When Some Fangirl Says That Frozen Is  the Best Movie Ever...

Happy birthday to Christopher Clavius (March 25, 1538-February 6, 1612), the German Jesuit mathematician and astronomer. And now, ladies and gents, here are some fun facts:

History doesn’t know his actual German name. It could be Christoph Clau or Klau. It might be Schlüssel, which is German for “key”, which in turn is “clavis” in Latin. But really, it’s all speculation.

At the age of 17, Clavius joined the Jesuit Order, which was founded when he was a child.

While studying at a Jesuit college in Portugal, he excelled in math. Upon observing a total solar eclipse in 1560, he decided that astronomy would be his life’s work.

As a professor at the Collegio Romano in (you guessed it!) Rome, Clavius taught mathematics and wrote textbooks, including works on algebra, the astrolabe, and practical arithmetic and geometry. He also did his own version of Euclid’s Elements; that probably contributed to him being called “the Euclid of the sixteenth century.”

Clavius was the senior math guy on the commission that reformed the calendar in 1582. This gave us the Gregorian calendar that most of the Western world uses to this day. Check out my previous post on this subject.

In his astronomical works, Clavius was geocentric in his opposition to the Copernican model of the universe for reasons both scientific and scriptural. He remained an everything-rotates-around-the-Earth guy until near the end of his life.

He budged on the matter. A little. Well, not quite, maybe. Clavius and Galileo had a mutually respectful relationship, and Clavius was rather thrilled (in his cautiously Jesuit way) with Galileo’s groundbreaking observations of Jupiter’s moons and other wonders. In 1610, during Galileo’s visit to Rome, Clavius and other scientists confirmed the existence of Jovian satellites and the phases of Venus, which contradicted the Ptolemaic view of the cosmos. But the geocentrism-vs-heliocentrism debate raged on.

Clavius also seemed to take this skeptical-but-delighted approach to Galileo’s telescopic observations of the Moon’s rough surface. He wrote that “when the Moon is a crescent or half full, it appears so remarkably fractured and rough that I cannot marvel enough that there is such unevenness in the lunar body.”

Speaking of the lunar body, Clavius was honored with his own crater formation on the Moon, as you can see above. Largest to smallest, the craters are designated Clavius D, C, N, J, and JA. Fans of 2001: A Space Odyssey might recognize this lunar location as the setting for Clavius Base, a human colony featured in both the film and book.

Feel free to contact me if I’m getting any of this wrong. I’m no Clavius.

(Rice University/Wikipedia)

Freaking Orwell was a dang profit.

YOU FUCKING SEE THIS MAP, MOTHERFUCKERS?

YOU GETTING A LONG GOOD SQUINT ON WITH YOUR SIGHT-HOLES?

YOU SEE THAT LONG ORANGE SNAKE WEAVING ITSELF AROUND OUR FAIR COUNTRY?

THAT ORANGE LINE DENOTES THE 100 MILE BORDERS OF THE US, WHICH IS NOW BASICALLY A CONSTITUTION-FREE ZONE

DOES THAT SOUND HYPERBOLIC TO YOU SHITHEADS?

DO YOU THINK I’M GETTING MY MOTHERFUCKING HYPERBOLE ON?

THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY HAS DECLARED THAT ITS AGENTS NOW HAVE THE RIGHTS TO SEARCH THE ELECTRONIC POSSESSIONS OF ANY FUCKING ONE IN THAT ZONE

ANYBODY, FOR ANY REASON, AS LONG AS THEY ARE WITHIN 100 MILES OF A BORDER OF THE US, CAN NOW HAVE THEIR FOURTH AMENDMENT RIGHTS VIOLATED

THIS OBVIOUSLY INCLUDES THE ENTIRE EAST AND WEST COASTS, ALSO KNOWN AS, YOU KNOW, THE FUCKING POPULATION CENTERS OF OUR ENTIRE FUCKING COUNTRY

THIS EQUATES TO NEARLY 200 MILLION FUCKING AMERICANS, OR 2/3RDS OF OUR ENTIRE SHITSTAINING WAFFLEHUMPING JELLOFUCKING FROGTOGGLING MINTSNIFFING HORSEHOCKING COUNTRY

IN ALL LIKELIHOOD, YOU RIGHT NOW DO NOT HAVE FOURTH AMENDMENT RIGHTS ANYMORE

THEY HAVE BEEN TAKEN AWAY IF YOU LIVE ANYWHERE WITHIN 100 MILES OF A US BORDER

THAT MEANS MOST OF THE POPULATION OF ALL WEST COAST (ESPECIALLY CALIFORNIA) AND EAST COAST STATES, ALL OF FLORIDA AND THE ENTIRE NORTHEAST QUADRANT, AND ALL OF POOR MOTHERFUCKING HAWAII

JUST LOOK AT THAT LITTLE FUCKER, NOW A LITTLE COLLECTION OF ORANGE DOTS FLOATING AROUND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN

LET ME REPEAT THAT FOR YOU NOOKWHIFFERS: THE FOURTH AMENDMENT NO LONGER APPLIES TO THE ENTIRE STATE OF HAWAII, AS WELL AS THE ENTIRE STATES OF FLORIDA, MAINE, MASSACHUSETTS, DELAWARE, NEW YORK, AND ALL THOSE OTHER FIDDLY LITTLE TINY FUCKING STATES UP IN THE SNOOTY PART OF AMERICA, YOU KNOW, THE ONES THAT LOOK LIKE A KINDERGARTNER TRIED TO MAKE A JIGSAW PUZZLE OUT OF RABBIT SHIT

INTERESTINGLY ENOUGH, THE RED MEATY CENTER OF AMERICA IS ENTIRELY PROTECTED BUT I’M NOT EVEN GOING TO GET INTO THAT

POINT IS, THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, WHICH IS NOTORIOUS FOR ITS BLANKET STATEMENTS AND ITS DISREGARD FOR THE PRIVACY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, HAS NOW DECLARED THE RIGHTS OF TWO MOTHERFUCKING THIRDS OF THE GODDAMNED COUNTRY INVALID

AND YES I MOTHERFUCKING STRETCHED YOUR DASH FOR THIS

GUESS WHAT? I’LL STRETCH YOUR FUCKING ASS TOO UNTIL YOU AT LEAST REBLOG THIS, AND LET MORE FUCKING PEOPLE KNOW THAT THEIR RIGHTS ARE FUCKING GONE

MAKE SOME FUCKING NOISE, PEOPLE

cuz this shit ain’t right.

EDIT: CLICKTHROUGH THE PIC FOR SOURCE, SHITSTAINS

ALSO THIS AND THIS AND MOTHERFUCKING THIS

In Defense of Holden Caulfield

I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever understand why exactly people hate Holden Caulfield from “The Catcher in the Rye”.

I mean, sure, you could defend your dislike with a classic gem such as, “Oh, he’s just a whiny, pretentious f***boy! He’s so boring, all he does is complain!”

But at that I’m just like

okay, wow, I’m sorry the incredibly depressed mentally ill teenager who has no true friends and is constantly being ignored by the people he tries to reach out to and is constantly being told he’s useless and a bad influence by his peers and has alluded to being sexually molested by multiple people as a little kid and has to deal with the pain and hardship of growing up in a world he can’t help but see as superficial and hypocritical and WHOSE CLASSMATE FRICKIN’ COMMITTED SUICIDE IN FRONT OF HIM isn’t a conventionally cheerful or likeable protagonist????

I don’t understand why that’s so hard for people to grasp; it just straight up BAFFLES me. I mean, people eke out all sorts of ways to like downright villains like Alex (DeLarge) or Loki or Ramsay Snow/Bolton, or antiheros like Jaime/Cersei Lannister, Sherlock Holmes, etc.

Why is it so hard to dole out a little sympathy for Holden, who, ultimately, just wants to protect children from the evils of the world—arguably one of the noblest and most heartbreakingly tender aspirations of all?

Good ol’ Rory

The complete aesthetic of this blog.

Sharpening up Jupiter

An infrared image of Jupiter taken with the Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics Demonstrator instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Details are 300km wide. Infrared imaging of Jupiter allows astronomers to learn more about the depth of the clouds on the planet.

I can't feel my sides right now!

Ohne dich kann ich nicht sein, Ohne dich, Mit dir bin ich auch allein, Ohne dich, Ohne dich zähl ich die Stunden, Ohne dich, Mit dir stehen die Sekunden, Lohnen nicht

Rammstein, Ohne Dich (2004, Reise, Reise)

I want to say that the Gemini astronaut in the foreground is either Gene Cernan or Ed White, but don't quote me on that.