brazen bull

Despite the relative profusion of medieval torture museums and the odd device displayed in a cellar or alcove—settings that lend an air of authenticity, it is interesting to think how an inflated idea of savagery has been perpetuated, and in fact torture and public gatherings to watch an execution were exceedingly rare occurrences.
Such spectacles did happen from time to time to seed the imagination and set an example, of course, but these were in the main orchestrated to assert legitimacy for new regimes—to suppress revolts and to claim a divine right of republic when dynastic orders were pushed aside. The artefacts, often shameless reconstructions cannibalised from other less exciting machine parts, planks and ploughshares from an appropriate age with no disclosure to the visitor—real or imaginary, are sort of a caprice, an idyll of hobbyists that I am not sure from what tradition of urban legends originate—though it seems rather Victorian to cultivate such diversions. Whatever the compulsion was to begin with, it seems that the historically selective and seldom practices carry the same forces of propaganda, though inverted, by suggesting that the same contemporary lexicon is hyperbole and drawing on the brutality of an uncivilised past, which was probably much more restrained.

typeface or spaghetti and meatballs

In light of one of the internet’s prime estate’s decision to re-brand its appearance with a little kerning and serif that makes one wonder about the endurance of the iconic and recognition—since of course logos and charges evolve and grow more sophisticated or shed their more esoteric heraldry in favour of something cleaner and simpler (Google too has of course doodled through several phases and still true to it’s refrigerator magnet alphabet theme and still rather a bit evocative of juvenile clothing line but nothing so tremolo-terrible as what the label GAP tried or new Coke), it was refreshing to see that others debated and agonised over the identity that logos impart.
The original emblem, in the tradition of a military unit patch, of the US National Aeronautic and Space Agency (NASA) came to be known as the meatball once it was replaced by a sleek modern, artisanal font. The rendering of the acronym last from the early seventies until the early nineties and was referred to as the worm, the agency having decided—not without controversy, to the original meatball design. Still mindful of this schism, the graphic design team that not only created and promoted the worm but also the vocabulary of standard icons—the template for a launch pad service truck, rocket parts, shuttles, spacesuits, etc that mission-planners had in their quivers to stage their presentation, are hoping to offer a big blank-book of these creations in small batches in a context that underscores their style with all its associations and aspirations.

the swerve or i am the operator with my pocket calculator

Fourth century BC philosophy, Epicurus, whose Athenian salon was referred to as the farm and attracted many contemporary adherents and much, much later through his rediscovery previsioned Enlightenment-thinking and quantum uncertainty as a way of giving free-will through a bit of microscopic called the swerve or deviation chaos a purchase in an otherwise pre-determined Cosmos, once extolled that, “a bit of cheese was enough to turn a meal of bread and water into a feast.”
Blaise Pascal, who is probably best known for his Wager also invented the first functional and patented pocket calculator to assist his ailing father in his job as an assayer and the discipline of probability and statistics by asking how to fairly call a game that was interrupted—it is never a draw—that drive our algorithmic-based economics and world-view, once wondered in his unfinished, draft Pensées how “The beak of the parrot, which it wipes, although it is clean.” I wonder what the contexts of both fragments were—I suspect they are one and the same.

5x5

good housekeeping seal of approval: a retrospective look at therapeutic and recreational use of LSD before it was outlawed

jingle-jangle: ice-cream van graveyard
autoscopy: psychological disorder that causes hallucinations of out-of-body experiences and Doppelgänger

message in a bottle: science and big-thinkers discusses what missive to impart to a rebooted civilsation

karma chameleon: chameleons change colours not to fade into the background but rather express themselves

bouillabaisse

I remember noting how back in 2008 through declassified CIA service records that gourmand, connoisseur and television cooking show pioneer Julia Child had served in the OSS—the Office of Security Services, the agency’s precedent incarnation, and being rather surprised but also cognizant that thousands of other women who weren’t celebrities had to maintain absolute silence on their early careers as well, which was surely an insult after being let go at the factories and laboratories once the crisis ended and being condemned to being merely house-proud.
Bea Arthur and Doctor Ruth Westheimer are in the same class as Child with many others surely to be disclosed posthumously. Until recently, however, I had not appreciated what Child’s war-time contributions were: the Smith College graduate and heiress volunteered for a duty assignment in Ceylon, and despite having not yet discovered her passion for kitchen chemistry, undertook to develop an effect shark-repellent. Aside from attacking overboard sailors and ejected airmen, curious sharks were thwarting Allied efforts to blockade Axis submarines in southeast Asia by getting themselves blown up by mines. Heretofore, the only known shark-repellent was the rotting carcass of another dead shark, which was not a very palatable part of one’s kit. Though not a perfect deterant (which even for its faults might be added to the quiver of current beach life-guard crews), Child’s team did manage to isolate certain copper-compounds that approximated the aversion of having a dead shark in the vicinity. Child married a fellow OSS staff member and were stationed subsequently in post-war France but with only her husband commissioned as an intelligence official. Going back to those tradition house-wifely duties, Child was introduced to French cuisine as sort of a transfiguring experience and became resolved to share this joy of cooking—plus the consumption, pairing of wine with meals—with a wider audience and worked passionately toward this goal rather than resigning into the background. Bon appetit!

dodona and di-oscuri

In one of its latest acquisition released for all, the Public Domain Review presents the 1898 illustrated ethnographical exposition on bird-watching in the Bird Gods by Charles de Kay with decorations by George Wharton Edwards.  The book opens with a strong injunction against those who’d seek to preen their own image with furs, skins, plumage and big-game trophies, written at a time just after the herds of buffalo were wiped out in North America and about a decade before the passenger pigeon went extinct and goes on to address the cultural and religious connotations attributed to auguries in action and in their natural habitat.

Pigeon-fanciers might already be in the know when it comes to the extensive catalogue of metaphorical associations (a truce) connected with this breed of bird, but the notion that dovecotes are allegorically thought to represent the treasury of souls in-waiting (a containment unit) was new to me, as well as the personified traits given to all the fowls of field and forest—like woodpeckers as locksmiths and by extension, SWAT teams, crows as tailors, the cuckoos as manifestations of foundlings (Young Arthur being nicknamed Egg), or that placing an oath upon a swan (compare the old-timey expression I swanny or the German saying, “es schwanet mir”—it makes me shudder, like saying someone’s walking on my grave carries an obligation to be true to one’s word, since the graceful birds are known for being discrete and mute, except for the occasional hiss and honk, they’ll confess all during their swan song, its final dirge. Be sure to check out the Public Domain Review’s extensive archives and well-curated collections for more forgotten treasures.