Tuesday 23 August 2016
finger-licking good
popular imagination
A small specialist publishing house in Burgos with a penchant for the palindrome, the Local’s Spanish edition reports, has been granted permission to recreate exact replicas of the enigmatic and mysterious Voynich manuscript, named after the Polish antiquarian who acquired the fifteenth century document from Italian Jesuits just before the start of WWI. Scholars, collectors and cryptographers have been bewitched by this inscrutable tome ever since it came to light—having baffled all and successfully thwarted every attempt to decipher it or deduce it’s authorship—or even its purpose.
The text consists of a score of unique glyphs that has all the hallmarks of an alphabet and natural language but cannot be decoded, adorned by bizarre and beautiful illustrations that provide little in the way of context clues—naked women and plants that don’t exist, leading some to suggest it is a book of magic spells or a treatise on alchemy, rendered so, covertly by one of the respected and orthodox luminaries of the age—or even the artefact of a visiting extra-terrestrial or temporal tourist. What is your theory? Images of the entire book has been available online for some time (the original is kept safe in a vault at Yale University), but the publishers home that exact copies that capture the weight of the parchment, every tear and stain might just embolden the wit of academics in the near future to take that leap and be able to intuit its meaning.
catagories: ๐ช๐ธ, ๐, ๐ฌ, ๐, myth and monsters
Monday 22 August 2016
6x6
fungus among us: a look into the amazing, networked lives of fungi, including the potential for living bricks made out of mushrooms and pistachio husks
one hot minute: Koko the Gorilla shows bassist Flea how it’s done
gumshoe: Scotland Yard’s new task-force of super-recognisers could revolutionise the force, via the always marvelous Nag on the Lake
we represent the folly cove guild: the unsung graphic designers of Cape Ann Massachusetts and their stunning, iconic prints and patterns
the ocean’s hotdog: the tale behind the origin of fish-fingers, the convenience food no one asked for
amber room: excavations begin for legendary Nazi gold train—which could also be carrying proto-type weapons, via Hyperallergic
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ถ, ๐, antiques, architecture, food and drink
vorrat
While it is always sound advice to “prepare appropriately for a development that could threaten our existence and cannot be categorically ruled out in the future” it does smack as pretty frightening and foreboding (especially in German), and the directive to citizens to stockpile food as an element of a broader civil defense plan does raise one’s spider-senses.
The timing of the announcement, which was last issued during the Cold War, does not, I think, indicate some imminent attack but rather a general precaution—especially as it is customary to make a trip to the neighbourhood market an almost daily occurrence and not buying in bulk—nor cue people to change their lifestyles. What do think? While not down Tornado Alley exactly or contending with tremours, German does have its share of natural catastrophes as well, without leaning on the threat of war or terrorism. Surely this plan was months in development and includes increasing the budget for emergency services and increasing hospital capacity, and there was no intent to cause panic or stoke conspiracies or the admission that multiculturism and inclusion is something to cower before.
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐, ๐ช️, ๐ง , food and drink, foreign policy