The Giant’s Shoulders #5 – The Magic (Blog) Circle!

by podblack on November 15, 2008

Welcome to the enchanting spectacle that is the Giant’s Shoulders #5 at Podblack Blog!

Inspired by classic science papers, this star-studded show presents its magic for both your entertainment and education. So, roll up, roll up – and be dazzled by these conjurers of science blogging!

1800s - patenting of the Bird Cage Illusion by J. Buatier (1890)

First out of the hat is ‘The Singularity Can’t Come Soon Enough’ (1877)‘, by The Digital Cuttlefish – on the magic of coffee and the contribution of a magician of psychophysics :

I have a machine to smell my coffee,
To see if it’s any good;
I asked it to make me the perfect cup,
But I think it misunderstood—
It analyzed alkaloids, sampled aromas,
Tried seventeen samples of beans,
Then told me I clearly had no taste at all:
I never was good with machines…

With a flourish of a wand, Epicanis unveils a mystery with ‘On the Lactic Fermentation and its Bearings on Pathology’ (1878) posted at The Big Room:

Although today we consider it essentially obvious that fermentation processes are caused by microbes, this wasn’t obvious at all to people in 1878. Certainly, people like Pasteur had demonstrated that microbes always seemed to be associated with fermentations, but many people were apparently still not convinced that the microbes were actually the cause of them.

The Master of Mystery, ‘GG’ presents Fabry, Perot, and their wonderful interferometer (1897, 1899) posted at Skulls in the Stars – they do it with mirrors!

In 1897, Charles Fabry and Alfred Perot introduced a new interferometric device which would eventually bear their name: the Fabry-Perot interferometer. The design of the interferometer is, in principle, simplicity itself: light is passed through a pair of parallel, highly reflecting mirror

1920s – Miss Esmeralda Martin, the Girl With the Radio Mind”; a show exposing spirit mediums and their methods (1920).

Every good show has someone knowledgeable about the tricks in the trade: thus M P Gururajan presents On Griffith’s Criterion For Brittle Fracture (1920) posted at Entertaining Research:

…by introducing the idea of flaws, Griffith removed this inconsistency and showed a way of quantifying things. In doing so, Griffith gave rise to the field of study, now known as fracture mechanics.

1930s – creation of the Vanishing Radio trick by Robert Harbin (1930)

Olivier Morin takes us behind the curtain with Magic and inference (1933) posted at cognition and culture:

I must confess a predilection for the anthropological and psychological writing of the mid-twentieth century, when anthropologists were still trying to explain culture and the principles of the cognitive revolution in psychology were first being worked out. It was in the course of my most recent historical dalliance that I came across E. E. Evans-Pritchard’s 1933 article “The intellectualist (English) interpretation of magic”…

1950s -Lewis Ganson writes ‘The Dai Vernon Book of Magic’; often heralded as the greatest book on close-up magic ever published (1950).

Greg Laden produces ribbons and ribbons and ribbons and more ribbons of reading joy with Greg Laden’s Blog : David L. Clarke and Analytical Archaeology (Or, ‘The Life of a Graudate Student’) posted at Greg Laden’s Blog:

Processual archaeology represented a theoretical shift in archaeology to come into closer alignment with broader anthropological theory extant at the time, in the post Willey and Phillips (1958) period when every tenth paper about archaeological theory had the words “archeology”, “anthropology” and “is” in the title.

John Dennehy gets close up and reveals the rabbit in the hat at The Evilutionary Biologist: This week’s citation classic: ‘Homage to Santa Rosalia – or Why There Are So Many Different Kinds of Animals‘ (1959) posted at The Evilutionary Biologist.

You should also check out another post by an earlier act, featured at Entertaining Research – Morphological instabilities during growth: linear stability analyses (1960):

A rigorous mathematical study of these kinds of instabilities of interfaces during growth were pioneered by Mullins and Sekerka in a couple of classic papers… this work is considered as one of the key steps in the general area of study known as pattern formation.

As the era draws to a close, an entry which also uses mirrors! Republican Schoolmaster and the Narcissism of the Minor Differences by Curving Normality, classic papers that reflect upon the psychology in politics…:

This hypothesis states that it is possible that average levels of public opinion remain stable, but that different groups diverge. In other words: polarization does not necessarily mean a change in average levels of permissiveness towards induced abortion. According to the authors, prior studies failed to take that into account. Using survey data from the General Social Survey (GSS) the authors found that the Court’s decision did indeed influence the public opinion, but not in the way the positive response hypothesis would expect…

It’s a mystery that you should unveil (and sorry for slipping it in as overlooked before!).

For the final act, it’s a disappearing canary in a cage! GrrlScientist produces (with a puff of feathers) Singing in Slow Motion, posted at Living the Scientific Life, saying it is ‘a story about building on previously known technology to refine our knowledge about previously known biology.’

That concludes our magic show for this round and Podblack Cat tips her hat to you for joining us! Submit your blog article to the next edition of The Giant’s Shoulders the carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the blog carnival index page.