Bobulate

On the research program behind the pinball machine, or the more dignified name it went by, “Random Mechanical Cascade.” Here, described is Francis Galton’s “Law of the Frequency of Error,” a recurring pattern behind an early demonstration:

For reasons that are a little tricky to explain, a great deal of the stuff in the universe can be characterized using this curve. For example: if I measure the length of Manhattan many times using a ruler, I will come up with a mess of slightly different values; plotted, they will distribute themselves in one of these normal curves (with the odds being that my best answer will lie at the mean). Similarly, if I make everyone in Manhattan take an IQ test, their results, too, will fall out in a normal distribution. Ditto a host of other traits of this population, and, moreover, of all the other populations on the island, from the roaches to the seagulls.

On the perfection of bee architecture from Sydney Smirke and Charles Darwin, The Beavers and the Bees:

[In On the Origin of Species (1859), Darwin] argued that the refinement of the bee’s works resulted from natural selection — that is, through the accumulation of numerous successive, slight modifications of simpler instincts. One could witness this progress by comparing the nests of several types of bees: some, like the aptly named humble bee, made cruder, less mathematically rigorous cells, while others subject to greater selection pressures, like the hive bee, created combs that were superlative in economizing wax. The result was a flawless structure: “Beyond this state of perfection in architecture, natural selection could not lead.” It was, we might note, a curiously definitive statement from someone who is generally assumed to have divested nature of teleology.

Issue 001 of the Manual of Architectural Possibilities, a guide to potential actions, is out.

MAP (Manual of Architectural Possibilities) is a publication of research and visions; research into territories, which can be concrete or abstract, but always put into question. Map presents itself as a folded poster (A1) where information is immediate, dense and objective in one side, and architectural and subjective on the other. Map is a guide to potential actions in the built environment, a folded encyclopedia of the possible, a topography of ideas, or a poster on the wall.

The first issue is on Antarctica, an “unavoidable subject to be studied:”

The first issue of MAP has cast itself upon the unknown, but also the very physical. Although the Antarctica has only been a building site for slightly over 100 years, the scenario is, to say the least, disastrous and marvellous at the same time.

I, for one, am on the lookout for more from David Garcia Studio.

A sequel to a classic — A.A. Milne’s story of Winnie the Pooh — is being released.

David Benedictus, the writer who has taken on the task of re-creating the Hundred Acre Wood and all its inhabitants, says he tried to enter Milne’s mind to find his voice. …. [A]fter years of working on it, Return to the Hundred Acre Wood feels like his own book, albeit one that he shares with Milne: “I couldn’t have written it without Milne having set the scene and creating the characters for me. But, yes, I feel like he’s a sort of old uncle sitting in the background either smiling or frowning at my efforts a little bit.”