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Climbing in Mali

Jul 19, ’11 9:16 AM

My uncle Dan sent me a link to this terrific video of French freestyle rock climber Catherine Destivelle filmed in 1987 in Bandiagara, Mali.

It is very much worth the whole ten minutes of viewing time. Sure there are some stomach churning hangs and other examples of what looks to be fine climbing. But just wait for the appearance of a trumpet playing Dogon “witch doctor”, a pygmy cliff dwelling, a cave full of skeletons, an idiot in jean shorts shooting a gun and the masked dancing stilt-walkers. Thanks Dan!

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Subject: remember this?

Jul 18, ’11 11:44 AM

From the I get weird stuff emailed to me department.

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Monkbot

Jul 13, ’11 2:48 PM

This is the “monkbot,” an exquisite 16th century automaton who now resides at the Smithsonian Institution. Photo by the talented Rosamond Purcell. Watch the Monkbot move in the video below.

From the Blackbird journal:

Driven by a key-wound spring, the monk walks in a square, striking his chest with his right arm, raising and lowering a small wooden cross and rosary in his left hand, turning and nodding his head, rolling his eyes, and mouthing silent obsequies. From time to time, he brings the cross to his lips and kisses it. After over 400 years, he remains in good working order. Tradition attributes his manufacture to one Juanelo Turriano, mechanician to Emperor Charles V. The story is told that the emperor’s son King Philip II, praying at the bedside of a dying son of his own, promised a miracle for a miracle, if his child be spared. And when the child did indeed recover, Philip kept his bargain by having Turriano construct a miniature penitent homunculus.

Via Boing Boing

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Beginner Screen Names

Jul 7, ’11 10:29 PM

From Good, an article by Amanda Hess on The Eternal Shame of Your First Online Handle.

“The other day I made a comment on someone’s blog and I noticed I was the only one that put my online pseudonym into the name field,”MetaFilter founder Matt Haughey once wrote of the changing nature of online self-identification. Haughey had found himself the lone alias in a field full of real-life, first-and-last-named commenters. “This is one of those moments when you notice you’re becoming a dinosaur,” he wrote.

That was 2003. Since then, the trend toward aligning our online and offline personas has only accelerated. Today, humans stake online claims to their real-life names before they can even form words orsurvive outside the womb. (via Kottke)

Here’s mine

Handle: HANDSOFFIT

Platform: AOL

User: Kevin Casey AKA astro_astro, astroblastro, kcasey, kvncsy

Why: Maybe fighting over the keyboard with my sister? I don’t remember why really, but it was cool in a Kid Vid kind of way. That was back in the chat-room days. (ASL?) I can remember being put off by the in appropriateness of someone asking “hands off what?”

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