AvIation Week magazine covers

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Here, and after the jump are a number of covers of Aviation Week which, depending on the date, is  also known as Aviation and Aviation Weekly and Space Technology. They are from the Internet Archives Aviation Week section where you can view more covers as well as browse the magazines interiors as well.

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Casting an equestrian statue

This video uses animated etchings from the period to show the 15 year process of designing, casting and installing a monumental statue of Louis XV of France. Altogether it used 30 tons of brass. It was destroyed during the French Revolution.

Via The History Blog.

  

Friday

Get ready for a reimagined weekend with Matt Mulholland covering the Rebecca Black classic.
 

Sparrow Mart

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Sparrow Mart is an art installation created by Lucy Sparrow and housed in L.A.'s Standard Hotel. It is a replica of a 1980's American style supermarket. The replica goods and products are made of felt and can be purchased. It will be open until the end of August 2018, so if you're in the L.A. area and want to see it you still have time.

From the Colossal article Lucy Sparrow’s ’80s Style Supermarket Offers 31,000 Handmade Felt Items:

The retro shop has all the familiar selections of American comforts, including a videotape rental section with ’80s classics like Footloose, Dirty Dancing, and Short Circuit. She also has fresh hand-sewn seafood on ice, sushi, fruits and vegetables, a variety of meat cuts and other animal products, popular snacks, canned goods, cereals, candies, sodas, liquor and cleaning products. Each item is meticulously cloned from felt, a material that evokes childhood and play. The fact that the store offers 27 different types of sushi (each produced in 300 pieces), plus chopsticks, wasabi, pickled ginger, and even soy sauce packed inside iconic plastic fish containers, says a great deal about the amount of detail and determination that went into creating this overwhelming installation. Working alone until very recently, the artist ended up hiring four full-time assistants in her studio and outsourcing fifteen professionals to complete this immersive project.

The naked ones in the forest

Above is a short documentary about the isolated Mascho Piro tribe in Peru's Amazon jungle region.

The Mascho Piro are hunter gathers who are increasingly coming in contact with the outside world. The villagers they are encountering, and sometimes attacking with deadly force, are Christians. Some of the villagers are also descendants of the Mascho Piro. Regardless of blood ties, they consider the Mascho Piro as brethren who are living a sad life in the jungle and should be brought into the folds of civilization.

Acting as a buffer between the two are the Protection Agents. They're concerned about the effects of contact on the Mascho Piro, particularly exposure to disease and the realization that, were the Mascho Piro absorbed into civilization, they would end up on the bottom rung of society -- the "poorest of the poor" -- as they struggle to adjust.

It is a complex and tragic situation. In their desire for machetes and iron pots the Mascho Piro have no idea what they are walking into. That said, in these situations I always wonder about the logic of keeping such groups of people artificially isolated. What purpose does it really serve? Aren't they already the "poorest of the poor" with short life spans and high infant mortality among the negatives? How much of this desire to isolate is more for the vanity of the anthropologists then the benefit of the Mascho Piro and, more importantly, their descendants? I don't know.

For a related post see He gave us lollies.

Avoiding insult

If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War. ― George Washington

Ain't No Grave

Get ready for a revived weekend with Jamie Wilson.