giant robot fire breathing … and fertile!

Somebody made this fierce thing, somebody with a beautiful mind.  And now it’s having babies!

From Trends in Japan.

Here’s the artist’s website – kenji-yanobe.

germans vs greeks

Here’s an OLD favorite – Monty Python’s philosopher’s football match, the Greeks vs the Germans. 

You can read the sketch here.

Here’s the commentary for the game deciding, and only goal:

Football Commentator 
 Archimedes out to Socrates, Socrates back to Archimedes, Archimedes out to Heraclitus, he beats Hegel.  Heraclitus a little flick, here he comes on the far post, Socrates is there, Socrates heads it in! Socrates has scored!  The Greeks are going mad, the Greeks are going mad. Socrates scores, got a beautiful cross from Archimedes. The Germans are disputing it.  Hegel is arguing that the reality is merely an a priori adjunct of non-naturalistic ethics, Kant via the categorical imperative is holding that ontologically it exists only in the imagination, and Marx is claiming it was offside.  But Confucius has answered them with the final whistle! It’s all over! Germany, having trounced England’s famous midfield trio of Bentham, Locke and Hobbes in the semi-final, have been beaten by the odd goal, and let’s see it again.  There it is, Socrates, Socrates heads in and Leibnitz doesn’t have a chance. And just look at those delighted Greeks.  There they are, “Chopper” Sophocles, Empedocles of Acragus, what a game he had. And Epicurus is there, and Socrates the captain who scored what was probably the most important goal of his career.

highline

Pictures of the construction of the new high line park in Chelsea – due to open this summer, from Curbed.

prada transformer

Here is a presentation of the proposed Prada pavillion – called the transformer – in Seoul by the architect OMA. 

This architect’s mind is like a steel trap.  Always thinking.  It’s always about intelligence, a marriage of form and idea and tectonic.  He never allows orthodoxy to compromise what he is trying to do.  It’s never merely about beauty or aesthetics – we have a growing suspicion that bag is only half full.  How can a building, in a city, merely indicate who is serving and who is eating?

Anyway … somehow through this open process, he comes up with this Tatlin like, constructivist but thoroughly contemporary, abstract but contextual and most of all bold construction.

newsmap

The biases of news shown graphically in newsmap.  You can flip between countries to see national biases.  It seems to be mostly North America, Western Europe, Australia and with India thrown in, which already presents a huge problematic bias, but it’s pretty cool anyway. 

From the website –

Newsmap does not pretend to replace the googlenews aggregator. Its objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media. It is not thought to display an unbiased view of the news; on the contrary, it is thought to ironically accentuate the bias of it.

greatest philosopher

In Our Time, Melvyn Bragg’s show on BBC Radio 4, has announced your pick for greatest philosopher.  Marx, Hume, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche are the top four in order.  I wonder why?  You can find out –

In Our Time’s Greatest Philosopher Result

I’m not a good source for information about philosophy, but here goes nothing anyway.  It seems to me Marx was the founder of one of the two greatest errors of the 20th century – communism.  I think we are struggling with the second right now – capitalism.  They are both really good ideas, but not when taken on their own.  Solo, they became naive, delusional philosophies, which each drew us seductively under its spell.  They each describe one side of a coin and insist – on pain of death, or extreme shame anyway – that they are complete. 

Isn’t it telling that the In Our Time poll drew such a high response for the spokesman for one side of the same old debate – collectivism/the government vs. the individual/private citizen?   Please let it be over!  No more ideology.  Now, please. 

Must post the Greek vs. the German philosopher football match next.

shanghai

Pictures of Shanghai from Urban Age.

Alexandre Duret-Lutz’s planets

Church of Auvers-sur-Oise, Paris

Photograph: Alexandre Duret-Lutz

It looks like this lawn has become a tennis ball and wants to hug me.  The church is more reticent.  All three, the church, the lawn, the trees have made themselves mondial, the whole world.  Like some people I know.  Or maybe, like most people I know?

sony photographer of the year awards

Dustin Humphrey won first prize in the Advertising category for this image entitled ‘NUTOPIA’

Iranian tourists visiting Persepolis in Iran by David Watts.

sony photographer of the year awards 2009

nicholas hughes suicide

Nicholas Hughes was the son of the great poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.  His mother was made more famous – for no benefit to anyone – by  the scandal of her suicide when he was just one year old. 

Sylvia describes Nicholas’ birth —

“You are the one

Solid the spaces lean on, envious.

You are the baby in the barn.”

Read the whole poem.

After his mother’s suicide, his father writes that Nicholas’ eyes —

“Became wet jewels,

The hardest substance of the purest pain

As I fed him in his high white chair”.

I just started reading The Sisters Antipodes by Jane Alison, a memoir about children who live their lives under the enormous burden of family betrayal.  It seems betrayal haunts for years if not a lifetime.  Nicholas took his life four days ago. 

Nicholas Hughes, Sylvia Plath’s son commits suicide from the Times Online.