Things are buzzing here at Skinner Co. World Headquarters, (ie. we discovered a massive beehive in one of the shipping bays,) but I wanted to drop in quickly and bring your attention to a marvel of never-realized architecture, which I discovered in the wake of yesterday’s radio-based urban legend.
It would have dwarfed the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The tower’s main form was a twin helix which spiraled up to 400 m in height, around which visitors would be transported with the aid of various mechanical devices. The main framework would contain four large suspended geometric structures. These structures would rotate at different rates of speed.
Planned as a sort of combination monument and radio tower, the behemoth would have been taller than the Eiffel Tower by approximately 80 meters, (or 260 feet, for my imperialist friends.)
Unfortunately – or, maybe fortunately, considering how many were starving in Russia at the time – it was never built, largely due to the civil war that brought down the Czar.
The picture above is, I assume, a mock-up or Photoshop-job; I couldn’t locate its original source. There are apparently models on display at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, Sweden and at Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow – Tretyakov Gallery also being interesting due to its proximity to Fallen Monument Park, which, to my understanding, is essentially a graveyard for Russia’s long history of epic sculptures depicting overturned political ideals.
If the best name you can come up with for your shadowy agency is essentially a self-description, (The Organization, The Lab, The Shop, etc.,) you are doing it wrong.
If the moniker could easily double as a nickname for an art collective, a college dance bar, or the name of the structure in which your characters work, then it sounds like you couldn’t take a further two-minutes to come up with something better.
Consider: people love “The Man From UNCLE”, but they would not love “The Man From Secret Hideout” – and you can just forget about “The Man From Basement”.
The Eights are out with the same flu I just recovered from, so I’ve barricaded myself in my office, very much in the style of the climax of The Blues Brothers. I’ve got enough coffee to hold me for hours, but I should have better planned for my bladder.
What I really wanted to discuss, however, was the Antikythera mechanism.
It was discovered in a shipwreck off Point Glyphadia on the Greek island of Antikythera. The wreck had been discovered in October 1900 and divers had retrieved numerous artifacts, most of them works of art, which had been transferred to the National Museum of Archaeology for storage. On 17 May 1902, archaeologist Valerios Stais was examining the finds and noticed that one of the pieces of rock had a gear wheel embedded in it. Stais initially believed it was an astronomical clock, but most scholars considered the device an anachronism, too complex to have been constructed during the same period as the other pieces that had been discovered. However, investigations into the object were soon dropped until English physicist Derek J. de Solla Price took an interest in it in 1951.
The circumstances under which it came to be on the cargo ship are unknown. Investigators have suggested that the ship could have been carrying it to Rome, together with other treasure looted from the island to support a triumphal parade being staged by Julius Caesar.
What an odd and fabulous device. There are a number of far-fetched theories surrounding its purpose and origin, but I would argue the mundane reality is the best option: a scientific calculator so complex that modern science refused to believe it was even possible for its period to have built it, possibly lost at sea while on its way to take part in the pageantry of Caesar – what more could you want?
The real lesson here, I think, is how delicate our knowledge and handiwork can be, and how easily they are lost to history. I’ve heard it bandied about that the Antikythera mechanism’s technology and precision wasn’t remastered for a thousand years – at least it’s only been two or three hundred years since we lost the recently (sort of) recovered technology of wind-powered sailing.
Mr Wrage’s sail is actually an elaborate kite to help capture the power of the wind, using the energy to supplement convention forms of power. In trials this year on the waters of the Baltic Sea, he has performed the nautical equivalent of reinventing the wheel. By switching to wind power during favourable conditions, energy costs could be slashed, perhaps by more than half.
Of course, these days tramp has a bit of a different connotation, which got me thinking. If other minorities can take back their misappropriated or abusive names, (I’m looking at you, my queer and/or black friends,) then why not tramps?
Today I unveil the “Take Back The Tramp” campaign.
Not long ago, the ladies and I had an opportunity to see a documentary entitled Superheroes. The film technically hasn’t been released yet – we viewed it as part of a film festival – but it’s a nice bit of work that’s definitely worth checking out when you get the opportunity.
The movie’s subject is the variety of Real Life Super Heroes (RLSH) which have cropped up in recent years, and the fellow behind the project does a great job of trying to convey who these people are, and what motivates them.
Unfamiliar? You’ll be surprised how many hits googling RLSH will return.
The truth is, the majority of those dressing up to patrol the streets rarely confront crime directly. Instead, most seem to involve themselves in assisting the homeless and the less fortunate, sometimes with material goods, (snacks make heroes quite popular,) and sometimes simply by brightening their day with the feeling that someone is watching out for them.
While many do strive to put themselves in harm’s way, the lack of heroic fisticuffs is probably a boon; those who take a secret identity often seem to find themselves with a strong heart, but an, er, untrained body. The reasoning behind their risk-taking seems to fall into two camps: there are those who may be a little naive about the true brutality of the world, and their place in it, and then there are those who’ve suffered some sort of trauma in their past, and are dealing with their issues by attempting to help others.
It’s that second path that I find the most interesting.
I suspect nearly everyone who left the theater had the same thought nagging at them: “these people seem nice, it’ll be a real shame when one of them finally gets shot.”
Obviously, none portrayed have superhuman powers, and it’s easy to get anxious about those who do take the “fighting” part of “fighting crime” quite seriously – especially when they decide to confront a drug dealer twice their size, as happens in the film.
Still, I don’t think the idea will remain at the level of costumed social worker forever.
It’s that traumatized archetype that I wonder about. At some point the idea will reach the ear of a billionaire with a past, and then things will get interesting.
Sound ridiculous? Are you familiar with the work of Troy Hurtubise, who develops craziness not but an hour-and-a-half from where I grew up?
Troy sounds silly, I know, but the reality is that his materials tend to hold up. I’ve seen footage of the earlier version of his suit being set on fire, and shot repeatedly, and somehow the mad inventor continues to survive.
Would he have any issue with developing a copy for a secret investor looking to clean up the streets of, say, Detroit?
So, what happened? Where did they all go? Well, sometime during the politically correct ’90s, I suppose we all realized that a life of hard drinking rarely leads to humour – instead, it more often ends in a sad state of loneliness and medical bills.
It wasn’t the first time popular culture has had to reevaluate one of its stock characters, (I don’t think we need to go into the the moronic housewife/uneducated black servant/black-faced entertainer,) and I’m here to suggest that maybe its time to take another look at an old standard.
Now, listen, sometimes a talented artist can find himself in a bad bit; Rowan Atkinson is a hilarious fellow with fantastic timing and a glorious wit – when used properly.
While there are many that fit the category of lovable imbecile, the worst offender, to my mind, is Mr. Bean. Of course, I utilize “imbecile” in place of a word I was much freer with in my youth – one associated with Down’s Syndrome and a bevy of other genetic and mental disorders.
I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s parade, but aren’t we just laughing at people too stupid to be functional? I understand the need for slow characters – I’ve used them myself on more than a few occasions – but if the person realistically ought to be in some sort of assisted living home (or, say, has a number of odd facial ticks and tends to wander around with a stuffed animal,) maybe it’s something we shouldn’t be laughing at.
As you’ve probably heard, the world is ending in a couple of days – or, beginning to end, as I understand that bets have been hedged a little by extending the process from a massive earthquake/rapturing on Saturday, through till the end of everything sometime next October.
For the last decade, any time the end of the world is imminent, I’ve kept a handy site on tap – http://www.abhota.info/ (A Brief History of the Apocalyse.)
Where else will you learn great terms like:
chiliasm
The doctrine of a thousand-year Earthly reign of Christ.
– or even fantastic nonsense like:
pyramidology
A pseudoscience that teaches that the Great Pyramid of Giza is a divine revelation. Many pyramidologists believe that the future can be foretold by measuring the Great Pyramid’s inner passages.
I don’t mention the site simply to send them traffic, however – I wanted to post up a recap of Armageddons for this year, and next.
Let’s start with “Professor Wang”, (stop snickering,) – given his claim, and the current date, I don’t think his professorship is in geology, but let’s dig into the details a little.
According to wikipedia, the Yucatán Peninsula impact generated an earthquake of magnitude 12.55.
Unclear as to what that means?
In March 2010, following extensive analysis of the available evidence covering 20 years’ worth of data spanning the fields of palaeontology, geochemistry, climate modelling, geophysics and sedimentology, 41 international experts from 33 institutions reviewed available evidence and concluded that the impact at Chicxulub triggered the mass extinctions at the K–T boundary including those of dinosaurs.
– a 14.0 earthquake would definitely be the end of life as we knew it, but not because of an earthquake/tsunami: such an event would have to be precipitated by an impact orders of magnitude larger than the most massive collision we’ve ever sustained. Unless someone misapplies the moon’s parking brake, I think we’re good.
One of Camping's billboards - is the date underlined, or a fill-in-the-blank?
Next we have Harold Camping, doomsayer of the hour, and, as you’ve probably already read, failed prophet.
Central to Camping’s teaching is the belief that the Bible alone and in its entirety is the Word of God, and absolutely trustworthy. However, he emphasizes, this does not mean that each sentence in the Bible is to be understood only literally. Rather, the meaning of individual Biblical passages also needs to be interpreted in the light of two factors. The first is the context of the Bible as a whole. The second is its spiritual meaning.
[…]
In 1992, Camping published a book titled 1994?, in which he proclaimed that Christ’s return might be on September 6, 1994. In that publication, he also mentioned that 2011 could be the end of the world. Camping’s predictions use 1988 as a significant year in the events preceding the apocalypse; this was also the year he left Alameda Bible Fellowship.
Fool me into an apocalypse once, shame on you, fool me twice, and I may be a Jehovah’s Witness.
The religion’s doctrines surrounding 1914 are the legacy of a series of emphatic claims regarding the years 1799, 1874, 1878, 1914, 1918 and 1925 made in the Watch Tower Society’s publications between 1879 and 1924. Claims about the significance of those years, including the presence of Jesus Christ, the beginning of the “last days”, the destruction of worldly governments and the earthly resurrection of Jewish patriarchs, were successively abandoned.
Anyhow, the proof will be in the pudding that was once your neighbour’s face, as they say, but, given his track record, and the fact that his methodology for determining the timing was to essentially squint at a Bible till the date popped out like a stereogram image, I’m not too worried.
I’m just going to skip over Terence McKenna, as I’ve seen Novelty Teeth and Novelty X-Ray Spex, and I suspect his Novelty Apocalypse will amount to about the same level of effectiveness.
I rather suspect, though, that the current hand-wringing will be well forgotten by the end of 2012, and everyone will once again get their abandoned rapture-knickers in a bunch.
Fortunately, NASA has already done the heavy lifting in debunking the Mayan situation:
Q: What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in 2012?
A: The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012. Then these two fables were linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 — hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.
Q: Does the Mayan calendar end in December 2012?
A: Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then — just as your calendar begins again on January 1 — another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar.
To conclude: one man’s apocalypse is another man’s Saturday at the park. I’m not saying the world won’t end at some point, but it likely won’t be this weekend – in fact, the weather is looking pretty nice*.
(*Of course, if I’m wrong, most of you won’t be around to gloat about it.)
Come, walk with me down this shadowy path, won’t you?
Are you familiar with Robert Osborne? Host of Turner Classic Movies, the man is an aging repository of film facts and Hollywood trivia. Since 1994, every film shown on the station during prime time gets a personalized intro from Osborne, usually recorded on a set carefully constructed of earth tones and tchotchkes.
The problem, of course, is that Robert was born in 1932, and already stands as one of the oldest faces on television.
Imagine, however, the library of intros and outros the man has built up – four movies a night, seven days a week, over the course of nearly two decades. Even with some rounding, and some vacation time, that’s likely over twenty-thousand bookended films.
Someday, hopefully one not too soon, the TCM executives are going to find themselves at a crossroads. Will they set out the ghost of Robert Osborne – amiable and warm, but still nothing more than the afterglow of an expended life – to roam the airwaves and haunt our flickering boxes?
Will he become, as many of the stars he now introduces, a memory made real only by the broadcast of the thinnest slices of his existence?
Despite its generally positive portrayal of diversity, even in the the marvelous Land of Oz, lack of equality was apparently a problem.
In the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, Toto was played by a female brindle Cairn Terrier whose real name was Terry. She was paid a $125 salary each week, which was far more than many of the human actors (the Singer Midgets who played the Munchkins only received $50 a week. From Oz Wiki: The performers were paid $50 per week plus expenses during the preliminary costume and makeup tests, and $100 per week through the rehearsal and filming of the Munchkin scenes.
Of course, this comes from a period when it was considered fair game to play up a dog at the expense of some human stereotyping.
For example, here’s a bit of FDR defending himself against the birther-conspiracy of his day – that he’d lost track of the presidential pup during a naval tour, and had retrieved him only at massive expense to the taxpayers (emphasis mine):
You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him–at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars–his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since.
Which, to my mind, seems to imply that FDR’s dog was so Scottish, and thus supposedly cheap, that, realizing he’d been left behind, the pooch refused the costly ride, instead constructing a raft of cabers and modifying a bagpipe to act as propulsion.
This may seem far-fetched, but have you ever met an Irish Setter? Drunks, the lot of them.
Things are buzzing here at Skinner Co. World Headquarters, (ie. we discovered a massive beehive in one of the shipping bays,) but I wanted to drop in quickly and bring your attention to a marvel of never-realized architecture, which I discovered in the wake of yesterday’s radio-based urban legend.
Not long ago, the ladies and I had an opportunity to see a documentary entitled 
Please excuse me if I do a little thinking aloud on this sunny Friday afternoon, but:
It wasn’t the first time popular culture has had to reevaluate one of its stock characters, (I don’t think we need to go into the the moronic housewife/uneducated black servant/
As you’ve probably heard, the world is ending in a couple of days – or, beginning to end, as I understand that bets have been hedged a little by extending the process from a massive earthquake/rapturing on Saturday, through till the end of everything sometime next October.
Despite its generally positive portrayal of diversity, even in the the marvelous Land of Oz, lack of equality was apparently a problem.