salonnière or narrative structure

The ever intriguing BLDGBlog has a marvelously curated preview of an upcoming series of seminars chaired by the Flea Folly Architects of London on narrative architecture, inviting one to imagine a cityscape made with the vision and distinct styles of story-tellers in all media. The group’s own venture to create a serpentine plot “disguised” as an incredible, geometric urban-setting—as illustrated through Grimm City, wherein a fairy-tale Gotham sprawls as projections of the eponymous folklorist’s own enchantments, and rather the opposite of being inspired by the some of the places associated with their research and story-gathering, I think gives prospective acolytes a taste of what the workshop might offer.

columbian exchange

A pairing of thoughtful articles from Vox and Æon magazines present some really interesting insights and unresolved questions about ushering in the Anthropocene epoch.
There are many contenders for when the handiwork of man might have outstripped, outpaced geological change, from the nebulous reaches of time when early humans first hunted giant mammals to extinction—although the Holocene Age (Greek for wholly new) seems to me to include the rise of man, the landing of the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria that introduced global trade and New World transplants to the Old, a point in 1610 when green-house gases began an uptick due to land-management practice, the Industrial Revolution, the atomic bomb, to the nuclear winter of 1964. While it is an arbitrary distinction to some extent and many researchers will continue to champion their favourites in terms of delineation once—if a consensus is reached, what’s nearly as significant as the change that man is imparting on the environment is that we’re adverse, maybe unable to recognise or reconcile is when and how man became estranged from Nature—fancied as no longer of Nature but rather Nature was made man’s ward, with us as not very fit caretakers. What do you think? For all the eons that have gone before, is this debate a reasonable one?  It can nonetheless become a helpful one, I believe.

five-by-five

chizukigou: check out these lovely Japanese map legend symbols

système vidéo domestique: French artist repackages contemporary series and films in VHS wrapping

SMPTE bars: a look behind the scenes at the calibration tools of our seemingly seamless electronic world

maki-maki: sushi roll bath-towel concept

mirror, mirror: a look at Star Trek’s departures into an alternate reality

cartogram or far, far away

Some additional two-thousand fantastic pictorial maps of all subjects and styles have recently been acquired to supplement the already impressive resource and collections of Cartographer David Rumsey. There are endless curated galleries to wander down on his website and too many jewels to showcase so don’t pass up the chance to visit.

long-haul or get your kicks

The first trans-continental road-trip across North America—from San Francisco to New York City, was undertaken by pioneer and doctor Horatio Nelson Jackson on a bet and as a publicity stunt to demonstrate that the automobile was not just a passing-craze. In 1903, when he and his driving partner got off to a start, there was only about three hundred kilometers of paved roadways between the end points, virtually no maps and naturally no filling- or service-stations along the way. Once, a ranch hand misdirected the travelers on a lengthy, dangerous detour so her family, it was later revealed, could see a real live car. After some harrowing adventures and many break-downs, the company—which now included a mascot—arrived on the East Coast to fanfare. Jackson’s feat was certainly an impressive one and parallels the trail-blazing journey of Bertha Benz, whose hundred kilometer trip in the summer of 1888 from Mannheim to Pforzheim marked the first time in history anyone had driven a significant distance in an automobile.
Jackson’s wife, who was also called Bertha but no relation, was a wealthy heiress who helped him finance his hobbies—as was the business partner and later wife of inventor Karl Benz, but Bertha Benz is credited as an accomplished mechanic and expert promoter, feeling her husband was inadequately marketing his prototypes. With the excuse of going to pop off to visit her mother, Benz gathered her children and off they went, without telling her husband. They made quite an impression, and although they fewer hardships that Jackson’s team, did run out of petrol—for which Benz had the wherewithal to get a suitable catalyst from a pharmacy. The success was a great boon for the name and the industry. Incidentally, the make of the car Jackson drove was a Winton—a name not around anymore, though insanely popular after Jackson’s road-trip, was vindictively driven out of business by an upstart named Henry Ford, who the proprietor of the motor carriage company would not hire. Both accomplishments transformed the landscape of the world, how we work and live and paved the paths in between.

per dexter, checky and fesse or worth 1000

 

Though we have already established that the arcane language of heraldry was constructed and preserved so as to transmit the design of emblems, devices and coats-of-arms accurately without necessitating drawing the whole pattern all over again, I am enjoying immensely looking through a pretty comprehensive handbook of heraldic design, researched and illustrated by one Hubert Allcock—who does not share his family’s crest. The above about not wasting time, ink and tincture on reproduction being true, the book’s one drawback is that it is rendered in black and white sketches, so one needs to colour by number.
 And maybe that’s the point, pouring over the descriptions and exacting terminology, I can remember how when I was young, I’d often return to the reference section of the school library and look through an encyclopedia of symbols with the objective of increasing the vocabulary of my own secret, coded short-hard. Now, I am finding myself just as enchanted with the descriptive words.
Maybe we ought to adopt the same naming-conventions when it comes to tagging the photos we share. Eagle, displayed—or spread-eagle.  Deer, at gaze—looking straight at the viewer, like a deer in headlights. Other common charges (poses) include caboshed or erased, headed with nothing else visible, rampant or segréant, standing on its hindlegs rather than statant or on all fours, addorsed is back to back and regarding is eye to eye.
Blazonry—that is the background composition of the shield is told in even more fantastic ways. Figure 21 is instructed as Paly of six, argent and sable (silver and black), a fesse counter-charged. 34 is Lozengy, argent and azure. 42 is patterned as Gyronny of eight, or (gold) and azure. 47 is per pily barwise, reversed pall (white) and azure. Of course, every design in this retinue was chosen to impart specific and readily recognisable virtues of its standard-bearer and the symbolism is nearly itself inscrutable.

monotheism or my way or the highway

King Hezekiah, son of Ahaz and father of Manasseh, of Judah may not immediately conjure up any associations from the Bible or history, but his contribution to the manner in which future has unfolded is perhaps unmatched in its significance. Having witnessed the destruction of Samaria in the seventh century BC by the Assyrians, and fearing the same fate for Jerusalem and his southerly kingdom once it too came under siege, Hezekiah pledged to make the faith of the Judeans an exclusive one in exchange for deliverance. The king ordered the Temple Mount to be cleared of pagan paraphernalia and purged of altars (bamot, the high places) to all other gods save for their patriotic champion YHWY.
Jerusalem did not fall, thanks to the Angel of the Lord massacring a hundred thousand Assyrian soldiers and the clever underground sewer systems that Hezekiah had installed to allow the city to wait out a lengthy siege with a fresh water supply, and henceforth the Abrahamic religions were monotheistic ones—not implying that God had consorts and side-kicks before had that went suddenly out of fashion but that polytheistic traditions were generally much more tolerant and accepting of diversity and peaceable. A transitional term called henotheism (from the Greek for one God, as opposed to single, coined by theologist Friedrich Wilhelm von Schelling) holds that while one community worships a single, omnipotent being, the possibility of other deities, worthy of worship, is also acknowledged as well as the notion of divinity bounded by Fate or the laws as created—as opposed to the religious chauvinism and exceptionalism that Hezekiah’s deal-making gave us.

five-by-five

gallery sans grains: there’s an online museum of iconic artwork with gluten containing foodstuffs excised

lounge lizard: enjoy the space-age bachelor pad music of Juan Garcia Esquivel  the matter of

gallifrey: in the tradition of the Bayeux Tapestry, here is the continuum of the Time Lord, known as Doctor Who

merry pranksters: calendar reform was at the root of the tradition of hoaxes and pranks

poissons d’avril: a listing of the most epic stunts throughout the ages