If I am to trust Dennis Wilen's translation, these are inbound Hamas rockets intercepted outside of Beersheva by Israel's 'Iron Dome' rocket defense system. It also seems the video was taken from a wedding.

It is a sad but interesting technology. The YouTube comments claim 12 interceptions.

This is the vivid, unconventional story of Athanasius Kircher, the legendary seventeenth-century priest-scientist who was either a great genius or a colossal crackpot . . . or a bit of both.

Kircher's interests knew no bounds. From optics to music to magnetism to medicine, he offered up inventions and theories for everything, and they made him famous across Europe. His celebrated museum in Rome featured magic lanterns, speaking statues, the tail of a mermaid, and a brick from the Tower of Babel. Holy Roman Emperors were his patrons, popes were his friends, and in his spare time he collaborated with the Baroque master Bernini.

But Kircher lived during an era of radical transformation, in which the old approach to knowledge -- what he called the "art of knowing" -- was giving way to the scientific method and modern thought. A Man of Misconceptions traces the rise, success, and eventual fall of this fascinating character as he attempted to come to terms with a changing world.

With humor and insight, John Glassie returns Kircher to his rightful place as one of history's most unforgettable figures.

A STORYTELLER

Sometime in the early 1670s an old Jesuit priest named Athanasius Kircher began to write a remarkable account of his early life. It told how, by virtue of divine intervention and his own bright mind, he'd come out of nowhere (a small town in the forested region of what is now central Germany) and survived stampeding horses, a painful hernia, and the armies of an insane bishop, among other things, to take his place as one of the intellectual celebrities of the seventeenth century.

As a general rule Kircher never ruined a good story with facts.... but the main story he told was true.

_____

A 17^TH CENTURY LEONARDO DA VINCI?

This was the kind of man who pursued his interest in geological matters by lowering himself down into the smoking crater of Mount Vesuvius. He spent decades trying to decipher the hieroglyphic texts of ancient Egypt because he believed, along with many others, that they contained mystical wisdom passed down from the time of Adam. He examined all aspects of music and acoustics, and experimented with an algorithmic approach to songwriting. He was among the first to publish a description of what could be seen through a microscope.

Kircher was so prolific and so ingenious that he might have been remembered as a kind of seventeenth-century Leonardo. The problem was that he got so many things wrong...

This is the "magic" of potatoes. You can literally live off them, and some people have and do. Of course, you don't want to, nor do I, but it's a useful tool when you understand what's going on, which is one hell of a lot of things as I'm learning. Let me give you the very basics, though, for review.

--Potato fills you up and it's difficult to eat enough to maintain body weight.

--Eaten plain, it's pretty unpalatable and so even if you can eat enough to maintain body weight, you're going to have to get over that.

--Adding a little fat (1 tsp per medium potato) and spices will make them more palatable, but you will still have a difficult time eating enough.

--They have quality amino acids, meaning you will tend to guard lean muscle (and I supplement with branch chain aminos and liver tablets).

--Calories count, i.e., not eating enough equals weight loss; having sufficient aminos equals fat loss preferentially.

--And as UK Veterinarian Peter has also hypothesized, there may be a cute little trick that helps this along. Now while Peter—as a species agnostic veterinarian—is difficult for mere mortals to understand, things begin to sink in upon 2-3 readings of a post. The gist as this mortal understands: very, very low fat is essential. Pancreatic beta cells require fat to produce the insulin necessary to regulate blood glucose. Ahha! Lets load up on glucose, no or very little fat, and where does that fat to produce the insulin necessary to deal with the glucose have to come from? Your fat ass, that's where.

Yes, as I said, 5 pounds in 3.5 days. It's 1:43pm and I'm still not hungry and have had nothing since the plate I ate last night, recipe to follow. So let's get to the hash browns, just in case you get tired of french fries.

John Koetsier of VentureBeat: "Tyra Banks has released a new iPhone app to help other women -- and men -- learn the secret that she teaches America’s Next Top Models: how to take sizzling hot self-portraits by “smizing.” Smizing, as I learned today, is the art of smiling with your eyes."

Smizing with Tyra Banks

"Incredibly, the young France Gall never suspected the sordid pun lurking behind her lolly." (Via Adam Parfrey of Feral House, which is going to publish a book about Ye Ye Girls.)

An amazing and award-winning photo essay by Marie Hald of the Danish School of Journalism on Bonnie, a sex worker in Denmark.

Bonnie Cleo Andersen has been a prostitute since the age of 18. Her first time having sex for money was at a visit at a brothel in a small town. Bonnie and her girlfriend were in need of money and wanted to try it out. The experience was unpleasant and Bonnie was shy and ashamed of her body. But because of the money, she stayed in the sex industry.

Aaron Sorkin, who is one of the only qualified people (in my opinion) for the job of writing about the late Steve Jobs, has told The Daily Beast at their Hero Summit today that his screenplay will have some pretty ambitious stuff in it. Namely, three thirty-minute segments that will take place backstage at three different Apple product launches, each of them to be filmed in real time. And that's the whole movie! Sorkin's hope is to end the movie on the memorable line, "Here's to the crazy ones," mentioned in the 1997 "Think Different" ad narrated by Richard Dreyfuss. (Here is a longer, unaired version with Jobs narrating.) But only, he says, if he can "earn" that ending. (Ahhhh... capital "W" Writing.) Sorkin also revealed which product launches the movie will feature: the Mac, NeXT, and the iPod, meaning that the movie will span Jobs' career from 1984 to 2001. Expect a lot of walking and talking, hectic backstage shenanigans, Josh Malina, many mentions of the word "thing" (don't make it a drinking game since Jobs was well-known for his inventions of things), and a long speech about how important and noble technological progress really is.

In the same talk, Sorkin also revealed that while he wasn't close acquaintances with Jobs, he did get a request from him to write a Pixar movie. So, I'll let that marinate with everyone for a while -- an Aaron Sorkin-scripted Pixar movie.

(via /Film)

British oil company BP today announced it will pay $4.5 billion "in fines and other payments to the government," and plead guilty to 14 criminal charges resulting from the giant oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico two years ago. How much of that do you imagine will make it to the poor and working-class families whose homes, bodies, and lives were damaged or destroyed by the toxic disaster?

Here is BP's statement. Coverage here in the New York Times, and here in the LA Times.

Via @meghangordon, an interesting footnote: The National Academy of Sciences gets $350 million of the BP settlement to study human health and environmental protection in the Gulf of Mexico.

Boing Boing's BP spill archives are here.

Image, via NYT: The explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico that was connected to a well owned by BP killed 11 workers and spilled millions of barrels of oil. (photo: US Coast Guard)

A Dutch artist called Caspar Berger is producing a "self-portrait" by 3D printing a replica of his own skull, then layering "flesh" atop it.

In this project, Self-portrait 21, the 3D copy of the skull represents the true image (vera icon). This image has formed the basis for a facial reconstruction by a forensic anthropologist, who received the skull anonymously accompanied only by the information that it belonged to a man in his mid-40s born in Western Europe. This facial reconstruction is based on the available scientific documentation of tissue structure, skin thickness and muscle groups. The clay reconstruction has been cast in bronze to be presented as Self-portrait 21, a self-portrait that has not been made by the artist.

Skeleton / Self-portrait 21 (via Beyond the Beyond)

Our friends in the Tea Party have revealed President Obama's sinister plan for a "United Nations-run communist dictatorship in which suburbanites will be forcibly relocated to cities."

On October 11, at a closed-door meeting of the Republican caucus convened by the body's majority leader, Chip Rogers, a tea party activist told Republican lawmakers that Obama was mounting this most diabolical conspiracy. The event—captured on tape by a member of the Athens-based watchdog Better Georgia (who was removed from the room after 52 minutes) —- had been billed as an information session on Agenda 21, a nonbinding UN agreement that commits member nations to promote sustainable development. In the eyes of conservative activists, Agenda 21 is a nefarious plot that includes forcibly relocating non-urban-dwellers and prescribing mandatory contraception as a means of curbing population growth. The invitation to the Georgia state Senate event noted the presentation would explain: "How pleasant sounding names are fostering a Socialist plan to change the way we live, eat, learn, and communicate to 'save the earth.'"

It can happen here: the horror of Agenda 21

Science and technology writer Steve Silberman asked ten of his favorite writers (science authors, poets, bloggers, NYT reporters) to share "their playlists of music that evokes the elusive Muse." The answers ranged from "silence, to Eno, to the Velvet Underground and the White Stripes."

Writers have their secrets and rituals for courting the fickle favor of the Muse. For some, it’s sitting in a certain chair at the right time of day — or getting out of familiar surroundings to type busily away in a café filled with people that might someday be readers. For others, it’s a brisk walk in the open air. Or it’s potions; woe to the poet who finally decides to undertake her epic sestina sequence only to discover that her cupboard is bare of aged Sumatra.

And for many writers, one way to evoke that elusive flow-state of inspiration is music.

Not, mind you, just any music. I love me some Elvis Costello, but trying to eke out an apt phrase while being throttled with the thesaurus of his post-coital tristesse would be impossible. A writer needs a soundtrack that arouses the desire for articulation while denying its consummation by anyone else’s genius.

Enjoy: Music to Write By. (Image: Bach, 'shooped by Dave Grossman)