Agatha Christie is the master of the murder mystery. Over the dozens and dozens of people that died in her books – many were killed with poisons and chemistry.
But did you know that Agatha Christie’s poisons were accurate because she actually knew about them as a medical chemist? She worked in a chemist dispensary early in her life and passed her exams to making drugs.
In this video, chemist Kathryn Harkup describes 4 particularly interesting poisons used in her books.
When I was in 5th grade, a few of us ‘gifted’ kids read the Ambrose Bierce story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and talked about it. I remember thinking it was a lot like my favorite show: The Twilight Zone (only later I learned the Twilight Zone actually did an episode of that very story). We were then told we’d be going to see it as a stage play next week. We rode in a school bus an hour from our tiny little town to the big city of Indianapolis. It was the first play this farm boy had ever seen.
I’m pretty sure we went to the beautiful Indiana Repertory Theatre. It was a fairly simple production for only a few dozen kids/small school groups in the audience. I remember looking at the stage and seeing nothing really there. I wondered if they were going to bring out all the props and scenery. I had a lot of anticipation as I waited for things to begin – but not knowing what would happen. I think I expected something like TV in which everything is depicted realistically, so my curiosity was already piqued.
The play started out exactly as the story did with a man being led to a bridge. The bridge and rail line was represented by a projected trestle and rail shadows. When the moment of his death came, the lights went out for a second at which point there were sounds of a rope breaking and a tremendous splash. Blue lights came back up and the actor was in the water being shot at with the sounds of gunfire. They represented him in the water by being halfway in a big blue sheet blown by air that he bobbed and ‘swam’ through.
This effect blew my mind as a kid. I had never seen such imagination – and from adults. I had no idea such things existed and how a simple story we read in a book could be made alive in this way. The rest of the play was well done, but these stage effects really astounded me. It started me down a path of going to plays and local theater whenever I could.
In recent years, it seems I’ve had trouble finding plays I’d actually like to see. It’s not that my favorites aren’t being done – it’s just…they’re not the plays I know.
For example, when I went to London a few years back I really wanted to see one of the famous plays at Shakespeare’s Globe theater. I have definitely seen a few wonderful shows there, but I was surprised to see 2 of the 3 shows were strange re-imaginings that seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with their original material beyond the name. One was modernized to current times with completely different themes. The other seemed to have replaced key characters with ones that represented modern social controversies. In the end, believe I saw a more period accurate version of Richard III which was highly enjoyable because it showed me how those plays I read in High School would probably have looked and sounded on stage when Shakespeare’s company performed them. Even if the play itself wasn’t really my favorite.
I have had some good luck though. One of the best was a really excellent production of The Woman in Black in Chicago. A few great versions of And Then There Were None at local theaters. But it seems like I have better luck with smaller productions. Primarily because they stay true to the original stories. Which, after all, is why they are great.
This is not a new thing. So what is going on? Scores Unstitched is a professional opera singer turned YouTuber. She describes how things have changed, the frustration that even the actors have, and how the audience is not the target anymore. It sure seems like an interesting state of affairs when the audience is no longer even the reason for your art to exist. One has to wonder what motivates the actors or singers if the actual stories and plays they love aren’t even being done.
Our culture used to have much more readable messages and symbols. Not because they were overtly hidden – but because we can no longer speak the language. One of the effects of a classical education (something that was done up until about the 1950’s) was the development of verbal, written, musical, and pictorial languages that were based on thousands of years of human development and thought.
Most modern people have completely lost the original understanding of our cultural cornerstones. The Declaration of Independence’s phrase ‘the pursuit of happiness’ really means something very different than what most people know (happiness = eudaimonia, a central concept in ancient Greek philosophy, often translated as “human flourishing,” “well-being,” or “living well,” but represents the highest human good, a state of deep fulfillment achieved by living virtuously, developing one’s potential, and fulfilling one’s purpose, distinct from fleeting pleasure (hedonia) and rooted in meaning, authenticity, and growth). Classic stories like Dante’s Inferno had so much staying power because they spoke with the language of classical definitions.
Today, we’ve traded thousands of years of cultural wisdom for internet memes and viral trends that usually only last a few days. How much have we lost? Watching videos like this can give you an idea.
I find it interesting we can no longer ‘read’ a clear message from art (like this video shows us), but instead traded that for ‘critiquing’ art. Each person can now give a piece of art its meaning and value based on their individual interpretation. An interpretation often only based on nothing more than personal opinions, ignorance of context or language, and even outright bigotry.
Instead of ‘critiquing’ a painting using only modern limited social trends and sensibilities that are limited to only the beliefs of the viewer/critiquer, maybe we should once again learn to read them and learn about a lived experience of others without trying to make it something it was never meant to be.
Monocab is an attempt to make trains more useful by allowing both rails to be used at the same time in different directions by utilizing gyroscopically self-balancing rail cars. Or in other words, a monorail. The advocates claim this makes things more environmental and socially conscientious for ‘fairer mobility’. This claim is pretty vague but seems to relate to an effort re-use abandoned rail lines to help people in rural areas have an alternative to the cars they drive.
Adam Something calls out some of the…er…questionable hype. Firstly, rural people need to get to those lines. By nature, rural areas are dispersed. People would have to walk, bike, or…drive to the rail line. They then call the pod which comes from town to you. But now it’s got to get on the other track to go back to town. Do I need to ride this thing all the way to the end of the line to the spot where it switches sides? What happens when 3 or 4 or 15 people all try to go different direction at the same time. Sounds like people will be sitting around a lot, or waiting around for their turn at a ride. So much for the promise of calling a train out to service you night or day. Sure, it might not need a driver, but the capacity and latency would be dependent on the length of the rail line/turnaround points. And since it’s rural – we have to assume it’s many miles.
Neutrino detector experiences it’s own chain reaction
The Super-Kamiokande is a gigantic tank full of ultra-pure water, lined with hundreds of glass bulbs with ultra-sensitive detectors. It, like the Canadian SNO+ detector, was buried over a mile under tons of rock to shield it from cosmic rays. The goal of these gigantic underground tanks? To detect neutrinos.
Neutrinos and anti-neutrinos are some of the most abundant particles in the universe, but can fly through miles of rock without interacting with a single atom. The Super-Kamiokande was operating to do the same, and help detect supernova that explode massive amounts of the particles. The SNO+ detectorwas the first to detect an antineutrino in 2018 – from a nuclear reactor operating over 150 miles away.
Despite planning, the Super-Kamiokande experience a catastrophic failure on November 12, 2001. One of the photomultiplier tubes imploded. Despite having thought of this issue, in a chain reaction, as the shock wave from the concussion of each imploding tube cracked its neighbors. Around 6,600 tubes were destroyed in just moments. The detector was partially restored by redistributing the photomultiplier tubes which did not implode, and by adding protective acrylic shells that are hoped will prevent another chain reaction from recurring
Nightdive Studios is on a mission to bring back lost and forgotten games. They have released some very true to the original updates of games like Quake, System Shock, Turok, and Dark Forces.
They also act as kind of preservationists. They contact the original studios to archive and include a lot of extras with the games. Quake 2 includes behind-the-scenes making of the game with concept art, discarded enemies, videos, etc. The PC source code for the original System Shock was found in a subfolder on a Mac. The most recently did this with a re-release of one of my favorites: System Shock 2.
I hope they keep digging up these old classics and making them available for generations to come.
Small modular nuclear reactors (SMR) are generally defined as nuclear plants that top out at about 300 megawatts. That’s enough to run about 30,000 US homes. Advocates have been excited and spreading lots of hype. They claim the new designs are safer, cheaper, and faster to build. There are nearly 80 SMR projects currently in various stages of development around the world. SMR advocates have said these new designs are the answer to our future power needs.
The most recent IEEFA report looked at all these projects brought those aspirations back to a crashing reality. In fact, these SMR efforts have been shockingly similar to large, classical big nuclear projects. Many have massive 200-700% cost overruns and experiencing delays of 3-4 times longer than originally planned. Worse, they even have more financial and security risks than classical designs simply due to unknowns. Since these designs contain lots of newer and relatively untested ideas – there’s lots of risk of issues nobody thought of. These risks are especially true for long-term cost of operations/maintenance and end-of-life decommissioning.
Besides the book, there was a whole TV series in which minor celebrities make the dishes and try them out. Pretty fun. You can watch it on Plex for free.
