The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is made up four separate optical telescopes (the Antu telescope, the Kueyen telescope, the Melipal telescope, and the Yepun telescope) organized in an array formation, built and operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) at the Paranal Observatory on Cerro Paranal, a 2,635 m high mountain in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. Each telescope has an 8.2 m aperture. The array is complemented by four movable Auxiliary Telescope (ATs) of 1.8 m aperture. Working together in interferometric mode, the telescopes can achieve an angular resolution of around 1 milliarcsecond, meaning it could distinguish the gap between the headlights of a car located on the Moon.
(Interferometer: an array of telescopes or mirror segments acting together to probe structures with higher resolution by means of interferometry)
4/12 - Inheritance by Christopher Paolini
Argh.. Kesal.. Pulang dari kantor, dapetin rumah kosong, gelap gulita, makan siang gak disentuh, gak pulak dimasukin dalam kulkas biar agak awet. Ckckck..
Tsavo Man-Eaters were a pair of notorious man-eating lions responsible for the deaths of a number of construction workers on the Kenya-Uganda Railway, from March through December 1898.
In March 1898 the British started building a railway bridge over the Tsavo River in Kenya. The project was led by Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson. During the next nine months of construction, two maneless male Tsavo lions stalked the campsite, dragging Indian workers from their tents at night and devouring them. Crews tried to scare off the lions and built campfires and bomas of thorn fences around their camp for protection to keep the maneaters out, to no avail. The lions crawled through the thorn fences. After the new attacks, hundreds of workers fled from Tsavo, halting construction on the bridge. Patterson set traps and tried several times to ambush the lions at night from a tree. After repeated unsuccessful endeavors, he shot the first lion on December 9, 1898. Three weeks later, the second lion was found and killed. The first lion killed measured nine feet, eight inches (3 m) from nose to tip of tail. It took eight men to carry the carcass back to camp. The construction crew returned and completed the bridge in February 1899. The exact number of people killed by the lions is unclear. Over the course of his life, Patterson gave several figures, once claiming that there were 135 victims.
Patterson writes in his account that he wounded the first lion with one bullet from a Martini-Enfield chambered in .303 caliber. This shot struck the lion in the hindquarters, but it escaped. Later, it returned at night and began stalking Patterson as he tried to hunt it. He shot it with a .303 Lee Enfield several times, tracked it the next morning, and found it dead. The second lion was shot five times with a .303 Lee Enfield, but it got up and charged him in severely crippled condition, whereupon he shot it three more times with the Martini-Henry carbine, twice in the chest, and once in the head, which killed it. He claimed it died gnawing on a fallen tree branch, still trying to reach him.
After 25 years as Patterson’s floor rugs, the lions’ skins were sold to the Chicago Field Museum in 1924 for a sum of $5,000. The lions’ skins arrived at the museum in very poor condition. The lions were then reconstructed and are not on permanent display along with the original skulls.
Patterson’s accounts were published in his 1907 book The Man-Eaters of Tsavo.
Folk rock is a musical genre combining elements of folk and rock music. In its earliest and narrowest sense, the term referred to a genre that arose in the United States and United Kingdom around the mid-1960s. The genre was pioneered by the Los Angeles band The Byrds, who began playing traditional folk music and Bob Dylan penned material with rock instrumentation, in a style heavily influenced by The Beatles and other British bands. The term “folk rock” was itself first coined by the US music press to describe The Byrds’ music in June 1965, the same month that the band’s debut album was issued. The release of The Byrds’ cover version of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” and its subsequent commercial success initiated the folk rock explosion of the mid-1960s. Dylan himself was also influential on the genre, particularly his recordings with an electric rock band on the Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde albums. Dylan’s July 25, 1965 appearance at the Newport Folk Festival with an electric backing band is also considered a pivotal moment in the development of folk rock.
3/12 - Edensor by Andrea Hirata
The East End of London, known locally as the East End, is the area of London, England, east of the medieval walled City of London and north of the River Thames, although it is not defined by universally accepted formal boundaries. Use of the term in a pejorative sense began in the late 19th century, as the expansion of the population of London led to extreme overcrowding throughout the area and a concentration of poor people and immigrants in the East End. These problems were exacerbated with the construction of St. Katherine Docks (1827) and the central London railway termini (1840-1875) that caused the clearance of former slums and rookeries, with many of the displaced people moving into the East End. Over the course of a century, the East End become synonymous with poverty, overcrowding, disease and criminality.
The East End developed rapidly during the 19th century. Originally it was an area characterized by villages clustered around the City walls or along the main roads, surrounded by farmland, with marshes and small communities by the River, serving the needs of shipping and the Royal Navy. Until the arrival of formal docks, shipping was required to land its goods in the Pool of London, but industries related to construction, repair, and victualling of ships flourished in the area from Tudor times. The area attracted large numbers of rural people looking for employment. Successive waves of foreign immigration began with Huguenot refugees creating a new extramural suburb in Spitalfields in the 17th century. They were followed by Irish weavers, Ashkenazi Jews and, in the 20th century, Bangladeshis. Many of these immigrants worked in the clothing industry. The abundance of semi and unskilled labour led to low wages and poor conditions throughout the East End. This brought the attentions of social reformers during the mid-18th century and led to the formation of unions and workers associations at the end of the century. The radicalism of the East End contributed to the formation of the Labour Party and demands for the enfranchisement of women.
Official attempts to address the overcrowded housing began at the beginning of the 20th century under the London County Council. World War II devastated much of the East End, with its docks, railways and industry forming a continual target, leading to dispersal of the population to new suburbs, and new housing being built in the 1950s. The closure of the last of the East End docks in the Port of London in 1980 created further challenges and led to attempts at regeneration and the formation of the London Docklands Development Corporation. The Canary Wharf development, improved infrastructure, and the Olympic Park mean that the East End is undergoing further change, but some of its parts continue to contain some of the worst poverty in Britain.
(Taken from: “Encyclopedia”)
1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
4. Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
5. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
6. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
7. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
8. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
9. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
10. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
11. The Stranger by Albert Camus
12. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
2/12 - Habibie & Ainun by Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie #bookamonth #monthlyreading
