Saturday, February 22, 2014

512s Coda Lunga: the "Highbrow" Ferrari


A matter of taste of course... The Ferrari 512s Coda Lunga--notwithstanding the sophisticated character of its design--is to me the most beautiful car ever built.

And it is to this sophistication that I attribute the car's success. I use the word "sophisticated" as an expression to characterize its formal complexity. From some perspectives the car is over-burdened with curves, abrupt changes in form, sudden straight lines, overly-complex activity--but then suddenly the viewer draws a new angle on the car and its beauty jumps out. The above view, for example, or the plan view--the view directly from the side... and so on. The 512s Coda Lunga (Long Tail) is a spatial poem. It represents Ferrari's most risky and most successful design. Despite many triumphs, the company was never able to achieve such dynamism again (and I am sure they tried).






Friday, February 21, 2014

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Highbrow Affirmation and Rule of Thumb Number One

If you receive an invitation to travel to Italy to star in a Hercules movie...






GO FOR IT!

Friday, February 7, 2014

Considering things to come...






















The future is lost somewhere in the history of the past fifty years, therefore it really is out of this world.

Monday, February 3, 2014

Query

Quantum mechanics emphasizes the effect of the observer. Could this notion be "expanded" to take into consideration the historical period and the technological-level of the observer? Hence, observations and interpretations of the subjective phenomena of space and time are influenced by the level of technology and the level of scientific understanding possessed by the observer? But harder scientific phenomena like change are not influenced...? One of the "features" of modern skeptical-empirical science is that there is a place for not knowing. That is, we can say we know "something" is happening, but we don't necessarily have to know what that something is to do science. I seem to recall Locke came up with this idea when he was studying to be a physician, and when confronted with the human body he acknowledged that there were obviously many elaborate structures as well as many complex processes taking place within the human body that would be useful to know about, and we should of course endeavor to find them out, but meanwhile what can we do to save the patient?