The Common Good.

“Take a walk through any big city. Do you see anything that needs improvement? There are huge amounts of work to be done, and lots of idle hands. People would be delighted to do the work, but the economic system is such a catastrophe it can’t put them to work.

The country’s awash in capital. Corporations have so much money they don’t know what to do with it – it’s coming out of their ears. There’s no scarcity in funds – these aren’t “lean and mean” times. That’s just a fraud.”

Noam Chomsky

Have 75 years of television made us smarter?

A curious phenomenon is occurring each Wednesday. The BBC is receiving a lot of love. Well, to be specific, David Attenborough’s current series is. Frozen Planet is so beautifully put together, so moving, so informative, that even those cynical journalists who routinely abuse the BBC on behalf of their paymasters for the simple reason their products are in direct competition with it are eagerly embracing the brilliance of this programme.”

wow

Spike Jonze: Mourir Auprès de Toi

 Mourir Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side)

“Designer Olympia Le-Tan’s embroidered clutch-bags spring to life in director Spike Jonze’s tragicomic stop-motion animation Mourir Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side). On a shelf in famed Parisian bookstore Shakespeare and Company, the star-crossed love story of a klutzy skeleton and his flame-haired amour plays out amidst Le-Tan’s illustrations of iconic first-edition book covers. “It’s such a beautiful and romantic place,” offers Le-Tan of the antiquarian bookstore. “The perfect setting for our story!” The project started after Jonze asked for a Catcher in the Ryeembroidery to put on his wall and the plucky Le-Tan asked for a film in return. Enlisting French filmmaker Simon Cahn to co-direct, the team wrote the script between Los Angeles and Paris over a six month period, before working night and day animating the 3,000 pieces of felt Le-Tan had cut by hand. “I love getting performances from, telling stories about and humanizing things that aren’t human,” said Jonze of working with Le-Tan’s characters. After spending five years adapting Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are, Jonze’s recent shorts include robot love story I’m Here and an inspired G.I. Joe-starring video for The Beastie Boys. “A short is like a sketch,” he says. “You can have an idea or a feeling and just go and do it.” Here the iconic director reveals his creative process to writer Maryam L’Ange.”

The Vallard Atlas

'Terra Java' (east coast of Australia?)
‘Terra Java’ (east coast of Australia?)

From BibliOdyssey:

  •  “It was (anonymously) produced by the Dieppe school (France) in 1547 and was either copied from Portuguese maps or was completed with the input of (a) Portuguese cartographer(s)
  • The maps are known as portolan (navigational) charts [previously]
  • Unusually, north is shown at the bottom of the maps in the style of Muslim cartographers (very rare in European Christian mapping)
  • Allegedly, this atlas shows the first ever European record of Australian coastline — some 250 years ahead of Capt. Cook and 60-odd years before the earliest official European discovery/sighting/mapping of any Australian coastline by William Janszoon in 1606 [see: Landing List].<
  • The miniatures and marginalia depict 16th century native and colonisation scenes
  • The first[?] use of the name “Canada” in a map 

 

North America, East Coast
North America, East Coast

 

 

Aegean Sea
Aegean Sea

See lots more at BibliOdyssey.

 

Frozen Planet

 
This is Frozen Planet, which I was working for a while there..
Should be going out on BBC One soon (Oct?).
I was taking and interpreting data from NASA and commercial satellite scans and turning them into accurate, explanatory yet aesthetically pleasing globe views.
I was assisted in the task by the excellent Jessica Lee.
There is one at the front of this trailer there, but it has been compressed to **** on the YouTubes, there are at least another 6 million shades of snow in there on the full HD version.
(All the animals are real, btw.)