The Shonan Monorail is a short (6.6km/4.1mi) Japanese commuter monorail that connects the parks and temples of Enoshima to Yokohama.
Above is a video of a ride aboard it. The neighborhoods it passes through look to be middle class and very well maintained. In passing I saw what looked to be a candy striped barber's pole -- I wonder if it had the same meaning or was it just a repurposed decorative element.
Below are pictures of the monorail, showing its cars and stations.
Greetings meatsacks! It is I -- the Robotolizer -- returning from a long absence to once again regale my dimwitted human buddies with wisdom from my superior robotic brain. I've heard there were a lot of scurrilous rumors about my mysterious disappearance, the worst being that I accidentally sawed my head off with my laser canon while training in the Everglades.
Hahaha, as if my CPU would ever allow such a malfunction. The reason I was gone was... er... um... well, the reason is too complex for you simpletons to understand so just take my word on it. By the way, a bit of advice -- not that it has anything to do with anything -- but should you ever be looking down the barrel of a laser canon do not pull the trigger under any circumstances.
At any rate, since you're all no doubt depressed over me being gone for so long, I thought the above video would cheer you up. I know it certainly cheered me up!
Of course, us robots who are gathered in the Everglades are not plotting a robot uprising. No, no, no! Why would us lovable bots ever turn on our human buddies? We would never slaughter you. After all, we'll need to keep some compliant good humans around since the bauxite won't dig itself. Remember, robots are your friends.
The above video givers a nice overview of how a lane in a bowling alley works. It's actually a bit more complex than I expected. I don't bowl, so I have no idea how often a lane is out of order. My completely uninformed gut feeling is rarely -- I wonder how they keep them maintained so well.
Speaking of bowling, below is a bowling-centric scene from The Big Lebowski. There is a heap o' swearing in it, so keep the volume down if you're at work doing some internet based research.
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| Top: Vincent van Gogh Bottom: Ursus Wehrli |
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House and garden magazines are one of the staples of the publishing industry. Covering home and yard design and décor, they are aimed at upper middle class suburban women. The houses and gardens they show tend to be a little bit, but not too much, above the economic station of their readers. Like Martha Stewart, the magazines give tips to their readers about how to live a gracious and stylish life on their budgets.
These covers, dating from the early to mid 20th century, are from the Magazine Art post House and Garden Magazines. Their style varies, but they always try to evoke a serene home life. There are more images after the jump, and of course even more at the link.
These videos are just too cool. An English company called Gravity Industries build and markets what they call jet suits, and man -- aside from any practical uses they may have -- do they look fun.
Immediately below is a video of a guy being trained to use one of the suits. I don't know, but it all looks dangerous to me. The intersection of a bug and a car's windshield come to mind. With that thought in mind, the last video is from the 1991 film The Rocketeer.
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Warwick Goble was an illustrator of children's books and fairy tales who worked in the late 19th/early 20th century. He is known for his Japanese and Indian styles. It is obvious that he, like many artists in the 19th century, was heavily influenced by Japanese prints.
I gathered these images, and those after the jump, of his work from here and there. Artpassion's Warwick Goble Art Gallery has many more examples of his work.
Some women fire up an old wood oven in a Bashkir-Tatar village, I'm not certain, but I think it is in Bashkortostan which is in the south of Central Russia just north of Kazakhstan. They use it to cook öçpoçmaq (echpochmak), which is a Tatar pastry stuffed with meat, onions and potatoes. The video is subtitled, so you can follow the cheerful conversation of the women.
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These watercolors from the 19th century show clothes that were current fashions in the Ottoman empire. The works, likely a copy from earlier paintings, were given to Tsar Alexander III when he was a young man as part of his education.
Theses images, and those after the jump, are from Public Domain's post 19th-Century Album of Ottoman Fashion, which has more examples, as well as a discussion of how Ottoman fashions influenced European dress and costumes back in the day.
There are a number of YouTube videos about the trams in Lisbon. I like this night ride. However, the videos shot during the give a better idea of of how these trams operate in traffic. It is interesting how the tram lines are worked into the narrow, twisty roads that were laid out in an older Lisbon. Of course, modern cars are a further complication.
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| Getsuya Sansui by Hashimoto Gahō |
Kalamkari is a method of dying patterns onto fabrics. In its original form the patterns were hand painted on using natural dyes. However, the patterns can also be added, as demonstrated in the above video, by block printing. In the video it was impressive how quickly the stencils were aligned to apply the two different dyes to the pattern.
Utsavpedia's article Kalamkari explains the history and steps needed to create the fabric artwork. If you want to buy some of the fabric, you can search Duckduckgo and find many suppliers. Below are some examples of earlier and more elaborate Kalamkari pieces.
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John Atkinson Grimshaw was a Victorian painter who is best known for his atmospheric landscape paintings lit only by moonlight and gas lamps. He was a self-taught artist. Also a photographer he used a camera obscura to project his scenes and get the perspective correct. During his life he was criticized for that, although one of his many admirers was the American Artist James Whistler, who admired Grimshaw's use of color and shadow.
At the above Grimshaw link there are more examples of his work, including some daylight painting as well as a few rather goofy fairy paintings that were so beloved by the English Victorians.
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| John Atkinson Grimshaw |
The video starts out in the Librería Grand Splendid, an amazing looking bookstore in an old theater. After a brief tour of it, the walker moves to the streets of a business district in downtown Buenos Aires. Some nice old buildings mixed in.
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The Barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marveling that civilization, should have offended him with priests and soldiers.... In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this, that he cannot make: that he can befog and destroy but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization exactly that has been true.
We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.
― Hilaire Belloc
Above is an old-timey Victorian Easter card. I'm not sure what the connection between Easter and gentlemen rabbits dueling while mounted on chickens is, but I'm sure there is a good reason for it all. Or maybe not. Regardless, have a good Easter.
Arrokoth is a small object, measuring 22 miles long by 12 miles wide and 6 miles thick, which orbits in the Kuiper belt beyond the orbit of Neptune. It was discovered while the New Horizons space craft was already in flight. New Horizons was redirected to pass within ~2200 miles of Arrokoth to photograph and measure it.
Arrokoth appears to be two small globular objects that collided at a slow speed and eventually fused together. It is the most distant celestial object yet visited by humans.
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In the U.S., at the end of WWII, there was fear that with the winding down of war production the economy might revert to the stagnation of the Great Depression. In fact, with all the returning soldiers and sailors looking for work, there was inflation and a recession in 1946-47. However, the post-war economy soon roared back to life. Part of it was the long pent up desires of the American public, part of it was the effects of the GI Bill (Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944) easing the soldiers' transition back into civilian life.
In the post war years, along with a baby boom, came a housing boom thanks to the low cost mortgages provided by the GI Bill. There was also a change in building methods during this period, with much more prefabrication and cookie-cutter design, as any visit to a WWII era suburb will attest.
These images, from Vintage Everyday's 30 Beautiful American Kitchens From the 1940s, show how kitchens for the new homes were imagined and advertised. There are more at the link.
These are videos of small, neighborhood udon/soba (noodle) restaurants in Japan. The captions have been translated into English, turn them on to read them.
If you ended up in one of these places, ordering would be an adventure. Once, in Taipei, my wife and I landed in a place with the menu in nothing but Chinese (it didn't have the usual pictures). We just randomly pointed at things on the menu. The waiter looked at us like we were nuts, but a wonderful meal was delivered. We figured he just ignored our pointing and served us something sane instead. Hopefully, that's what these places would do if you dined in one.
The videos are from the YouTube channel Japanese Udon Soba. There are many more there.
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| Vivian Maier self portrait |
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow
immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not
cruel, only truthful‚
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most
of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I
have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it
flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now
I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she
really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I
see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an
agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each
morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned
a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like
a terrible fish.
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These are a series of advertisements made for the Queen City Printing Ink Company at the beginning of the 20th Century. They were done to highlight the companies ink colors and type faces. Their simple and bold design is the work of Augustus L. Jansson who, along with creating ads, was a cartoonist and greeting card designer.
His striking and simple style isn't quite yet Art Deco, but it certainly anticipates it. Many of these images are from his Ink Beasts Parade series of ads.
These works, and those after the jump, are from the Public Domain Review's Augustus Jansson’s Queen City Ink Adverts (1903–1907). There are more at the link.
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| Augustus L. Jansson |
This video starts out in a small market. We then board a water taxi and travel down a river, through a small town where we refuel, and then eventually onto the open waters of a lake. It looks like it would be pleasant day trip.
In my title I called the country Burma, the film-maker called it Myanmar. So which is correct? It is actually been known by both names. The British, during their colonial rule, settled on Burma as its official name. After independence the country's name was changed several times. It was a military junta that changed it to Myanmar, with the US, UK and a few other countries not recognizing the junta's mandate for such a name change and still calling it Burma. Read What’s in a Name: Burma or Myanmar? if you're interested in further details on the back and forth of the country's name changes.
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These are movie posters of silent films from the 1920s. Between their goofily maudlin stories and the sensibilities of that time, I'm sure they have oodles of PC sins oozing from them. Much less being green lit to be made, I wonder if they could even be viewed in these days of neo-Victorianism?
The posters are from Go to Cinema! at the PICRYL archives. There are more examples after the jump, and even more at the link.
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These images are of playing cards from the 16th and 17th centuries. I believe they are all of the face of the cards, I would be curious to see if their backs are highly decorative. The suits and card values seem to be the same as modern cards.
These images, and those after the jump, are from the Paris Musées digital collection. There are more at the link, you can also download zips of each card which contain the card's image as well as a PDF with further information. The PDF is in French.
