Thursday 1 November 2018

opus latericium

Material science students in Cape Town have developed a process that forms a durable, pliable building substance out of urea, sand and a strain of bacteria that metabolises urine into calcium carbonate that cements the loose sand to fit a given mould.
Not only would construction sites draw in and sequester atmospheric carbon during the growing phase, reinforcing the sands with limestone matrices, the reaction that produces the bricks, pillars and cobblestones happens at ambient temperature and doesn’t need to be fired in a kiln—another potentially huge benefit as the cement and concrete industry contributes a huge volume of greenhouse gases.

moonrise

Thanks to some detective work, art historians and geomancers were able to reverse engineer the date, time and location of this black and white photograph captured by Ansel Adams of the Moon ascending over the unincorporated settlement of Hernandez, New Mexico.
Under contract with the Department of the Interior, Adams spent six months documenting the south west and came across this scene in the late afternoon of 1 November, 1941 and stopped on the shoulder of a highway, driving through the Chama valley toward the city of Espaรฑola, to take the picture. Multiple prints were made from the original negative and became one of the most popular and collectible images for the next three decades, with one print personally developed by Adams selling for the unprecedented price at auction that’s strangely coincident (adjusted for inflation) with the first acheiropoieton executed by an artificial intelligence.

general audiences

On this day in 1968, the Motion Picture Association of America replaced its stringent and interventionist Motion Picture Production Code (the Hays Code after the association’s president Will H Hays) that had been in force since 1930 with a voluntary ratings system, which appealed to filmmakers and cinema-operators and did not smack of censorship and prudishness as much as the previous regime of conduct. Originally the tiers of suitability were:

Rated G: Suggested for General Audiences
Rated M: Suggested for Mature Audiences—parental discretion advised
Rated R: Restricted—persons under sixteen not admitted, unless accompanied by parent or adult guardian
Rated X: Persons under Sixteen Not Admitted

By 1984, the standard included PG-13 (parental guidance suggested—some material may not be suitable for children under thirteen) and in 1990 X (originally not sanctioned by the MPAA) was replaced by NC-17, no children under seventeen admitted. The broad categories have translated to over half of the movies released in the past five decades have garnered an R-rating or higher.

rubicon, rio bravo

Despite the refutation on the part of the US Secretary of Defence that “this department doesn’t do stunts,” Trump’s fearmongering is playing to the crowds thronging his Nuremberger rallies with his announcement that he will deploy up to fifteen thousand active duty soldiers to the southern border to act in a support capacity for the army of deputised goons already there, and could hardly be characterised as anything else. Fully thirty-nine military units have been put on notice. Barred by federal law (posse comitatus) from acting in an enforcement capacity within the United States, their role during this mission will be limited to intimidation and building temporary barriers.