motorama or à la kart

Messy Nessy Chic brings us the profile of George Barris, the late, legendary designer of custom cars who was responsible for nearly all the iconic vehicles featured on film and television throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
Though perhaps the contribution of his workshop that’s most easily conjured up would be the original Batmobile, Barris also brought us My Mother the Car (a much maligned sitcom that was premised on the idea that an attorney purchases a used Porter touring car that his mother has been reincarnated as), the dragsters from Mannix, the Dukes of Hazzard and the Banana Splits as well as the signature cars of the Munsters and the Clampetts and another sentient automobile in Knight Rider’s KITT plus his nemesis. Barris’ studio also recreated many novelty vehicles for special exhibitions and designed custom cars for celebrities, including Zsa Zsa Gabor, Elton John and Elvis Presley.

dot-dot-dot

A suspension point—or an ellipsis comes from the Greek term for omission or falling short and has paradoxically transformed as punctuation mark to signal a continuance rather than a trailing off (aposiopesis, a figure of speech whose literal translation is becoming silent) or something suggestive of an unspoken alternative thanks in part to that shit gibbon occupying the Oval Office who’d prefer to legislate from the bully pulpit in one hundred and forty character conniptions.
Dear Leader’s latest chained but unhinged affront to reason and dignity and human kindness, the ban on transgender personnel from serving in the military, is not indicative itself of course of any larger agenda or policy shift in itself and was only a ploy to secure funding for his Border Wall and more immediately a distraction from the health care debate and the ongoing investigation into Russian interference and collusion. He does not care and has no strategy, but that does not mean his deputies won’t seize on the action to discriminate and discharge whole classes of service members en-masse and won’t continue with their goals of ideological course-correction that will push America to a much darker place that’s far bigger than the volunteer army. Another sad irony of Dear Leader’s announcement was that it fell on the sixty-ninth anniversary of Harry S Truman’s issuance of Executive Order 9981 which abolished racial discrimination and segregation in the Armed Forces and on the fifty-fourth anniversary of the institution of the policy that forbade service members and federal workers from patronising businesses or institutions that practised discrimination, opening up the route for greater equity and social justice in the country as a whole.

inside the actors studio

At a USO sponsored event, I got the opportunity to see the accomplished actor and director Bryan Cranston—of Malcolm and the Middle and Breaking Bad fame—give a motivation talk about his career and the importance of seizing on one’s good fortunes.
Though only subjects adjacent to the discussion and not brought up at large, it was interesting to discover that Cranston, in addition to the numerous credits to his name, was also the vocal artist behind some of the monstrous villains of the American adaption of Mighty Morphing Power Rangers—and made such an impression on the cast, the Blue Ranger was retroactively named Billy Cranston in the actor’s honour and that this autumn Cranston will be starring in a London stage adaptation of the film Network, playing the role of Howard Beale. We’ve been fans of his performances and agree that he’d be perfect for this new part too.

sine, cosine

We are really mesmerised by these sleek animations by Frédéric Vayssouze-Faure that illustrate complex geometric and trigonometric functions by re-combining elements of minimalism and multitude. The source code that regulates these oscillations and harmonic motion plus many more examples can be found at the artist’s website, Wavegrower.

double-détendre

Writing for The Atlantic, correspondent and former member of the US National Security Council Jan M Lodal recalls a pledge shared between Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev and Gerald Ford (who as Nixon’s second vice-president took office once Nixon resigned in lieu of impeachment and served out the term until the next election—also having the pleasure of exonerating Nixon of all wrong doing by pardoning him) of the USSR’s support to ensure Ford’s re-election. The exchange took place during the Helsinki Accords—the formal settlement that marked peace in Europe after World War II and helped to limn the rules of engagement for the Cold War—in 1975 during a private moment with only the interpreter present. Some snooping and quick thinking on the part of Lodal, who was part of the presidential entourage during the summit, confirmed that this promise was extended—though the expressed outcome didn’t materialise with the election of Jimmy Carter.

7x7

master of the pan-flute: Tedium looks at those compilation albums and other musical genres hocked on late-night television commercials

goldwater rule: the American Psychiatric Association is relaxing its tradition against making comments on the mental stability of public figures

pet sounds: there’s a German-based internet radio stationed designed to keep canine companions company whilst their humans are away

disenchantment: Simpsons’ creator developing new animated series set in medieval times, including elves, wizards and demons

algebraic topography: neuroscientists determine that the brain can cogitate in mental frameworks of up to eleven dimensions

openluchtrecreatie: experimental tiny shelters spring up in Amsterdam

memphis group: an exhibition of Ettore Sottsass’ designs placed in context beside the artefacts the pieces reference or inspired

shutter-bug

Researchers have trained a neural network to scour Google Street View (which of course is not limited to urban environs) and frame what it believes to be æsthetic scenes, applying algorithms on cropping, lighting and composition that its acquired in the learning process. The coda to this experiment was to subject the photographs to a sort of human-juried “Turing test.” The judges were not told that a machine had selected and perfected the images and rated nearly half of them to be the work of a professional. Chew more of the scenery over at Twisted Sifter at the link up top and learn more about the exercise in deep learning and wonder about its implications.

sacré-cœur

From the stacks of Public Domain Review, we are presented with an English translation of an 1812 illustrated treatise from church author and philanthropist Johannes Evangelista Goßner called Geistlicher Sitten-Spiegel (the Spiritual Mirror of Morality) that was probably derived from earlier Enlightenment works and was given the explanatory subtitle for export audiences The Heart of Man: Either a Temple of God, or a Habitation of Satan: Represented in Ten Emblematical Figures, Calculated to Awaken and Promote a Christian Disposition. Goßner was a reformed minister at a Berlin simultaneum, a shared sacred building where different denominations worshipped, albeit with separate clergy at different times. The administration of such congregations is known as status quo. The guide’s graphical representation is pretty striking with its incrementally increasing facial grief-scale and recalls (or rather previsions) to me the stylings of Edward Gorey and offers explanations of much of the iconography.