Pixel Scroll 10/24 The Pixels that Fall on You from Nowhere

(1) Quirk Books has compiled an array of “Bookish Tights and Leggings” now on the market. For example:

ColineDesign Printed Tights

Jane Austen quotes. Emily Dickinson poems. ColineDesign on Etsy also allows you to personalize your tights with any text you want.

Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly gave me these leggings.

We have our eye of Sauron on this map of Middle Earth by BlackMilk Clothing.

If you’re looking to go into fight some Orcs, these sword leggings by Souvrin will keep you battle ready.

 

lotrleggings

(2) John King Tarpinian remembers the neighbors built a fall-out shelter — today it is a wine cellar. Atlas Obscura looks back to the Cold War days in it gallery “Surviving a Nuclear Attack with Spam, and Other Images from Cold War Fallout Shelters”.

During the Cold War, as the arms race between Soviet Russia and the United States escalated, the perceived threat of nuclear attack became increasingly heightened. In response, the U.S. developed procedures to protect its citizens should the worst happen. In 1956, the National Emergency Alarm Repeater—NEAR—warning siren device was implemented to alert citizens to a nuclear attack. Students were drilled in “duck and cover” practices at schools. Books with titles such as Nuclear War Survival Skills were issued. And the only means of protection against radiation in the event of such a catastrophe was a fallout shelter.

Designs for fallout shelters appeared in pamphlets, subway advertisements and displays at civil defense fairs.  President Kennedy even got involved. In September 1961, the same month that the Soviets resumed testing nuclear weapons, Life magazine published a letter from the President advocating the use of fallout shelters. Rather terrifyingly, it was printed over an image of a mushroom cloud.

But that was just one of the many interesting graphical representations of the threat of annihilation. Below, check out our collection of fallout shelter designs and photographs that show just how people in the 1950s and 1960s tried to prepare for the unthinkable.

(3) Last Halloween Curbed posted a fascinating collection of photos of party costumes created by members of the Bauhaus school.

Most people attribute Germany’s Bauhaus school with the following: being on the vanguard of minimalist design, the paring down of architecture to its most essential and non-ornamental elements, and the radical idea that useful objects could also be beautiful. What may be overlooked is the fact that the rigorous design school, founded by modernism’s grandsire Walter Gropius, also put on marvelous costume parties back in the 1920s. If you thought Bauhaus folk were good at designing coffee tables, just have a look at their costumes—as bewitching and sculptural as any other student project, but with an amazing flamboyance not oft ascribed to the movement.

 

escola_bauhaus

(4) M. Harold Page tells how to conquer the NaNoWriMo challenge at Black Gate, with a collection of links to posts filled with his advice. Two examples…

Some Writing Advice That’s Mostly Useless (And Why): The following writing advice is mostly useless — “Work on your motivation,” “Revise, revise, revise,” “Have a chaotic life,” “Just write,” “Know grammar and critical terms,” “Practice skills in isolation.”

World Building Historical Fiction using Military Thinking: Don’t fall down the rabbit hole of research or worldbuilding. Instead use a layered approach, focussing your world building  as you descend from Strategic (villas exist and can be raided for supplies), through Operational (this villa sits on this ground amidst these fields), to Tactical (here is the ground plan of the villa and here are the people guarding it) level.

(5) Timothy Harvey’s “Doctor Who: How To Train Your Time Lord” at SciFi4Me concludes its introduction with a true piece of wisdom:

We don’t watch Doctor Who for history lessons.

It’s an episode recap with the premise —

OK, so if you’ve ever wanted to see what happens when you cross Doctor Who with How to Train Your Dragon, well, here you go.

(6) “10 Alabama actors who had roles in ‘The Twilight Zone’ series”

Day 5 of Kelly Kazek’s “13 Days of Alabama Halloween,” posted each day from Oct. 19-31 featuring an old news item, spooky legend, historical tale or fun list about All Hallow’s Eve.

“The Twilight Zone” TV series was groundbreaking for its time, not only for its spooky and supernatural content but for its social commentary. Twice, the show’s tales featured Alabama. A 1964 episode mentions Birmingham in a morality tale about hatred and the 1983 movie based on the series also references Alabama in a segment that features the Ku Klux Klan.

But the series has other Alabama connections: At least 10 Alabama actors had roles in the original and reboot of “The Twilight Zone” series, including some of the best-known episodes, such as “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.”

(7) Maureen O’Hara passed away October 24. Her resume was light on genre work, but included memorable fantasies like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Miracle on 34th Street, and Sinbad the Sailor, the latter with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. She never was nominated for a competitive Oscar but received an honorary Academy Award last year.

(8) Many fans are linking to video of a Lenin monument that has been made over as a statue of Darth Vader,  part of the “de-Communization” of Ukraine, and David K.M. Klaus says, “I’m not sure that this is an improvement…!”

People dressed as Chewbacca and Stormtroopers from Star Wars attend the unveiling of the Darth Vader monument in Odessa on Friday. The monument, built around a bronze Lenin statue, is part of Ukraine’s de-communisation legislation which was introduced earlier this year. The Darth Vader character attending the event says that he is happy to be made into a monument while ‘still alive’

(9) Today’s Birthday Boy

  • October 24, 1915 — Bob Kane (cartoonist; co-creator of Batman) was born

(10) I only thought I had never heard of PewDiePie, the most-viewed YouTuber of all-time. Then I read that he does the Let’s Play! videos. My daughter has watched a bunch of those and shown me a couple.

(11) “The most complete picture of the Milky Way ever” explains Gizmodo —

The picture comes from astronomers at Germany’s Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Of course, this wasn’t a simple matter of an instantaneous point-and-click shot. Instead, to get the full spread, researchers spent a full five years taking photos, which they put into a single 46 billion pixel image.

The entire resulting image was so large, that the photo could only be released in sections…

To see the whole thing, Ruhr-Universität Bochum built a special tool where you can scroll through the full image right here.

(12) Actor Richard Benjamin will do a Q&A following a showing of the movie Westworld at The Theatre at Ace Hotel on November 15 at 1 p.m. Presented by Creature Features. Hosted by Geoff Boucher. Tickets $15.

(13) “Shambleau” read aloud by the author C.L. Moore – the audio from a 1980 spoken word record, posted on YouTube.

(14) Via Andrew Liptak at io9 –

Yesterday, word broke that Bryan Fuller was bringing the sci-fi anthology show Amazing Stories back to life. Now, you can watch the entire first season of the original 80s series over on NBC.

(15) Haven’t had enough Star Wars trailer creativity yet? Science Vs. Cinema co-creator James Darling has mashed together the ultimate supercut for Star Wars: The Force Awakens using all three trailers and the Comic-Con BTS reel.

[Thanks to Michael J Walsh, James H. Burns, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]

390 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 10/24 The Pixels that Fall on You from Nowhere

  1. Iiii think I would like theoretical Creationism to stop being part of a discussion about a story that doesn’t seem to have mentioned Creationism, too.

    Aside from othe factors (which American’s are probably better equipped to deal with than I am – CoE is quite cheerful about believing in the creation myth and the big bang and evolution all at the same time) it feels a bit too much like an I-Win button – if you disagree with me about the science basis for this science fiction then you’re being illogical and siding with people who want to murder other people (which… I don’t think all Creationists do..?) over religion, even when those people haven’t been mentioned by anyone else or the story. Which isn’t really a fair or accurate representation of what anyone else has said.

    I thought Johan P’s explanation of what wasn’t plausible about the science was much better.

  2. @catrinket

    Oh good! I hoped it would.

    @Beth in MA

    Yay and good luck! I will cross my fingers for you.

  3. Actually, I’m not sure I’ve heard of any modern Creationists trying to murder people. Do other, not-fatal stupid things, like get people to teach ‘both sides’ in a science class, but not so much with the murdering. Certainly very little burning at the stake.

  4. Stevie, I have met Creationists who are kind and generous people, whose faith directs then to care for God’s creation by protecting the environment and biodiversity. They aren’t loud, and they don’t get much media coverage, but they exist. Please stop projecting excessive villainy onto people based on religious disagreements.

  5. Well, my predictions were actually 100% correct in this bracket. I’m sure it’s a fluke; it won’t happen again….

  6. Teensy spoiler for The New Mother, in part-pig-latin so Lis can read it and it’s easier to skip, if you care:

    The other bit of oreshadowingfay is when she says something like “Iyay amyay uresay Iyay onday’tay, exceptyay orfay enwhay Iyay amyay uresay Iyay oday.”

  7. Mike

    My apologies; I have been reading the John Shakespeare series and the Giordano Bruno series for the last week or two. The religious wars of the 16th and 17th century in Europe featured people convinced that God was on their side, and with God on their side there was nothing, however vile, that they would not do to other human beings to demonstrate that fact. By the end of the 18th century we had discovered that there is nothing, however vile, that people would not do to demonstrate the fact that there is no God, and the streets of Paris once more ran with blood.

    I had forgotten that the U.S. does not have the sort of visceral understanding of what people are capable of in the name of God, or in the name of Reason, or in the name of Science, which is an accident of history. But I walk past Smithfield, where Bloody Mary’s victims were burnt alive at the stake, and I fear human beings who are convinced that they are right…

  8. NelC:

    I haven’t read the story in question (I can’t even recall the title from my earlier read of this thread), so I don’t know if or how much this may apply, but one of the guidelines I have to make a happy reading life is if a character in a story provides a ropey explanation (even if it’s the viewpoint character’s or narrator’s internal monologue), then it will get a provisional pass for suspension of disbelief purposes. It may be that the character is just wrong, is crap at explaining things, or lying for plot reasons.

    Good point, although it doesn’t really apply here, the explanation is given by a scientist, and there are no in-story hints that it’s anything but trustworthy.

    I think what it’s doing is something really common in sf (sciencey-fiction?) written by mainstream authors (and kind of surprising in an Asimov’s story, although it’s not like it’s rare in genre sf), where the “science” is wholly in service to the needs of the plot. It’s bacteria, and not a virus, because the story needs there to be a way for it to get past certain precautionary measures a character was relying upon, not because the what if is scientific in the first place.

    @Stevie:

    I admire your commitment to good science, but I don’t see how you get from bad science to “Creationism” without “Aristotle” to help you.

    I’m upset and offended by the War on Science promoted by specific currents of fundamentalist young-earth-creationists, but I don’t think the pro-science side has anything to gain from broadly turning religion into a murderous bogey-man that lurks in the pages of sf magazines. And we, as human beings, certainly don’t.

  9. “I’m sorry I forgot one more way the USA droolz and Europe roolz” is one of the best self-serving apologies I’ve seen in a long time, and I’m a connoisseur.

  10. The Giordano Bruno … series? What’s that?

    I’ve read Giordano Bruno. I find the recent revival of interest in him interesting.

  11. … You know, I’m pretty sure there are religion-related killings in the history of the USA.

  12. Meredith: … You know, I’m pretty sure there are religion-related killings in the history of the USA.

    I’d say that there are. Not all that many, though, by comparison (of course, we’ve got less history to work with in the first place), and especially if you count “the USA” as being the establishment of the United States as a separate nation. Once we get the separation of church and state more or less in place, the killings that could be called religiously-motivated tend to be more, well, personal and isolated, for lack of a clearer definition, and less state-supported. I don’t believe we have the equivalent of a Bloody Mary, for example.

    We tend to do our mass, state-sponsored killings for other reasons, I believe . . .

  13. @Meredith: Sure. Just not on the scale of turning the continent into a charnel house for 30 years at a time “for the gods they made.” We’ve tended to go with other excuses when it comes to justifying our large-scale atrocities. But that’s kind of a side issue.

  14. @Mary Frances & Jim Henley

    Mm, it was just the idea that no American could possibly understand religious atrocities.

  15. Stevie:

    “By the end of the 18th century we had discovered that there is nothing, however vile, that people would not do to demonstrate the fact that there is no God, and the streets of Paris once more ran with blood.”

    And after that, we learned the horrors of fundamentalist atheists through Stalin and Pol Pot.

  16. Hampus Eckeman on October 28, 2015 at 7:48 am said:
    And after that, we learned the horrors of fundamentalist atheists through Stalin and Pol Pot.

    That’s an excellent point.

    It’s pretty clear that religion is only one of numerous excuses for murderous genocide. The actual behavior is the problem, not whatever rationalization is proclaimed for it.

  17. Meredith: Mm, it was just the idea that no American could possibly understand religious atrocities.

    Yup. I see your point. And anyway, we have had sufficient religiously-inspired atrocities to be noteworthy–the scale is only minimally different, in my opinion.

  18. IMO, this whole kerfuffle started because an American writer had the gall to write a story set in America addressing American concerns and some readers had the gall to enjoy it. Everything after that is an ex post facto excuse for and misdirection from the initial grumble, and the whole tissue of justifications is so snarled that attempting to disentangle it seems like madness.

  19. Jim Henley said:

    IMO, this whole kerfuffle started because an American writer had the gall to write a story set in America addressing American concerns and some readers had the gall to enjoy it. Everything after that is an ex post facto excuse for and misdirection from the initial grumble, and the whole tissue of justifications is so snarled that attempting to disentangle it seems like madness.

    Yes. This. Very much this. The complaints about scientific plausibility came after Stevie got blowback for bitching about an American writer being so insular and parochial as to write a story set in America addressing American concerns.

  20. May I point out that by and large the mass murderers that were atheists did not, in fact, murder in the name of atheism? Other things, maybe, but not that.

    The only case I know of people singled out for slaughter because they were religious is in Spanish Civil War, and innrge great lake of blood that that was, it was just a small splash.

    I am not saying atheists are better, they clearly are not as Richard Dawkins is helpfully reminding us daily.

  21. While I’m not sure I’d describe it as “in the name of atheism” religion and religious people were a specific target of the Cambodian genocide. That they were only one group of many judged insufficiently pure does not change that they were killed for it.

  22. @ Peace
    “That’s an excellent point.

    It’s pretty clear that religion is only one of numerous excuses for murderous genocide. The actual behavior is the problem, not whatever rationalization is proclaimed for it.”

    This. Us vs them, in group/out group, intolerance, xenophobia, clannishness, etc. These ‘flaws’ in the human psyche are the root cause, imo, of most group directed murderous behavior. Any institution or group encouraging these modes of thinking to get or keep power are dangerous.

  23. @ Ann Feruglio Dal Dan
    “I am not saying atheists are better, they clearly are not as Richard Dawkins is helpfully reminding us daily.”

    We are all humans with all the same flaws…good, bad, and ugly.

    I once admired Dawkins as a science educator, but nowadays he sounds like an ignorant idiot about almost everything else.

  24. @ Meredith

    Anything can be used to trigger the in group/out group psychological idiocy to genocidal action that humans are, unfortunately, prone to. In Cambodia the “in group” was a particular flavor of Communism that was practiced as a form of “religious” belief (blind adherence without critical thought*). Atheism is to most communisms as theism is to most religions. All of the Communist states have been run, essentially, as autocratic state religions.

    *Hmmmm….maybe I can just use an acronym, BAWCT, for all the stupid! 8-]

  25. @ Camestros

    That Dawkind graph is perfect! I copied it. Do you mind if I share it?

    ETA: with attribution, of course!

  26. junego on October 28, 2015 at 5:35 pm said:

    @ Camestros

    That Dawkind graph is perfect! I copied it. Do you mind if I share it?

    ETA: with attribution, of course!

    Share away 🙂

    Back in the past I found him annoying when he was giving Stephen J Gould a hard time for various things – but I could see the point he was making …but then again Gould was a much better writer and just always seemed to be just a much nicer person*.

    *[subjectively of course – I’ve no idea what he was actually like as a person. He may have been habitually mean to fluffy kittens for all I know**]
    **[Now I can’t help but picture Stephen J Gould shouting at a kitten “evolutionary history is CONTINGENT you stupid cat!”]

  27. Anna

    I think the example of the Cult of Reason in the French Revolution is relevant; they did specifically set out to kill in the name of atheism. Admittedly it didn’t survive very long, but there seems to have been enough blood in the streets of Paris to emulate the levels reached in the St Bartholomews Massacre…

  28. Lunar G

    I have no doubt that there may be wonderful people who believe in Creationism, and accordingly may behave wonderfully in striving to maintain biodiversity, based upon their reading of the Bible passages purporting to give man dominion over the earth. I use the word man specifically, because it is men, not women, given dominion over the earth by the Bible.

    Unfortunately there are a lot more Creationists whose reading of the same Bible passages leads them to

    Drill, Baby, Drill

    and the the greatest mass extinction in the history of our planet is underway. We are, almost certainly, beyond the point of no return, and the only thing we can try to do is fight some sort of rearguard action to minimise the horrors which will result. But I was wrong to imply that all Creationists are like their predecessors in history, who created the Inquisition. Ironically enough, vastly more people will die as a result of the modern Creationists…

  29. Oh, Stevie.

    That’s just pathetic.

    The current in-progress mass extinction is not driven by believers in Creationism. It’s driven by greed, especially but not exclusively corporate greed, and that has neither religion nor nationality. Say what you like about ExxonMobil etc., and I’ll likely agree with you, but B(ritish) P(etroleum) and (Royal Dutch) Shell aren’t any better. If you think they are, have a chat with fishermen and farmers around the Gulf of Mexico.

    And the word Creationism means something–something that awful as the Inquisition was, its perpetrators never believed in. It’s not a synonym for “religious” or even “Christian.” At its core is an insistence on a literal reading of the entirety of the Bible, something the Catholic Church rejects as heretical.

    Based on a literal reading of Genesis, Creationists reject evolution. The Catholic Church never did denounce evolution (unlike the CoE), made its first cautious statement in support of it in 1913, and fully accepted it in the 1950s. In the 1960s, I learned about evolution in Catholic school, out of diocesan-approved textbooks, with the nuns talking about Creationism only to explain that to reject the best scientific evidence concerning the physical world was basically to call God a liar.

    You seem to have lumped everyone and everything you don’t like into the category “Creationists,” with the word being a synonym for “religious,” and decided that all modern examples thereof are Americans.

    Which is a pretty impressive display of ignorance.

  30. Stevie: Just quit digging. Please. It’s just painful watching you do this to yourself.

    You would do well to learn how to apologize and walk your words back instead of doubling-, tripling-, and quadrupling-down.

  31. Lis

    It is very, very difficult, coming from an entirely different culture, to spot in advance where the gaps are.

    However, I have at no point suggested that the Catholic Church is Creationist. I have never suggested that Creationist is a synonym for Catholic, just as I have never said that Creationist is a synonym for Protestant. The guy the media describes as the Pope’s Astronomer happily wanders around with a T shirt emblazoned with And God said, followed by the Maxwell Equations, and there was light.

    The Jesuits remain a highly respected intellectual resource, as they have been for centuries.

    It would be helpful if you would quote the posts, or the parts of the posts, which lead you to believe that I have ever said this. Because at the moment you seem to be setting fire to a lot of strawmen.

  32. Until I have full internet access restored, I’m not really able to quote easily. However, you did, in your last post prior to this one, describe the Inquisition as the predecessors of today’s Creationists–an equation which shows a sad lack of understanding of either. And which, yes, does rather link the Catholic Church with the Creationists, who generally think of the Catholic Church as the Whore of Babylon.

  33. @ Camestros
    re: Dawkins

    I love the writing of both Dawkins and Gould wrt science. Completely different styles – one sorta folksy, down-home, the other cooly intellectual, both very informative and educational. I just ignored any disagreements. :-9

  34. @Peace Is My Middle Name:

    The Giordano Bruno series is by S.J. Parris, historical mysteries, in which Giordano Bruno fights crime. I only read the first one, and thought the history was far better than the mystery, but it didn’t grab me. I’m really picky (in idiosyncratic ways) about historicals, though, so I wouldn’t take this as an anti-recommendation.

    @Camestros Felapton:

    Thanks for the graph and the mental image. This thread needed some giggles.

  35. Stevie on October 28, 2015 at 6:23 pm said:
    Anna

    I think the example of the Cult of Reason in the French Revolution is relevant; they did specifically set out to kill in the name of atheism. Admittedly it didn’t survive very long, but there seems to have been enough blood in the streets of Paris to emulate the levels reached in the St Bartholomews Massacre…

    You mean all that stuff about class, democracy, fraternity, representation, toppling the anciene regime, were all red herrings? Wow, that changes my perspective a lot!

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