SolidAir

Ask a dozen people to name a genius and the odds are that “Einstein” will spring to their lips. Ask them the meaning of “relativity” and few of them will be able to tell you what it is. The basic principles of relativity have not changed since Bertrand Russell first published his lucid guide for the general reader. The ABC of Relativity is Bertrand Russell’s most brilliant work of scientific popularisation. With marvellous lucidity he steers the reader who has no knowledge of maths or physics through the subtleties of Einstein’s thinking. In easy, assimilable steps, he explains the theories of special and general relativity and describes their practical application to, amongst much else, discoveries about gravitation and the invention of the hydrogen bomb. An ideal introduction to the theories of special.

ABC of Relativity: Understanding Einstein
By Bertrand Russell - Narrated by Sir Derek Jacobi

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 film about a troublesome corpse appearing in an ordinarily boring small town isn’t thought of as one of the master’s great works, but it’s mordantly funny, and it happens to be one of the great foliage porn movies ever. Just look at this early scene in which the body is discovered by Captain Albert Wiles (Edmund Glenn), who mistakenly assumes he offed the poor bastard in a hunting accident. The screen is a canvas of yellow, orange and russet gold, impeccably re-created on a soundstage from on-location footage in Vermont, where “Harry” was shot. A comedy of mistaken assumptions that seems to have given the Coen brothers a template for about half of everything they would one day make, Hitchcock’s movie is a series of black comedy set-pieces strung together with funny exposition; every 10 minutes or so, somebody digs the body up and buries it somewhere else. Hitchcock must have know what a spectacle he had here, weather-wise: the poster showcases the fall leaves as if they were one of the movie’s stars.

 Leaf peep show: The greatest autumn movies

1861 I pittori del Risorgimento
Roma, Scuderie del Quirinale, 6 ottobre 2010 – 16 gennaio 2011 

In occasione delle celebrazioni per il 150° anniversario dell’Unità d’Italia, le Scuderie del Quirinale presentano una grande mostra per illustrare come la pittura italiana abbia rappresentato gli eventi che tra il 1859 e il 1861 portarono il nostro Paese alla conquista dell’indipendenza e dell’unità nazionale. 
L’esposizione presenterà le opere dei maggiori artisti dell’epoca (tra i quali Francesco Hayez, Giuseppe Molteni, Domenico e Gerolamo Induno, Eleuterio Pagliano, Federico Faruffini, Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega, Odoardo Borrani, Michele Cammarano e Giuseppe Sciuti) ed evidenzierà come la loro lettura degli accadimenti di quegli anni abbia privilegiato una commossa rappresentazione dell’adesione popolare a dispetto di una più scontata e retorica celebrazione.

It was like the sky: pleasant, visually appealing, reliable. Peanuts had a Picture of Dorian Gray quality; you kept getting older and more decrepit and more cynical, but it didn’t. By the time you started reading it, you were already older than the characters in the strip, so it immediately made you nostalgic for childhood. Not necessarily for your childhood, but for the childhood Lucy and Charlie and Linus were having.

Why I love Peanuts