Boulangerie: March 2023

Unbaked bits from the month!

The Boulangerie is a regular, unscheduled feature of Technocomplex, appearing once or twice a week. It is for half-baked, rising dough, the just-now-in-the-oven entries. After all boulangerie in French is bakery. Entries are always very short. To find out when new loaves have been set out, follow @mrdelong@mastodon.online.

March 29, 2023

Highsmith, Carol M. Cowboy at the Funky Cadillac Ranch, U.S. Route 66, Amarillo, Texas. between 1980 and 2006. Transparency: color; 4x5 in. or smaller. Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. http://lccn.loc.gov/2011631210. Rights: Public domain.

“In 1974, three artists from San Francisco found themselves in Potter County, Texas, burying ten Cadillacs nose first into a Texas wheat field alongside Interstate 40, an art installation that would eventually come to be known as Cadillac Ranch.”

Good article: Smith, Sonia. “Forty Years of the Cadillac Ranch.” Texas Monthly, June 12, 2014. https://www.texasmonthly.com/travel/forty-years-of-the-cadillac-ranch/.

Boulangerie: Another kind of "einstein." Beautiful math. Nice tile!

An aperiodic monotile that looks like a "hat" discovered by some guys

March 22, 2023

Figure 2.2 from the arXiv PDF.

Note the funding credit. “Development of software used in this work was supported in part by a Senior Rouse Ball Studentship for 2002–3 from Trinity College, Cambridge.”

Smith, David, Joseph Samuel Myers, Craig S. Kaplan, and Chaim Goodman-Strauss. “An Aperiodic Monotile.” arXiv, March 19, 2023. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2303.10798.

Boulangerie: Mattias Adolfsson drawings. Wondrous and funny!

How could I have missed this so long?!

March 14, 2023

Moleskine Sketchbook 18. YouTube video, 2011.

There are a lot more videos on YouTube, too. Adolfsson’s website is https://mattiasadolffson.com — also a delight! Worthwhile for all my notebooking friends, too.

Boulangerie: Historic tubas

V & E Simonetti Historic Tuba Collection, Durham, North Carolina

March 11, 2023

This picture predates the Simonetti collection’s current location, since it was taken before the Simonettis sold The Tuba Exchange. But you get the picture. Government & Heritage Library, State Library of North Carolina, United States. Tuba Exchange, Historic Low Brass Musical Instrument Exchange Durham (Durham County, N.C.). December 6, 2005. Digital photograph. Historic tuba collection. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Historic_tuba_collection_(8635531700).jpg. Rights: Public domain.

The Vincent and Ethel Simonetti Historic Tuba Collection resides near where my wife and I lived during part of our graduate school years in Durham, North Carolina. It is said to be the largest historic tuba collection in the world. The Simonettis sold The Tuba Exchange in 2011, but retained the collection and set up their low-note museum in a yellow house in Durham.

V & E Simonetti Historic Tuba Collection. “Vincent and Ethel Simonetti Historic Tuba Collection,” January 10, 2013. https://simonettitubacollection.com/.

Atlas Obscura. “Historic Tuba Collection.” Accessed March 11, 2023. http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/v-e-simonetti-historic-tuba-collection.

Boulangerie: Homunculus on the brain

Visualizing parts of the body with brain activity ... and the brain with body parts

March 7, 2023

Penfield, Wilder, and Theodore Rasmussen. The Cerebral Cortex of Man: A Clinical Study of Localization of Function. Lane Medical Lectures; 1947. New York: Macmillan and Co, 1957.

In the center, a hemisphere of the human brain. At the periphery, depictions of parts of the body controlled by the respective parts of the brain. Penfield and Rasmussen included two such visualizations, one for motor control and the other for sense. The one pictured is the so-called “motor homunculus.” The visualizations — there are others — have come to be known as Penfield’s homunculus.