But seriously, are these really any crazier than the West Edmonton Mall?
Seven Insane Soviet Projects
June 12th, 2007 · 4 Comments
Tags: Asides · Technology · Russia is Neat
A few of my favorites:
The network isn’t virtual. It’s physical, and that matters.
Most. Important. Post. Ever.
Technology and democracy in the golden age of the American eccentric.
“A flannel curtain has descended across the continent.” The second of five alternate Canadian histories.
The watery disasters, natural and human-made, of 1927 and 2005.
Most recent posts:
Is John Hodgman the last observer of Gilded Age telephone etiquette? I WOULD NOT PUT IT PAST HIM.
Write up and reflection on THATCamp 2008, an excellent “unconference” on digital technology and the humanities.
I’m psyched for this weekend’s digital humanities conference but feel a bit the phony.
Just a cool little story about electrification from the early days of the USSR.
Synopsis of my new course on science, technology, and global history.
In loose Borgesian categories:
But seriously, are these really any crazier than the West Edmonton Mall?
Tags: Asides · Technology · Russia is Neat
Interwob links to confound and bemuse:
Depends. Is Hayden Christensen In It?
“Would you rather go see the latest Star Wars movie, or a giant card catalog?” NYT on the Mundaneum, the cardboard internet noted here a few months ago.
Lousy Cheapskates
Guess my so-called friends were outbid: that first telephone book sold for $170,500. I would have “settled” for the ENIGMA machine which went for $104,500.
City of Shadows
Long-exposure photographs of St. Petersburg turn the bustle of urban crowds into beautiful shoggoths of human smoke.
My Name Is Charles Guiteau
Garfield without words was inspired. Garfield without Garfield was, I thought, kinda gilding that lily. But Garfield plus Garfield is the winner.
Shan Carter and Amanda Cox Have A Posse
Another swell interactive graphic from the people who did the box office one, this time showing demographic margins for Clinton and Obama.
Good Luck Getting the DeLorean to 88 MPH
Tyler Cowen and his readers discuss survival tips in case you are unexpectedly stranded in the year 1000 AD. Would it surprise you to learn that I think about this all the time?
Oral History of the Internets
Because I get all my history of technology from Vanity Fair. (No, actually, it’s not half bad.)
Captured Monsters
“Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee…” A blog of stills from old monster movies.
The Financephalograph
Your war bonds at work: Brett Holman at Airminded follows up my link to MONIAC with more history, smart analysis, and lots of pictures.
The Telectroscope
It’s no giant mechanical elephant (what is?), but, yes, the telectroscope is wicked boss keen. Once again, I live in the wrong London.
Invisible elves make our site go:
© 2001–2007 Rob MacDougall

4 responses so far ↓
1 Jess Nevins // Jun 12, 2007 at 8:29 pm
I am *so* stealing those for Sekrit Projeckt Two.
2 Bill Brickman // Jun 14, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Ground-effect craft should fit well into Steampunk Star Wars. Assuming you don’t have to be going 240 miles per hour to have them work…
3 Mark A. Rayner // Jun 14, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Yeah, I thought the World’s Largest Hydrofoil was cool rather than insane.
4 Adam // Jun 26, 2007 at 1:28 pm
While working as a student at the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing [no longer in existence], I’d have weekly chats with my supervisor, a physicist. Once we got talking about really big bombs, and [this is probably bunk] that the reason the Soviets eased back on really big hydrogen bombs, was because they thought during some of their tests they had cracked the earth’s crust. Neato!
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