‘Kurt Steiner,… holds a Guinness World Record for “most skips of a skimming stone”—he skipped a rock a whopping 88 times at Red Bridge, near Kane, Pennsylvania, on September 6, 2013… I recently stumbled across a video posted by WIRED where Steiner explains the physics behind stone skipping, and it’s one of the most fascinating and informative things I’ve ever watched. WIRED describes the video:

Kurt Steiner is record holding champion stone skipper—and a master of the physics that underpin the sport. A labor of love that’s evolved into a world-class passion, see where Kurt harvests his preferred rocks, the qualities he seeks in them, and each factor he considers in order to throw like a pro.

In the video, Kurt discusses various aspects of the process of skipping a stone that he has to take into account—including the speed at which he’ll throw it, the spin he’ll give it, and the various angles he has to balance, including tilt angle, attack angle, and twist angle. He also talks about how he must be mindful of the direction of the wind, the water’s surface, and his footing. He also describes the “makings of a really good rock,” which include things like a flat surface and a little bit of a curved top edge that is a bit sharp but not too sharp (stone skipping is clearly both a science and an art). In the video, he demonstrates various rocks that are good choices and shows us some of his throwing techniques as he explains the physics of it all.

In addition to being a world-record-holding stone skipper, Steiner is also a pretty darn good philosopher, which is evident when he describes stone skipping as:

” . . . a simple thing [that], through a mastery, becomes a really visual, spiritual kind of art form. It’s a way of making joy out of nothing. And that’s can’t be valueless, right?”…’ (Boing Boing)

‘…Republicans need to hasten the move to a post-Trump party….’ (POLITICO)

‘The National Institutes for Health has abruptly ended its study of “Havana Syndrome” after it learned that the CIA forced people to participate in it. Though the agency isn’t named in the NIH’s announcement, CNN reports that “some of the people who reported being sick previously claimed that the CIA made them join the research as a prerequisite for getting health care.”

“They wanted us to be a lab rat for a week before we actually got treatment at Walter Reed — and at bare minimum, that is unethical and immoral,” Marc Polymeropoulos told CNN in May.

Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer who says he has been sick, is an advocate for those struck by what the US government calls “anomalous health incidents.” He said in May that he believes that participation in this research was “ordered” by senior leadership at the CIA.

In March, the CIA issued a statement that denied that people were required to participate. The agency did not respond to CNN’s request for comment Friday.

Forced participation in a study is considered highly unethical and is extremely uncommon, ethicists say.

Havana Syndrome—a mysterious collection of ailments suffered by U.S. personnel serving at embassies abroad—is widely thought to be a somatic disorder. Hyped by credulous national security reporters as caused by electromagnetic weapons (or other tall tales from three-letter agencies), the whole saga is now so murky that to discuss it at all is to juggle conspiracy theories….’ (via Boing Boing)