Morning Linkage (Feb 12)

Posted bylara

Transportation

In hon­or of the Iceholes hav­ing * all * made it across the bor­der. Piaggio Ape rac­ing. The mad­ness nev­er stops.

The 1955 Ariel offer­ing. “The only four cylin­der motor­cy­cle you can buy in America.” Moto jour­nal­ist hyper­bole is not new.  Click to en-biggen.

Industry news, changes in own­er­ship and man­age­ment at KTM and Mission Motors. I’m impressed that the lessons of the auto indus­try fail­ure are being heed­ed. Whether these new direc­tions are the best choic­es or not remains to be seen but at least they’re not repeat­ing the mis­takes of others.

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Society and Culture

This Recording is a source of good mid-afternoon reads. Literary and social obser­va­tions. Here the Italian poet and thinker Cesare Pavese’s diary entries for the year 1950. He’s not an opti­mist, but he observes closely.

The head­line “Kirkus Gets a New Owner — from the NBA” sent chills down my librar­i­an spine. The long stand­ing pub­li­ca­tion which pre­views upcom­ing book releas­es had failed and was up for sale. It’s pur­chase by a bas­ket­ball team own­er was a fright­en­ing prospect. Until you read the arti­cle and the quotes from Mr. Simon and his cho­sen chief exec­u­tive Mr. Winkleman. There is hope for the world of letters.

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Technology, Architecture

Air brakes and oth­er pas­sive safe­ty mech­a­nisms are explained. And the intrigu­ing ques­tion is asked. Can pas­sive safe­ty be a use­ful par­a­digm for soft­ware design? Discuss.

Wickedly cool pre­fab hous­ing that is dis­as­ter resis­tant and goes up in two days. The ulti­mate coastal storm watch­ing outpost?

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Art, Images, and Design

Prints avail­able from MotoClassique. Including the won­der­ful Geo Ham “At Speed” of  Farnsworth’s speed attempt on his Brough-Superior.

Astonishing paper sculp­tures by Anna-Wili Highfield. Raggedy birds in flight.

Mythic crea­tures from Seattle based Stacey Rozich. She is hang­ing her work at Dolce Vita right now. Opening tomor­row night. Perhaps a lit­tle sup­port for local art is in the future. (I’m not out of walls yet!)

Beautiful recon­tex­tu­al­iza­tion of clas­sic art on the walls of Paris. Zilda once again pro­vides an argu­ment against blan­ket graf­fi­ti erad­i­ca­tion pro­grams. (NSFW clas­sic nudes)

Martin Whitford’s series of paint­ings “Tempest”. Is this the new vision of the chaos of the end of times?

and that’s it for this week. see you on Monday.