Remember, remember the fifth of … June June 1 should have been D-day, but General Eisenhower needed three subsequent days of fine weather to get enough men and materials across the channel in order to resist the inevitable counter-attack. In the event the weather was not good and the invasion had to be postponed until it improved. On 5 June, Eisenhower was in conference with his staff when a courier arrived from Bletchley Park and handed him a piece of paper to read. Hitler had sent Field Marshall Rommel battle orders by radio transmission, which Bletchley Park had decoded with … Continue reading
Category Archives: associations
Here’s my idea of what happened to ↑Malaysia Airlines Flight 370—from top to bottom the panels are taken from pages 15, 16, and 20 respectively of ‘Flight 714’ (Hergé 1968 [1966-1968]). HERGÉ (aka REMI, GEORGES [PROSPER]). 1968 [1966-1968]. ↑Flight 714 [comic]. London: Methuen Publishing Limited. Originally published as ↓Vol 714 pour Sydney. Le Journal de Tintin 836-997. … Continue reading
↑Natsumi Hayashi lives in Tokyo and mainly photographs levitating self-portraits, sometimes even in 3D—see her ↑how-to. Her blog ↑yowayowa camera woman diary almost exclusively consists of the mentioned levitating pictures (with some cats interspersed) which for quite some time appeared on a daily basis. To my eye the pictures have a poetic quality. The sheer mass of them, no comments whatsoever, the somewhat distanced facial expression—all adds to it. Natsumi had an ↑exhibition of her pictures in 2012, ↑another one took place in late March 2013 in the Spiral Garden. Also in 2012 her first photo book, naturally titled ‘Today’s … Continue reading
On 26 February 2013 TV2 of Denmark needed a backdrop for a report on the current conflict in Syria. As it seems someone at the station searched the web for a suitable picture and hit upon a beautiful vista of the old city of Damascus. But the picture shows Damascus as it most probably has looked during the time of the ↑third crusade (1189-1192). Above that the picture doesn’t depict anything from the empirical world, but is a still from the computer game ‘↵Assassin’s Creed‘ (Ubisoft Montreal 2007). Quite tell-tale is the wooden beam attached to the minarett at the … Continue reading
The ↑Kroger gun stunt sparks 2nd Amendment debate, NBC reported yesterday: Charlottesville police say the man who showed up at a Kroger grocery store with a loaded gun wanted to make a point. On Sunday, an unidentified 22-year-old man carried a loaded AR-15 into the Kroger store on Emmet Street and Hydraulic Road, sparking not only a scare for customers and employees but also a 2nd Amendment debate. Charlottesville police drew their guns on the man after witnesses reported he brought a gun into the store. They restrained the man to ask him questions, but released him after … 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
Whenever I hear or read about the ↑quantified self—a lifestyle obviously deeply influenced by the heritage of ↵cybernetics—I am reminded of conversations I led and overheard while I still was visiting the gym regularly, three times a week. Already when just eavesdropping I was amazed by the topics the real bodybuilders talked about. The weights lifted almost aren’t a topic at all—with the exception when they spot somebody they care about using too heavy weights. This not only has negative training effects but greatly heightens the risk of injuries, too. Then, somewhat related to the former, there is the topic … Continue reading
Here is yet another example from the ↵games with defects: ↑PlaygroundPong. From ↑the documentation: PlaygroundPong is a proof of concept for inverting Avatar & Playground. The player cannot move the paddles at all like in a regular Pong game. The ball seems to move from side to side but clearly it does not! The player cannot identify with the avatar (playing object), he or she has to get to terms with moving the background (from left to right, right to left, top to bottom and bottom to top) in order to bring the paddles in a position where they manage … Continue reading
Stephen ‘kongorilla’ Kongsle designed this wearable cardboard mask and has put ↑all you need for it online under a creative commons licence. When I first saw it I immediately had three associations: 1) A ↑Bizarro t-shirt would go perfectly with the mask, 2) there was a time ↵when I perceived the everyday world around me like that, and 3) if you are learning to draw the human head and face this is a wonderful inexpensive tool for understanding the planes of the face. As it turns out association #3 hit it: Sometime in the future I hope to make a … 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