Monday 17 January 2011
wayback machine
catagories: antiques, lifestyle, technology and innovation
Saturday 15 January 2011
free agent or blonde ambition tour
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?
Friday 14 January 2011
rope-charmer or snake oil
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.
catagories: ๐, ๐จ, ๐, ๐ญ, holidays and observances
Thursday 13 January 2011
ebb tide or compound words
Wednesday 12 January 2011
klaxon or a bird that swims, a fish that sings
Tuesday 11 January 2011
flotsam and mackintoshes
The gradual warming trend here is melting the accumulated snow and the cold, cold ground and rivers cannot accommodate much more of the water. It is strange to think that the chief weapon against flooding the world-around is the humble sandbag and neighbours helping neighbours, and not something novel, unwieldy and dangerous like Ice-9, especially considering the weather-weirding factors that are most likely contributing to the extremes.
European communities along major rivers, particularly where the waters have been straightened and manicured for shipping and are more prone to flooding because of these alterations, are equipped, however, with impressive retractable retaining walls, steel panels that rise out of the harbour automatically and as articulated as the sluices of the canals that they guard. It is potentially tragic and certainly nerve-wracking but always handled with poise and steadfastness, and not the same breed of stubborn prospectors on eroding beach-front property. Venice and Amsterdam have endured below sea level for centuries, recognizing that the constructs and artifices encroaching on the environment bring the floods regularly, and even harnessing the power of the waters wanting to be untamed.
catagories: ๐, ๐ก️, ๐ช️, environment