wayback machine

Our latest electronic help-mate is a pretty clever little device that backs up one's data, passively--parasitically almost, over one's local, WiFi network.  The external hard-drive--a little monolith that completes the henge in the office--can accomodate an incomprehensibly large though what is now a standard metric of information from up to three different sources, computers, and is sensible enough to save only what has been changed or added since the last session.  Keeping one's history and memories safe is quite different than one's indelible footprints on social networking sites.  Seeing the manufacturer's logo, instantly made me recall that I have an antique pair of silver cufflinks with nearly the same design, although I believe that the cufflinks show an amber wave of grain rather than a ocean swell.

free agent or blonde ambition tour

Special effects artists are able to do amazing and pretty imaginative things, though computer-generated animation still fails to live up to sets and scale models, but there are ambitious plans to digitally resurrect actors and actresses to ensure cinematic continuity.  The executor of the estate of Marilyn Monroe is in negotiations to license her likeness, not just for movie royalties and icon's image on merchandise, but her potential screen-presence for future movies when the technology is perfected.  Contemporary stars may be appearing along side or in competing auditions with such immortals, first as post-production edits, holograms, Marilyn-Monroe-Bots, zombies, clones and gholas.  It is far different than continuing one's career quietly, meditatively as a brain in a vat.  Living actors could further just start calling it in--lending their likeness and let animators do the work, like with promotions and celebrity fragrances.

The potential for strangeness is a bit overwhelming, with legal wranglings, discrimination against the real and the living, piracy and copyrights, and the digital screen-actors' guild.  Instead, I rather enjoy the ideas behind these brilliant movie posters from alternate realities from Sean Hartter.   What fantasy casts would you bring together?

rope-charmer or snake oil

Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and all the other visionaries knew about the progression of the celestial sphere through the heavens, cycling season by season, and epoch by epoch. The constellations, originally serviceable as an aid to navigation and the herald the changing of the seasons and were both derivatives and forerunners of the calendar, more meaningful than just a fixed count of days, familiar in zodiacal circles and a sort of birthmark and personality-avatar were set out at least three-thousand years ago, as known in the West. A group of astronomers are advocating a significant realignment of the Signs: this shift of the fimbriation from one constellation to the next recognizes the wobble and imperfections (again, made by calendars that are a count of days, where a day is a count of hours, ad absurdum) of the Earth's transit is a departure of the classical division, the sphere of the heavens, having 360 degrees, parsed into twelve equal thirty degree houses.

There are not thirteen months now, but Scorpio--in a bit of an unfair turn of events--has been nearly edged out, in favour of the now more prominent Ophiuchus, the snake-handler and identified with the Father of Medicine, Aesculapius. None of this is new or novel, and there have always been purists and different schools of astrology. Incidentally, mythological, it is the Scorpion that crouches at the foot of Orion, as he embarks on his Great Hunt. While sporting with the other safari gods, Orion threatened to hunt down every last animal on Earth, but Mother Nature (Gaia) sent the Scorpion to sting Orion and stop the violence. According to some versions of the legend, it was Aesculapius (Ophiucus) who was able to heal Orion, though the party was called off. I guess that is why all these figures were banished to the night skies to chase each other forever. It seems especially unfair, though, considering Scorpios' ruling planet, Pluto, was demoted not too long ago.

ebb tide or compound words

Though the rushing, roiling water in our little stream rages like a mighter river, the water level (Pegelstand) seems to be leveling off and sinking back within its banks.  During this process, however, we were introduced to a very useful and by turns reassuring and anxious-making government website, der Deutschehochwassernachtrichtendienst--you know, hnd. 

We have been monitoring it quite closely but its united and scientific front for information is much better than impeachingly staring at the American Weather Channel or competing broadcasters' weather-copters and Doppler radar sweeps for disaster news.  US emergency management could decidedly take a cue from this.  The landscape looks strange, mostly denuded from snow except where it has been smudged and packed, and the temperature is too balmy for this time of year, and we'll keep watching the waters for some time to come.