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Pretty Pictures
Images I have found striking over the years.
READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
First, just got to say this image (of houses in Uummannaq, shot by Nathan Gallagher) is one of the prettiest things I've seen all week. Uummannaq is the last human settlement they will see on their voyage north, as Robyn says it is "the last place we will visit on this trip that has an ATM."
Francesca Galeazzi did a performance piece yesterday, walking out onto the snow field of the Jakobshavns fjord with a cylinder of 6kg carbon dioxide and releasing it into the unspoiled beauty of the wilderness.
My first reaction to this is visceral disgust -- sort of, "You find a spot that's untouched and you 'pollute it' just to show that you can? What's the point, just to show yourself as a human and an asshole?" But her follow-up post from this morning makes what seems to me like a really good point:
Some of my fellow voyagers were upset about my piece because they could visualise that black â??nastyâ?? cylinder full of CO2 in a way that they couldnâ??t, if I told them that every time they drive their car for 30 miles they emit the same amount of carbon dioxide. So I wonder if the societal shift that I was advocating with my performance could be achieved if we would find a more direct way to visualise the Carbon impact of the resources we use!
This contextualizes the performance piece in a really useful way -- I think my original reaction is kind of the response she is looking for, and that she's trying to extend that visceral disgust to everyday polluting activities.
Johan Huibers, a creationist who lives in Schagen, Netherlands, has built a working replica of Noah's ark ("working" should be taken with a grain of salt here: two key benchmarks that I don't believe have been passed are (a) loading it with pairs of every animal species and (b) launching it in a 40-day inundation) "as a testament to his faith in the literal truth of the Bible." It is 1/2 scale (so I guess would only hold half the world's species, or a singleton of each species), which is still quite incredibly large. He has populated it with stuffed animals, which seems a bit like cheating...
The Apostropher links to photos of an abandoned train station in Abkhazia (originally posted by LiveJournal user zyalt). Just beautiful. Reminds me a bit of the beautiful (if not nearly as ornate) abandoned train station in Liberty State Park, in Jersey City.*
The ru_sovarch community at LiveJournal has lots more photos of old architecture in and around Russia.
*Note: Hm, it just occured to me I should specify that said station is not really that beautiful anymore; for about the last 10 years it has been converted into a park building, with a new floor put in and is basically unrecognizable now.
Tomas Eriksson has created an awesome animation -- it allows you to coax a tarantula across a map of Europe. Never thought about how much fun that might be? Well then you're in for a surprise. Link via Old Water Too.
Samuel Beckett's Film (1965), featuring Buster Keaton as O, has been uploaded to YouTube by user richardhead. It is too long for a single video but I've created a playlist so you can watch the whole thing sequentially. Beckett called his production "an interesting failure"; Times critic Dilys Powell called it "a load of old bosh." Katherine Waugh and Fergus Daly wrote a celebration of Film's 30th anniversary for the Spring 1995 issue of Film West, "Ireland's film quarterly."
posted morning of September 12th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about The Movies
Kathy's inaugural post at The Edge of the American West makes me wonder how much of the relevant history Sylvia knows about. I don't believe we've talked about it at any length with her; but she has made references to it. Maybe we should go over it some, she's getting old enough. (The events took place just a few days after we had come home from China.)
Not sure if it's a coincidence or what; but on this day, on this date, I find myself wanting to post some tower imagery. Below the fold for more.
Today, the NY Timesprints some before (1978) and after (2008) pictures of the World Trade Center, shot from various perspectives:
In 1928, M.C. Escher painted a Tower of Babel. It does not have the errors of logic that I have been conditioned to expect seeing in an Escher painting. It is very beautiful:
And hundreds of years before that, Pieter Brueghel the Elder painted his own twin towers:
(Oh and let's not forget number 16 of the major arcana! Thanks Ms. Pamela Colman Smith.)
In comments at The Great Whatsit, Rogan posts a link to a truly mind-blowing animation, by Run Wrake of Sclah Films (and based on the art of children's book illustrator Geoffrey Higham). It's got insects, jewels, words, idolatry, mindless brutality -- it takes my breath away:
posted evening of September 8th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Animation
The Apostropher has totally been coming through with great posts recently. Today he links to a post from Avi Abrams of Dark Roasted Blend, about the Yemeni island of Socotra, which Abrams deems "the most alien-looking place on earth."
It is weird-looking, alright, and dazzling. Approximately 230 species live on this island which are found nowhere else on earth. Take a look at the post, it features tons of pictures of bizarre flora and of the people of Socotra, plus some magnificent mainland Yemeni architecture.
More about Socotra -- the island's name derives from the Sanskrit dvipa sukhadhara, "island of bliss" -- at the American Institute for Yemeni Studies.
A White Bear posts her thoughts on the video of Arnold Conrad calling on Christians to prop up God's "reputation" by voting Republican. "Nope. For Christians, all the pwnage is in the future."
Tomas Eriksson has created 
her thoughts on the 