Back at ClientCo this week, and actually looking forward to having root canal treatment next week as it means I can take Monday off 
Happy invoicing!
- The Hijacker - "The last thing we expected to bump into on a ball field in Normandy was an airplane hijacker, but that’s exactly what happened. Yes, an air pirate, a fugitive from justice still wanted by the FBI for the 1972 hijacking of a Delta airliner from Detroit to Algiers." The story of Mel McNair’s journey from Black Panther to baseball coach working with disadvantaged French children.
- The Most Powerful Artwork I Have Ever Seen - Jerry Saltz on the experience of seeing palaeolithic art in the Niaux Caves: "Imagery seemed adjusted for curvatures and protrusions of the walls in the same ways that Renaissance frescoes adjust for distortions, distance, and odd viewing angles. I saw a bison with one horn curving up, the other curving down — either from battle or birth. Whatever the cause, this was something that had been seen and intentionally rendered… I venture that when it comes to the best of these paintings, mammals have never been rendered better in the history of our species.”
- The Suits of James Bond - HT to barrydidit for this gloriously specialised site about suits in James Bond films: ”SPECTRE agent Number 5 Kronsteen, played by Polish actor Vladek Sheybal in From Russia with Love, is a natty dresser who is very comfortable in his own sense of style. When he is first seen at a chess tournament, he is wearing a Mod-inpsired dark blue Tonik suit. Tonik is a two-tone cloth in a lightweight blend of mohair and wool that has a vibrant sheen…”
- Ultra-detailed Apollo 11 command module scan can be 3D printed or explored with VR - “The impetus for the project was that, for the first time in decades, the plastic covering which had sealed the command module away for decades was being taken off,” Vincent Rossi, senior 3D program officer at the Smithsonian’s Digitization Program Office, tells Digital Trends. “We were asked if we wanted to apply our 3D-scanning tools to it, and it just seemed an opportunity that was too good to pass up.” It was the 47th anniversary of Apollo 11 last week, in case you missed it. WARNING: autoplaying video at the top of the page
- Guy Paints Over tulip Graffiti And Makes It Legible - Artist Mathieu Tremblin tidies up the city:
- This Map Shows Where All the Ships Are Buried Underneath San Francisco - As SF grew during the Gold Rush of the 1850s, land was reclaimed from the harbour with one result you might not expect: ”Those ships that didn’t have anywhere to go where just built on top of.”
- ‘The Foulest Place of Mine Arse is Fairer than thy Face’ - Jonathan Healey finds some of the more inventive insults recorded in legal records from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: ”To this, Frideswide exploded: ‘Agnes Haycroft nay thou pokey nosed hore, feiste thow, thow meseld faced hore, thow camest to towne with a lepers face & a skalled hed, And I defye the[e] utterly, for I wold thow knewist yt that the fowlest place of myn arse ys fayrer then thy face’.”
- Why did ancient Egypt spend 3000 years playing a game nobody else liked? - Christian Donlan on the game that preoccupied Ancient Egyptian society at all levels throughout its history, but which isn’t actually much fun: ”Senet didn't seem to work particularly well as a game. Where was the drama? Where was the tactical thrill? What was I missing?… Senet was the favoured game of the ancient Egyptians. I had read this in books for years, and, in my ignorance, it always made sense. it made sense right up to the moment I actually tried it myself - after which it seemed to hint at a great mystery.”
- Buses on Screen - Another brilliantly specialised site: ”Buses on Screen celebrates buses as they've been depicted on screen over the years, on film, on TV, in screen advertising, even in music videos. This is the perfect meeting of a great form of public transport and one of the great mediums of mass communication!” The film Speed, predictably, gets covered in some detail: "Central to the story is GM New Look fleet number 2525; in fact a total of 16 New Looks were used, including five 5303s and two 4519s from San Diego Transit, a 5303 from Dallas Transit via Lake Elsinore Transit and a Los Angeles Transit 5301 (fleet number 5233), also a T6H 5305A which had been a demonstrator, and a Flxible New Look (4300) used for sound effects."
- Collage: The London Picture Archive - The City of London’s picture archive of over 250,000 images has been online for a while, but has just relaunched after a major revamp added many great features, including browsing for images by map, street name, and category. I’ve walked past this fading mural on Short’s Gardens no end of times, never aware that behind the retailer’s sign lurks an angry message to the GLC from 1974:
Happy invoicing!
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