wampum or echo base

Some are criticising the 2008 decision by the Norwegian Ministry of Defense with the approval of NATO to mothball and sell its secret arctic seaport at Olavsvern, three-decades in the making at a cost of over half a billion dollars, at less than one percent of the construction price as one of the biggest blunders of recent military history. 

These apparent pangs of remorse of not having any ready presence near the North Pole are much compounded by the fact that the bargain-hunting holding group have sublet the property—now off-bounds from any government oversight—to a fleet of Russian research vessels, ostensibly prospecting for untapped sources of petroleum in the contested reigon, that wintered in cavernous compound. Given, however, that the privatisation took place under the auspices of a government whose then leader now heads the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as a whole, I wonder if there is not something else going on here. Despite the complete lack of economic necessity to divest itself from any of its holdings, whether or not of dubious strategic value five years ago, the transaction seemed to belong to a buyers’ market and no vanity environmentalist, troll-cordonnier, film-crew, patient investor or even a mad-scientists seeking a hidden lair materialised at the time—for the first public auction of such an installation was advertised online. I wonder if there is not some sort of game of entrapment going on here.

five-by-five

huldufólk: elf-conservationists are stalling construction projects all over Iceland

pink punk: fun renditions of the theme from Blake Edwards’s Pink Panther

upstairs, downstairs: amazing and intricate stairwell concept models

the ballad of max headroom: rewritten by machine on new technology 

pick-ups, perfume and pasta: fifteen commercial ventures directed by David Lynch

salonnière or narrative structure

The ever intriguing BLDGBlog has a marvelously curated preview of an upcoming series of seminars chaired by the Flea Folly Architects of London on narrative architecture, inviting one to imagine a cityscape made with the vision and distinct styles of story-tellers in all media. The group’s own venture to create a serpentine plot “disguised” as an incredible, geometric urban-setting—as illustrated through Grimm City, wherein a fairy-tale Gotham sprawls as projections of the eponymous folklorist’s own enchantments, and rather the opposite of being inspired by the some of the places associated with their research and story-gathering, I think gives prospective acolytes a taste of what the workshop might offer.

columbian exchange

A pairing of thoughtful articles from Vox and Æon magazines present some really interesting insights and unresolved questions about ushering in the Anthropocene epoch.
There are many contenders for when the handiwork of man might have outstripped, outpaced geological change, from the nebulous reaches of time when early humans first hunted giant mammals to extinction—although the Holocene Age (Greek for wholly new) seems to me to include the rise of man, the landing of the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria that introduced global trade and New World transplants to the Old, a point in 1610 when green-house gases began an uptick due to land-management practice, the Industrial Revolution, the atomic bomb, to the nuclear winter of 1964. While it is an arbitrary distinction to some extent and many researchers will continue to champion their favourites in terms of delineation once—if a consensus is reached, what’s nearly as significant as the change that man is imparting on the environment is that we’re adverse, maybe unable to recognise or reconcile is when and how man became estranged from Nature—fancied as no longer of Nature but rather Nature was made man’s ward, with us as not very fit caretakers. What do you think? For all the eons that have gone before, is this debate a reasonable one?  It can nonetheless become a helpful one, I believe.

five-by-five

chizukigou: check out these lovely Japanese map legend symbols

système vidéo domestique: French artist repackages contemporary series and films in VHS wrapping

SMPTE bars: a look behind the scenes at the calibration tools of our seemingly seamless electronic world

maki-maki: sushi roll bath-towel concept

mirror, mirror: a look at Star Trek’s departures into an alternate reality

cartogram or far, far away

Some additional two-thousand fantastic pictorial maps of all subjects and styles have recently been acquired to supplement the already impressive resource and collections of Cartographer David Rumsey. There are endless curated galleries to wander down on his website and too many jewels to showcase so don’t pass up the chance to visit.

long-haul or get your kicks

The first trans-continental road-trip across North America—from San Francisco to New York City, was undertaken by pioneer and doctor Horatio Nelson Jackson on a bet and as a publicity stunt to demonstrate that the automobile was not just a passing-craze. In 1903, when he and his driving partner got off to a start, there was only about three hundred kilometers of paved roadways between the end points, virtually no maps and naturally no filling- or service-stations along the way. Once, a ranch hand misdirected the travelers on a lengthy, dangerous detour so her family, it was later revealed, could see a real live car. After some harrowing adventures and many break-downs, the company—which now included a mascot—arrived on the East Coast to fanfare. Jackson’s feat was certainly an impressive one and parallels the trail-blazing journey of Bertha Benz, whose hundred kilometer trip in the summer of 1888 from Mannheim to Pforzheim marked the first time in history anyone had driven a significant distance in an automobile.
Jackson’s wife, who was also called Bertha but no relation, was a wealthy heiress who helped him finance his hobbies—as was the business partner and later wife of inventor Karl Benz, but Bertha Benz is credited as an accomplished mechanic and expert promoter, feeling her husband was inadequately marketing his prototypes. With the excuse of going to pop off to visit her mother, Benz gathered her children and off they went, without telling her husband. They made quite an impression, and although they fewer hardships that Jackson’s team, did run out of petrol—for which Benz had the wherewithal to get a suitable catalyst from a pharmacy. The success was a great boon for the name and the industry. Incidentally, the make of the car Jackson drove was a Winton—a name not around anymore, though insanely popular after Jackson’s road-trip, was vindictively driven out of business by an upstart named Henry Ford, who the proprietor of the motor carriage company would not hire. Both accomplishments transformed the landscape of the world, how we work and live and paved the paths in between.