The Oncoming Hope

He says commandments for teachers, I say commandments for life. You should be so lucky with your own education (with rare exceptions, I was not).

Bertrand Russell's "A Liberal Decalogue" (1951)

1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.

2. Do not think it worthwhile to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.

3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.

4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.

5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.

6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.

7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper argument than the latter.

9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.

10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

Russell's rules are as effective as commandments for good thinking as for teaching, and it's incredibly how frequently they're violated. Which particularly touches your life? Share in the comments.

(h/t to Marginal Revolution)

James Clerk Maxwell didn't invent the earliest color photograph, but he invented the first that didn't fade into black and white when exposed to light.

Until James Clerk Maxwell developed the three-color method (which we've all absorbed since our earliest school days - all colors are based on combinations of red, green and blue light), color photographs were barely more permanent than memory, automatically reverting to Instagrammatic nostalgia.

Even Maxwell's timeless Tartan feels more like a Monet than a Man Ray, with shades leaping across the page like a quickly descending fog.

Or perhaps it's just a photo, after all. The past never quite seems photo-realistic, and perhaps it's unfair of us to try and make it so.

This is 1861. It seems strange that none are alive to challenge this basic fact.

An intrepid photographer named Timothy Allen recently ventured into the abandoned remains of Buzludzha in Bulgaria, an enormous building designed to be a glorious monument to the success of communism. Like Communism, this too did pass. You should read his full account of his discovery here (and all images are credited to him, and there are MANY many more).

In better days, Buzludzha resembled something created by aliens rather than man:

And now, this is all that remains, the perfect evil lair for a Bond film:

Even indoors, the whole experience seems more evocative of the intergalactic than the earthly communistic:

Time did its work, however, changing this:

Into this:

(I do love it, it's all my time travel fantasies come true, the sort that feature in all my favorite classic Doctor Who episodes. But I digress).

Buzludzha remains abandoned due to ideological issues. The Bulgarian Socialist Party have taken control of the building, but haven't found a use for it (there's little point in pretending that a sidelined party has the right (or the money) to make such an extravagant statement as restoring the building).

And so it stands, derelict, a concrete reminder of a very peculiar point in human history, when a sort of madness overtook central Europe for the better part of a century. What will future generations think of such a useless monument, built to an enormous scale despite a total lack of proximity to human beings?

Go forth to Timothy Allen's original post, and make sure and read through the comments thread.

The Metropolitan Museum's running a fantastic exhibition called Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine. There are works from a number of artists celebrated and forgotten, organized thematically into caricature, grotesque, political and societal. It comes as no surprise that the art form reached its apex from the late 18th century onwards, with the dawning of the French bourgeousie and its copycats in Blighty.

One of my favorites is the work pictured, simply named The Bum Shop, attributed to one R. Rushworth. It's wonderfully silly, and not a little obscene, as men and women ignore the flesh they are born with in favor of tawdry decoration borne from an early version of J.Lo envy.

The lady at the far left has been suitably derriered, while the remaining young women strive to achieve the look of the French poodle. It's completely ridiculous, and completely wonderful.

Here's the text at the bottom of the etching:

"DERRIERE begs leave to submit to the attention of that most indulgent part of the Public the Ladies in general, and more especially those to whom Nature in a slovenly moment has been niggardly in her distribution of certain lovely Endowments, his much improved (arida nates) or DRIED BUMS so justly admired for their happy resemblance to nature. DERRIERE flatters himself that he stands unrivalled in this fashionable article of female Invention, he having spared neither pains nor expence in procuring every possible information on the subject, to render himself competent to the artfully supplying this necessary appendage of female excellence."

Get your DRIED BUMS here!

As a conversationally challenged barkeep slams a pair of mini-steins on the table, you may wonder exactly what sort of establishment you've stepped into. "Dark or light," he snaps when you're lucky enough to interrupt his purposeful strides across the floor.

I suppose you can sacrifice certain charms when your family bar once played host to Honest Abe (by no means the only president to frequent the place), Boss Tweed and and numerous men both famous and infamous.

The walls are covered in ephemera, from Civil-war era flags to newspaper articles. The Rat Pack loved the place, as did Elvis.

e.e cummings, moved to rhapsodize, wrote here in a poem that begins "i was sitting in mcsorley's":

"and I was sitting in the din thinking drinking the ale, which never lets you grow old blinking at the low ceiling my being pleasantly was punctuated by the always retchings of a worthless lamp.

...

Inside snugandevil. i was sitting in mcsorley’s It,did not answer.
outside.(it was New York and beautifully, snowing. . . ."

John Sloan, one of the more famous NY painters, crafted that lovely image that sits atop of this post, featuring the second manager of the bar, Bill McSorley, Jr.

"Good Ale, Raw Onions and No Ladies"

McSorley's, despite playing host to a coterie of painters, writers, poets and politicians since 1861, may be more famous today for keeping out the fairer sex in until 1970.

Only one woman made it in before then, a Vaudevillean named Maggie Klein. What made her so special? Oh yeah, she dressed up as a man and snuck in.

Even Wonder Woman was denied service in 1941 (clearly H.G. Peter was a man ahead of his time):

Some things haven't changed. The floors and seats are covered in sawdust, sawdust with insect-like abilities to crawl up and down your jackets and into your boots. The legendary wishbones still linger over the bar, tormenting us all with memories of so many wars past (read more about that here).

But I am glad to have seen this place, a strange little place that holds its own against the ravages of time.

You may have come across the insanely charming letter that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to his daughter, Scottie (read it if you haven't, it's an excellent insight into a man losing the battle against his demons).

He concludes the letter with a list of things to worry about, not worry about, and things to think about.

"Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?" seems a very present concern for a man who was soon to die from heart failure due to alcohol abuse.

That lovely list came to me via Lists of Note, a website devoted to lists great and small, young and old. The website includes everything from a scan of the original rules of basketball to writing tips by the noble and the ignoble.

Even through all that, I have a favorite. A new addition to my collection of the more bizarre traditions of etiquette in centuries past (the things my postage stamps are saying behind my back!): The Ethics of Eye Flirtation, from the National Library of New Zealand:

I particularly enjoy "winking left eye twice -- I am married." Apparently, back in 1891, New Zealanders were wandering around like a bunch of Sheldon Coopers...

Oh tumblr. What would we do without you? (that image c/o sheldony.tumblr.com)

Although most of us are familiar with Harry Houdini, character of history, I'm sure that very few of us stop to consider that in his day, he was actually a colossal figure in pop culture.

PBS has posted this lovely graphic from Ladies Home Journal, June 1918, created by the great magician himself:

In spaces now reserved for hair and makeup and dubious tips on "how to please your naughty lothario", the venerable woman's mag once posted expert tips on how to escape from dubious BDSM situations.

"And not one of them observed the sort of shoes I wore!" That's the minimum price for being tied up by sailor boys, right?

Of course, the most troublesome part of Houdini's guide is that which we'd rather not know; cheating.

"A sharp knife with a hook-shaped blade should be concealed somewhere on the person, as it may be found useful in case some of the first, carefully tied knots prove troublesome. A short piece cut from the end of the rope will never be missed."

Thus spake Houdini, for all you "howd-he-do-dats" out there in the audience.

I suspect this means that I'll be expelled from the Magic Society. Much like this guy:

Bernard Basset, a relatively famous Jesuit in the 1950's/60's, set out to educate the common man in all things God-related. However, there were hiccups. Stan Carey highlights one of the best of them (the foul effects of cheese on the soul!):

I was home in suburban London in 1946 and back in the world of extramural studies when this weird, nocturnal visitation shattered my calm. I had no possible reason to expect so violent a disturbance; by my own subjective standards I was more than normal when I retired to bed that night. Perhaps I was overworked and a little worried, for I had a wisdom tooth that might prove impacted, but no wisdom tooth in history has toppled a man’s faith overnight.

To show how unexpected it was, Margery, when told about it, immediately ran through the items of the previous supper and attributed my atheism to the cheese. She herself, so she said, had sniffed the cheese secretly that evening and had judged it very mature. She smelt it once, replaced it in its carton and then took it out for a second sniff. Knowing how much I liked cheese, she had quietened her scruples, thus unwittingly contributing to my sudden distress. Had I roused her in the night as I should have done, she was sure that her first, semi-conscious explanation would have been “Cheese”.

Margery informed me that cheese was a recognised spiritual hazard and that St Margaret Mary kept a piece down for just ten minutes and this when commanded under Holy Obedience.

Bernard Basset, We Agnostics: On the Tightrope to Eternity

Life Magazine published a set of photographs inside a Nazi Christmas Party, shot by Hugo Jaeger. In 1941, two weeks after implementing his "final solution," Hitler throws this lifeless "party" for his generals and officers.

Only the Nazis could turn Christmas into the dark universe equivalent of a Hogwarts dinner. (Can you imagine what kind of sorting hat the Nazis would have? The possibilities are too terrible to even contemplate).

As always, read the original post, but here are a few highlights.

Tis' the season to be...not even slightly jolly:

You wanna talk about a war on Christmas? In the words of Nazi propagandist Friedrich Rehm:

"We cannot accept that a German Christmas tree has anything to do with a crib in a manger in Bethlehem. It is inconceivable for us that Christmas and all its deep soulful content is the product of an oriental religion."

So what did they do? They rewrote Christmas carols, erasing all reference to Christ. They tried to return Christmas to its pagan origins.

When that failed (and the Reich failed more broadly), they tried to change it's meaning again, attempting to re-characterize the holiday as a remembrance day for fallen troops.

Narcissism really knows no bounds.

Before sexting, before coded bracelets, there were...stamps? Rio Wang has written a fascinating piece about how the angle that stamps were placed on the envelope conveys different meanings. According to the OP, the tradition began with the Austro-Hungarians in the 1860's and swiftly spread throughout Europe.

I highly recommend reading the original post, but here are some of the highlights:

Meanwhile, the English make it exceptionally formal, including the phrase: "Beware your dearest lady-friend!"

What's fascinating is that the code wasn't local to English speaking nations, there are guides in Russian, in Polish and in other languages I can't identify. Naturally, the French take romance to the next level:

Go read the full post! http://riowang.blogspot.com/2011/12/language-of-stamps.html

There's an adored pub on Clerkenwell Green called The Crown Tavern, which sits in the hub of 20th century communist thought (this is where Lenin first met Stalin, for instance). Well, I was looking for more information about this particular establishment, and found an interesting bit of ephemera.

There's a wonderful website called My Time Machine, which republishes eyewitness accounts throughout history (I recommend that you spend some time on that site, though you may never leave).

In a nutshell, Karl Marx and our author, Wilhelm Liebknecht, set out to hit every saloon between Oxford Street and Hampstead Road. Drunkenness, brawling, and streetlamp assaults ensue. But I'll let Herr Liebknecht speak for himself:

A London pub crawl with Karl Marx, late 1850s

One evening, Edgar Bauer, acquainted with Marx from their Berlin time and then not yet his personal enemy […], had come to town from his hermitage in Highgate for the purpose of “making a beer trip.” The problem was to “take something” in every saloon between Oxford Street and Hampstead Road – making the something a very difficult task, even by confining yourself to a minimum, considering the enormous number of saloons in that part of the city. But we went to work undaunted and managed to reach the end of Tottenham Court Road without accident.

There loud singing issued from a public house; we entered and learned that a club of Odd Fellows were celebrating a festival. We met some of the men belonging to the “party,” and they at once invited us “foreigners” with truly English hospitality to go with them into one of the rooms. We followed them in the best of spirits, and the conversation naturally turned to politics – we had been easily recognised as Germany fugitives; and the Englishmen, good old-fashioned people, who wanted to amuse us a little, considered it their duty to revile thoroughly the German princes and the Russian nobles. By “Russian” they meant Prussian nobles. Russia and Prussia are frequently confounded in England, and not alone of account of their similarity of name. For a while, everything went smoothly. We had to drink many healths and to bring out and listen to many a toast.

Then the unexpected suddenly happened…

Edgar Bauer, hurt by some chance remark, turned the tables and ridiculed the English snobs. Marx launched an enthusiastic eulogy on German science and music – no other country, he said, would have been capable of producing such masters of music as Beethoven, Mozart, Haendel and Haydn, and the Englishmen who had no music were in reality far below the Germans who had been prevented hitherto only by the miserable political and economic conditions from accomplishing any great practical work, but who would yet outclass all other nations. So fluently I have never heard him speak English.

For my part, I demonstrated in drastic words that the political conditions in England were not a bit better than in Germany [… ] the only difference being that we Germans knew our public affairs were miserable, while the Englishmen did not know it, whence it were apparent that we surpassed the Englishmen in political intelligence.

The brows of our hosts began to cloud […]; and when Edgar Bauer brought up still heavier guns and began to allude to the English cant, then a low “damned foreigners!” issued from the company, soon followed by louder repetitions. Threatening words were spoken, the brains began to be heated, fists were brandished in the air and – we were sensible enough to choose the better part of valor and managed to effect, not wholly without difficulty, a passably dignified retreat.

Now we had enough of our “beer trip” for the time being, and in order to cool our heated blood, we started on a double quick march, until Edgar Bauer stumbled over some paving stones. “Hurrah, an idea!” And in memory of mad student pranks he picked up a stone, and Clash! Clatter! a gas lantern went flying into splinters. Nonsense is contagious – Marx and I did not stay behind, and we broke four or five street lamps – it was, perhaps, 2 o'clock in the morning and the streets were deserted in consequence. But the noise nevertheless attracted the attention of a policeman who with quick resolution gave the signal to his colleagues on the same beat. And immediately countersignals were given. The position became critical.

Happily we took in the situation at a glance; and happily we knew the locality. We raced ahead, three or four policemen some distance behind us. Marx showed an activity that I should not have attributed to him. And after the wild chase had lasted some minutes, we succeeded in turning into a side street and there running through an alley – a back yard between two streets – whence we came behind the policemen who lost the trail. Now we were safe. They did not have our description and we arrived at our homes without further adventures.

Source: Karl Marx: Biographical Memoirs, by Wilhelm Liebknecht. First German edition, Nuremberg, 1896; first English translation (by E Untermann), 1901. Reprinted by Journeyman Press, London, 1975.

Seriously, folks, check out the original site.

"Invented by an Italian engineer, a queer "horseless sulky" has been rolling on the roads near Brussels, Belgium, in recent tests. The seats, engine, and controls are located between the two huge, rubber tired wheels. According to the designer, the vehicle can attain speeds of 116 miles an hour." (Popular Science, pg. 19, 1935).

I would love to see photos of this thing being driven around Brussels.

In case you thought the Belgians were good for nothing but beer and international organizations, you can add totally useless transportation to the list. Do you think this is incredibly silly? Cause I sure do. Today's automakers, however, don't seem to agree.

Harley Davidson seems very enamored of the design, developing their own one-wheeled motorcycle:

(courtesy of Autoblog)

It appears that Bombardier has taken the design and simplified it even further, with the Embrio, which is hydro-powered and relies on gyroscopes to stay up:

Another variation of the "monocycle", the Wheelsurf, was premiered at Wired Nextfest:

I won't lie, I kind of want one. It tops out at 30 mph and sets you back around $4000. Which is a small price to pay to be transported STRAIGHT INTO THE FUTURE.

Cargo cults are a fascinating phenomenon in pre-industrial societies that have come into and then lost contact with more technologically advanced cultures. The most famous ones sprung up in the South Pacific after WWII, but they've existed for centuries.

Islands in the South Pacific played a key role in the war between US and Japan, who frequently air-dropped food, weapons and other supplies to aid their troops. This cargo often ended up in the hands of the islanders. Then, as you can imagine, when the war ended, so did the cargo drops.

The islanders, by that time, had come to perceive cargo as the root of the Western and Japanese wealth and power, and ascribed the air drops to blessings for ritualistic practices. So what did these cargo cults do? They copied the soldiers.

The built air strips, control towers out of bamboo and planes out of straw, and even mimicked airplane sounds in the hopes that, by following the "rituals" of the soldiers, they too would be blessed with cargo. They marched with bamboo spears cut in the shape of guns and carry American flags like soldiers on parade.

In a nutshell, they went through the visible motions without taking into account any of the underlying principles. Some of these cults still exist today, most prominently the "John Frum" cargo cult in Vanuatu. (It is rumored that they named their cult John Frum after the frequently spoken introduction from soldiers: "I'm John from Cincinnati, John from Alabama" and so on.

Since then, the phrase "cargo cult" is frequently applied to both science and design. Richard Feynman defined cargo cult science as science that goes through the motions of scientific investigation without any critical thought. Similarly, cargo cult programming is defined by The Jargon File as:

A style of (incompetent) programming dominated by ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. A cargo cult programmer will usually explain the extra code as a way of working around some bug encountered in the past, but usually neither the bug nor the reason the code apparently avoided the bug was ever fully understood.

Smashing Magazine has a great article about how "cargo cult" thinking has contributed to the slow erosion of creative design.

Best trivia of all? Serge Gainsbourg wrote a song about cargo cults!

"I know of the the magicians who call to jets
In the jungle of New Guinea 
They scrutinize the zenith coveting the guineas
That the pillage of freight would bring them

On the sea of coral in the wake of this
Machine those creatures not deprived
Of reason those Papuans wait for vapour
The wreck of the Vice-count and that of the Comet"

This Soviet technology magazine has some of the loveliest artwork I've ever seen. I can't find a whole lot of information about it, since the original poster is Russian (and Google Translate is especially goofy with Russian).

These visions of the future are fascinating. There's the totally cliché vision of flying cars, but I'm intrigued by some of the other ideas, such as:

Wall-E!:

The Underground Kremlin:

The flying stadium:

My beloved Golem. I never cease to be entertained by the Jewbot:

The Soviet vision of a united global politik:

My favorite, because it's just a damn beautiful drawing:

Check out the original post for tons more.