Just sold this on my new and improved shop. Some fine person paid honest to goodness money for 20x20 inch blowups of this one and another one. Cool.
Neil Gaiman to the University of the Arts Class of 2012
… or a meditation on the limits of creativity, which are, of course, nonexistent.
People who know the rules know what is possible and what is impossible. You do not and you should not. The rules of what is possible and impossible were made by people who have not tested the bounds of possible by going beyond them - and you can.
(via Brain Pickings and Coudal Partners)
When the exact moment of your birth is accompanied by a large clap of thunder, the rest of your life is pretty much guaranteed to be a bumpy ride. When Mary of Burgundy was engaged to the Archduke Maximilian, it marked the first recorded use of a diamond engagement ring with a ring set with thin, flat pieces of diamonds in the shape of an “M.”
She died young, after a fall of her horse broke her back and she passed away days later. What stuck in history was the whole engagement ring concept.
But we can trace this mark-your-territory wedding trend way, way back, eons before Max and his fair Lady M. Below, how our love affair with the rock slowly evolved.
Pre-History: The caveman tied cords made of braided grass around his chosen mate’s wrists, ankles, and waist, to bring her spirit under his control.
Circa 2800 BC: Egyptians are buried wearing rings made of a single silver or gold wire on the third finger of their left hands, believed to be connected directly to the heart by the vena amoris.
2nd Century BC: According to Pliny the Elder, the groom gives the bride first a gold ring to wear during the ceremony and at special events, then an iron ring to wear at home, signifying her binding legal agreement to his ownership of her.
1st Century BC: Puzzle rings first appear in Asia, where sultans and sheiks use them to tag each of their wives.
1217: The bishop of Salisbury puts an end to the popular practice of seducing girls into mock marriage with rings made of rushes. His solution? Declaring a marriage with a rush-ring legally binding.
1456: The Gutenberg bible is published. There is no mention of betrothal or marriage rings in this or any other edition of the bible.
1477: In one of the first recorded uses of a diamond engagement ring, Archduke Maximilian of Austria proposes to Mary of Burgundy with a ring that is set with thin, flat pieces of diamonds in the shape of an “M.”
1700s: Silver “poesy rings” engraved with flowery sayings are in vogue in Europe. Across the Atlantic Ocean, the Puritans give their betrotheds useful thimbles instead of rings, which are derided as frippery. Eventually, however, many thimbles get their tops sliced off and are worn as rings anyway.
1800s: The highly sentimental Victorians make jewelry from human hair, and use gemstones to spell out names or endearments, such as a D-E-A-R-E-S-T ring set with a sequence of diamond, emerald, amethyst, ruby, emerald, etc.
1867: Diamonds are discovered in the Cape Colony (now a province in South Africa), the beginning of a huge increase in the diamond supply.
1880: Cecil Rhodes, who arrived in South Africa in 1873, founds the DeBeers Mining Company with other investors. Within the decade, they will control 90 percent of the world’s diamond production.
Agent 3Z: Sometimes I like to post stuff that is not entirely correct, or not... →
Sometimes I like to post stuff that is not entirely correct, or not scientifically backed just to see people go batshitcrazy in correcting my wrongful ‘assumptions’.
It’s like throwing a piece of prime cut meat in a pit of hungry bastard wolves.
I know it is horrible. But it is also highly…
I’m debuting a new design for answering your questions that you send in, because I can’t help myself
Howdy, Sweetpal!
Great question. The short answer is yes, they can die, but usually don’t. First we need to look at a map of where lightning actually strikes the Earth, like this one from NASA:
As you can see, lightning strikes land far, far more than it does water. But it still happens at some level, and saltwater is a good conductor because of all the dissolved ions. But fish don’t usually die en masse in lightning strikes, and can be completely unaffected just a few meters below the surface.
The lightning bolt’s current simply doesn’t penetrate deeply into the water, but instead radiates outward along the surface, as seen in this experiment, photographed in National Geographic:
I’ve seen this phenomenon attributed to two things. The first is called the skin effect, where electrical pulses travel primarily on the surface of good conductors like copper wire. The second is due to the fact that air ionizes (forms the “bolt”) much easier than water, so the current instead dissipates over a thin layer of air at the water’s surface. This is a similar phenomenon to why being in a car or plane when it gets struck by lightning doesn’t kill you.
I’m not sure that physics has decided which is the right answer, but lightning doesn’t penetrate the surface of the ocean beyond a few feet, if it penetrates at all. And after a few tens of meters on the surface, the bolt dissipates. As long as the fish are deep enough, which they almost always are, they survive just fine!
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