one planet, slightly used

Although this photograph from the NASA archives from a 1984 space-walk might look as if the Earth were for sale, astronauts Joseph P Allen IV and Dale A Gardener are actually making a comment on the quality of two recovered satellites that failed to deploy properly and fell into lower orbits. This space shuttle Discovery mission was the only time “space junk” was salvaged and brought back to Earth for repairs.

blessed are the cheesemakers

Although we’re a little late for this season with first Advent last Sunday already (I suppose that necessitates that we’ll just have to eat extra morsels to catch up) and as the finished kit won’t be ready until next Christmas—via Bored Panda, there are instructions on how to make a cheese Advents calendar of one’s own. That sounds perfectly delectable and preferable—at least to my wizened old palette—to chocolates. I know quite a few fancy delicatessens and fromageries that could pull together some truly gourmet ways to count down to the holidays. What would be your daily treat?

geodesy or tectonic fictions

The always brilliant and imaginative BLDGBlog has a feature about Danish geomancers that are getting close to unveiling an “atlas of the underworld,” won through ground x-rays and computerised tomography—that is, CT scanning.
While it’s amazing enough to be able to peer into the depths of what lies beneath (and I thought it would take the whole array of gravitational wave detectors on opposite ends of the globe to bring into any sort of focus what’s under the crust), these early images also narrate an inferred history of continental drift and whole islands, oceans and mountain ranges that are now lost to us ephemeral beings. Realising how short of a time our present map of the world has existed in its recognisable form is really humbling and it makes one wonder what other artefacts—not just fossils or treasure—might have been buried and forgot.

encomio

Since seeing that raw tweet put out by one major news organisation—since amended—announcing the death of Fidel Castro with the parenthetical instructions to update the number of US presidents he’s survived if George HW Bush were to perish first, I’ve been thinking about how the media keeps its reckoning for the dead in a very much animated manner, updated continuously for all persons of note. Sadly, this year has seen quite enough in those columns. Kottke takes a look at how another bulwark of journalism has been morbidly drafting and then revising Castro’s obituary for nearly six decades on a set recurring basis as well as every time intrigue or rumours began circulating—the Cuban leader having outlived not only several successive regimes but even print journalism, various formats of media storage and some of the industry’s other institutions.