Friday Ephemera

Cylon Headlights! Does Audi have a plan?

Why can’t we make all our clothing from titanium? From the practical experiment above it would only need to be about a quarter of an inch thick, or even less.
Would be very useful for when there’s one of those (multitudinal) lone wolf attacks.

The “waffle poots” vid has over 1.2 million views.
We live in an age of wonders.
Pffft…. let’s see it do this.
Kid’s got skillz.

I think “waffle shart” would be a better title, but 1.2m views is definitely a sign of end times.

Let’s take the fusion of Politics and Art to a new level.
I don’t know if it’s art, but I do approve.

“Feminists around world.”
https://twitter.com/FeministShit/status/684185250474405889

Well, the snow drawings certainly fit the category of ephemera. I think they’re lovely, but I’m puzzled by the lengths people will go to in order to create evanescent art. What does it say about 21st century civilization? Stonehenge was built between 3100 and 1100 BC; the Pantheon in Rome was finished in 125 AD and is still used today; Chichen Itza is dated to the 7th century AD; the great cathedrals of Europe, 11th to 14th century; the palaces at Knossos, 20th to 12th century BC. These people thought for the ages. We have the attention span of a mayfly.

Stonehenge was built between 3100 and 1100 BC; the Pantheon in Rome was finished in 125 AD
Large numbers of sophisticated megalithic sites point to the 10-12,000 BC era. Apparently primitive man felt an overwhelming need to mark his place in the heavens with remarkable precision, which he did all over the place. Some ancient event coincided with the rapid uptick in temperature that led to the stable climate of today, and that Something Big was recorded with culture-bending urgency.
We couldn’t build the Giza pyramids today if we wanted. Although we can dick up 21st century civilization to the degree that we won’t be able to prevent our own demise. With our organizational skills and staggering grasp of the philosophy of human life, surely we were seeded here to see how long simple idiocy could last.

we have cameras to record these things for posterity
And the internet.
Yes, although most if not all of these cameras are digital, and of course so is the internet, which means that after Chtulhu escapes his subterranean lair and brings death and destruction to our civilization, whoever finds the remnants won’t be able to do anything with them. At least the people we now consider the great painters and composers of the past recorded their scribblings on a more permanent medium. What’s more, they didn’t create for impermanence by design. With works like the snow drawings, however, the impermanence seems to be a large part of the point.
And yes, I know that the internet is forever, but only as long as we know how to keep the lights on. There have been periods in history when that was not the case.

I really recommend taking up a different hobby.

These people thought for the ages. We have the attention span of a mayfly.
Have you thought that the impermanent things they did haven’t lasted? Duh!
We couldn’t build the Giza pyramids today if we wanted.
What.A.Crock.Of.Shit.
We build entire islands. Not little islands, but whacking great things on which we land our not very tiny jet planes. Or that have ports that service major cities like Shanghai.
We build bridges of staggering length — Denmark to Sweden for goodness sake!
The Millau Viaduct only has a mass of about a tenth of the Great Pyramid of Giza, true. But the fucker is over 300m in the air.
Not only could we build the pyramids if we wanted. We could build them on stilts.

We couldn’t build the Giza pyramids today if we wanted.
Tongue half in cheek, I suspect planning might be an issue, and there might be some health and safety concerns. Ultimately, though, I suppose you have to ask why you’d want to build them again. What modern purpose would they serve? It’d be a huge project with no obvious commercial or cultural pay-off.
And I suspect that if you could take one of the mighty pharaohs around even one of the duller buildings of our world – say, a provincial biscuit factory – he would be astonished by what happens inside.

A few months ago, I caught part of a How It’s Made or How It Works programme, which happened to be about something ostensibly quite dull, i.e., the making of rather bland dry crackers. I snorted dismissively, thinking the programme makers must be short of ideas and scraping the barrel bottom. Twenty minutes later, I was still watching, fascinated by the ingenuity of the process, the machines, the timing, the almost perfect reproducibility.
And if the humble cracker can impress…

We couldn’t build the Giza pyramids today if we wanted.
What.A.Crock.Of.Shit.
Presume away. If you think I refer to size and scale, you don’t even begin to know the subject.
Although I am quite daunted by your use. Of. Idiotic. Internet. Devices.

Yeah, we’re indeed great at relocating vast amounts of soil.
[ Raises hand sheepishly. ]
I’m not clear what point is being missed either. If we’re not talking about technological ingenuity or scale or whatever, or practicality in a modern context, what’s being missed? Are you referring to projects that involve huge swathes of the population, point to the heavens and announce “This is who we mighty people are!”?

Ultimately, though, I suppose you have to ask why you’d want to build [the pyramids] again. What modern purpose would they serve? It’d be a huge project with no obvious commercial or cultural pay-off.
We’d first want to know why they were built and for what purpose. We don’t. The cultural pay-off they delivered for their time is likewise unknown, although their incredible precision – which is what’s impressive – appears to point to it. Any idiots can move dirt and many have…
And no, we couldn’t do that today, even assuming the mass-versus-height problem could be surmounted. We literally can’t move today what was moved in antiquity. We can, however, presume we could. Because we really like us.
And I suspect that if you could take one of the mighty pharaohs around even one of the duller buildings of our world – say, a provincial biscuit factory – he would be astonished by what happens inside.
I would certainly think so. But the original point remains: Aside from our mechanical and electronic technologies – which are the objects of two hundred years fiddling and which obviously we’re quite self-impressed by – we haven’t the cultural and hence, spiritual directive to organize well enough to stave off, say, monetary collapse. Or political disaster, any number of democides and genocides, or even the dysfunction of this blog’s unending targets. That was the point.
Despite the despised notion of noble savages – modern man being magically but wholly superior because modern man – I suggest that there have been periods in antiquity where spectacular and still-astonishing projects were tacked that today we haven’t the skills of direction to accomplish, even if we were able to grasp what and why they are. For our part today, we’re wrong on a number of advanced sciences, with professional scientific bewilderment being professed weekly out on their forefronts. Our reach commonly exceeds our grasp.
But then I’m less impressed than most with western man’s unique ability to pat himself on the back for the temporary windfalls gleaned from the greatest frauds and perversions of organizational sanity ever known. We love those levers, regardless of where they lead us. Pride and falls, and like that.

God-kings, popes and pharaohs had more elbow room in that respect.
Modify that to contemporary progressive God-kings, popes and pharaohs – whether on the left or right political wing – and I’d think that today we have at least as much elbow room for idealistic collective projects.
Again, there is no reliable history for the ancient versions, calling the presumed history of former God-kings, popes and pharaohs into question. Today, not so much. Today we’re staring insolvent groupthink in the face, not least of which is about cultural stability and endurance. Likewise for hunks of our sciences.

One thing I miss about back then was that we didn’t have silly spell checkers that turn every use of “were” into “we’re”, even after you’re damn sure you went back and corrected it three times. Of course we paid much more attention to detail back in those days rather than rely on technology like the lazy monkeys we’re.

I think the best example is considering the “miracle” of modern communication technology, which allows us virtually instant access to information all over the world. This leads not to the modern equivalent of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations but incomprehensible strings of 140 characters and “Waffle Fart” videos.
Yup. The technological inverse being impossible projects – with impossible precision regardless of time or technology – being coordinated and successfully executed for unknown reasons (although we have our rote, quasi-official explanations).
Like I alluded, swaths of other of our most religiously revered sciences are undergoing the first phases of revolution. We’re probably somewhat more impressed with ourselves than history will be, assuming it’s recorded, cackling over waffle farts recorded in the great Oracle of YouTube within it. Thanks for that cultural insight, David, and I reckon that’s what it best is.
Now back to viewing Coogan and Brydon’s The Trip…

FFS, we sent men to the moon. The f’ng moon.
Yes, and we couldn’t do it today- we’d have to start again from scratch. It seems to me that Western Mans ambition has shrunk over the last 40 years. I can remember when we looked out into the Universe and the future was a better place, now the future has arrived and we just gaze inward.

It seems to me that Western Mans ambition has shrunk over the last 40 years. I can remember when we looked out into the Universe and the future was a better place, now the future has arrived and we just gaze inward.
The cold war’s arm-flexing over the moon didn’t have much to recommend it, and today’s rote dogmas about “exploring space” – typically practiced by the right – is equally questionable, at least in terms of real, sustainable returns unrealizable by the objectives of the near monopoly on cosmology and astrophysics held by official agencies.
Habitation and mining aren’t likely to exist in any near future just because they can’t. If they should come to pass, they’ll be accompanied by a new awareness of and appreciation for natural and abundant oxygen and gravity and crops and standing upright – of the preciousness of the Earth we tacitly admit we can’t manage either. But the Buck Rogers thing is compelling, if not exactly rational. How many astronauts don’t gaze back upon Earth with their hearts in their throats.
So space remains a cultural ideal shared by a small portion of mankind for reasons unrelated to self-sustaining accomplishment but quite related to showmanship and nationalism. Maybe like making megalithic sites, come to think of it. They’re both largely Marxist ideals…

Thunderbirds? If we’re talking Anderson stuff, it has to be UFO.
I remember enjoying UFO as a wee seedling and I had a model of the S.H.A.D.O. 2 mobile, complete with rocket launcher, but I haven’t seen it since.
Watching Thunderbirds over pizza, the Other Half and I realised that Lady Penelope is much more ruthless than the Tracy boys. She blasts ne’er-do-wells away at a rate of knots. Every other week rival spies are driven off the road to die in an explosive fireball, and she’s handy with a surprising array of firearms, from 21st century blasters to the stash of machine guns kept under Parker’s bed. And being a lady, she’s always classy with it.

Parker was the true psychopath not Penelope.

We have a theory that they met in prison. Before “Penelope” transitioned.
Damn it, David. I was drinking tea when I read that. You owe me a new keyboard.

A few months ago, I caught part of a How It’s Made or How It Works programme,
A personal favourite of mine. Fascinating stuff.
I’d just like to point out a major issue about the majesty of the pyramid building.
It wasn’t done by people volunteering. It wasn’t done by slaves, true, but the labourers involved didn’t do it for the love. They worked “together” because they had no option.
All that work was done because one man wanted his tomb to be better than his predecessors.
It is an example to us. A perfect example of the type of personal egotism that we are better off without. Why authoritarian systems of rule should be avoided, and theocratic ones even more.
If you want an example of people working together for common purpose you’d be better off citing the great cathedrals of Europe.
If “we couldn’t do that today” then that is a very good thing indeed. (Actually, given the likes of Mao and Stalin, we could do the same today in that sense. The White Sea Canal is a good example.)
This leads not to the modern equivalent of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations but incomprehensible strings of 140 characters and “Waffle Fart” videos.
If you think the Romans didn’t do fart jokes, you could not be more wrong.
As pointed out above, the ephemera of the ancients has been lost to us (mostly) but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have it. (The irony of complaining about modern society’s taste for such things on a blog specialising in ephemera isn’t lost on us either.)
You may not have noticed, but in between the ridiculous tweets and silly videos the world is continually producing many great works of art. They just haven’t the time to be given the garnish of time that transforms what would be some reasonably interesting thoughts into the greatly over-rated “Meditations”.

Adam Smith pointed out that if you created wealth a few hundred years ago or more, the only thing you could spend it on was people. Court hangers on, priests and soldiers mostly. Hence the popularity of empire and conquest. It was the only thing that gave you any return.
I like to think of the pyramids as a workfare program. We’re not feeding so you can just sit around all day. Go and put that stone on this one. You’ve done that? OK now that stone…

The unscientific Big Bang . . . .
. . . . the initial conditions of the big bang theory remain similarly inexplicable.

Lady P likes a drop or two of acid in her Pernod.

I had no idea this existed.

“Free handkerchief.”

We have the attention span of a mayfly.
I’m informed in recent news and political humour that evidently some alleged adults in the UK have been insisting on wandering about anywhere in pyjamas . . . . and then there was the political humour blending in the other news;

Lady P likes a drop or two of acid in her Pernod.
You don’t?

Any evidence for that ?
Yes, or I wouldn’t have made the claim.

I invite you to find references yourself, Thornavis, although I linked a teaser above. Anonymous people assert wildly different versions of reality at one another online almost as a requirement. I have no interest in making our hosts space an example, as off-topic as this is.
As for posterity, I find the assumption about ancient man’s thinking interesting. Much of the point upthread had to do with modern man’s inability to think, whereas looking back in time we find the wholly ubiquitous phenomenon of legend: it’s illogical, rather, to nullify the tradition of oral and written lore that eventually combined to form the foundation of western thought.
Clearly there is no hard dividing line of human consciousness based on time – a go/no-go gauge with a datestamp. Consider that the Egyptians – who did indeed reference some very old phenomenon – erupted on the historical scene with their stunningly competent sciences, technologies, and methods fully formed, and left no prior or subsequent record of them with their disappearance. They’re not the only ones…
I’m aware that history is shoved into the convenient boxes of our time – they’re another component of the myopic and self-regarding establishment that also replaces reason and mind with post-structuralism and officialdom in virtually every category you’d care to mention. It’s also wrong on at least one major science and it is indeed logical to question its dogmatic view of history. We are not superior because we find ourselves to be superior. We just fiddle better and collect more. Or we think we do.
I also find it interesting that the moderate or conservative will accept a half dozen or so major structural fallacies – political, economic, cultural, social, moral, philosophical – and go so far as to urgently defend their effects that, were they defined fully and completely, would clearly fall into the fanciful progressive mindset. It’s certainly then a small step to link big bang creation myths to a slanted view of history by way of archaeology-by-the-numbers, or more assuredly, archaeology by popular interpretation out on the street. I’m sure that tendency of ours surprises no one.
I proposed that pop sensibilities are as predictable as they are common. With where we’re going and how we’re getting there, we should be less impressed with ourselves and our times than we are.
To dismiss our mega constructions [as] merely ephemeral and serving no higher purpose on the basis of unknown and possibly misinterpreted history is illogical
To say that said history is widely misinterpreted is not such an audacious statement, and if that’s the case, it makes less sense to question posterity and thought; certainly purpose and intent. I simply dismissed our stuff – since roughly the 20th Century, and with some exception – as technical, very short-sighted, and deeply self-impressed. I’d sort the remarkable phenomenon found in the distant past as anything but. Obviously they built for great meaning, whoever they were and however the bloody hell they did it.
Virtually all of our accepted narratives on distant times and peoples simply leaves all the many dozens of unanswered questions up in the air. That’s not a basis; it’s a concession. By now it’s even a tradition.

Such a travesty, since the general subject of accomplishment and periods and thought had been an open topic, right? I can see how very gutted you’d be not to have some red meat to bang on about.
Given how malformed your comments were, I somehow figured you’d take it that way. Call me perceptive.