[Image: "The Trees Now Talk" cover story in The Electrical Experimenter (July 1919); image via rexresearch]. Way back in 1919, in their July 14th issue, Scientific American published an article on the discovery that trees can act "as nature's own wireless towers and antenna combined." General George...
Books Received
[Image: The Wiederin bookshop in Innsbruck, Austria; photo by Lukas Schaller, courtesy of A10]. Barely in time for the holidays, here is a quick look at some of the many new or recent books that have passed through the home office here at BLDGBLOG. As usual, I have not read all of the books listed...
Sound Signature
Electrical networks emit such a constant, locally recognizable hum that their sound can be used to help solve crimes. [Image: Random sound file using Sound Studio]. A forensic database of electrical sounds is thus being developed by UK police, according to the BBC. "For the last seven years, at the...
Not a grid, but a fleet
Some of my favorite architectural images of all time come from a series of photos taken by Fred R. Conrad for the New York Times, showing the remains of an 18th-century ship that was uncovered in the muddy depths of the World Trade Center site, a kind of wooden fossil, splayed out and preserved like...
Model Warfare
[Image: A carved sandstone model of the incredible walled fortress-city of Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, found where else but within the walled fortress-city of Jaisalmer, Rajasthan; photo by BLDGBLOG]. In his new book Oblique Drawing, architectural historian Massimo Scolari refers in a footnote to a story...
Monuments of Misdirection
[Image: Monumentalizing mismeasurement in Ecuador; photoby Meridith Kohut for the New York Times, courtesy of the New York Times]. At the end of her forthcoming book The Measure of Manhattan, author Marguerite Holloway refers to the impossibility of precisely locating, using today's GPS technology,...
Pop-Up Forests and Experimental Christmas Trees
The New York Times this morning profiles a plant pathologist at Washington State University named Gary Chastagner, who "heads one of the nation’s half-dozen Christmas tree research labs." These labs include institutions such as WSU-Puyallup (producing "research-based information that creates a high-quality...
Back-Up Tut and Other Decoy Spatial Antiquities
[Image: Laser-scanning King Tut's tomb, courtesy of the Factum Foundation].On the 90th anniversary of the discovery of King Tut's tomb, an "authorized facsimile of the burial chamber" has been created, complete "with sarcophagus, sarcophagus lid and the missing fragment from the south wall." The resulting...
Foodprint L.A.
For anyone in or near Los Angeles next weekend, consider stopping by Foodprint L.A., hosted at LACMA. [Image: A robot strawberry harvester, courtesy of Robotic Harvesting LLC]. There are two things to attend. The first is a ticketed walking tour, which kicks off on Saturday, December 8th, at 1pm; it...
