joyeux noël

We enjoyed reading through this handy guide from the local’s French edition deciphering the holidays—especially taken with learning that there is a chant profane (a Christmas carol not on the subject of the Nativity) called “Vive le Vent” (Long Live the Wind) that’s sung to the tune of Jingle Bells and has lyrics about Father Time, Baby New Year and New Year’s Day. Entitled “One Horse Open Sleigh,” the original jingle by composer James Lord Pierpont was incidentally the first musical piece performed in space by humans during a Gemini mission in 1965, the astronauts having smuggled a harmonica and bells on board to the surprise of Mission Control.

6x6

decluttered: a website that removes the background (and adds transparency) from portraits in a single click, via Slashdot

hasenpfeffer incorporated: celebrating the life and career of Penny Marshall

lumière: amazing, remastered footage of Paris in the 1890s

la casa telematica: high tech home of the future with a distinctly 80s flair, via Things Magazine

aura: images of the Sun from the Parker Solar Probe

in focus: an Alan Taylor curated photo gallery that embodies 2018

implosion fabrication

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a miniaturisation technique to scale, downsize any physical object to the nanoscopic level whose method and materials most laboratories already have on hand.
The process works by using a laser to etch a frame out of expanded absorbent gel at workable dimensions and then overlay this scaffold with a material skin of the engineer’s choice. After assemble, the gel is then dried out, desiccated, pulling the structure inward, effectively resizing the object. The potential applications seem rather limitless and scientists believe that we might first encounter the technique used to improve optics and to make tiny robots.

clockwise

We are fans of any method that encourages numeracy and engages and like the concept behind the Albert Clock, which does not surrender the hour without a challenge.  I always liked doing factorials (n!) myself and working out how many ways and with what operators one can reach a given number.  Depending on your target audience—this would be a good addition for a classroom or waiting area, the skill level of the problems to solve can be dialled up or down.

franking privilege

Found on Booooooom, we enjoyed these little figures composed of stamps and cancelations by Sapporo-based artist Baku Maeda. The cut-up typography includes the stylised katakana symbol〒(yūbin kigō, read more here) the service mark of Japan, derived from the word for communications teishin and used to as punctuation to indicate a zip code as well. Explore more of the artist’s portfolio, his collaborations with fellow creative Toru Yoshikawa and peruse a large gallery of his drawings and photography at the links above.

shock and awe

Gleaned from the latest instalment of Kevin Stroud’s excellent History of English podcast, our generic word for firearm entered the English language in the early fourteenth century as gunpowder was gradually making its way to Western Europe as the namesake of a very large and formidable catapult inscribed in the armorial inventory of Windsor Castle called Domina Gunilda.
This practise of naming munitions and engines of war after women is an ancient tradition that still echoes today and sure carries some problematic psychological associations—though recalling that the common female name of Norse extraction might be somewhat fitting, itself derived from Gunnr the Valkyrie, meaning battlefield and the handmaid of Odin assigned the onerous task of separating the heroic from the cowardly casualties and determining who gets into Valhalla. It is unclear if Lady Gunilda herself actually used any of the newly introduced gunpowder as a range-multiplier (early cannons, like their Chinese predecessors relied mainly on their ability to scare and disorientate belligerents by its noise rather than projectiles) though other, contemporary documents mention “gonnylde gnoste”—that is, Gunnild’s spark—and whatever the firepower, the written use of gonnes and handgonne appears shortly thereafter.