Freja & friends II

The Snoos has developed relationship's with various of her toys now, so I've take a picture to introduce the main characters of her gang...

1. The Snoos. Ring leader and largest menace about the home.

2. Wabbit. Deputy trouble maker and most favourite friend of the Snoos.

3. Dino Sørensen. Reputed to be a giraffe, but so obviously a plesiosaur. Often has a good word of advice and is very well educated.

4. Patch. The nose of doom. A bit of a lay about.

5. Fant. The hippy elephant. More reserved than most of the other friends Fant is much given to reading a book by himself.

6. Æsel, the Kiwi sheep cross dresser (Æsel tranlsates to donkey)

7. Stich. Who just is.

8. Floppy Dog. The flying hound.

9. Andrea the parrot (you have to be Danish to appreciate Andrea who is a childrens TV icon)

Yamoto

(aka Otoko-tachi no Yamato)

Dir: Junya Sato

Usually I love Japanese films, and I'm also a big enthusiast for historical drama's and a certain class of war film, so when I saw this film on the shelf in my local kiosk, I thought I'd been granted a pleasant surprise. After all, this same little shop once surprised me with an excellent Samurai film (the name of which I have long since forgotten).

For those of you unfamiliar with Japanese military history, the Yamoto was a battleship, but not just any battleship. It was in fact the biggest battleship ever built, with the biggest guns and the the biggest expectations and so on and so forth. Alas, it was also a big waste of money for it was built at a time when battleships had become obsolete. This has not stopped a portion of the Japanese glorifying its memory though, and this film, with its cartoon like CGI and bad acting (you know its bad when you don't need to understand what they're saying to see them making a mess of it) is a perfect example of how sentimental people can become with regards to magnificent death machines. Any one would think the Yamoto was a symbol of honour, charity and all things good from watching this film. The plot ignores the historical context and glosses over Japan's many war crimes, focusing instead on the sufferings of the manly crew and their families back home who all die in horrible ways... "I'll wait for you after the war" Says one characters sweet heart, "...in my childhood home of Hiroshima". Its enough to induce mild nausea. The film is pretty dire. The acting sucks. The sentimentality is absurdly over done. The ambience is almost pantomime like and the art direction is poor. The CGI, which could have been a redeming feature, isn't. This film is even worse than 'Pearl Harbour'.

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1936 and all that

So, yesterday, I was sitting at a table with various older members of my family and amongst these was a distant and very old relative who was loud and deaf and much given to telling stories about the old days. It was interesting, despite being near asphixiated by the tobacco smoke and before I was forced to leave due to the subsequent pounding head ache this afforded me, I was regaled by a story of this worthy ancient's boyhood adventures on a Danish island called Fanø. (Ø in Danish means island so most Danish islands end in ø. Ø is pronounced in a way that does not translate into English at all, but its a noise similar to U).

As I was listening to the story teller he suddenly remarked in an off hand way, "...and that was about, oh, 1930" and at that my brain, never very good at concentrating on any one subject for long, got side tracked for it suddenly impacted upon me that what was to me a genre was to this man just another memory. 1936 to me is so far removed from my life and experiences that although I read about this period all the time it never really has any impact on my life. I might just as well have been listening to a man talk about 1066 for all the insight my books and surfing have given me.

I looked down at Freja, who was wandering about in a lurid 1970's style green dress that Mette had made for her and had this sudden insight of her sitting at a table in seventy years time, telling a host of young people about the twenty twenty's and they all listening, unable to fully understand what it was like in the twenty twenty's.

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For Peter & Bettina

Har i set det her?

The Flying Wing

The term ’flying wing’ is a generic term, though it usually refers to an American aircraft of the 1950’s called the Northrop YB-49 and subsequently that aircrafts modern day descendent, the B2 ’Spirit’ stealth bomber. In fact the term is much older and refers to a recurring dream of aeronauts that has always found resonance in the realm of pulp literature. Quite why this particular type of aircraft should continue to appeal to the genre is not hard to fathom. Flying wing aircraft are both futuristic and yet arcane in appearane. They combine the grace of birds with the brutality of machines.

The first flying wing designs were very basic and were nearly all gliders or variants based on glider designs. They usually featured swept back wings since the lack of a fusilage meant tail planes had to be placed at the wing tips in order to control the air craft during flight. Some of these designs go right back to the father of all gliders Otto Lilienthal, whose earlier designs often come very close to being flying wings, but never quite make it. Hugo Junkers, the German aircraft manufacturer and designer patented a flying wing design in 1910 under the name ’Nurflügel’ (see the above image) though this was essentially another glider. Junkers did have designs for building powered flying wings and he even began on a prototype called the JG-1, but the post First World War limitations placed on Germany killed the project.

In the 1981 film ’Raiders of the Lost Ark’ (set in 1936) Speilberg and Lucas introduced an nazi flying wing that could be a homage to the JG-1 but since I’ve never been able to find a picture of the proposed JG-1, I really can’t say for sure. The Indy plane also bears a slight resemblence to the Horton Ho-VII though this was a far smaller aircraft in reality and I have a feeling some one (apparently Spielberg) was thinking wishful thoughts. Can’t say I blame him. The designer of the Indy plane was none other than the great Ron Cobb whom I shall have to dedicate a month to one day soon...

The earliest, successful, pioneers of true powered flying wings were Waldo Waterman in the USA and the Horton Brothers in Germany. Both also began by designing glider designs and moved onto powered flight. Waldo Waterman is the typical American genius whose talents ultimately led no where because, like so many American genius’s, he had no serious backers. Waterman built his first ’flying wing’ in 1929. It was called a tailess monoplane at the time, but in essence it was the worlds first, powered and operational flying wing. Waterman however never developed the concept of a flying wing, vainly concentrating all his efforts on the manufacture of a ’flying car’.




It was left to two German teenagers to do the really serious pioneering work on flying wings and when they flew their first glider prototype in 1933, neither Walter nor Reimar Horten had passed the age of twenty. They received the backing of the nazi’s however and they built their first fully operational powered flying wing, called the Ho-VII in 1937. The credibility of the flying wing never really 'took off' though. The Hortons worked hard to build a serious jet fighter called the Horten Ho-IX (see above image) but this aircraft never saw service and subsequently the flying wing retained its aura of mystery which renders it so perfect for the pulp genre. The only surviving Horton jet resides in the Smithsonian archives.

During the war, the Americans ‘inherited’ much of the Horton brothers idea’s and Northrop in particular made various fully operational prototype’s, including the amazingly beautiful YB-35 (see above image) and the YB-49. Jack Northrop was another designer who’d long been fascinated by the concept of the flying wing. He’d examined the idea in the 1930’s examining photographs of the Horton brothers glider protoypes and during the war he received backing to attempt to build a long range bomber on the flying wing principle. At first Northrops designs were just rip offs, as can be seen by comparing the (still surviving) N9-M with the Ho-VII but this didn't last long. Northrop’s later prototypes became the most spectacular flying wings ever built. Silvery and graceful they had the size and power to encourage the imagination of the period and despite their short operational service managed to impress themselves onto an eager audience. For a short period, the future seemed to be embodied in the flying wing.

The 1953 adaptation of HG Wells ‘War of the Worlds’ features footage of a YB-49 deploying an atomic bomb against the Martians and this is probably the last time the flying wing was seriously considered as futuristic rather than retro. Ironically, the only flying wing today is the B2 ‘Spirit’ bomber, the most advanced operational aircraft in the world, but the original romance of the flying wing has not survived and the angular drab B2 has none of the trappings that are the appeal of the flying wing.

A comprehenseive history of the flying wing.
B35 gallery
B49 gallery
German flying wing enthusiasts page
Flying wings
Video: Indiana Jones. Flying wing fight scene
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Weiter, weiter ins Verderben...

Hörst du denn den Donner nicht?





We never made it to my parents place on Sunday after all. Instead they came in here and we 'hung out' for a while. My Dad and I got into a 'debate' about the end of the world. The sort of male barking thats typical in my family where the underlying message is really about love and happiness but there is no way to say this except by telling each other how wrong you are and how you just don't get it.

Heh heh heh.


Afterwards Mette told me that we were tiresome to listen to, but I just laughed. Things are very different in her family and they never 'bark' like we do. When my parents had gone I was so happy because I knew that my Dad loves me. I laughed till I cried when I thought back at all the times he's made me and my brothers laugh. He's so old and stuck in the 1950's it cracks me up. My brothers will know what I mean, when I write 'Bare læs det ud!"

What a life! So, anyway, the argument about which our posturing revolved centred around something which my parents had seen on TV about Yellowstone park being about to erupt and blow the whole world to kingdom come. I did some research on Wikipedia and am informed my parents predictions about the end of the world being nigh are based more on sensationalism than on science. Or maybe the Wikipedia is wrong and we're all going to die soon... ? As my Dad points out with his typical stoic belligerence, we're all going to die any way so what difference does it make?


We also got into a 'fight' over which state Yellowstone was in. My Dad, fresh from having seen his TV doc claimed it was California, but having read National Geographic, I knew it was in Washington state.

Turns out its in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho... Ah well. Can't win 'em all.

Freja has a cough...

...and we know it! All day long and all night also. The reality of being a parent is never more obvious when your child is on the floor, howling and kicking and utterly indifferent to reason or bribes and your partner is so jaded with lack of sleep that she stares at you with dull eyes that ask, why am I in the situation?. All you who have trodden this path and those of you who have chosen not to have children may laugh now...

Ah well, so, its not all bad... the weather is terrible... we're in our traditional January financial slump... neither of us has a job... Freja is sick... Whats not to laugh about? Heh heh heh.

In between howls of anguish, Freja is usually in a good mood. Today's high point was her discovery that laundry can be used as clothing. She's getting more teeth which I think are a part of why she is so whiny this time around, and she's may be becoming bored with just being home 'alone' instead of being with her friends at the day care. She no longer complains about being dropped off there anymore and even runs to the door in the mornings.

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When she is at home with us, we have to exert our selves considerably to maintain her good humour and once thats been established its a hard job to keep it going. The slightest, most obscure reasons have her flat on the floor crying her little heart out... though a lot of it seems to be an act, it quickly escalates. Its a balance to know whether or not to give her the attention she needs as opposed to the attention she merely wants...

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Her language is coming along slowly. There are more words which sound like words, but are really complex sounds copying short sentences. Whats that/this? in Danish being her favourite.

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Snus'en er syg og det er vi andre også. Der er en rigtig møjvejr i Århus, vi har ingen penge over hovedet og vores bolig ejer er endnu en idiot og som altid er jeg fyldt med god humør....

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Ud over at være syg, så går det godt med Freja. Hun er bleven meget glad for vuggestuen, kommer godt ud af det med det flest menneseke hun møder og er ved at få flere tænder. I dag har hun lejet med vasketøjet, som du kan se her, og har været en tur med Mor ud i vejret. Mette håber at tag ud til min forældre i morgen men vi har ikke kunne få fat i dem endnu. Jeg tror jeg tager med for en gangs skyld. Jeg tranger rigtig meget til at kom ud i det åben vejr.

The Departed

Dir: Martin Scorcese.

I've noticed Scorcese has this thing about ambiguous endings where every one must die in order to avoid making a moral judgement. Its like he has an aversion to story telling, prefering to focus only one events instead of meaning. I suppose one is meant to find meaning in the film, but frankly, when there is no point t the story then whats the point of looking for the point? 'The Departed' wasn't as bad as 'Gangs of New York', but it was still as predictable as most of Scorcese's latter works. When characters died, I didn't care. I felt nothing. No surprise or remorse. In some cases the most tedious aspect of the death was how predictable it had been.

Having said that the only character who's death I was waiting for, didn't. A slight deviation from the down ward trend but not enough to stimulate any enthusiasm.

Freja:17 months old, yesterday

Its finally happening! After more than two years of anticipation (since I first learned Mette was pregnant) I have heard myself referred to as Dada by some one to whom that word bears its full meaning. The Snoos has learned to call me 'Dada' and Mette 'Mama'. She also has several other words in her vocabulary, 'Hi', 'no' and 'bye bye', some of which are accompanied by gestures or followed by gobblidigook. She can also say, 'whats this?' in Danish, but whether or not she understands her own question is rather obscure.

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Freja er begyndte at tale. Lige så småt nu er hun ved at bruge lyde der bære mening. Jeg hedder nu Dada, og Mette hedder Mama. Hendes tøj kanin hedder Wabbit, men det har kun Mette hørt hende sige. Hun peger også på ting og spørger "hvadet?", siger 'Bye bye' og vinker nå hun skal afsted, eller når Mette efterlader hende på vuggestuen, siger "Hej" når hun få øje på nogen og ryster på hovedet og laver et nej lyd når hun ville ikke spise mere (selv om ti sekunder senere gider hun godt alligvel). Det er små skridt endnu, med kæmpe fremgang. Jeg er så stolt!

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The Death Ray

It doesn't get more succint than this. Also known, paradoxically, as the 'Peace Ray', this is Nicola Tesla's almost built, theoretical directed energy, or 'teleforce' weapon. If your not sure who Tesla was then its enough to know that he was probably the most brilliant practical scientist who ever lived, being at the same time, an original archetype for the pulp literature 'mad scientist' and like all mad scientists, Tesla naturally invented a Death Ray.

Tesla was a Serb born in 1856 in what is now Croatia, who later became an American citizen and who lived until 1943, dying alone in his hotel room in New York. During his long and productive life, Tesla discovered and invented so much that it is almost impossible to describe his accomplishements without writing a whole book, but for now we shall stay within the pulp realm of 1936.

All mad scientists have two standard props without which they lose their 'pedigree'. The first is the Einstein type wild hair (preferably white) denoting ungovernable, perverted intelligence, and the second is the arc of lightning, preferably crackling from one large orb to another in the back ground, denoting the Promethean power of the unchained human mind. This latter is often coupled to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but I suspect that this modern iconography of the mad scientist was a by-product of Nicola Tesla's insistence that he would not give any public demonstration, or attend any convention without a Tesla coil sending terrifiying bolts of lightning about the room. The impact of this demonstration of harnessed lightning must have been overwhelming to a public still in awe of scientific trickery and played no doubt in Tesla's favour when seeking financial backers. Fritz Lang's classic science fiction film 'Metropolis', made in 1927, references Tesla's invention in a scene which has since been echoed many times as a potent symbol of the god like power of the corrupted human mind.

In 1934, the New York Sun made public the news that Tesla was building a 'Peace Ray'. Later that same year, Tesla described the defensive nature of the device to his some time backer, the financier JP Morgan:

“I have made recent discoveries of inestimable value. . . . The flying machine has completely demoralized the world, so much that in some cities, as London and Paris, people are in mortal fear from aerial bombing. The new means I have perfected afford absolute protection against this and other forms of attack. . . . These new discoveries, which I have carried out experimentally on a limited scale, have created a profound impression. One of the most pressing problems seems to be the protection of London and I am writing to some influential friends in England hoping that my plan will be adopted without delay. The Russians are very anxious to render their borders safe against Japanese invasion and I have made them a proposal which is being seriously considered.”

The 'teleforce' weapon was described as being an electrical energy field capable of throwing up an impenetrable barrier which would destroy anything that attempted to penetrate it. It could destroy air craft or ground troops with a theoretical range of some 200 miles but was limited by the curvature of the Earth. Tesla admitted at the time that the weapon could also be misused as a means of aggression, but never specified quite how. Later research has expanded upon Tesla's idea's and today several countries experiment with particle beam weapons which are very similar to Tesla's original concept. In 1934 however, the concept of a 'death ray' was pure science fiction.

Tesla had worked on and off on the idea of a directed energy weapon since 1900, but even as late as 1940, he was still advancing the idea to a sceptical world. Despite his many successes, Tesla was perceived to be deranged in later life and his weapon was never fully built. Though he claimed to have made a working prototype, no such device is known to have existed.

What is known about the workings of the teleforce weapon indicate it was to be powered by a Van de Graff generator (an electrostatic machine which uses a moving belt to accumulate very high voltages on a hollow metal globe) a powerful amplifier, a projecting device/vacum chamber (also sometimes refered to as the ray gun) and "a new method for producing a tremendous electrical repelling force. It appears this would be applied to the projector or gun element of the system in the form of “provisions for imparting to a minute particle an extremely high charge.” While the specific details about this aspect of the design are not readily apparent, it seems that strict attention to the fulfillment of requirements 1, 2 and 3 is critical to success. In Tesla’s words, “by the application of my discoveries it is possible to increase the force of repulsion more than a million times and what was heretofore impossible is rendered easy of accomplishment.”.

The image at the top of this post is a diagram of the actual ray gun element of the weapon.

Later observors, including some US scientists have predicted that, had it worked, the Tesla weapon could have been used to bounce off the ionosphere making it capable of hitting targets far over the curve of the Earth. There is even a conspiracy theory that the US military conducted secret tests of the weapon resulting in the 1908 'Tunguska Incident' when a mysterious explosion, estimated to be circa 15 megatons in strength levelled a vast, isolated region of Siberia. Modern expermentation at the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program with ionospheric processes have added further impetus to these conspiracies.

What ever the truth is regarding Tesla's weapon, its impact on popular culture has been profound, not least because when Tesla died, his papers and theories were confiscated on the orders of J Edgar Hoover and later several important documents and notes were claimed to be missing.

Wikipedia: Teleforce

A Machine to End War, by Nicola Tesla.

Nikola Tesla's Teleforce & Telegeodynamics Proposals.

Tesla's Wireless Power and the Tunguska Incident.

MirrorMask

Directed by Dave McKean, with some help from Neil Gaiman and Jim Hensons creature shop.

I kept hearing contradictatory reviews of this film. Some people loved it and some hated it, and having now seen it for myself, I can understand both points of view. Its a good film, very well made despite a tiny budget, but it does have a serious flaw some where obscure. I wasn't quite able to put my finger on it, but its there some where. It was most apparent in the almost abrupt ending and I suspect the flaw lies in the pacing, plot or what ever. Where ever it is, it isn't in any aspect of the film that matters too much to me. I liked 'MirrorMask' for its ambience. The imagary was good and the music fitted the mood perfectly. The film really did have the quality of a dream, and it even features Andy Hamilton (one of my favourite comedians) in a cameo role. The actress playing the lead role was almost too pretty to be real, but I could over look this since she is very easy on the eyes.

Official site.

Acoustic mirrors

This is the first of a new catagory of posts related to 1936. The point of these is to gather interesting trivia about the 1930's period of the ROCKETMAN games I some times run with my friends. Any one who knows of similar arcane technological relics is welcome to bring them to my attention.


So, how do you detect enemy aircraft when you haven't gotten around to discovering radar yet? The answer is simple enough. You build big acoustic mirrors and you just listen for them. That was the cutting edge of air defence detection in the 1920's and early 1930's and the British in particular went to some lengths to establish an air detection network across their southern coasts. The above image shows the vast fully operational 200ft mirror at Dungeness (Kent) demonstrating perfectly the simple operational principle. The curve of the mirror reflects sound waves to a focus point where a microphone can pick up any sounds for further amplification. Simple. The British only seem to have built two really large mirrors (the other being on the Mediterranean island of Malta) and these had a range of 15-25 km. At Dungeness there are three different mirrors, each a different size, and many of the smaller mirrors, see image below, were built around England. Unfortunately, given the speed of aircraft at the period, these devices were only able to provide a maximum warning of about 4 minutes, and by the late 1930's they were already being made obsolete by the advent of radar which is in some ways merely the same principles taken to a higher level of sophistication. When the Second World War broke out the acoustic mirror network had already been rendered obsolete, but its legacy was such that despite the British radar system being technically inferior to the German system, the already established network of the Acoustic mirror system gave the British an operational edge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_mirror

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_location

http://www.ajg41.clara.co.uk/mirrors/dungeness.html
Naturally Kate Bush was already inspired by martial acoustic experiements...
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=4846
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiment_IV

The second image below shows a similar acoustic detector. It is a Japanese 'War Tuba'. A portable listening device based on a different principle, but equally as arcane.

New e-mail address

In case any one here doesn't know, I have now shut down our old Stofanet account. Any one I've over looked and who needs to send me a message can let me know here and I'll send the new e-mail address.

Artist of the Month: Paula Rego

Paula Rego is a Portugese artist who has become main stream popular in the UK. I don't know how wide spread her reputation is become in the rest of the world, but she was short listed for the Turner prize in 1989 and widely celebrated in the UK when I was studying art there in the mid to late 90's. I was introduced to her work as a part of my contemporary arts classes and I later visited an exhibition of her work at the Tate gallery in Liverpool. Rego was often described by my tutors as something of a feminist icon, but I never understood why (frankly, I've never understood feminism's deeper mystery's at all). For me, Rego is first and foremost an interesting figurative artist and though there is a lot of obscure narrative in her work that refers to female issues, these don't really interest me at all. As usual I am less interested in what artists have to say, as how they've chosen to say it.

2007

Another year and not much to say about it, except Happy New Year to any one who strolls by. I don't have much to say these days. Most of my time is spent in bed, playing with Freja or EVE when I'm feeling okay. Two days back I seemed to have some sort of relapse and spent the day groaning into a bucket and fending off my boisterous daughter who insisted on hopping on my belly. Last night Freja kicked up such a fuss that I thought perhaps she was feeling the same thing. The current symptoms invole a sharp cramp in the stomach, slight nausea and an ongoing feeling of drowsiness. Hopefully this will pass soon. I've been much the same every xmas & new year for the last four years. I don't know what causes it, but this season always seems to hit me very hard.
I also have the obligatory New Years sore throat (another ailment that hits me every single bloody year!). Any way, enough whining about illness, I'll hopefully have something actually interesting to write about soon.