Navel Warfare

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Andrea_schiavone_(o_ambito_di),_cacciata_dal_paradiso_terrestre,_1540-60_ca.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Another mistake there may be in the Picture of our first Parents, who after the manner of their posterity are both delineated with a Navel. … Which notwithstanding cannot be allowed, … that in the first and most accomplished piece, the Creator affected superfluities, or ordained parts without use or office.

… Now the Navel being a part, not precedent, but subsequent unto generation, nativity or parturition, it cannot be well imagined at the creation or extraordinary formation of Adam, who immediately issued from the Artifice of God; nor also that of Eve, who was not solemnly begotten, but suddenly framed, and anomalously proceeded from Adam.

— Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, 1646

| Art · Religion

Nowhere

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ZendiaProblem-callimahos-1960.jpg

This is charming somehow: a detailed portrait of a place that doesn’t exist. During the Cold War, U.S Army cryptologist Lambros D. Callimahos devised a “Republic of Zendia” to use in a wargame for codebreakers simulating the invasion of Cuba. (Callimahos’ maps of the Zendian province of Loreno are below; click to enlarge.)

The Zendia map now hangs on the wall of the library at the National Cryptologic Museum. The “Zendian problem,” in which cryptanalysts students were asked to interpret intercepted Zendian radio messages, formed part of an advanced course that Callimahos taught to NSA cryptanalysts in the 1950s. Graduates of the course were admitted to the “Dundee Society,” named for an empty marmalade jar in which Callimahos kept his pencils.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Central_Part_of_The_Province_of_Loreno.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Northern_Part_of_The_Province_of_Loreno.jpg

08/02/2025 UPDATE: Apparently they speak Esperanto in Zendia, or at least their cartographers do. “Respubliko” is Esperanto for “Republic,” “Bovinsulo” and “Kaprinsulo” are “Cow-Island” and “Goat-Island”, and so on. (Thanks, Ed and David.)

| Art · Puzzles

The Mahler Hammer

The last movement of Mahler’s sixth symphony calls for the sound of a hammer, which the composer indicated should be “brief and mighty, but dull in resonance and with a non-metallic character (like the fall of an axe).” (The two blows represent the death of Mahler’s daughter Maria and the diagnosis of his heart condition.)

Because no recognized instrument exists to fulfill this function, symphonies have had to devise their own solutions, often striking a wooden box or bass drum with a mallet or sledgehammer. Houston Symphony percussionist Brian Del Signore built a 22-pound custom hammer and a wooden box to receive the blow.

| Art · Technology

Family Plan

Given names of the 11 children of Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Russell of Vinton, Ohio, 1972:

  • Noel Leon
  • Novel Levon
  • Norwood Doowron
  • Nerol Loren
  • Leron Norel
  • Noble Elbon
  • Lledo Odell
  • Laur Rual
  • Loneva Avenol
  • Lebanna Annabel
  • Leah Hael

“Mother did it, but I don’t know why,” Laur told UPI. “She would take names from the Bible and other books and compare them until they came out that way.”

Bonus palindrome item: Volume 1, Issue 5 of Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen, titled “Fearful Symmetry,” is a deliberately contrived visual palindrome, not just in structure but often within individual panels (designed by artist Dave Gibbons). Pedro Ribeiro shows the correspondences here.

| Art · Language · Oddities

Piecework

Austrian artist Thomas Medicus’ 2014 anamorphic sculpture Emulsifier arranges 160 hand-painted glass strips to present each of four different images, depending on the viewer’s perspective.

Head Instructor, below, uses the same technique. More at his website.

| Art

Studies

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bologna,_Museo_internazionale_e_biblioteca_della_musica_(2).jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

This bookcase, in Bologna’s International Music Museum and Library, is itself a work of art — the doors are paintings depicting shelves of music books, rendered by Baroque artist Giuseppe Crespi.

Below: In 2014, designer József Páhy devised this bookish façade for a housing estate in Kazincbarcika, Northern Hungary. That’s a teddy bear on the bottom shelf.

Image: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kazincbarcika,_Nagy_Lajos_%C3%BAt_14-18..JPG">Wikimedia Commons</a>
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kazincbarcika,_Nagy_Lajos_%C3%BAt_14-18..JPG
| Art