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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.
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.
I've fallen in love with mural-blog The Wooster Collective -- every day tons of clever, striking images of graffiti on streets and buildings around the world. Today they link to an NRK article on Urban kunst midt i ødemarka, which shows many walls by Norwegian artists Dolk and Pøbel. This is a site you should add to your daily rounds if you're interested in public art.
Flybane/fluesopp by the by, is also Little My's preferred fungus -- I've forgotten which Moomin book it is that has the family sorting mushrooms they've gathered, all of Little My's are poisonous and/or psychoactive.
Update: I made "Pike med fluesopp" my desktop wallpaper. I love this image! Here are a couple more photos, with higher resolution.
posted afternoon of September second, 2008: 1 response ➳ More posts about Wallpaper
Trouble in Rome for artistic freedom; but mainly just hilarious.
Martin Kippenberger's sculpture "First the Feet" has been singled out for criticism by the Vatican. What a lovely image! Pure luck that on the way home after I saw this article this afternoon, "Globe of Frogs" came on the stereo.
(There's got to be some clever way to tie this in to the wave of extinctions of frog species, but I am not up to it, I fear. Also: The Frog Prince → The Frog Messiah.)
Tomas Eriksson has created 
I've fallen in love with mural-blog 
Happiness is a 
