hadfield and shatner
↑Chris Hadfield, currently on board of the ↑ISS (in mid-March he will take over command of the space station), having a chat with ↑William Shatner (on 07 February 2013). … Continue reading
↑Chris Hadfield, currently on board of the ↑ISS (in mid-March he will take over command of the space station), having a chat with ↑William Shatner (on 07 February 2013). … Continue reading
NASA Johnson Style is a volunteer outreach video project ↑created by the students of NASA’s Johnson Space Center. It was created as an educational parody of ↑Psy’s Gangnam Style. The lyrics and scenes in the video have been re-imagined in order to inform the public about the amazing work going on at NASA and the Johnson Space Center. … Continue reading
My physical inbox today was graced by the presence of the newest issue (60/2012) of the ‘Berliner Blätter: Ethnographische und ethnologische Beiträge’ [Berlin leafs: Ethnographic and Anthropological Contributions], a German language anthropology journal. It bears the title: ‘Räume durch Bewegung: Ethnographische Perspektiven auf eine vernetzte Welt’ [Space by Movement: Ethnographic Perspectives upon a Networked World]. The editors of said issue, ↑Beatrix Hoffmann and ↑Hansjörg Dilger—who did a truly fine job—sent me the specimen, because it contains a short contribution by yours truly. Here’s the abstract, taken from the issue’s introduction: Alexander Knorr erläutert in seinem Beitrag Möglichkiten ethnografischer Forschung unter … Continue reading
Martin Hunt invents great origami models depicting things out of the star wars universe and shows them off at ↑starwarigami. Unfortunately he withholds most of his diagrams as he wants to publish a book in which all of them are collected. But there are countless links to ↑diagrams by others at a subpage of starwarigami. If all those are too complex for you at the moment, try Chris Alexander’s simpler designs at ↑star wars origami. Chris already has published a book, hence at the moment, as far as I can see, ↑only the diagrams for his rendition of the Millenium … Continue reading
zeph’s pop culture quiz #47 Between which worlds is the man the depicted hand belongs to travelling? Just leave a comment with your educated guess—you can ask for additional hints, too. [Leaving a comment is easy; just click the 'Leave a comment' at the end of the post and fill in the form. If it's the first time you post a comment, it will be held for moderation. But I am constantly checking, and once I've approved a comment, your next ones won't be held, but published immediately by the system.] UPDATE and solution (31 October 2012): This … Continue reading
zeph’s pop culture quiz #46 What is the tiny shiny artefact displayed by the hands? From which movie does the screencap stem, and what role in the plot of that movie does the artefact play? Just leave a comment with your educated guess—you can ask for additional hints, too. [Leaving a comment is easy; just click the ‘Leave a comment’ at the end of the post and fill in the form. If it’s the first time you post a comment, it will be held for moderation. But I am constantly checking, and once I’ve approved a comment, your … Continue reading
Conceptual art for S.H.I.E.L.D.’s airborne aircraft carrier, the ‘↑Helicarrier,’ as seen in ‘↑The Avengers‘ (Whedon 2012). ↑Christopher Weuve, among other things a naval analyst and science fiction geek, ↑talked with Michael Peck of Foreign Policy about the dialectics between naval warfare and space warfare as depicted in science fiction. When Peck asked, “Has sci-fi affected the way that our navies conduct warfare?” Weuve answered: This is a question that I occasionally think about. Many people point to the development of the shipboard Combat Information Center in World War II as being inspired by E.E. Doc Smith’s Lensman novels from the … Continue reading
Neil Armstrong just went far, far away. Farther away than he appears reflected in Buzz Aldrin’s vizor above, and even farther away than where he took the picture—Neil Armstrong was the very first human being in all humankind’s history who ever sat foot on another planet. Just imagine! … Continue reading
Mars Panorama – Curiosity rover: Martian solar day 2 in New Mexico Click it, then hit fullscreen and enjoy the martian landscape in its full glory. via ↑entry at ↑kueperpunk … Continue reading
[abstract:] This essay explores the proposition that Walt Disney World is an amusement park whose form is borrowed from the pilgrimage center. Bateson, Norbeck, and Turner have shown that play and ritual together comprise a metaprocess of expressive behavior rooted in our mammalian past. Substantively both traditional pilgrimage centers, especially Mecca, and Walt Disney World are analyzed in terms of shared activities, symbols displayed, myths evoked, and tripartite time-space processes of rites of passage. The Magic Kingdom is shown to be a giant limen ritual threshold, which symbolically replicates the baroque capital. To go there is to engage in transcendent … Continue reading