Monday 5 September 2016

redoubt and ravelin

The always interesting Kuriositas has an engrossing feature on the concrete and steel behemoths, the Flak Towers that form to this day a considerable portion of the skylines of some of the cities defended from Allied airstrikes during World War II.
These poignant reminders, whose terminology comes to us from the mouthful Flugabwehr- kanone, like remnants of the Atlantic Wall and pillbox bunkers along the beaches that are too sturdy to be easily demolished are not just sentinels of a muted, recent past—many urban centres, like with this tower in Hamburg, have decided not to try to raze these structures and live with their legacy (which was not only offensive but also provided shelter for tens of thousands during air raids) by repurposing them in innovative ways. Be sure to check out the full photo-essay on Kuriositas to learn more about the flak towers’ past and future.

Sunday 4 September 2016

them!

Reading a bit like a formicidic version Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the research of Polish entomologists into an ant “colony” discovered subsisting in a derelict nuclear weapons bunker yields quite a few unexpected findings, via Super Punch.
That the ants could carry on at all under such harsh and deprived conditions is remarkable to begin with, but even stranger is how they go through the motions of eusocial behaviour (more on the insects here and here) absent a queen or off-spring of their own, the population only being replenished by hapless outsider ants that fall through holes in the ventilation shaft and are obliged to join their ranks. The environment in the bunker is not at all suited to ants, being constantly cold and nearly devoid of food sources. Scientists are not speculating that the ants stave off certain starvation by somehow feeding on radiation, but rather gruesomely guess that the ants are surviving off the ecology that has established itself in the ants’ rather extensive graveyard (among the normal conventions that they try to keep up in these very abnormal conditions) and are in a way cannibals once removed—or zombies outright.

churfrankenland

We had heard of the Kurhesse region or even Churmainz previously (referring to the principalities’ electoral passing influence) but never before the term Churfranken, which was adopted not too long ago by a consortium of towns, villages and singular destinations along the River Main between the Spessart and Odenwald mountain ranges to promote themselves. We took advantage of the extended weekend to take a drive through this area and saw a few of the sites.
First, we toured the grounds of Schloss Mespelbrunn, an early Renaissance moated castle and keep still owned by the same noble family, governor of the Archbishop of Mainz six centuries on. We had the briefest of tours before being inundated with the crowds from a tour bus that had just arrived, but we were able to navigate through the trophy room ourselves and marvel at the authentic state of the elements and embellishments.
We clung to the river’s banks, crisscrossing several bridges and saw quite a lot along the way before stopping in historic Miltenberg. Here too, we unexpectedly found ourselves overwhelmed with crowds—there was a huge festival going on, but had a nice walk through the town nonetheless. Established as Roman fortress because of its strategic and defensible location, the town prospered throughout the Middle Ages because of its deposits of red sandstone, a distinctive building material much valued all over Europe.
The market, town gates and scores of half-timbered (Fachwerk) houses were absolutely charming and well-preserved. Among the main sites is the inn Zum Riesen (the Giant), whose registration documents dating back to the early 1400s make it one of the oldest, continuously running hotels in the world, with its guests including Holy Roman emperors, kings, generals, Napolรฉon, chancellors and Elvis Presley. We’ll have to return here soon and explore more.

Saturday 3 September 2016

steampunk

Published in the last decades of the nineteenth century and arguably the first dedicated periodical dedicated to science-fiction, the Franke Reade Library was quite a visionary—although that vision included Manifest Destiny, the white man’s burden and second-wave colonialism as well as the untapped potential of electricity—exploit in circulation in the five-and-dimes of New York and abroad.
Writing under the pseudonym Noname (which made me think of how the wily Odysseus called himself Nobody, ฮŸแฝ–ฯ„ฮนฯ‚, as a nom de guerre whilst combatting the Cyclopes and how Nemo is the Latin equivalent of the pen-name), the young Cuban-American Luis Senarens was certainly the first modern prolific writer in the genre, authoring hundreds of stories in this series and in others, later becoming the editor of a detective story and true-crime magazine. The comparison of Senarens’ work to that of Jules Verne (Captain Nemo) is and the two corresponded over their careers—taking elements of the other’s feats of engineering.

Friday 2 September 2016

icebreaker and impasse

The somewhat ironically named Crystal Serenity is the first leviathan of a cruise-liner to haul holiday-makers through the once fabled Northwest Passage (only navigable year around since 2009 due to the arctic pack ice) and recently completed its maiden voyage, as Jalopnik reports.
Not only were guests a bit disappointed to not see majestic icebergs parting before them or penguins and polar bears accompanying them, it seems they also failed to appreciate the infamy of being the first “explorers” here. Aside from stark environmental concerns, as the sea-lanes widen and traffic inevitably increases, it also poses a vexing problem for Canada since the waters are part of the country’s internal territory but the rest of the maritime world has already decided (without conferring first with Canada) that there should be free and unhindered transit for all. Depending on how negotiations go forward, Canada might maintain its fishing and environmental regulations but not the power to bar any vessel entry—saddled with the responsibility for combatting piracy, smuggling and clean-up operations when a spill or a wreck does occur.

food, fรณlks and fun

Though the last franchise of a global fast-food giant closed nearly seven years ago due to the worldwide financial crisis, there is apparently still at least one committed gourmand, as the Reykjavรญk Grapevine reports, who received a parcel from Hungary containing a hamburger.
The customs office intercepted the package before the recipient could claim it, and it is unclear whether the meal was consumed afterwards (or if indeed this was a regular delivery but I do not imagine that much contraband gets through the Icelandic postal system). Given that the last value menu sold in the country was on display under glass at the National Museum looking little changed since October 2009 (it’s subsequently been moved to a plinth at a local hostel), I am guessing the Icelander was able to satisfy his nostalgic cravings.

Thursday 1 September 2016

the uncola

I really enjoyed reading this history of 7Up from Collectors’ Weekly and learning how a succession of marketing campaigns that brilliantly, verging perhaps on plagiarism sometimes, helped the UnCola distinguish itself from the cadre of competing tonics by making the soft drink resonate the movement of the times, echoing Peter Max (especially his playfulness), psychedelia and the Yellow Submarine.
It’s really worth browsing the entire gallery of billboards, posters and merchandise amassed by a few dedicated collectors that helped the beverage survive—including covert and overt references to protests of the Vietnam War and illicit hallucinogens. The only thing missing from the account is the effervescent story behind its original, secret recipe—which contained lithium—and is named in homage to the pep (or rather mood-stabilising effects) that that element with the atomic mass of seven can impart.

glass menagerie or radial symmetry

Hyperalleric invites us on a field-trip that they’ve helped to curate themselves to the Corning Glass Museum to marvel at the exhibit of antique glass models of deep sea creatures—tube worms, squid, corals and anemones—crafted in a nineteenth century workshop in Dresden from the stacks and storerooms of Cornell University, having acquired a sizable amount of them in the late 1800s for instruction in marine biology.
The glass-workers were quite skilled and came from a long line of artists, and in response to wide-spread interest in natural history at the time, turned their attention away from jewelry (though having gotten quite talented at making glass eyes for taxidermists) and tried to accurately capture the look of these delicate specimens that usually disintegrate once taken out of their native environment. The gorgeous creations were shelved and forgotten with the advent of photography, and later rediscovered and mended—nearly as fragile as the invertebrates they represent, displayed not just as other-worldly chandeliers and beautiful baubles but also studied as record (a novel sort of fossil) of the loss of biodiversity in the oceans over the ensuing century and a half.