The Athanasius Kircher Society gives us a head-up on a very nice slide show on Slate devoted to the photographs of Rosamond Purcell. I realized while looking at the photographs that I’d seen a couple of the images before, without paying enough attention to the person making the art – I won’t make that mistake again (I hope) w/ Ms. Purcell’s work. One place you can go to see more is the Museum of Jurassic Technology’s exhibit of Ricky Jay’s decaying dice. Enjoy!

Update – Purcell links abound! Here’s one from the Boston Globe. (via BoingBoing)

Another site that blurs the line between gaffs and art – weighted more toward art and less towards the Feejee mermaid side of the house.

An interesting bunch of photographs – certainly worth an occasional look. Allow me to present the Flikr Wunderkammer pool (drum roll)…

*

A crack team of South Korean forensic animation specialists work on the remains.

I hesitate to characterize this work as gaffs – I’m not sure it can be put in any category. It is fun, interesting and beautiful; take a look. (via BoingBoing)

Today is the anniversary of Joseph Kittinger’s third and highest parachute jump in 1960. Using a helium balloon, he reached an altitude of 31,300 meters; upon exiting the gondola, his speed peaked at something close to 618 mph. The film of the jump shows the curve of the earth and a sky that is quite black – he was a third of the way to the Karman Line (100 km up; the line that officially marks ‘space’). A couple clips, while I figure out how to embed videos into the blog: a short subject on Project Excelsior and a clip from the Discovery Channel showing the jump. Col. Kittinger is one of the unsung pioneers of the space age; prosit!

Update – Aug 16, 2012. In a classic case of link rot, both the above clips have been yanked from YouTube. Here are a couple others.

A newsreel piece:

*

There are a quite a few YouTube color clip assemblages with iffy soundtracks. This is not one of them:

Pink Tentacle does it again – check out this post on Japanese mermaid mummies.

While I’m on the subject of things Japanese – a couple of wonderful screens? books? depicting goshawks. Click on the initial image to zoom (via Bibliodessey)

The critters in the post below got me thinking about gaffs – taxidermy where one cobbles together a mount from pieces, parts and whatever is handy. The canonical gaff is/was P. T. Barnum’s Feejee Mermaid; she’s not what I think of when I think mermaid, but she’s “This way to the egress” Barnum all the way. A while ago I ran across the work of Sarina Brewer whose gaffs include mermaids and Jenny Hanivers among other wild stuff. The etymology of Jenny Haniver is worth the detour into the world of aberrant taxidermy by itself.

…or Museum of Fantastic Specimens.

A wonderful group of creatures made out of paste, paper and the king of materials – bamboo. The site is in Japanese – what little I know of what’s going on comes from this post (thanks Pink Tentacle), discovered via boingboing.