Whoa – this is insane:
From the blog post (where there are a bunch more images):
I had the immense opportunity to see this wonderful paper craft art installation by a genius of the name of Wataru Itou, a young student of a major art university here in Tokyo. The installation is hand made over four years of hard work, complete with electrical lights and a moving train, all made of paper!
Damned impressive. And I say that as someone who is a book & document conservator, with considerable experience in working with paper. Damned impressive, indeed.
Jim Downey
(Via BB.)
Filed under: Art, Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, Humor, Phil Plait, Science, Space
Via Phil Plait, a glimpse into how far woo can go wrong:
Orbiter crashing into the moon
There is a Japanese lunar orbiter named Kaguya that is scheduled to crash into the moon today at about 2:30 pm ET. Scientists hope to learn something about the moon’s composition by observing the debris that is kicked up.
In many traditions, including astrology, the moon represents the feminine. It is the yin, the intuitive, the emotions. Women are connected to the moon by their menstrual cycles while they are fertile, and all beings, including the earth herself, are affected by the pull of the tides.
* * *
Did these scientists talk to the moon? Tell her what they were doing? Ask her permission? Show her respect?
Wow.
Just . . . wow.
Believe it or not, I got similar comments from a number of people when I did my “Paint the Moon” project back in 2001. I don’t know if Ms. Harvey was one of the people who contacted me, but I did hear from people who were really worried that we were going to somehow ‘insult’ or harm the Moon by pointing laser pointers at it. I mean, I expected a fair number of folks who would miss the whole point of it being an art project, but some of these people were seriously lacking in any sense of scientific reality, who were actually worried that our little laser pointers would destroy the Moon or something.
Wow. Sometimes I think I am not nearly cynical nor pessimistic enough, to paraphrase Lily Tomlin.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
. . . I had to share this particular bit of insanity I stumbled across over my morning coffee:
Bishop’s Castle is a one-man work of art begun in 1969 by Jim Bishop. The top of the tower is 110 feet up. People do go up there and climb right into the top. It’s a beautiful creation but I can’t even begin to imagine the amount of work that’s gone into the building. If you do stop and talk to Jim, you’ll discover that the hardest work in the whole project was fending off all kinds of attacks on him and his work coming from the federal government and the National Forest Service: he’s on private property but he’s surrounded by National Forest and the feds want complete control of everything. In Jim’s words: the only thing they haven’t done is they haven’t shot him, yet. While most of the building is native rock cemented in place, there is a lot of wrought iron and glass used, too. The man has done a pretty incredible job of designing and building his own castle. It’s the kind of artwork that very few people will try to imitate, and he’s become a world-class stone mason the hard way. I know this thing looks a bit like a fairy castle but when you stand on the ground beside one of the pillars, you get this sense of an immense, heavy, intimidating Viking fortress in the forest. Jim wasn’t working with a bunch of pea gravel in concrete to do this, he used some pretty good sized boulders.
Man, and I thought I was crazy . . .
Jim Downey
(Via DRB.)
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Art, Ballistics, Blade Runner, Guns, Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction
a.k.a.: Deckard’s gun from Blade Runner, sold at auction earlier this month for $270,000. From The Firearm Blog:
At first glance the gun looks to be some sort of auto-revolver. It is in fact a Steyr Mannlicher .222 Model SL rifle action and trigger group with some revolver parts tacked on. Note the double set trigger and Steyr’s iconic “butter knife” style bolt handle. It even retains the Steyr serial number.
Man, what a piece of movie history. But then, you know I have a weakness for the movie.
Anyway, as mentioned the other day, we launched the revised BBTI late Thursday. Friday and Saturday each day the hits to the site went up by 10x, and we’re now at about 825,000 total. At this rate it should break a million by next Sunday.
Zoom.
It’s good to get this done and off on its own. I still need to do a write up for another firearms site about it this week, but then I’ll mostly be able to leave this project be for a while and devote my attention to other matters, including a not small pile of conservation work awaiting my attention.
But it’s good to be busy.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Book Conservation, General Musings, Publishing, Writing stuff
As I mentioned the other day in the preface to this post, I had reason to be digging around in some of my old writings. I’m still not in a position to disclose the full reason for this, but I can discuss it in general terms: I had been interviewed for a feature article for a national magazine (I am not the focus of the piece, just one aspect of it), and something I had written previously was pertinent to the background I had provided the interviewer.
Anyway, it was a thorough and rather draining interview, not unlike some of the others to which I have been party in my somewhat offbeat course through life. Nor, in fact, to some of the interviews I have conducted, when I was writing my column for the local paper. So it was that I recognized this insightful passage from a recent item at the Economist:
Mr Rauch: This ties back to your last question, in a way. I suspect a lot of bloggers may be introverts, because blogging is great if you like to sit in front of the internet all day. If not for my aversion to specialising in one subject, I probably would have been an academic historian, because I think it would have suited me to work in libraries back before there was an internet. (In a way, the internet is a library that talks back.) Reporting doesn’t come naturally to me, since I have to screw up my energy level every time I pick up the phone. So that’s something of a handicap. I’ll never be a natural journalist.
On the other hand, introverts are good questioners and attentive listeners. After a thoughtful, probing interview that I feel has touched marrow, I feel exhilaration, along with exhaustion. As if a tough hike had been rewarded with a new vista. I’m not a great hiker but I do enjoy the views.
Very apt metaphor.
Jim Downey
(Economist link via Sully.)
Man, maybe it is just me, but I found this hilarious.
Via Balloon Juice.
Jim Downey
Cross posted to UTI.
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Art, Ballistics, Book Conservation, Politics, Preparedness, SCA, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff
There are other things I should be writing. Revisions for the BBTI site upgrade, work on the Caregiving book. Even (laughably) my own fiction.
But I’m in a bit of a reflective mood. And something I heard the other day has been churning around in my head. It’s this:
The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.
Recognize it? That’s from Dune. I’ve been listening to the recent audio version of the book as I’ve been doing conservation work. I usually only listen to books I know well, because for the most part I need to maintain my concentration on the work at hand. But having a favorite book rolling along in the background is a help, allows me to get technical things done while engaging part of my creative mind, eases the hours to pass. Anyway, I was at a pause between tasks, and that quote came up (it’s actually a quote in the book, and referenced as such at a chapter heading, as a way to explain something about the main character.)
If Frank Herbert hadn’t read The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he should have. That’s very much an insight of which Campbell would be proud. But then, I have long recommended Dune to any and all who would want a good primer on personal politics disguised as a SF story. Herbert’s understanding of myth was considerable.
Anyway, the passage caught my attention. And I spent the next little while musing on it, and how I had understood it and incorporated it into my way in the world when I was very young.
No, I am not saying that I am “great”. But I have been touched by myth, and had momentary brushes with greatness. Recognizing those moments, and understanding the role I played within them, made the experience all the more enjoyable – and less risky than if I fell into the trap of believing my own press releases.
See, there’s that sardonic touch – the wry, self-deprecating cynicism that disarms critics and endears friends. And it is not an artifice. It is who I really am – some deeply seated self-defense mechanism which has allowed me to play with greatness but not to be captivated by it. Nonetheless, I am conscious of it – aware of how the sardonic wit gives me latitude and a certain insulation from praise or popularity. Because of it, I have known when to walk away from lusting after greatness, how to shut my ears to the siren’s call which has destroyed others.
The one thing I worry about – well, ‘the one thing I wonder about’ is perhaps a better way of phrasing it – is whether this ability to walk away means that I have never risked enough to actually *be* great, and so have missed opportunity. Oh, I have come up to the line many times. And crossed lines which most people would not have had the nerve to cross. I have risked life and limb, reputation and financial security (and sometimes lost those bets). But there have also been times when I walked away.
Was this prudence, or was it fear?
Hard to say.
Jim Downey
* Full quote here. The first sentence of which is what I used as the motto for my Paint the Moon project, one of my more creative brushes with greatness.
Filed under: Art, Gene Roddenberry, Humor, Science Fiction, Star Trek, YouTube
As you probably know, I’m a big fan of the old Star Trek series – the original one, not so much the various and sundry movies and spin-offs. Sometime last weekend I came across this gem, which contains excerpts of a live stage production of the classic “Spock’s Brain” – brilliantly done:
Excellent!
Jim Downey
OK, be sure to watch this to the end. It’s just two minutes.
Something fun for Friday, via my good lady wife and the crazy Welsh.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 