Somewhat reminiscent of the accursed crew of the Flying Dutchman who are beginning to fuse with their ship in the Pirates of the Caribbean, the excellent Futility Closet introduces us to Altamura Man, discovered in a karst cave in Apulia (the heel part, near Bari) in 1993. The Palรฆolithic fossil is the best preserved and most complete example known, but owning to the calcite concretions of some one hundred and fifty thousand years of water funnelling over limestone, Altamura Man is merged with the cave and can only be studied in situ.
Sunday 9 October 2016
7x7
art deco revival: Paris’ 1920s Hotel Bachaumont is reopening with all its former grandeur after four decades
sequoia: the puzzling phenomena of the albino redwoods provide a glimpse into how trees communicate and support one another
suburbia: New York City is getting an underground park complete with Victory Gardens
transhuman: the first Cyborg Olympic Games are being held in Zรผrich
nightliner: with competition from discount flights and long-haul busses killing romance, Austrian railways are trying to save the sleeper berth
luminophore: self-charging, glow-in-the-dark bicycle and pedestrian paths in Poland
Saturday 8 October 2016
mechanical turk or singing for one’s supper
JF Ptak delves into a very modern topic of discussion through the lens that the long shadow that innovation has cast over jobs-security and the notion that robots will create mass-redundancy with musicians, once the mainstay of entertainment with live, orchestral accompaniment, finding themselves shoved aside with the advent of talkies and canned- or robotic-soundtracks punctuating the experience.
Colluding with the advent of telephony that made written correspondence a less attractive means of communication, various leagues and lobbies back in the 1930s rallied on behalf live bands—though there’s no incipient doubt yet of the humanity of the composition, just perhaps the emotional quotient of the performance. A Mechanical Turk is a human employed, at a pittance, to perform repetitive tasks that could be automated—thus stealing jobs from robots—but given the circumstances, it’s more efficient to have a person perform it, like squirrels running in wheels to operate a complex juggernaut.
soda derby
A new front has opened in the Cola Wars, as Boing Boing reports, in the form of rewarding dieticians to endorse the benefits of drinking sugary concoctions—or at least disparage the notion of taxing soda as sort of a gateway sin-tax for controlling all sorts of behaviour and choice. While this practise is undoubtedly revolting and ought to be brought to light (for shame, disreputable nutritionists), I think being subversive on social media pales in comparison to the way that soft-drinks are marketed almost as sacramental wine in Central and South America. What do you think? Most peddlers of patent-medicines were run out of town long ago, yet the biggest ones remain.