A blog dealing with the paradox of being spiritual beings in a physical world; the sometimes horrific humor of this life; and the inevitable changes we either fight against or welcome...
Two vortex rings travelling along the same line can repeatedly leapfrog one another. During my recent visit to the University of Chicago, PhD student Robert Morton of the Irvine Lab demonstrated this leapfrogging in the same apparatus they use to study knotted vortices. Leapfrogging works because of the mutual interaction of the flow fields of the two vortex rings. Their influence on one another causes the front vortex ring to slow down and widen while the trailing vortex narrows and speeds up. Once the vortices have switched places, the process repeats. In a real fluid, viscosity eventually breaks things down and causes the vortex rings to merge, but in simulation, inviscid vortex rings can leapfrog indefinitely. Our friend Physics Girl even showed that half-vortex-rings can leapfrog. (Image credit: N. Sharp; thanks to R. Morton for the demo)
Nearly 90 cinemas in the US and Canada are planning to show the film adaptation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, starring the late John Hurt, in protest at President Trump’s policies. The coordinated screenings will take place on 4 April, the date that the book’s central character Winston Smith writes on the first page of his illegal diary.
The organisers of the protest have released a statement, saying: “Orwell’s portrait of a government that manufactures their own facts, demands total obedience, and demonizes foreign enemies, has never been timelier.” According to the statement, the cinemas involved – which include the Alamo Drafthouse chain and New York’s IFC Center – “strongly believe in supporting the National Endowment for the Arts and see any attempt to scuttle that program as an attack on free speech and creative expression through entertainment”.
Winston Smith – a rewriter in the Ministry of Truth – remains one of Hurt’s most celebrated roles. He starred opposite Richard Burton and Suzanna Hamilton in the film, which was directed by Michael Radford and released in 1984.
