The Cheerful Insanity of Me

Went into town today and someone has put a load of Israeli flags on a number of lampposts along the seafront. We recently had a similar thing with St George's flags a few weeks ago (which have since been taken down by the council).

While I disagree with most of the actions of Israel in the current conflict, I get that the events at the music festival 2 years ago were horrendous and people should be allowed to commemorate them if they need to. However, even if the flags are simply intended as a symbol of solidarity, they still seem a little provocative given how precarious the situation is there at the moment, so I'm sure there must be some other way of doing it.

It feels as if flags are becoming more and more meaningful in a very uncomfortable way, and most of that meaning seems to be down to arbitary boundaries that someone has decided to draw on a map (and often not the people that are affected by where the line is). I know that some people would argue it's also to do with culture, but I'm a little unconvinced by that argument as culture seems to be much less rigidly bound by borders and often connected to less formal geographic locations.

Having come back to this blog after some time, I was looking back through my icons and was reminded of this one. It's a photo of Oxymoron by Mark Wallinger, a flag he created when tensions were running high in Northern Ireland combining elements of both the UK and Irish flags. I saw it flying on the South Bank near the Royal Festival Hall some time around 15-20 years ago (guess if I looked back through the posts here, I'd probably find out exactly when it was). I love how thought provoking it is on the whole concept of national identity.

Not going to go out and tie copies of it to lampposts, but somehow think it would help if more people would question these things.

Can I live here please:

Here's a couple of interesting pictures.

Firstly, this one contains 32 mistakes:




and this one contains 16 faces (the answers are highlighted in the smaller image on the camera screen):

So, yes, erm, telephone sheep...



These examples by Jean Luc Cornecs are currently on display at the museum of communication in Frankfurt.

(via inhabitat)

There are a number of things going on in the run up to Copenhagen to make the point about how serious climate change is.

One of the more interesting ones is this:



Alfio Bonanno and Christophe Cornubert have created a 1 ton cube of CO2. At 27-foot it's not inconsiderable.

Going on figures from the Guardian, each person in the UK, on average, produces nearly 10 of these each year. That's a lot of carbon, and yet it's nothing compared to places that the US, who produce twice as much per capita.

(via inhabitat)

I seem to post a lot of rubics cube based items on here, which is odd as I can't remember the last time I picked one up. Solved it once, it took a long time, not motivated to give it another go.

They do look ultimately cool though, especially when made out of stained glass like this one from Icebone on deviantart:



(via uberreview)

Apparently there's a couple of giant treehouses in Regent's park until 6 September



Now these I've got to see!

(via @LDN)

I've never really been sure what to do with 1 cup of coffee, let alone 3,604 of them.

This seems a good solution though:



(via @Ale_2point0)

This is shiney:




It's the world's first floating apartment block! It's designed by Dutch architect Koen Olthuis and given how much of the Netherlands is reclaimed wetlands this is probably a useful thing for them to be building.

(via uberreview)

For those of you that aren't already aware:

There is a giant domino rally using concrete blocks running from Mile End to Greenwich this afternoon.

I guess that decides my Sunday afternoon then... This I've got to see!