Wikipedia Tangents

4th Nov 2011

Dr. Herb Goldberg/Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“Dr. Herb Goldberg, (born July 14, 1937) is the author of the book What Men Still Don’t Know About Women, Relationships, and Love, previously authored The Hazards of Being Male: Surviving the Myth of Masculine Privilege (1975), related to the formative men’s movement.”

“The Mythopoetic men’s movement is based on spiritual perspectives derived from psychoanalysis, and especially the work of Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and the poet Robert Bly. It is called ‘mythopoetic’ because of the emphasis on mythology communicated as poetry with some appropriation of indigenous mythology and knowledge”

“He published ‘A Wrong Turning in American Poetry’, an essay in which he made a case against the influences of Eliot, Pound, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams, in favour of the more direct work of writers such as Pablo Neruda, César Vallejo, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Antonio Machado, and Rainer Maria Rilke.”

“Bly criticizes Eliot’s idea of the objective correlative: ‘These men have more trust in the objective, outer world than in the inner world’.”

“Popularized by T. S. Eliot in his essay ‘Hamlet and His Problems’, the term was first used by Washington Allston around 1840 in the “Introductory Discourse” of his Lectures on Art.”

“Eliot sets the ground rules by criticising the fixation on Hamlet the character as opposed to Hamlet the play, which is exacerbated, in the case of Goethe’s treatment of the subject, by the creative ability to meld Shakespeare’s creation into a ‘Werther’ while still professing to offer critical insight.”

”[Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship] has had a significant impact on European literature. Romantic critic and theorist Friedrich Schlegel judged it to be of comparable importance for its age as the French Revolution and the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte.”

“In mimicking Kant’s difficult style, Fichte produced works that were barely intelligible. ‘He made no hesitation in pluming himself on his great skill in the shadowy and obscure, by often remarking to his pupils, that ‘there was only one man in the world who could fully understand his writings; and even he was often at a loss to seize upon his real meaning.””

3rd Nov 2011 | 1 note

Helmet/Albert T. W. Simeons

“After Hamilton had left the Band of Susans, Helmet formed in early 1989. They were spotted by Tom Hazelmyer and signed to Amphetamine Reptile Records, releasing their debut 7 inch single, ‘Born Annoying’, later that year. AmRep released their first album, Strap it On, in 1990.”

“In the early to mid 1980s, Poss studied under the tutelage of avant-garde guitar ensemble composer Rhys Chatham, and played in the bands Tot Rocket and Western Eyes. Taking their name from the number of Susans then in the lineup, Band of Susans released the 12” EP Blessing And Curse on Poss’s own Trace Elements label.”

“Chatham began his musical career as a piano tuner for avant-garde pioneer La Monte Young as well as harpsichord tuner for Gustav Leonhard, Rosalyn Turek and Glenn Gould.”

“By this time Young had taken a turn toward the conceptual, using principles of indeterminacy in his compositions and incorporating non-traditional sounds, noises, and actions.”

“One strand of indeterminacy in music sees it^{[weasel words]} as an aesthetic endeavour that strives to dissolve any fixed properties of music sound into a fluid process and do away with the traditional control of the composer over the material.”

“An article published by the Buffalo News attributes the origin of the term to William Shakespeare’s plays Henry V and As You Like It, in which the author includes similes of weasels sucking eggs. The article also claims that this is a misnomer, because weasels do not have a mandible suitable for sucking eggs or blood.”

“Finally, the cartilagenous fish, such as sharks, do not have any of the bones found in the lower jaw of other vertebrates. Instead, their lower jaw is composed of acartilagenous structure homologous with the Meckel’s cartilage of other groups.”

“Johann Friedrich Meckel, the Younger discovered this cartilage in 1820.”

“His grandfather was also named “Johann Friedrich Meckel”. In order to avoid confusion, he is often referred to as Johann Friedrich Meckel, the Elder. The elder Meckel was also a professor of anatomy, and he too has anatomical structures named after him.”

“During his career, Meckel began an anatomical collection that was continued by his son and grandson. The collection includes mummified parts of the body, organs, skeletons and skulls, zoological as well as human anatomy. The collection also contains teratological specimens, including a complete situs inversus from the 18th century.”

“It was previously believed that the mammalian embryo developed in the impervious uterus of the mother, protected from all extrinsic factors. However, after the thalidomide disaster of the 1960s, it became apparent and more accepted that the developing embryo could be highly vulnerable to certain environmental agents that have negligible or non-toxic effects to adult individuals. ”

“Thalidomide (/θəˈlɪdəmaɪd/) was introduced as a sedative drug in the late 1950s that was typically used to cure morning sickness.”

“Proximate causes of pregnancy sickness include:

An increase in human chorionic gonadotropin. It is probably not the human chorionic gonadotropin itself that causes the nausea. More likely it is the human chorionic gonadotropin stimulating the maternal ovaries to secrete estrogen which in turn causes the nausea.”

“A controversial usage of hCG is as an adjunct to the British endocrinologist Albert T. W. Simeons’ ultra-low-calorie weight-loss diet (less than 500 calories). Simeons, while studying pregnant women in India on a calorie-deficient diet, and ‘fat boys’ with pituitary problems (Frölich’s syndrome) treated with low-dose hCG, claimed that both lost fat rather than lean (muscle) tissue.”

“Dr. Simeons lived in India for 20 years then moved to Rome, Italy & opened his practice focusing only on the perfection of the HCG Weight Loss Protocol.”

27th Sep 2011 | 1 note

K-hole/Nueva Germania

“Ketamine and its subjective effects were related by Timothy Leary to the eighth and final circuit of his 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness, along with DMT and high doses of LSD.”

“As one grows from infancy, the various circuits are activated and begin to function, as described by Jean Piaget. The eight levels are associated with eight basic loser/winner scripts prepared by John C. Lilly.”

“In 1961 a group of scientists including Lilly gathered at the Green Bank Observatory to discuss the possibility of using the techniques of radio astronomy to detect evidence of intelligent life outside our Solar System. They called themselves The Order of the Dolphin after Lilly’s work with dolphins. They developed the Drake equation to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy.”

“The equation was cited by Gene Roddenberry as supporting the multiplicity of inhabited planets shown in Star Trek, the television show he created. However, Roddenberry didn’t have the equation with him, and he was forced to “invent” it for his original proposal. The invented equation created by Roddenberry is:

$Ff^2 (MgE)-C^1 Ri^1 ~ \cdot ~ M=L/So.\$

Drake has gently pointed out, however, that a number raised to the first power is merely the number itself. A poster with both versions of the equation was seen in the Star Trek: Voyager episode ‘Future’s End.’”

“Star Trek: Voyager went fully CGI for certain types of shots midway through Season 3 (late 1996). Paramount obtained an exclusive contract with Foundation Imaging, the studio responsible for special effects during Babylon 5’s first three seasons.”

Live action series

Babylon 5 (1993 - 1996) (seasons 1-3)
Hypernauts (1995 - 1996) (season 1)
Star Trek: Voyager (1996 - 2001) (seasons 3-7)
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1997 - 1999) (the season 5 finale, seasons 6-7)
Dawson’s Creek (2000) (single episode water effects)
Star Trek: Enterprise (2001 - 2002) (season 1)

“Due to its lineage, Hypernauts featured relatively detailed designs of its technology and its aliens, as well as a fairly intricate plot; especially for a Saturday morning children’s series. The premise of the series was that three cadets from the Academy of Galactic Exploration become lost in a Hyper Bubble (hyperspace) mid-jump and must band together with an alien named Kulai in order to survive in an unfamiliar part of the galaxy.”

“In the video game series Xenosaga (published 1998– ) for the PlayStation 2 console, people routinely travel long distances in space through hyperspace. Hyperspace in the Xenosaga universe is a realm of alternative space that looks like a long tube or column similar to a wormhole.”

“All three episodes of the main Xenosaga trilogy are named after the books of Friedrich Nietzsche. The first episode is named after The Will to Power, a book published posthumously by his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche.”

“Förster planned to create a “pure” Aryan settlement in the New World, and had found a site in Paraguay which he thought would be suitable. The couple persuaded 14 German families to join them in the colony, to be called Nueva Germania, and the group left Germany for South America on February 15, 1887.”

“Nowadays only 10% of the inhabitants are of mainly German origin.”

23rd Sep 2011

winged cat/The Unforgiven

“The earliest currently known report of a winged cat is from Henry David Thoreau: ‘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 neighborhood 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.’”

“In the Middle Ages, marten pelts were highly valued goods used as a form of payment in Slavonia, the Croatian Littoral and Dalmatia. The Croatian word for marten, kuna, is the name of the modern Croatian currency.”

“The high mountains of the region help the coast maintain a milder Mediterranean climate relative to inland areas. The area is also known for the Bora, a type of katabatic wind.”

“Examples of true katabatic winds include the Bora (or Bura) in the Adriatic, the Bohemian Wind or Böhmwind in the Ore Mountains, the Mistral, the Santa Ana in southern California, the Tramontana and the Oroshi in Japan.”

“The winds carry Coccidioides immitis and Coccidioides posadasii spores into nonendemic areas, a pathogenic fungus that causes Coccidioidomycosis (“‘Valley Fever’).”

“California state prisons, as far back as 1919, have been particularly affected by Coccidioidomycosis. In 2005 and 2006, the Pleasant Valley State Prison near Coalinga and Avenal State Prison near Avenal on the western side of the San Joaquin Valley had the highest incidence in 2005, of at least 3,000 per 100,000.”

“Noteable inmates: Anerae Brown aka X-Raided - Convicted for the murder of a woman during a home invasion robbery.”

“X-Raided’s next album Unforgiven came in 1999, and was also recorded surreptitiously while in prison. A guard helped X-Raided access the equipment necessary to record his vocals, and even his cell mate, Dott Dogg, made an appearance on the album.”

19th Sep 2011 | 1 note

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

—

Riz Ortolani - “Oh My Love (feat. Katyna Ranieri)”

“In the early 1950s Ortolani was founder and member of a jazz band of national Italian renown. His first score he wrote for the 1962 Paolo Cavara and Gualtiero Jacopetti pseudo-documentary Mondo Cane, whose main title-song More earned him a Grammy and also was nominated for an Oscar as Best Song.”

“Yves Klein, a subject of the film, suffered a heart attack at the Cannes screening and was appalled by how he and his work and theories were misrepresented.”

“In the performance piece, Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle (Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility) 1959–62, he offered empty spaces in the city in exchange for gold. He wanted his buyers to experience The Void by selling them empty space. In his view this experience could only be paid for in the purest material: gold. In exchange, he gave a certificate of ownership to the buyer. As the second part of the piece, performed on the Seine with an Art critic in attendance, if the buyer agreed to set fire to the certificate, Klein would throw half the gold into the river, in order to restore the ‘natural order’ that he had unbalanced by selling the empty space (that was now not ‘empty’ anymore). He used the other half of the gold to create a series of gold-leafed works, which, along with a series of pink monochromes, began to augment his blue monochromes toward the end of his life.”

“The use of ritual in Klein’s work is a theme running through his work, from his exhibition Le Vide (The Void) 1958, in which he exhibited invisible works at Clert’s gallery flanked by Republican Guards, to his elaborately planned wedding ceremony in 1962 and his votive offering to Saint Rita of Cascia.”

“Her actual entrance into the monastery has been described as a miracle. During the night, when the doors to the monastery were locked and the sisters were asleep, St. Rita was miraculously transported into the convent by her patron saints Saint John the Baptist, Saint Augustine, and Saint Nicholas of Tolentino. When she was found inside the convent in the morning and the sisters learned of how she entered, they could not turn her away.”

19th Sep 2011

swimming pool/Australian feral camel

“I got an indoor pool and an outdoor pool.” - Ray J

“The Fleishhacker Pool in San Francisco, California was the largest swimming pool in the United States.”

“It was built by philanthropist and civic leader Herbert Fleishhacker in 1924, and opened April 22, 1925. The pool measured 1,000 by 150 ft (300 by 50 m), held 6,500,000 US gal (24,600,000 L) of seawater, and accommodated 10,000 bathers. The pool was so large the lifeguards required kayaks for patrol, and was used by the military for drills and exercises. The pool water was pumped from the Pacific Ocean, filtered and heated.”

“It is possible that in the mid-1920s he had his portrait painted by the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury (1862-1947) who had established a new studio home in San Marino, California in 1925.”

“He was born Felice Adolfo Müller on March 29, 1862 at Airolo, in the Ticino in Switzerland, into a prominent patrician family whose lineage descended from Alfred the Great, Charlemagne and Doge Pietro Orseolo of Venice, through the von Rechburg family (a lady from which family married a Müller) and by the 18th and 19th centuries included mercenaries, lawyers, hoteliers and businessmen.”

“In the early 19th century, Ticino was the poorest of the cantons of Switzerland. According to the contemporary Franco-Danish scholar Conrad Malte-Brun, ‘in no part of Switzerland is there more poverty, bordering on wretchedness, so much idleness, and so little industry’.”

“Malte-Brun was the first person to suggest importing camels into Australia. See Australian feral camel.”

“Camels in Australia are the only feral herds of their kind in the world, and are estimated to number more than 1,000,000, with the capability of doubling in number every nine years.”

19th Sep 2011

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti/formant

“Above all, we believe it is necessary to be rid of pasta, that idiotic gastronomic fetish of the Italians.” - Filippo Marinetti, “Manifesto of Futurist Cuisine” (from Lapham’s Quarterly, Fall 2011 pg. 141)

“About the same time he worked on a very anti-Roman Catholic and anti-Austrian verse-novel, Le monoplan du Pape (The Pope’s Aeroplane, 1912) and edited an anthology of futurist poets. But his attempts to renew the style of poetry did not satisfy him. So much so that in his foreword to the anthology, he declared a new revolution: it was time to be done with traditional syntax and to use “words in freedom” (parole in libertà). His sound-poem Zang Tumb Tumb exemplifies words in freedom.”

“The ZTT Records label and the Swedish 80s new wave pop act Zzzang Tumb were named in homage to the poem.”

“ZTT Records is a record label founded in 1983 by NME journalist Paul Morley, record producer Trevor Horn, and businesswoman Jill Sinclair. The label’s name was also printed as “Zang Tumb Tuum” and “Zang Tuum Tumb” on various releases.”

“Morley is the author of Words and Music: the history of pop in the shape of a city. The book is a journey through the history of pop; it seeks to trace the connection between Alvin Lucier’s experimental audio recording, ‘I am sitting in a room‘ and Kylie Minogue’s ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”.”

“Since all rooms have characteristic resonance or formant frequencies (e.g. different between a large hall and a small room), the effect is that certain frequencies are emphasized as they resonate in the room, until eventually the words become unintelligible, replaced by the pure resonant harmonies and tones of the room itself.”

18th Sep 2011 | 2 notes

anencephaly/Teufelsschritt

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/books/review/the-grief-of-others-by-leah-hager-cohen-book-review.html?hpw

“A statistical rarity born without a brain, he lives only 57 hours”

“Strictly speaking the Greek meaning of the term is “no brain” (that is totally lacking) but it is accepted that children with this disorder are born without a forebrain, the largest part of the brain consisting mainly of the cerebral hemispheres (which include the neocortex, which is responsible for higher-level cognition, i.e., thinking).”

“A high neocortex ratio is thought to correlate with a number of social variables such as group size and the complexity of social mating behaviors. (See Dunbar’s number)”

“Dunbar’s surveys of village and tribe sizes also appeared to approximate this predicted value, including 150 as the estimated size of a neolithic farming village; 150 as the splitting point of Hutterite settlements; 200 as the upper bound on the number of academics in a discipline’s sub-specialization; 150 as the basic unit size of professional armies in Roman antiquity and in modern times since the 16th century; and notions of appropriate company size.”

“Alberta Hutterites had originally won the right to avoid having their photograph taken for their drivers’ licenses. In May 2007, the Alberta Court of Appeal ruled that the photograph requirement violates their religious rights and that driving was essential to their way of life. The Wilson Colony based their position on the belief that images are prohibited by the Second Commandment.”

“This prohibits the construction or fashioning of “idols” in the likeness of created things (beasts, fish, birds, people) and worshipping them (aniconism). It also prohibits making an image of the God of Israel for use in worship (see the incident of the golden calf).”

“In Australian Aboriginal culture there is a prohibition and tribal lore and custom contravening the depiction of the newly or recently dead, including photographs, as this is held to inhibit their passage to the Great Dreaming of the Ancestors.”

“Upon birth, the child is considered to be a special custodian of that part of his country and is taught the stories and songlines of that place.”

“In some cases, the paths of the creator-beings are said to be evident from their marks, or petrosomatoglyphs, on the land, such as large depressions in the land which are said to be their footprints.”

“At the entrance to the Munich Frauenkirche church in Bavaria is located the Devil’s Footstep or Teufelsschritt. This mark in a tile resembles a footprint, which according to legend was where the devil stood after he had made a deal with the builder to finance construction of the church on the condition that it contain no windows. The builder managed to trick the devil by siting columns so that the windows were not visible from the spot where the devil stood at the entrance. The devil eventually worked out that he had been tricked, however he could not enter a consecrated church and could only stand in the entrance foyer, stamping his foot furiously, leaving the footprint that remains visible in the church’s entrance today.”

18th Sep 2011 | 1 note

Maniac Mansion/cable ferry

http://twitter.com/#!/gabedelahaye/status/115310969563000833

Sleep No More is a very good theatrical adaptation of Maniac Mansion (from the creators of Leisure Suit Larry).

“At Gilbert’s request, David Fox, who had previously worked on Labyrinth: The Computer Game, assisted with Maniac Mansion’ scripting.”

“It is also one of the few adventure games made by the company to not use a variation of the SCUMM game engine (the other games being the GrimE-based Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Island).”

“GrimE’s and SCUMM’s names are similar in that they both come from synonyms for dirt (grime and scum).”

“In Britain, the Public Health Act 1875 required households to place their refuse into a container which could be moved so that it could be carted away. This was the first legal creation of the dustbin.”

“George Dempster invented the Dempster-Dumpster system in the 1930s for automatically loading the contents of standardized mobile steel containers onto the dustcart.”

“During World War II, the company produced pontoon boats and other equipment for the U.S. Navy.”

“A type of ferry known as the cable ferry(“punts” in Australia and New Zealand) pull themselves across a river using a motor or human power applied to the cable, which also guides the pontoon.”

17th Sep 2011 | 1 note

Tom Otterness/car wash

http://gawker.com/5841423/should-sculptor-who-shot-dog-for-art-receive-750k-in-public-funds

“Somehow the judging panel didn’t know about Otterness’s dog-murder movie—even though it’s listed right there on his danged Wikipedia page, and a simple Internet search of his name pulls up results that refer to it.”

“Journalist Gary Indiana criticized Otterness for an independent work done in 1977 called “Shot Dog Film” a looped video piece, in which, Otterness adopted a dog and then shot it to death for what Indiana called ‘the fun of recording his infantile, sadistic depravity on film.’”

“More obviously a novel, Resentment seems nevertheless to be an account, or perhaps a speculative exploration, of the case of California brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, convicted of the murder of their parents, though names and other details have been changed.”

“Lyle bought an expensive Rolex watch; a Porsche Carrera; and Chuck’s Spring Street Cafe, a Buffalo wings restaurant in Princeton.”

“Buffalo wings are used in competitive eating events, such as Philadelphia’s Wing Bowl and at the National Buffalo Wing Festival.”

“The International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE) hosts more than 100 “Major League Eating” events worldwide every year.”

“IFOCE changed its name to Major League Eating (MLE) in the early 2000s.”

“On June 28, 2010, Takeru Kobayashi announced he would not compete in the Nathan’s Fourth of July hot dog eating competition due to a labor impasse with Major League Eating over the stipulation that he could only compete in contests sanctioned by MLE.”

“Since 2005, Paul Page has been ESPN’s play-by-play announcer for the event, accompanied by color commentator Richard Shea, live at the contest location.”

“On December 1, 1977, while doing a helicopter traffic report, Page was nearly killed in an accident, as he crashed near a Speedway, Indiana, high school.”

“In addition to periodic reports, live traffic status information became more common in in the early 21st century with traffic congestion maps available by personal computer, mobile devices, and GPS units.”

“Data is typically collected via loop sensors embedded in the roadways, then processed by computer at a central facility and distributed as a map view to users.”

“Common applications of inductive sensors include metal detectors, traffic lights, car washes, and a host of automated industrial processes.”