NB! · Archive · Books · Science · Mores
Drawings by Charles Darwin's children on the backs of the drafts of "On the Origin of Species". Of the draft notes, only those sheets have survived on which the scientist's children left their drawings, undoubtedly inspired by natural-scientific interests
NB! · Art · Observations · Science · Humour
Should you ever grow vain, compare yourselves, lying awake until two in the morning with a telephone in your embrace, scrolling through reels, with the seventeenth-century astronomer of the Dutch painter Gerrit Dou, who, with hourglass and globe, passes his nights over a scientific treatise. Do you feel the
Art · Science
Magritte's "The Obstacle of the Void", 1965, and Schuster's Impossible Trident, 1964. Magritte, who preferred to call his art magic realism rather than surrealism, used the recently discovered effect of Schuster's trident in his painting "The Obstacle of the Void"
Science · Society
The general meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences has resolved to establish a Board of Trustees of the RAS. The academicians will send Vladimir Putin an invitation to head it. Academician Nikolay Makarov remarks that the academy has never before had a board of trustees, but that it should
Books · Observations · Science
Instant photography appeared in 1923, but books of 1927 already give the word "shapshot" in the sense of "taking instant snapshots". What a swift entry of a neologism into everyday speech. Though originally this required a most cumbersome contraption, in effect a portable photographic laboratory combined
Geography · Observations · Science · Nature
Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky, but in fact it can be seen in the daytime sky too, if you know where to look. It is also known as the Dog Star, or Alpha Canis Majoris, for its reliability, constancy and unrivalled ability to help people find
Observations · Science · People
I am convinced of an afterlife, independently of theology. If the world is constructed rationally, there must be an afterlife. The Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel (1906-1978)
Coming Up · Books · Moscow · Science
On Wednesdays, as is our custom, I share a selection of intellectual events for the coming week. 🧩22 May at 18:00 Presentation of F. Holt's book «When Money Talks: A History of Coins and Numismatics from Antiquity to Pop Culture» at the State Public Historical Library of
Geography · Maps · Science · Humour
And here comes Emmanuel Macron in the Mercator projection. A splendid photograph for explaining why the scale on Mercator maps is not constant, and why the true area of countries differs from their area in the projection the farther one moves from the equator. This comes from the function that
Archaeology · Books · Moscow · Science · Reportage · Ethnography
A publication unique in Russian historical scholarship has been presented at VDNKh: the Academic History of Yugra in eight volumes. It is the first project of its kind in Russia: a comprehensive study of the region's history, from the era of its settlement 18,000 to 16,000
NB! · Science · Nature
Books · Observations · Science · People
Bertrand Russell