sónar calling

Celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary, the music, creativity and technology festival Sónar that just concluded in Barcelona, as BLDGBlog informs, is sending transmissions, short samples of electronic music to a potentially inhabited exoplanet via a high-gain radio station in Tromsø, Norway. The second of two signal bursts, it’s projected to arrive at Luyten β (GJ 273b)—orbiting a stable red dwarf star and among the most Earth-like planets discovered to date—by 2030 with a reply another dozen years in the waiting. Listen to the message and playlist at the link above.

iww

First published and distributed in 1909 by the Wobblies of Spokane, Washington, the Little Red Songbook—officially Songs of the Industrial Workers of the World—was a rousing compilation of standards meant to engender solidarity and lift the spirits of the marginalised. Nearly two hundred different songs were captured in editions that ran until 1973, including the anthem “The Red Flag,” which was adopted in 1945 by the British and Irish Labour parties—later in translation by the North Korean armed forces. Traditionally sung at the conclusion of every party congress—though under the leadership of Tony Blair the practise was discouraged. With the chorus:

Then raise the scarlet standard high.
Beneath its shade we’ll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We’ll keep the Red Flag flying here.

Sung to the tune of O Tannenbaum! (“Oh Christmas Tree” rather disconcertingly) the song’s stanzas (with the choral refrain in between) are as follows:

The People’s Flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyred dead,
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their hearts’ blood dyed its every fold.

Look round, the Frenchman loves its blaze,
The sturdy German chants its praise,
In Moscow’s vaults its hymns were sung
Chicago swells the surging throng.

It waved above our infant might,
 When all ahead seemed dark as night;
It witnessed many a deed and vow,
We must not change its colour now.

It well recalls the triumphs past,
It gives the hope of peace at last;
The banner bright, the symbol plain,
Of human right and human gain.

It suits today the weak and base,
Whose minds are fixed on pelf and place
To cringe before the rich man’s frown,
And haul the sacred emblem down.

With head uncovered swear we all
To bear it onward ‘til we fall;
Come dungeons dark or gallows grim,
This song shall be our parting hymn.

rolling stock

The departed pair of graphic design pioneers Massimo and Lella Vignelli bequeathed their papers—some sixty years-worth of drawings, layouts and logo ideas, to the Rochester Institute of Technology, where a single archivist is discovering and documenting previously unknown treasures with regularity. Among the latest striking finds includes these circa 1973 proposals for an abstract diagrammatic map for Washington DC’s Metro system. The authorities ultimately opted for another concept but did incorporate some of Massimo’s ideas. Be sure to visit City Lab at the link up top to learn more about the artists and their legacy and to discover more artefacts.

jumpman

Wanting to establish Nintendo reputation in the arcade—its first games flattering in popularity compared to rival Atari—the original concept for Donkey Kong was to feature Popeye, Olive Oyl and Bluto as an ensemble of characters.
The legendary video game engineer Shigeru Miyamoto, however, was not able to obtain the rights to these characters (until the following year—that is, and released a forgettable title based on the sailor man) so designed a world with an unnamed protagonist whose mission was to rescue Lady (later to be called Pauline) from a brute ape. Referred to as Jumpman in the instruction booklet and styled Mister Video by Miyamoto himself with the idea he would be a reoccurring character across all games, the character was limned out with a family and profession for his next appearance in Mario Bros., being the namesake of Mario Segale, the real estate developer that owned the warehouse where Nintendo had set up its US division. After a heated exchange between the company’s executives and the landlord over being behind on rent, game developers opted to name the character after him with assurances that they would be caught up on payments soon.

the betterment of well people

Fresh Air host Terry Gross interviews food ethnographer Michael Pollen (known for the adage “eat food, not too much, mostly plants”) on the history, experimentation, therapeutic application, social impact, suppression and current revival of psychedelic drugs—both natural and synthetic—with some first-hand anecdotal evidence.
Not only do clinical trials seem promising in providing patients and the non-remarkable a way to step outside of their repetitive narrative and re-write it, the general view of society is shifting to one more willing to take the potentially scary step towards self-reflection and dissolving one’s ego. Do listen to the entire programme and check out the author’s book, but one of my favourite take-aways (of several) that can help explain why this once broadly accepted and praised method became so demonised: the rite of passage of young people during the Counter-Culture was in part drug-laced and an experience that the elders had not shared and thus felt threatened by it. Timothy Leary earned the appellation The Most Dangerous Man in America by Richard Nixon for saying that these kids taking LSD aren’t going to be the ones to fight your wars and wholly outlawed all consciousness expanding expedients as having no pharmacological merit and other jurisdictions quickly followed that example.

inland empire

We are finding the wealth of New World charts depicting what’s presently the State of California as an island and separated from the continent to be quite fascinating.
I wonder what other geographic misconceptions have been perpetrated and fossilised in the same fashion (see more examples here—having discussed this very subject before but having quite forgot—plus another island that existed only as a cartographical error)—the a-drift version of California (the name itself coming from a early fourteenth century romance about an earthly paradise) reappearing over the decades despite the fact that explorers had confirmed that the Baja peninsula was in fact firmly attached. See the whole curated selection of maps and learn more at the Public Domain Review at the link up top.

6x6

el diablo: a ghoulish gallery of the comic and pulp art of Mexican publications of the 50s and 60s

和菓子: Edo period illustrations of Japanese confections called wagashi

in memoriam: ten stunning structures designed by recently departed architect Will Alsop

red carpet: Star Wars actress dazzles with a Vivienne Westwood original that celebrates increasing diversity in science fiction

landlines: an assortment of vintage telephones from Western Electric, via Weird Universe

from bauhaus to our house: celebrating the wide-ranging contributions and influence of author and journalist Tom Wolfe