![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.conversiondiary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/7_quick_takes_sm1.jpg\" "\\"7_quick_takes_sm\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u2014 1 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Here\u2019s the most fun you\u2019ll have since slime molds mapped your public transit<\/a>. \u00a0Scientists are using ants to model stampedes and other chaotic ways humans move around<\/a>. \u00a0It turns out that ants (and probably also people) exit more quickly and safely when the doors are partially obstructed. \u00a0If an exit is partially blocked, people tend to wind up in more of a queueing pattern than when they all rush a wide open door in unison.<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 2 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n More enjoyable problem solving: a stat guy did survival curve modelling to see how long after a criminal is placed on the most wanted list s\/he is expected to be apprehended<\/a>. \u00a0Turns out there\u2019s a fifty-fifty chance you\u2019ll be caught within 2.7 months. \u00a0I\u2019ve chosen suitable background music below for you to play while reading the author\u2019s analysis.<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Igi62qTHTGk<\/a>\n <\/a>\u2014 3 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n And in one other fun data + legal system mash up, there\u2019s a project that feeds descriptions of literary characters into a police sketch program<\/a>.<\/p>\n In terms of image-construction itself, Davis used the forensic software program\u00a0Faces ID<\/a>, which gives users (creepily, incredibly) about 10,000 individual facial features to choose among. He then used the authors\u2019 descriptions of their characters as guidelines in his selections, selecting the most true-to-text facial features, Identikit-style. For the inevitable gaps in the characters\u2019 descriptions (noses and ears, Davis discovered, were often ignored by authors), he did some educated guesswork, considering factors like the era the author was writing in and other elements of the story that might inform its characters\u2019 appearance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There\u2019s a cool Dracula<\/a>, but, when I was paging through to figure out who to feature, there was an obvious choice<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Certain police officers have a peculiar physiognomy, which is complicated with an air of baseness mingled with an air of authority\u2026The human face of Javert consisted of a flat nose, with two deep nostrils, towards which enormous whiskers ascended on his cheeks. One felt ill at ease when he saw these two forests and these two caverns for the first time. When Javert laughed,\u2014and his laugh was rare and terrible,\u2014his thin lips parted and revealed to view not only his teeth, but his gums, and around his nose there formed a flattened and savage fold, as on the muzzle of a wild beast. Javert, serious, was a watchdog; when he laughed, he was a tiger. As for the rest, he had very little skull and a great deal of jaw\u2026Between his eyes there was a permanent, central frown, like an imprint of wrath; his gaze was obscure; his mouth pursed up and terrible; his air that of ferocious command\u2026This singular\u00a0composite<\/em>\u00a0of the Roman, the Spartan, the monk, and the corporal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/a>\u2014 4 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n And speaking of reimagined literary figures, a college friend of mine has just started a really fun project called \u201cWhat Werther Went Through\u201d<\/a> inspired by Goethe\u2019s The Sorrows of Young Werther<\/a>. \u00a0I\u2019ll let him explain it:<\/p>\n I read\u00a0Werther<\/em>\u00a0in German when I was twenty-one and, honestly, it freaked me out. I\u2019d come to it expecting something impressive but stuffy; instead I found\u2026this guy, this disturbingly recognizable guy, tearing himself to pieces over this girl he was obsessed with, borderline manic-depressive, bouncing from rhapsodic exultations about nature and rambling arguments about art and philosophy to hopeless, frenzied grasping at straws on the level of \u201cShe looked at everyone in the room but ME! Does that mean she LIKES me?!\u201d<\/p>\n And the whole time, I kept thinking,\u00a0This is from 1774? This could be happening right now! I mean, this IS happening right now!\u00a0<\/em>(I\u2026might maybe have been coming off two rounds of obsessive crushes myself.)\u00a0This is important. This is special.<\/em><\/p>\n Now, since I\u2019m a good Millenial, when I find something special I want to share it. But most of my friends don\u2019t speak German. And the only free translations online right now are the\u00a0very first English translation<\/a>\u00a0from 1779 and the\u00a0Project Gutenberg<\/a>\u00a0one which I\u2019m guessing is from the 19th century.<\/p>\n So I figured, hey. I\u2019m Goethe\u2019s age. I\u2019m young and I\u00a0get<\/em>\u00a0this. I\u2019m going to write a translation in updated English that my friends could read as if this were someone we knew going through this. And the idea snowballed from there: I\u2019m going to use contemporary slang. I\u2019m going to update the setting (changing as little as possible). I\u2019m going to post the letters on the days they were \u201cwritten\u201d. Ah! I\u2019m going to\u00a0email the letters<\/a>\u00a0on the days they were written! The 1774 novel claims to reproduce letters written from 1771-72; I\u2019ll claim these letters are from 2011-12\u2026finally it all came together.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 5 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n If my friend\u2019s project takes off\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>he moves to Mexico, he might be able to pay his taxes by submitting the modernized translation of another novel. \u00a0You see, under Mexican tax law, artists are sometimes allowed to pay their tax bill in paintings<\/a>.<\/p>\n The program is simple\u2014donations are made according to reported sales. If an artist sells between one and five pieces of art in a given year, he or she donates one piece to the federal government. If the artist sells between six and eight pieces, he or she donates two, and so on, with an annual cap of six donations. Only painters, sculptors, and graphic artists can participate, though program administrators are currently considering whether to include performance art as an acceptable means of payment. A committee of artists and curators oversees the donations process to ensure that the art received meets certain quality standards. If the art is of a particularly high caliber, it becomes part of the \u201cnational-heritage collection,\u201d which is displayed in a permanent exhibit in Mexico City. All other pieces are divided up and shipped across the country to fill public museums and administrative buildings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/a>\u2014 6 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world of artsblogging, Rod Dreher is working his way through Dante\u2019s\u00a0Paradiso<\/em><\/a>, and this part of his meditation really struck a nerve for me:<\/p>\n Thinking about Piccarda as I\u2019ve been writing this piece, I\u2019ve thought of a few folks in my life that I\u2019ve been struggling to figure out how to deal with. The last time I was in confession, I told my priest, \u201cIt\u2019s not fair the way [this particular person] behaves towards me.\u201d My priest said, \u201cWho are you to expect justice?\u201d<\/p>\n I thought I understood what he was getting at, but I really didn\u2019t. I couldn\u2019t make much sense of the question, to be honest, because I was so hurt and angry by the unjust way this person behaved towards me. Meditating on Piccarda this evening, I\u2019m starting to get it \u2026 and I\u2019m starting to understand what I have to do next, whether I want to or not. It just about kills me to think about letting go of this stuff, but, well, that\u2019s the point of dying to oneself to live in Christ, isn\u2019t it? Piccarda is free in a way that I am not \u2014 and the door is locked from the inside.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Man, when you can immediately<\/em> think \u00a0of the grudge you\u2019re holding that could easily be answered by \u201cWho are you to expect justice\u201d it\u2019s probably time for me to make amends to that person.<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 7 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n And finally, also on the justice\/forgiveness beat,\u00a0The Texas Observer<\/em> profiles a prosecutor and the way his reasoning about when to seek the death penalty has changed over the course of his career<\/a>.<\/p>\n Castellano would plead guilty to a host of charges other than capital murder, including three counts of sexual assault, so that he\u2019d be sentenced to prison for the rest of his life. There wouldn\u2019t be a trial\u2014just a quick plea hearing, and Castellano would head to prison for good. Reis agreed. He still stands behind his call but admits that \u201cthere were plenty of people who think I made the wrong decision.\u201d Those people felt that Reis shouldn\u2019t have robbed a jury of the ability to decide Castellano\u2019s punishment.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n