john o’groats

Via the always interesting Things Magazine, we learn that the Islands Bill, passed by the Scottish Parliament back in May of this year, has recently come into force and includes a provision championed by Member Tavis Scott that prohibits the Shetlands to be depicted alongside the mainland’s coast in inset boxes, a geographical fiction quite irksome to the widely scattered archipelago’s residents, and demand that cartographers portray the islands accurately, empty space and all. The Ordinance Survey agreed with opponents who called the change impractical and warned it would reduce the level of detail that could be attained in all maps by changing the scale.

great railway journeys

Via Dark Roasted Blend’s weekly Link Latte, we find ourselves directed to the beautifully curated collection of vintage and antique European rail travel posters from Armand Massonet. Categorised and with a bit of provenance that allows one to date the ephemera and learn more, there’s a wealth of resources to discover. We especially liked the section dedicated to overnight expresses and sleeper cars (a less common luxury nowadays)—including automobile hauling service. The pictorial train map section, like this Bildkarte of Austria, is also definitely worth browsing through.

bavaria one: mission zukunft

Not to be outdone by Donald Trump’s desire to create his own strategic Space Force, our own slightly milder embarrassment of a minister president Marcus Söder (previously) is pressing for the German state of Bavaria to marshal its already significant contributions to the national German space programme and ESA into its own aeronautics agency.
I do not know exactly what to make of Herr Söder using his own face as the logo and perhaps is meant to either be a foil or a rival for narcissistic heights.  As with Trump’s directive, there was a notable paucity on how resources might be allocated under this already (mostly) future-oriented administration.

cпутник-1

Spanning from 1 July 1957 to 31 December 1958, the International Year Geophysical Year was a global science project called to thaw some of the frostiest periods of the Cold War that severely curtailed information exchange between the East and West and presented a grave threat to facing problems that affected the planet, no matter what one’s political leanings were.
Among the accomplishments of the scientific venture was the Antarctic Treaty, preserving the continent for peaceful and cooperative research and international data clearing houses where all researchers could freely share meteorological and seismological reports and promote its ongoing collection. The IGY also sparked some competition that could be characterised as more serious than merely friendly with both the Soviet Union and the US pledging to construct artificial satellites and beginning the Space Race. Originally designated as Object D, the satellite was to carry an array of scientific instruments to measure cosmic radiation and solar winds—which were eventually launched as Sputnik-3, but due to the complexity and anxiety that the Americans might indeed be the first to launch, researchers simplified the scope of the mission to radio transmission.
On 4 October 1957, the rocket carrying Sputnik-1 launched from the Tyuratam range in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (presently the Baikonur Cosmodrome) and orbited the Earth once every ninety-six minutes for three weeks, its highly polished surface visible to keen observers and continually broadcasting a “beep-beep-beep” that could be intercepted by any amateur radio operator when it came in range. After its batteries ran out in those first weeks, it remained aloft for another two months before burning up on re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere, having completed fourteen hundred-forty circuits around the Earth and travelling a distance of over seventy million kilometres. The Americans eventually launched the Explorer I satellite on 31 January 1958 but not before the USSR launched Sputnik-2 just under a month after the start of their first mission, this time with a living passenger.

inching towards october

Taking a cue from a challenge that artist John Vernon Lord set for himself in 2016 to create a miniature illustration every day of the calendar year that fit in a little, standard square, we’re doing the same for this month—maybe longer. Just for fun, but it’s also a good daily practise to keep up with other things—like keeping one’s diary and other routines and resolutions—that we tend to let slip away. Here are our first four. How would you finish out the week?