wie ein wüstensohn

Happily after the absolutely brilliant regular podcast Futility Closet introduced a few weeks back to a large portion of its listening audience the German and Eastern European phenomenon bound up in the works and personality of the imaginative adventure writer Karl May—and re-introduced to others with the glad occasion to reflect and wonder a little bit how this author was no longer remembered in some of the exotic lands where his stories took place, the topic has become for the team and commentators a sustained and very productive one.
Branching off to a series of tales set in the Middle East, rendered all the more amazing since like his stories that took place in the American Old West came across as convincing and more culturally sympathetic than those who’d actually experienced those places first hand, another iconic character, akin to Old Shatterhand and Winnetou, comes on scene, in the faithful guide Hadschi Halef Omar Ben Hadschi Abul Abbas Ibn Hadschi Dawud al Gossarah. Notwithstanding that fictional character was the only naming-convention in the Muslim tradition studied and committed to memory by committed fans from a European background, the stories were a lens on the casbah and the souq, which all things considered was not a bad introduction for the 1890s. The German disco band Dschinghis (Genghis) Khan, EuroVision Song Contest contender probably most famous for their party hit Moscow, Moscow—celebrated this literary figure with a particularly catchy number in 1980 (or try here, depending on your location). I hope all the characters in this particular universe eventually get their own treatment and profiles.

5x5

ancient aliens: a look at the three billion year old Klerksdorf Spheres mined in South Africa

∞: floating, figure-eight ferris wheel under construction in Macau casino

word wars: war reporting presented as a Star Wars opening exposition crawl

i am what i play: once in 1979, BBC 1 was turned over to David Bowie

life-long learning: an exploration of how architecture learns and grows after its been built

drivers’ education

The nonpareil BLDGBlog offers a fascinating and ponderous contrast between autonomous, driverless cars and one of select pilots qualified to operate planetary rovers who ply and steer in a similar sort of headspace.
While the unmanned automobiles navigate through a virtual recreation of our reality, the ensemble of Martian rovers—with the aim of allowing the little robots to ultimately exercise their own innate sense of curiosity, manoeuvres with a unique but directed compromise between their human engineers (the featured pilot honed her skills first operating tractors in India) of projection and instinct, as the distances between worlds are too great for real-time, defensive-driving. As our vehicles of both exploration and personal transit gain greater self-sufficiency, I wonder if those skeuomorphs, placebo-buttons and other vestiges of feeling in control will be retained even after choice or necessity is taken away and people are just back-seat drivers.

the big one or nxnw

Recommended reading from Kottke comes in the form of this absorbing article from the New Yorker on the science behind the hysteria over the North American Pacific Northwest earthquake that’s by the numbers long overdue.

Aside from the convincing and frightening exposition and eloquent, clear explanation of seismology and what geologists fear—as opposed to the fear we’re better at propagandizing (making useful and expedient) or thrilling but non-challenging cinematic spectacles—the discussion of consequences and policies that foreshorten the long view on planning and contingency was also quite thought-provoking, and not in the orthodox ways that dampen self-regard, response and precaution worse than the disaster or otherwise try to make things less scary. One of the more astounding points touched upon was how the expedition of Lewis and Clark did not think to ask the Native Americans that they encountered in the Cascades about seismic events—albeit, how could they know to, not that it’s like not being savvy enough to ask about a home-owners’ association’s by-laws before moving in, but it’s really quite jarring to compare Japan’s millennia of record-keeping (and the historic “orphaned” tsunamis that might give researchers clues about this region’s timeline) and their sobering embrace of reform and change compared to inertia and enthusiasm that might be characterised as geologic.