#binary systems

Starflight

The Jacquard Loom Device

~ an idea that led to the computer age -

The morning news sent me a thread that took me to a rabbit hole ending in a deep well of philosophy & economics.

First - the article 👇 (take 5 minutes to really read this story of technology loss & salvation.)

There's a lot of threads to untangle here so let's begin with the impact of this device on our collective world history.

Although often called a Jacquard loom it is really a separate piece - the Jacquard Loom Device - attached to a loom that separates this weaving machine from others. It is this device, with its array of connected punch cards, that made complex patterns from binary code.

After all - the warp threads (the shead) are either UP or DOWN in the process of weaving. Up (1) or down (0) - the two choice system is the basic of Binary code.

These looms were once ubiquitous. Today - as with many older tools of hand crafting - they are rare. Their decline is - of course - economic based. It is understandable that the loom & device is no longer feasible as a method of production - - - However, as a method of rendering Art and as historical reference of the computer age - why would a College or University dedicated to the association of Art & Science not find a place for these machines?

The Anatomy of a Nebula

JWST has been looking closely at many things over the Christmas break, one such deep space object was the Southern Ring Nebula, NGC 3132.

It was once thought that like many planetary nebula, that the remains were that of a single sun like star that entered a red giant stage then about 2,500 years ago exploded, the JWST image shows that it could be the remains of up to 5 stars, maybe in a binary system, with multiple outflows.

It was known a number of stellar remains existed within, but the debris left around the main star show signs of other stars that were probably in close orbit at the time of the collapse, but no longer appears to exist. It's assumed this star has since fallen in to the centre and merged.

Source:

Ancient Egyptian astronomers may have discovered variable stars, and calculated the period of a well-known one called Algol, thousands of years before Europeans. But they buried those observations in a calendar designed to predict lucky and unlucky days, wrapped in religious narratives, so it's taken some work for modern scholars to tease out the hidden discovery.

Not all of the stars in the night sky shine steadily. Some, called variable stars, appear to fade and brighten at regular intervals. These stars are actually part of binary systems, and when the dimmer member of the pair passes between us and its brighter sibling, it causes an eclipse, so the bright star seems to fade from the night sky for a few minutes or hours. European astronomers first described a variable star called Mira in 1596, and another called Algol in 1669. John Goodricke calculated the orbital period of Algol's two stars over a century later, in 1783 -- but it turns out the ancient Egyptians had worked that out over a millennium and a half earlier.

After you finish your work After you do your day After you've read your reading After you've written your say — You go down the street to the hot dog stand, One block down and across the way. On a blistering afternoon in East Harlem in the twentieth century. Most of the windows are boarded up, The rats run out of a sack - Sticking out of the crummy garage One shiny long Cadillac; At the glass door of the drug-addiction center, A man who'd like to break your back. But here's a brown woman with a little girl dressed in rose and pink, too. Frankfurters, frankfurters sizzle on the steel Where the hot-dog-man leans - Nothing else on the counter But the usual two machines, The grape one, empty, and the orange one, empty, I face him in between. A black boy comes along, looks at the hot dogs, goes on walking. I watch the man as he stands and pours In the familiar shape Bright purple in the one marked ORANGE Orange in the one marked GRAPE, The grape drink in the machine marked ORANGE And orange drink in the GRAPE. Just the one word large and clear, unmistakable, on each machine. I ask him: How can we go on reading And make sense out of what we read? - How can they write and believe what they're writing, The young ones across the street, While you go on pouring grape into ORANGE And orange into the one marked GRAPE - ? (How are we going to believe what we read and what we write and we hear and we say and we do?) He looks at the two machines and he smiles And he shrugs and smiles and pours again. It could be violence and nonviolence It could be white and black, women and men, It could be war and peace or any Binary system, love and hate, enemy, friend. Yes and no, be and not-be, what we do and what we don't do. On a corner in East Harlem Garbage, reading, a deep smile, rape, Forgetfulness, a hot street of murder, Misery, withered hope, A man keeps pouring grape into ORANGE And orange into the one marked GRAPE, Pouring orange into GRAPE and grape into ORANGE forever.

Muriel Rukeyser