Hyde Park Blvd

Theory by Peter Horvara of UC Berkeley is getting attention for proposing that space and time unstitch at high energies, causing quantum (instead of relativistic) effects.  And accounting for everything from dark matter to evidence that the universe began with a bounce instead of a bang.

Scientific American lands the plane, bringing cosmic math back down to earth, giving folks like me that smug sense that, we too, have some vague notion of what’s going on.

But reading this stuff — just the names of scientists involved — is a heartening statement about the internationality of leading-edge research.  Here’s to you Diego Blas, Robert Brandenberger, Gia Dvali, Shinji Mukohyama, Mu-in Park, Oriol Pujolas, and Sergei M. Sibiryakov.

Cassini spacecraft is currently on I-94 nearing the Saturn turnoff.  Venting ice from the moon Enceladus spews hundreds of miles into the air.  Us childhood fans of the Lucky Starr books just love this stuff. Photo November 24 via NASA.

Via Frango’s careful eye.

Another good one via Frango.

Via Frango.

David Rosenberg, he of Gluskin Sheff in Toronto, opines on US unemployment and the likelihood that 12% is not impossible, that structural problems may be around for a while:

Think about it. We haven’t yet hit bottom on employment but that will happen at some point. Employment is not going to zero, of that we can assure you. But when we do start to see the economic clouds part in a more decisive fashion, what are employers likely to do first? Well, naturally they will begin to boost the workweek and just getting back to pre-recession levels would be the same as hiring more than two million people. Then there are the record number of people who got furloughed into part-time work and again, they total over nine million, and these folks are not counted as unemployed even if they are working considerably fewer days than they were before the credit crunch began.

So the business sector has a vast pool of resources to draw from before they start tapping into the ranks of the unemployed or the typical 100,000-125,000 new entrants into the labour force when the economy turns the corner. Hence the unemployment rate is going to very likely be making new highs long after the recession is over — perhaps even years.

Don’t know exactly why, but these are great.  Via Inspire Me Now! Made by the design team of R&E Praspaliauskas, you can see the whole line at DeZeen and the sold-out sign at dadadastudios.

One more from my Brazileno friend, Frango.  The lips look like something wonderful stolen from Man Ray.

Yousuf Karsh photo, 1954.  Via Frango.