Diacritiques

Last week, NASA and ESA’s Cassini-Huygens spacecraft crossed Saturn’s rings and entered the planet’s orbit. It is now sending us the most captivating and delightful images.

Cassini-Huygens is going to fly by the moon Titan in October. Then, the Huygens probe will separate from the Cassini spacecraft and attempt a landing on Titan’s surface, scheduled for January 14, 2005. Cassini-Huygens was launched in 1997. NRP has a very nice collection of pictures of the rings and the tiny moon Phoebe. Many people link to the NASA site; but don’t forget ESA, who built the Hugens component: they have the newest pictures, too, and even Real Media streaming video coverage of the Saturn approach in four parts. (Linux users don’t need the proprietary Real Player; xine handles the videos perfectly well.)

When I was a student many years ago, I learnt from a Dutch-speaking friend that the 17th-century astronomer Christiaan Huygens’s name is pronounced /’hœj.xəns/ (I don’t speak Dutch, so I can only hope I got the IPA transcription right). Shortly afterwards, I used this pronunciation in an oral seminar presentation. Needless to say, I got a number of questioning looks and even giggles when I explained myself and blushingly reverted to the accepted but wrong form.

Huygens greatly improved the telescope and is credited with the discovery of Titan. Cassini is the Italian-French Astronomer Jean Dominique (born Giovanni Domenico) Cassini. He discovered four of Saturn’s moons and first described the structure of the rings. The Cassini Gap in the rings (the big one in the picture) is named after him.

In this festive season, my favourite Thomas Jefferson quotation:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

From a letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813

This throws an entirely different light on the concept of “intellectual property”, doesn’t it?

In this case amazon.com thinks you “might also be interested in” a Mini-Skeleton with Stand or the Van Helsing Gross Dissection Lab; or maybe you’d prefer listening to Rock Against Bush Vol. 1.

The document can be purchased for $2.99 in MS and Adobe e-book format. Printing is strictly forbidden for users of MS Reader and restricted to two copies every year in the Adobe version. Unfortunate as these restrictions may appear, citizens of the world can rejoice in this essential and and closely guarded document being finally available for a modest contribution to the publisher: the US Government. They ought to take down the pages at The House and the National Archives, though.

Le premier jet de la partie graphique de ce carnet web est fait. On commence alors à attaquer la création de son contenu, l’écriture propre. A terme, serendipity est censé devenir trilingue: proposer un choix de langue y compris pour la navigation et les renseignements en marge. Mais pour cela il faudra que je comprenne […]