hiatus or ciao bella

We at PfRC have only had the chance to take one grand vacation this year—which we’re forever grateful for knowing that most do with a lot less and thankful too that this is an anomaly and not a worrisome trend, but happily we will have the chance to return to the Italian Lake District in a few days and returned from further adventures we will be refreshed and ready for more. In the meantime, you can visit our friends over at the Smörgåsblog or consult our extensive archives. Arrivederci!

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you know that’s Cyndi Lauper singing: a look into the making of the opening of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse

of all things the measure is man: an open letter to the Internet of Things

your hit parade: Kottke looks at the reemergence of the cover song and the throwback economy of imitation

bus stop sally: wonderfully bizarre public transport shelters of the USSR

tipple: specially designed snifter for enjoying a fine beverage in a micro-gravity environment

hermes trismegistos or copernican revolution

I was familiar enough, I thought, with legendary the Prague (Praha) of the late Renaissance and dormitories and laboratories constructed on the castle grounds for research into alchemy and the esoteric arts, but failed to appreciate that this commission and many of the scattered artefacts, both tangible and in the realm of ideas that challenge received knowledge, have a singular provenance thanks to the curiosity of one practitioner and patron, Hapsburg Emperor Rudolf II.

Weary of the overtly hostile political ambitions of the his traditional capital of Vienna (Wien) and having no truck with neither the Protestants nearer to home nor the Counter-Reformation of his Spanish cousins, Rudolf chose to move his court to the ancient city—considered rather isolated from the rest of the Empire due to the recent and relatively successful Hussite rebellion against papal authority. There, collecting wonders and academics, Rudolf was able to carry on as a mad scientist in peace with the aims of ending factionalism in faith through miraculous demonstrations.

Not only did the discipline of chemistry develop out of the magicians’ trial and error—the aim was not to transmute base metal into gold but because gold did not rust, it was considered incorruptible and thus immortal—but also many mystic writings, including the undeciphered oddity known as the Voynich manuscript, were gathered together, studied in view of endless galleries of curio-cabinets.
These Wunderkammern were of course a treat to show-off to visiting dignitaries and an unparallelled collection of liminal objects which blurred the divide between Nature and artifice that also made a statement of the might of the Emperor—especially during a time of messy war with the Turks and the Finns—but primarily, there in the study-hall, were catchments of the art of memory and imagination. Polymath Pierre Hérgony himself was also a compatriot. University education or the time involved little research or experimentation and certainly did not invite unorthodox thought. There is quite a bit to unpack here and sadly the catalogue was broken up, lost, destroyed or hidden away—the perpetual motion machines, grimoires, unicorn horns and other unverified relics, so it is hard to declare Rudolf’s greatest legacy, but among the top contenders would certainly be the Emperor’s engagement with astronomers Tycho Brahe and Nicholas Copernicus, who during their tenure at court moved the centre of the Universe from Earth to the Sun and finally to a point in the void, a focus, around which the worlds revolved.

5x5

corso zundert: Dutch annual tournament of tulips parade

bromance: Donald Trump praises Silvio Berlusconi as a “nice man”

a pig in a poke: thoughtful, well-organized essay explores how the history of technology parallels the history of pockets

limestone: looking at the chemistry and biology of coral colonies, material science is developing cleaner cement

superhenge: hidden landscape project hint at the true extent of the ritual monument