A

— Archpng (@archpng) June 8, 2019

The Original People of Los Angeles

Here is an online vignette from a Los Angeles Times project about the origins of Los Angeles.

Quoting from the vignette: "The original people of Los Angeles, the Tongva, defined their world as Tovaangar. It extended from Palos Verdes to San Bernardino, from Saddleback Mountain to the San Fernando Valley."

(Tip of the cap to Paulette Steeves.)

What Could Possibly Go Wrong (1840s Edition)

Wow.

Also, look at the follow-up tweet in response.

(What could possibly go wrong? 1840s edition)

Alas, I have no idea how this romantic gesture worked out for him. (Oxford Chronicle 1841, via @_newspapers) pic.twitter.com/neklN6DmhH

— Undine (@HorribleSanity) March 3, 2019

(Tip of the cap to Sydney Padua.)

Which Headline Do You Prefer?

Seen in the wild: @sfchronicle using two different headlines for the same article. pic.twitter.com/xPhbvbAMzV

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) October 14, 2018

A 1999 Death Knell for Examination "Blue Books"

This article from 1999 is "awesome" in historical context.

First, it's interesting to read about the origin of blue books. Here is part of it:

Michele V. Cloonan has a theory. As chairwoman of UCLA's Department of Library and Information Science, she believes they evolved from the cheaply produced, paper-covered school books, almanacs and novels known as the bibliotheque bleue, or blue library, in 18th century France.

Before the invention of chlorine bleach in 1774 revolutionized paper production, white books had to be made from white rags. Blue books came from blue rags, often from the old clothes of sailors. Blue paper was the cheap stuff, used for the covers of throwaway books.

And, earlier in the article, we have this excerpt: "Well, those exam booklets, after torturing college students with writer's cramp for almost 150 years, may finally be on the way out.

They're being replaced, of course, by the floppy disk." (LOL!)

And another beauty: "Equipped with the same level of encryption security used by the Federal Reserve Bank, the software makes cheating impossible." (LOL!)

And, of course, the blue book also ought to have a snake on it...

(Tip of the cap to @mathematicsprof.)

Grammatical Paraphernalia and the Original Guardian

This — the debut of The Guardian — is interesting for many reasons, including its comma density and other grammatical paraphernalia.

(Tip of the cap to Sam Howison.)

A Phase Transitions in the New York Times Front-Page Picture Density?

Visually, it seems like it resembles a phase transition (watch how suddenly the density changes), so I expect that one could see that arise in a simple model.

Every single New York Times front page since 1852. Look at the growth of pictures in news.
(h/t Josh Begley). pic.twitter.com/zLxe01U2QX

— Carl Miller (@carljackmiller) November 3, 2017

(Tip of the cap to Sabine Hossenfelder.)

Congratulations to Hall Daily on his Retirement!

Hall Daily, Caltech's Director for Government Relations, is retiring after a long tenure on the job.

Back in my undergrad era, Hall Daily was also the advisor for The California Tech (our student newspaper), of which I was a writer and co-editor. I learned a ton about journalism from Hall. He too someone who was someone who Autumn Looijen and I purposely earmarked as getting one of our free copies of Legends of Caltech III. He was an awesome advisor, and I owe a lot to him for my communication and journalistic skills. My experience with The Tech was probably more important for my career than any math or science class I ever took.

You Are Now Entering the Twilight Zone: Trumped-Up Edition

And, once again, Scotland proves that it's awesome.

(The Scots are also very good at flinging insults.)

Front-Page Editorial in The New York Times

Today, The New York Times ran a front-page editorial for the first time since 1920. I'm very glad they've done this, and obviously it takes a lot for them to do this when the last one was almost 100 years ago. I hope it has an impact.

(Tip of the cap to Ernie Barreto and George Takei.)

1981 News Report on The Internet

Long before the internet was for porn, the "two to three thousand" residents of San Francisco who owned home computers had the chance to download text from newspapers.

Anyway, watch this old news report from 1981 on electronic newspapers. It is awesome in several respects.

(Tip of the cap to Elizabeth Leicht.)

"Awesome" Headlines

Some of these newspaper headlines are "awesome" (as well as awesome). I approve!

I have seen a few of these circulating around the internet, and I remember at least two of them (the baseball ones) from the original newspaper articles themselves before they were circulated because of their humor content.

(Tip of the cap to Jed Yang.)

Headline of the Week

This demotivational poster is a big win. Awesome!

Unpopular Science

This particular cartoon guide to physics is fantastic! It appeared a couple of days ago in the New York Times.

(Tip of the cap to Ravi Montenegro.)

Probability and O.J.

Here is Steve Strogatz's latest column in the New York Times. This one is on probability.

Network science research provokes terror alert

A run-of-the-mill network science paper about cascading failures via targeted attacks (based on nodes with high degree or betweenness) has caused a bit of a panic in the United States. The work is rather theoretical and there are tons of other papers like it. This one did appear in a journal called Safety Science, and I wonder if that made a difference here? (By the way, I very much appreciate that the New York Times piece uses the term "network science".)

Maybe I ought to be careful about my research on cascading failures in networks?

(Tip of the cap to James Gleeson, my coauthor on this paper on network cascades.)

Think Globally

The latest New York Times article by Steve Strogatz is called "Think Globally", which is pretty ironic (despite the applications to earth's geodesics) given that the article is about differential geometry, which is inherently local. Maybe that's the "act locally" part? And it just warms my heart to see an article about differential geometry in the New York Times. Where are the wedge products, though? :)

Square Dancing

Here is Steve Strogatz's latest article in the New York Times. It concerns the Pythagorean Theorem and the different levels of elegance of different proofs of it.

Finding Your Roots

Here is Steve Strogatz's latest opinionator article on mathematics. My old "buddy" John Hubbard gets a nod in this one.