We got our Xbox 360 back from repairs today. Other Half cradled it in his manly arms and smiled. I kid you not.
Structures Lost and Found
Two links: Abandoned Russian Lighthouses - a series of crumbling structures in beautiful natural surroundings. Add a healthy dollop of poverty and tragedy:
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the unattended automatic lighthouses did [the] job for some time, but after some time they collapsed too. Mostly as a result of the hunt for the metals like copper and other stuff which were performed by the looters. They didn’t care or maybe even didn’t know the meaning of the “Radioactive Danger” sign and ignored them, breaking in and destroying the equipment.
The Linguistic Diversity of Europe - an interesting, if brief, look at how the linguistic landscape (literally!) may have looked as long as six millennia ago. Ringe makes a good case for how he constructs it (as we have very little, if any, hands-on evidence, obviously) and the comments are interesting too. I'm a sucker for (Proto-)Indo-European linguistic archaeology, anyhow even if that makes me sound vaguely geeky.
Do You Believe In Faeries?
If you are familiar with the history of photography or an Arthur Conan Doyleaficionado, you might recognise this photograph. It is one of the five Cottingley Faeries photographs.
In the early 19th century, photography was regarded as an instrument of truth. The camera couldn't lie. When Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths took the first two Cottingley photographs in 1917, their photographs were taken as proof that faeries existed. Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes and a noted Spiritualist, approached the girls a few years later, gave them a new camera and asked them to take more photos of the faeries. The girls obliged.
Nowadays it is difficult to understand how anybody could be hoodwinked by the photographs. The faeries look like cut-outs and the lighting is noticably "off". Quite apart from the Arthur Conan Doyle connection (and the inevitable "How could the creator of the world's most famous detective be fooled by this?!" question), these photos were arguably some of the first to trouble photography's truth claim.
Elsie and Frances denied faking the faeries for most of their lives, but eventually owed up in the 1980s when both were dying. I was reminded of the Cottingley photographs when I was watching BBC's Antique Roadshow this past Sunday. Frances' daughter and grand-daughter showed up with the original photographs and the camera which Conan Doyle had given the girls. What struck me was not so much the estimated value of the photographs and the camera, but rather how the Cottingley incident had impacted an entire family. Frances' daughter, now an elderly lady, visibly struggled to admit her mother had deceived an entire world. When asked, both the daughter and grand-daughter maintained the fifth and final photograph was genuine - but the grand-daughter looked as though she was protecting her own mother from an unbearable truth.
Photography has changed so much since two girls went down to the bottom of their garden and found faeries. Ellie pointed me towards a series of images from Google Earth which are staggeringly beautiful (particularly the one with the elephants). Make sure to explore the linked images to Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Everest.
Books 2009: Gregory Maguire - Wicked.
First book read in 2009: Gregory Maguire's Wicked which is a retelling of "The Wizard of Oz" from the viewpoint of the Wicked Witch. It read a bit like really decent fanfiction in the sense that it subverted canon, told the story via a secondary character and fleshed out the world of Oz (like, just how did they build the Yellow Brick Road and why?). Like much fanfiction, the book also adds a healthy dollop of sexuality to a familiar story.
Did I like it? If it had been fanfiction - i.e. self-published fiction by someone whose day-job does not involve literature - I would have sung its praise because it is clever, inventive and does a marvellous job at humanising a character who's cardboard Evil in the original book. But it's not the work of a smart fan. "Wicked" is professionally published, has a John-Updike-in-the-New-Yorker recommendation on the front cover and its author talks about his book being a parable for the Vietnam war. This is where I begin to have serious reservations.
"Wicked" simply isn't good enough for that sort of pretension. It's a fun read with its fair share of structural and characterisation problems (most of which are forgiveable, admittedly, except for the middle third of the book which is one big mess) but it does not go any deeper than that. Maguire sets up quite a few interesting points - the distinction between Animals/animals; attitude towards sexuality; the divide and interdependence of science/religion - and completely fails to follow up on these points. Other Half has another two Maguire books set in Oz. I will be reading them at some point, but I'm not in any rush.
Related: Gregory Maguire reimagines "The Little Match Girl" for NPR.
Welcome, welcome 2009
If you like Elliott Smith, you'd like Winterpills. Here's A Benediction.
Still Coughing
Meanwhile, British steampunk enthusiasts are now hiding their retro-styled reinventions of common househole items under their brass beds for fear of being visited by the long arm of the law themselves
io9 looks into a British newsstory about a rogue terrorist who turned out to be .. well, a LARPer with a steampunk bent?
Meanwhile, my Doctor Who prediction turned out to be a load of codswallop. Whoopsie.