September 28, 2008 by pdoyle
the campomaestsros responsible for the constrution of the florence cathedral spent hundreds of years stalling and not building the dome because they were afraid of building a huge dome that might collapse. it was suggested at one point to fill the entire cathedral up with earth, and build the dome on top of that (b/c there were no scaffolding timbers long enough to span the cornice) at one point, the plan was to mix the earth with pennies, so that on completion, the poor children of florence would excavate the church interior, digging for the money. it never actually happened, but what a beautiful idea. money, labor, religion, architecture, poverty, earth, a dome — the circuitous means of labor reminds me of the captcha project, which helps google verify the text of scanned books, while at the same time preventing bots from entering sites.
(source peter murray “architecture of the italian renaissance”)
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September 14, 2008 by pdoyle
after recently learning the ctrl + option + apple + 8 keystroke to invert screen color, i thought i would be witty, and go to the dark google to see a bright dark google, but it doesn’t work. Screen capture doesn’t pay attention to screen invert. after reading the dark google mission statement i also got to thinking about how much energy could be saved if web default background was black instead of white. who made that decision? why is the internet white?
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September 9, 2008 by vessels
“A few years before I lived in the woods there was what was called a ‘winged cat’ in one of the farm-houses in Lincoln nearest the pond, Mr. Gillian Baker’s. When I called to see her in June, 1842, she was gone a-hunting in the woods, as was her wont … but her mistress told me that she came into the neighbourhood a little more than a year before, in April, and was finally taken into their house; that she was of a dark brownish-grey colour, with a white spot on her throat, and white feet, and had a large bushy tail like a fox; that in the winter the fur grew thick and flattened out along her sides, forming strips ten or twelve inches long by two and a half wide, and under her chin like a muff, the upper side loose, the under matted like felt, and in the spring these appendages dropped off. They gave me a pair of her ‘wings,’ which I keep still. There is no appearance of a membrane about them. Some thought it was part flying squirrel or some other wild animal, which is not impossible, for, according to naturalists, prolific hybrids have been produced by the union of the marten and the domestic cat. This would have been the right kind of cat for me to keep, if I had kept any; for why should not a poet’s cat be winged as well as his horse? “
- Henry David Thoreau
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September 3, 2008 by vessels
I imported Inside the Dream Syndicate Vol. 1: Day of Niagara (1965), which iTunes immediately recognized as a 30:54 version of Bone Thugs N Harmony’s “1st of Da Month.” When I try to rename it manually, it defaults to “1st of Da Month” every time.
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shana tova!