pipe-dreams

This fully equipped residential building by architect Sergey Kuznetsov is a steel-clad installation that reflects the building’s surroundings and is perched on a hill in Kaluga, an aesthetic but inorganic intervention for the park on the bank of the Oka river. Read more about the model home, perhaps future glamping experience called Russian Quintessential from Design Boom at the link above.

dama de elche

Discovered just south of the eponymous private estate on this day in 1897, the intricate limestone bust known as the Lady of Elx is a fourth or fifth century BC Punic-Iberian artefact depicting the Carthage goddess Tanit, the equivalent of Astarte—Romanised as Juno Caelestis. Possibly used as a funerary urn, the originally sculpture would have been polychromed and the coils of her elaborate headdress are called rodetes and once featured on the one peseta bank note.

the thing

While best known for inventing the electronic musical instrument the theremin, Léon Theremin also designed one of the first bugging devices to passively transmit audio signals. A forerunner to RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips used in inventory control and as anti-shoplifting technology, the so called Thing (the first of its kind) or the Endovibrator (Эндовибра́тор) was embedded in a carved wooden seal presented to the ambassador of the US diplomatic mission to the Soviet Union by the Young Pioneer organisation (see also) as a gesture of friendship on this day in 1945, shortly before the end of World War II. Ingeniously, a small length of antenna requiring no external power source would vibrate, picking up voices in the embassy office and could be demodulated—without risk of detection by a receiver tuned to the right station.

Unnoticed for nearly seven years until under the tenure of George F. Kennan, the Thing was only discovered by accident with a radio operator at the neighbouring British compound picking up feedback. The existence of such bugging capabilities was not disclosed to the public until 1960, during an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council convened after a US spy plane had been shot down over Soviet territory.

billing block

With a portfolio to match any one in the industry, creating the iconic movie posters for all sorts of films in the seventies and eighties from Chinatown to Flash Gordon to the documentary of Woodstock, we appreciated the introduction to the graphic designer Richard Amsel (*1947 - †1985) from Reagan Ray and the artist’s distinctive soft, decorative signature style. Prolific and stellar, Amsel’s career was cut short after a diagnosis of AIDS and dying three months later—prompting many tributes and memorials that sustain his indelible legacy. Peruse a whole gallery of Amsel’s work at the link above.

netscape navigator

We enjoyed contemplating these social media properties featured in Print Magazine reimagined with retro trappings of the late nineties and early noughts (see also) from website builder Zyro. Though nostalgia is not the best impulse to reach for and those Golden Ages are illusory, we liked the subtle indictment of the platforms that ruined the internet and society at large.

aw:

Dispatched the day before from Cambridge, Massachusetts using the CSNET (Computer Science Network) platform Informatik and economics student Michael Rotert (“rotert@germany”) of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology became on this day in 1984 the first recipient (see also) of an email in West Germany, with project director Werner Zorn on the cc-line. The body read “Wlikomen in CSNET! Michael, This is your official welcome to CSNET.”

wag the dog

From the always engaging Language Hat, which just turned nineteen years old, we learn that the above phrase has a specific origin (see previously here, here and here) and can in print be sourced to the rather infamous 1858 play by Tom Taylor Our American Cousin (a boorish American comes to England as claimant to an estate—think King Ralph) and a scene with the characters Lord Dundreary and Florence: “Now I’ve got another. Why does a dog waggle his tail?” “Upon my word, I’ve never inquired.” “Because the tail can’t waggle the dog. Ha!” Familiar with the performance and audience reaction, Abraham Lincoln’s assassin timed his gun shot to be muted by laughter when the eponymous cousin Asa Trenchard says to Missus Mountchessington: “Don’t know the manners of good society, eh? Well—I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal, you sockdologizing old man-trap!” More philological investigations at the link up top.

6x6

roll for perception: the official video for the 1987 Rick Astley hit (previously) surpasses one billion views   

until proven safe: EURIDICE, the eponym from the mythological Eurydice who Orpheus failed to retrieve from the Underworld, is the acronym for European Underground Research Infrastructure for the Disposal of Nuclear Waste in a Clay Environment  

a clokey production: a bot scours Gumbasia for random screen-grabs

pelagic waters: exploring the oceans’ midnight zone beyond the reach of the sun’s rays

portrait of a teenage alcoholic: a 1975 after school special starring The Exorcist’s Linda Blair and Star Wars’ Mark Hamill  

an eternal golden braid: some crib-notes and a course on the 1987 classic Gödel, Escher, Bach