Why Do Tennis Balls Go Flat?

A tennis ball is essentially a pressurized rubber ball covered with cloth. The rubber is not completely impermeable, however, and slowly leaks over time, just like a latex balloon eventually loses its air. 

In a game, when the ball hits the court surface, the outside of the ball caves towards the center to make an indent on the side. That force pushes the air inside in the opposite direction (towards the other side). The outward force of the indent pushes the ball away from the court surface, which means the ball bounces up. More and more air keeps on getting out over time until there is not enough pressure inside a ball to help bounce it back up.

Also, the rubber loses some of its elasticity, although that effect is probably negligible, inasmuch as even unused tennis balls that have been removed from their pressure pack become “dead.”

I Buy My Clothes at McDonalds

Jeremy Scott is fashion's most evolved connoisseur of junk culture, and, in his heyday, Franco Moschino loved nothing more than poking the bear of fashion orthodoxy with flagrant infusions of trash. So when Scott paraded his mutant hybrid of Ronald McDonald and Coco Chanel all in the name of the late, great Franco, there was a friskily superficial compatibility. But—chalk it up to the gulf of time separating the two careers—there was in fact a difference in tone between Scott's revision of the Moschino legacy and Franco's original template. Today's Moschino presentation was a crowd-pleaser. Franco, on the other hand, was more satirical by nature and made a habit of biting the fashion hand that fed him.

From Tim Blanks' 2014 runway review for Vogue

The President's Madman Theory

The madman theory was a primary characteristic of the foreign policy conducted by U.S. President Richard Nixon. His administration, attempted to make the leaders of other countries think Nixon was mad, and that his behavior was irrational and volatile. Fearing an unpredictable American response, leaders of hostile Communist Bloc nations would avoid provoking the United States.

Nixon explained the strategy to his White House Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman:

I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that, “for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button” and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.

In October 1969, the Nixon administration indicated to the Soviet Union that “the madman was loose” when the United States military was ordered to full global war readiness alert (unbeknownst to the majority of the American population), and bombers armed with thermonuclear weapons flew patterns near the Soviet border for three consecutive days.

The administration employed the “madman strategy” to force the North Vietnamese government to negotiate a peace to end the Vietnam War. Along the same lines, American diplomats (Henry Kissinger in particular) portrayed the 1970 incursion into Cambodia as a symptom of Nixon’s supposed instability.

The madman strategy can be related to Niccolò Machiavelli, who, in his Discourses on Livy (book 3, chapter 2) discusses how it is at times “a very wise thing to simulate madness.” 

Industry, As Far as the Eye Can See

Edward Burtynsky, Manufacturing #18 (Cankun Factory, Zhangzhou, Fujian Province, 2005)

Canadian art photographer Edward Burtynsky is my greatest influence in terms of landscape photography. I love the balanced framing of intense industrialization, and how he is able to present the brutal destruction of the natural world in a way that is aesthetically appealing, and even beautiful.

My collection of Canadian landscape photography attempts to immitate his work, on a more humble and local scale. You can view the collection by clicking here.

Me Thinks The Lady Doth Protest Too Much

A scold’s bridle, sometimes called a brank’s bridle or simply branks, was an instrument of punishment used primarily on women, as a form of torture and public humiliation. First introduced by the Church of Scotland in 1567, the device saw use across Europe and the New World until the mid 18th century.  

The device was an iron muzzle in an iron framework that enclosed the head. A bridle-bit, about 2 inches long and 1 inch broad, projected into the mouth and pressed down on top of the tongue. The curb-plate was frequently studded with spikes, so that if the offender moved her tongue, it inflicted pain and made speaking impossible. Woman who were seen as witches, shrews and scolds, were forced to wear the branks, locked onto their head.