five-by-five

pantheon: murals of Greek gods superimposed against chaotic graffiti

fourth wall: a look at the pilot of Daddy-O from 1961, a sitcom that would have broken the fourth wall

sharper image: due to popular demand, Sky Mall catalogs are returning

these kids today and their y2k: classic countdown to Armageddon

the flower of battle: a beautifully illustrated fifteenth century guide to marshal arts

backmasking and beelzebub

From the Red Scare to recovered memories (with all the cringe-worthy hysteria of satanic sacrifice, subliminal song lyrics, and the general hallmarks that typify the industry of scaring the privileged classes), Alternet presents an outline that covers in brief the eruption of successive social panics in the US. Even though some of these terrors passed in the main as quickly as they came, their formative causes that appealed to the mass imagination and insecurities on a resounding level and their knock-on effects are still lingering and primed to champion the next. These assaults are not only against science, understandably fuelled by businesses outside of public-purview whose own privilege is fail-safe, but can be rallied against reason itself. This does not seem to bode well for the world at large, who's now even more closely committed to the rage
and mania of Americans.

duktig or arts and crafts

Daily Beast features a nice chart and timeline of the Bauhaus movement.

The design school that sought to create the harmonious and practical—durable and affordable too—which rose out of the rubble and ruin of Germany after the Great War, was dismissed as degenerate and subversive but those principles of design and economy certainly did win out in the end. It’s easy to take for granted how those founding visions of simplicity and democratisation have endured and sustained our sense of style and environment, sometimes reflected imperfectly but still without distortion, but the movement is very vibrant in terms of typography and elements of presentation—and of course in the Swedish furniture giant that dominates domiciles the world around.

five horsemen or executive-decision

Slate magazine has a pretty provoking essay on the nature of our executive faculties of decision making, also known as free-will, and how technologies emerging a-pace is altering the landscape of choosing and prerogative.
In some ways, buffeted by legislated morality disguised as cautious health and safety regulations, our feelings of being in control, having a choice translated into a statement and stance, individual will seems strengthened. There is some hint of distaste, however, that that confidence is illusory, and that seed of doubt is sown in a very fecund field. Maybe when faced with a paucity of alternatives, we’d like to imagine that we’re still being deliberative in a narrow framework—where the technology has already decided for us. The article speaks of five horsemen, those galloping fields of bio-engineering, robotics, artificial intelligence, nanites and the manipulation of judgment, perception and reason (also said to embrace free-will itself), that are canting leagues—some say, of the institutions, laws and even our own ability to cognitively cope, which while not heralds of assured destruction do seem to announce an era of difficult choices and direct dialogue.

five-by-five

lunchables: 3-D printer creates living, growing food

double-jeopardy: venture aims to promote an on-line trivia competitive community as a way to pay down student loan debt

promenade: bouncing, dancing continental gifs

ants go marching two by two: a study of the social insects reveals the dangers of isolation

corporate raider: The Guardian presents an historical overview of the East India Company

quantum triviality

Via Neat-o-Rama, comes the story that the mathematically literate and long-running television series The Simpsons had Homer at the blackboard (in the episode The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace, wherein he tries to outdo the prolificacy of inventor Thomas Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park) parsing a formula that’s eerily similar to the solution that particle physicists derived over a decade later to describe the mass of a Higgs-Boson particle, whose existence at the time of first airing was only theoretical. Given the naming controversy over this nano-particle, sometimes called the “God Particle,” maybe it should be called the Homer Boson. Even if only coincidental—to show the audience something incongruent, something they’d expect more from Professor Frick, and inscrutable, I hope that the story is true—although the debunking can also attract a lot of interest and hopefully in the sciences as well as the cartoon.

gazetteer

Vox complies an interesting and sometimes rather chilling glimpse of alternative histories and outcomes mapped-out graphically in twenty unrealized battle plans, contingency operations, secessionists’ aspirations, and massive infrastructure projects.

 I especially found engrossing the portrayal of Africa without colonialism, the secret US invasion plans for Canada, or the proposal for the terra-forming of the Mediterranean Sea. A gazetteer or a gazette has sometimes been used as name for a newspaper but originally referred to a directory, an index to be used in conjunction with a map or an atlas—like the underlying battle plans or agendas that plotted out these charts.