One of Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest mechanisms with rampaging rodent Princess power:
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And the X-RHEX hexapedal robot:
Aichi M6A1 Seiran Graffiti
I chanced across Secrets of the Dead: Japanese Super Sub while channel surfing last night. There wasn’t much exhumation/archaeology/poking around, but it was very interesting and jogged my memory a bit (see below).
Embedding the video seems to be borked – click the image below to go to a page where you can watch the show.
Image via.
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In the program, we briefly encounter Unit 731; one of the missions planned for the I-400 class subs was an anthrax attack on the west coast of the US. As always, when Japanese war crimes in Manchuria come up, I marvel at the differences between post-war Germany and Japan. Germany was forced to confront the horror of the Final Solution; Japan was allowed to deny and rationalize.
Quite a while ago I came across (via ?? – where’s my Memex?) pictures of engravings found during the restoration of the only surviving M6A1 Seiran (three Seirans were carried by each I-400 sub). I wonder who made them and what he was thinking about when he did.
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Historia Naturae
Wunderkammeriffic!
Via @microecos.
Catching up 2 – frogs
Off I went to a frogger’s get-together – lovely frog room, good pizza, great company.
Epipedobates tricolor Highland
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Allobates femoralis – two of my passions reference LBJs (little brown jobs). I like them in both instances – there’s always something that rewards close inspection. Here, it’s flash marks on the thighs (not seen below, but obvious here).
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Madagascar has Mantellas – small frogs similar in some ways to the neotropical poison dart frogs. I’d like to put together a large Malagasy biotope vivarium – a Mantella species, a few Phelsuma of some type, and maybe a group of Uroplatus. (Also a Platycerium madagascariense + Cymbididiella rhodochila, but they won’t move around much.)
Mantella milotympanum
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One wall of the frog room.
Citroen XM Transporter with Maserati on top
This popped up in my Flickr contact stream and just has to be posted. The beauty of front wheel drive: no pesky back-end drive train to fuss over. That being said, I wonder how M. Tissier dealt with the computer-controlled hydraulic suspension – I’m hoping he added more XM components and hacked the control system.
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Maserati Bora on top, I think.
Catching up 1 – tracks
Breaking the long posting hiatus with some pictures from weekend activities.
I took a long scouting walk around a salt marsh a couple weeks back and chanced upon this set of tracks in the snow. My theory is that they show a coyote’s attempt to drag down a white-tailed deer. He wasn’t successful here, but I didn’t follow the tracks to find out what happened next – I was like a horse that knows the barn is thataway – heading for the truck!
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Flying Merkel
As mentioned before, I have a soft spot for these beasties.
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Road or track, it was difficult to ignore a Flying Merkel, and not just because of the brand’s signature bright-orange paint. Merkels displayed perhaps the finest engineering of early American motorcycles, with components that were literally years ahead of their competitors.
Credit for that goes to founder Joseph Merkel, a self-trained machinist who went on to study mechanical engineering at university. A motorized tricycle he built in 1900 is credited with being one of the first self-propelled vehicles in Wisconsin. Soon after he was in the business of selling motorcycles. Where others were happy with bronze bushings inside their engines, Merkel insisted on German-made ball bearings, which quickly led to a reputation for reliability. Likewise, in contrast to the standard atmospheric pressure intake valves, Merkel designed a cam-actuated valve mechanism for both intake and exhaust. He also developed a throttle-dependent engine oiler way before Harley or Indian adopted that useful feature.
Merkel then turned his attention to suspension. Bone-jarring rigid frames wouldn’t do for Flying Merkel customers, so he designed telescoping systems at both ends with concealed springing. The so-called Spring Frame and Spring Fork gave his bikes an unsurpassed ride, leading to the advertising slogan, “All Roads are Smooth to The Flying Merkel.” The forks in particular were so good that many a competitor’s bike turned up wearing a complete Merkel front end! *
Via Hemmings.
Kayaking the Tsangpo Gorge
Seems like once something is front and center in your imagination, you find it everywhere. I finally ordered Atomic Robo (Vols. 1-3) – I opened up volume one and found myself at a Nazi installation in the Tsangpo Gorge! A few days later I was skulking around a local used bookstore when I came across The Last River, an account of the ill-fated 1998 kayak expedition that claimed Doug Gordon’s life. Like the ijit I am, I didn’t buy it immediately; when I returned a week later it was gone. Luckily, it hadn’t sold – just moved to the ‘featured used books’ shelf at the main store – I snatched it up. The Last River gets 2 1/2 out of 5 stars – in spite of (because of?) the extensive bios of the participants, I didn’t empathize with any of them. Some of it may also be my ambivalence about modern ‘extreme’ expeditioning. It was extremely useful as an overview of some of the other western personalities kicking around that part of the world: Ian Baker, Kenneth Storm, et al. and as a decent timeline of western activity in the late 90s though.
While wandering around the internet looking for info on other Tsangpo exploration, I found the video account of the 2002 expedition on Hulu. Some thoughts –
- Anyone who does not expect to have to re-negotiate with Monpa porters when the porters feel they have the upper hand is not paying attention. It happened to Kingdon-Ward in 1924, to the 1998 kayakers and, as you’ll see below, in 2002.
- The river volume in 2002 is low – and yet the water is still amazingly powerful and complex. Some of it has to do with the gradient and some with the fact that ‘low’ is a relative term.
- I can’t imagine what the holes, hydraulics etc. would be like at 2 1/2 to 5 times the volume depicted below (the conditions that the 1998 group confronted). Mind = boggled.
- If you have Google Earth installed, plugging 29°46’9.59″N, 95°11’13.33″E into the search box will fly you (close) to the Hidden Falls.
- The map graphics in the video confuse the heck out of me – all I can figure is that south is at the top of the map.
- Takin.
A different storm on Saturn
I’ve been getting a lot of search term hits on ‘saturn storm’ since yesterday – a combination, methinks, of this and this (which hit on Monday):
Gigantic Storm With Huge Tail Erupts on Saturn
A BLAST of Dazzle Camo
Via @roundmyskull, a post on a British dazzle camoufleur and Vorticist: Edward Wadsworth. The Design Student has indicated an interest in model building/painting (we’re going to ransack the house for his old Warhammer figurines – could be a nice side job); perhaps I should build a WWI ship model or 2 for him to dazzle up.
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And a print from RISD’s dazzle plan collection. I reiterate – I need more wall space.
Land Speed Record poster
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According to Mr. Strohl at Hemmings (where I found the image), “prints of the A2-sized poster (16.5 inches x 23.4 inches) will cost $76 each, including delivery, and can be ordered by emailing him at info [at] stefanmarjoram.com.”
I need more wall space.
I don’t know whether it was the documentary on the Campbells I half remember seeing when I was 6 or the tea cards (from the same period in my life), but I’m partial to the Blue Birds:
(more)
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and the Bluebird:
More plant genitalia (Paph. venestum)
My Paphiopedilum venestum seems to be happy – it’s thrown up three blossoms. Some pictures:
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