Geography Category Archives
that old cute Europe
14 March 2014 | Culturology, Geography | No Comments
was prepping a little — and spotted a beautiful quote:
Staff of Slovak and Slovenian embassies meet once a month to exchange wrongly-addressed mail! :)
aren’t they lovely? self-irony, that’s what makes the nations strong.
Moby Duck
26 January 2014 | Geography, History, Metaphysics | No Comments
In 1992 a shipping container filled with rubber ducks was lost at sea. Over 28,000 rubber duckies fell overboard on their way from Japan to the United States. Imagine thousands of rubber ducks floating on the ocean. Many of them have since washed up on the shores of Hawaii, Alaska, South America, Australia and the Pacific Northwest. Others have been found frozen in Arctic ice and made their way to Newfoundland and Scotland. How wonderful to find a rubber duck on shore one day!
Perhaps what is more interesting and the key point of this story is it is believed there are over 2,000 of them are caught up in the currents of the North Pacific Gyre. The Gyre is a vortex of water that stretches between Japan and southeast Alaska. It is a vast churning area of water that holds anything that comes into it in a whirlpool for years if not forever. Now imagine thousands of rubber ducks churning around and around in a whirlpool of water for over 20 years.
These duckies are just going around in the same cycle, doing the same thing day after day, year after year…until one day somehow they break free.
как и было сказано:
Next morning, though they were pressed to stay, the lama insisted on departure. They gave Kim a large bundle of good food and nearly three annas in copper money for the needs of the road, and with many blessings watched the two go southward in the dawn.
‘Pity it is that these and such as these could not be freed from the Wheel of Things.’
‘Nay, then would only evil people be left on the earth, and who would give us meat and shelter?’ quoth Kim, stepping merrily under his burden.
после войны
10 November 2013 | Geography, History, Photo | No Comments
фотографии Берлина в 90-х.
теперь это уже исторический эскурс, да. и еще, мне кажется, здесь будет сложно увидеть или понять, но Берлин все же один из самых потрясающих городов, что я видел. неизменно живой, эволюционирующий, молодой.
via.
о связях
3 November 2013 | Geography, Literature | No Comments
план военного исследовательского центра в Пенемюнде. оттуда (оттуда) и до Винеты недалеко[1].
улыбайтесь, господа
1 November 2013 | Culturology, Geography | No Comments
в известном смысле, британский колониализм сделал для уничтожения вестфальских границ (и для расцвета производителей сладостей) куда больше, чем все последующие государственные союзы и объединения, разве нет? именно об этом говорят те бокалы жертвенной крови, что раз за разом поднимали мы вчера перед всемогущей тыквой.
не знаю, если честно, что нравится мне в этом празднике сильнее: маскарады живых, веселящихся мертвыми, хороводы нечисти, разнузданные официантки-ведьмы с метлой под мышкой или пауком в кармане фартука, ядовитые коктейли и отравленные стрелы в глаз заскучавшим посетителям — или бесноватые клерикалы всех сортов, яро бьющиеся за давно сгинувшие во мраке веков религиозные оковы, жаждущие навязать всем свои унылые — и столь безграмотные — измышления. под дружное, разумеется, ликование окружающих.
хотя, конечно, все куда проще. потому что карнавал и смех — это всегда хорошо.
в лабиринтах
15 October 2013 | Geography, Literature | No Comments
зато чудесная карта викторианского Лондона, распластанная поверх современных Google Maps:
The National Library of Scotland’s Map Department, supported by David Rumsey, have taken some very high-resolution scans of the Ordnance Survey 1893-6 1:1056 (that’s 60 inches to the mile!) set of 500+ maps of London and, crucially, reorientated and stitched them together, so that they can be presented seamlessly (using OpenLayers) on top of a “standard” Google web map or OpenStreetMap, with the base map acting as a modern context.
определенно, время снова перечитывать “Квинкункс”:
How could I have a “real” name that I didn’t know? In that case, was there a real me that went along with it and that I also didn’t know?
пересечения
27 August 2013 | Geography, History, Literature | No Comments
Набоков о разъяснении Джойсова “Улисса”:
Instead of perpetuating the pretentious nonsense of Homeric, chromatic, and visceral chapter headings, instructors should prepare maps of Dublin with Bloom’s and Stephen’s intertwining itineraries clearly traced.
иными словами, надо ехать, надо.
оба автора, кстати, встречались — при исключительно чудесных обстоятельствах.
соединять
4 August 2013 | Geography, Literature, Technology | No Comments
Placing Literature is an online database of places from scenes in literature- sourced and plotted by readers and researchers. Created by an author, a geographer and an engineer, the goal of Placing Literature is to connect readers to the places they are reading about, highlighting the meanings, values and emotions attached to a space. Particularly, in this case, the meanings and values created by the author and experienced by the reader.
maps are just nude pictures of reality
16 July 2013 | Culturology, Geography, Google, Politics, Software | No Comments
или, например, снова географические карты — что это такое?
I’ve seen maps that I find completely terrifying. Maps of uranium mining and of various illnesses in the Navajo reservations—they’re just insane. They just make you furious. Bill Bunge’s map [above] — which I still think is one of the great maps, the map of where white commuters in Detroit [ran over] black children while going home from work—that’s a terrifying map, and that’s an amazing map.
как они меняют нас?
It’s there, for example, in the way Google Maps redraws the city in relation to its own way of seeing. Maps, as we know, are a form of information that not only shows us the terrain in question but also reveals the concerns of its author. Maps are not neutral windows onto the world: they colour, frame and distort the world they describe.
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As Slate magazine’s Evgeny Morozov explains, Google’s business model of targeted advertising is soon to merge with its description of the physical fabric of the city. Using the data that Google already knows about you through your email, your searches and so on, it will generate personalised maps of the city. As Morozov writes, “Space, for Google, is just one more type of information that ought to be organised.” And monetised too, we can add. The city, through the map, is remade according to the data held by Google, and according to Google’s idea of what a city is and what it thinks you will do there.
или как другие меняют их для нас?
Imagine how the experience of Google Glass might alter your experience of the city as it overlays information onto your view, with the city literally becoming framed by Google. This Googleopic way of seeing transforms space and the urban environment through how and what it reveals and excludes. Its ways of seeing, as John Berger’s 1970s book of that title explored, contain hidden ideologies in its visual depiction of landscape. What’s relevant here is the way an ideology is made invisible through the manufacturing of images. Increasingly, this frame is used not only to show the world, but to make the world. The map and the territory, in other words, converge.
можно было бы подумать, что карты — это только снимки реальности. но что это за реальность? кто ее автор?
прорастают в мир
7 July 2013 | Geography, Literature, Technology | 3 Comments
или вот, например, еще одно пересечение литературы и мира: сказки Андерсена с привязкой к местности.
не то, чтобы очень интерактивно и показательно, — но хоть как-то.