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Not only do I like miniature automobiles, but I also like miniature aircraft! Get outta here with your crummy fold-up scooter, give me a foldable personal helicopter. The Hiller XROE-1 Rotorcycle was first prototyped and flown in 1957 right here in Palo Alto at the Hiller Helicopter Plant. Designed to be an observational platform, the Rotorcycle was about as minimal as a helicopter can be. A one-seat flying tripod. Some people designed even more minimal copters, but they, umm, didn't work out.

Built at the behest of the Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics, twelve Rotorcycles in all were manufactured through 1962. It was powered by a four-cylinder two cycle Nelson H-59 air-cooled engine, producing 40 horsepower and equipped with a centrifugal clutch. The whole contraption broke down to store in a small pod.

The Hiller Aviation Museum, just up the Peninsula in San Carlos, California, has several of the remaining Rotorcycles in their collection, including this one which is on permanent display. Does this look like fun, or what?

In 1953 Hiller also produced the odd looking Flying Platform. The Flying Platform prototype was developed from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics engineer Charles H. Zimmerman, base on his concept he called "Flying Shoes." Zimmerman proved the theory that top-rotored craft, such as helicopters, were inherently unstable. He surmised that a person could use natural balancing reflexes to control a small flying machine by leaning though "kinesthetic control," similar to riding a bicycle or balancing on a skateboard or surfboard. The Flying Platform had two of the Nelson H-59 engines and was the world's first ducted fan vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft. This craft introduced the world to vectored thrust.

At one time the Hiller put out a cool 'zine (okay, newsletter) called "Copter-News" which had all sorts of interesting helicopter history and information. Included were images of historic helicopters as well as innovative mid-century experiments like this cute XH-44 which flew at Berkeley Stadium in 1943. My favorite issue was published in August 1952 where experts proudly proclaimed "no limit to helicopters of the future." Wow, if only that had been true. Take a look at the proposed Goliath, capable of holding 450 troops or three tanks, all while looking really spiffy. That, along with Hiller's vision of the sleek ramjet Skybus transport makes me wonder what the heck happened to our promised future.
- posted by JIMWICh on 2/28/2001 12:02:06 PM

At 3:19pm PST today I was sitting here working on a project when all of a sudden I felt a gentle shaking motion. I looked up to see my tensegrity sphere gently wobbling. The whole event lasted maybe five seconds or so. "Hmmm, was that a temblor?" I wondered.

Turns out it was. And within a minute or two I had my proof courtesy of the United States Geological Survey's interactive "Did You Feel It?" site.

The epicenter of Event nc51105698 was centered eleven miles east of San Jose City Hall, California - Latitude N37.33 Longitude W121.70, and at a depth of 7.8 km (4.8 miles). Official time was 15:18:23 PST. The event registered magnitude 4.4 on the Richter Scale. Event 51105698's USGS report site has links to:

- Event nc51105698 Seismograph Network Plots
- Event nc51105698 First-Motion Focal Mechanism Plot
- Stanford Telescope Seismograph Plot (Realtime events - will change)
- Regional Seismic Net Map (Realtime events - will change)

Within an hour, over 2,700 people had reported their perceptions of the event on the sites "Did You Feel It?" report page. Answers and statistics are then gathered and compiled in real time, and the event's regional map is updated with color-coded reports of perceived intensity interpreted as colored shading. That's pretty cool if you ask me! Of course, it might be more difficult to interact with if I were sitting here in a pile of rubble...

The "Did You Feel It?" site is part of the Pasadena USGS office's site. The USGS Earthquake Hazards Program - Northern California site has a range of other real-time and archived data on earthquakes. For Event 51105698 the USGS immediately had up charts of the quake's:

- Event nc51105698 Regional Reported Intensity Map
- Event nc51105698 Intensity Map
- Event nc51105698 Peak Ground Acceleration
- Event nc51105698 Peak Ground Velocity

And within a week they will have determined the Event nc51105698's Focal Mechanism

While I wouldn't want to try this out in a bigger, more serious event, I'm impressed with how fast the USGS can provide scientific feedback on earthquakes immediately after they occur. This, combined with the realtime compilation of web-fed reports of those who've experienced the event, provides an amazing example of the internet's power.
- posted by JIMWICh on 2/25/2001 5:32:09 PM

In 1970, the same year I was tooling around on my Orange Krate, I found an ancient Native American stone scraping tool in one our farm fields in northern Pettis County, Missouri just after it was plowed. Scrapers were small (4-5 inches long) stone blades with uniface flaking. Tools such as these were used to scrape the hides and bones of animals such as deer and buffalo in the preparation of food, clothing and shelter. On the web I found a site with a very similar Sedalia Scraper that was found in a field in Benton County, Missouri. This scraper (5 inches long and 2 inches wide)was slightly larger than mine (4.4 inches long and 1.75 inches wide), but is made of the same cream-colored flint and they both have a similar shape and flake style.

Sedalia points were named in 1961 by R. M. Seelan for specimens found near the town of Sedalia, Missouri, which is ten miles south of our family farms. The Sedalia artifacts are linked to the Early Archaic Period (7,000 BC - 5,000 BC). From what I've found in numerous sources, scraper tools similar to mine and found in the same region have been linked to the Early Archaic Period, though I have not had the scraper evaluated or verified in age by a professional archaeologist or expert.

Ironically, I found this tool in one of our fields near a spot my Dad and Grandpa called "the buffalo wallow." It was so named because it retained water differently than the more loamy areas around it, presumably because at one time generations of buffalos had used this spot as a wallow, stamping around in it decade after decade, compacting the clay layer underneath so that it was "sealed." A similar method was used in the building of our numerous farm ponds. After the pond was built, a herd of hogs would be confined in the only slightly-filled muddy pond. Their stomping and rooting around would similarly seal the pond so that it could reliably hold water with no ground seepage. Here is a page on a large buffalo wallow in Saline County, Missouri, which is just a few miles north of our family farms in northern Pettis County.

I've kept the stone scraper nearby me for over thirty years. One thing that I particularly liked about it is that it's a multi-purpose tool. And I like to hold it and imagine its ancient maker. Was its maker local? Did the maker use the scraper, or was it traded? The thing I most love about it is how good if feels in my hand. Ancient ergonomics.
- posted by JIMWICh on 2/24/2001 9:52:54 PM

A musical legend has left us. American steel-string acoustic guitar legend, John Fahey has died of complications from a heart condition.

Fahey was born in Cecil County, Maryland in 1939. Originator of the "American Primitive" fingering style (tablatures), Fahey's music has been called folk, blues, bluegrass, and more. He was truly too original to categorize. He influenced countless guitarist peers such as Leo Kottke, Robbie Basho, and Windham Hill founder, William Ackerman.

Fahey's bedrock recordings, Blind Joe Death, which released, re-recorded and re-released several times between 1959 and 1967. The first Fahey recordings I heard were from his 1960s recordings, Volume 2: Death Chants, Breakdowns, and Military Waltzes and Volume 3: Dances of Death and Other Plantation Favorites. I was spellbound by the woven sounds he plucked from the steel strings.

Just earlier this week I was listening to his 1983 recording, Railroad, and his death leaves me greatly saddened.
- posted by JIMWICh on 2/23/2001 12:01:33 AM

While Salon whines about NASCAR, JIMWICh digs deeper, bringing you: Souped-up lawnmower racing!

NASGRASS - North American Society of Grass Racers And Sod Slingers. NASGRASS' rules and regs.

USLMRA - United States Lawnmower Racing Association.

Top Hat Racing. Includes somewhat appropriate soundtrack (optional).

The Northwest Lawnmower Racing Association.

The Lawn Race Cafe. Lots of grass-stained racing action!

The HALFFAST Lawnmower Racing Team.

Leonhardt Racing (cool racing mower, alas, w/GeoC pop-up)

Home And Yard University (H.A.Y.-U). Home of Geronimow.

- posted by JIMWICh on 2/22/2001 12:24:40 AM

I give you... micromobiles.

The historic: The Hunslet Scootacar Mark 1, Mark 2, and Mark 3. The Heinkel. The BMW Isetta. The Messerschmitts: Fend Flitzer, KR175, KR201 (whole gallery), and the TG500. The Nissan Fuji Cabin, The Daihatsu Bee. The Mazda R360 Coupe. The Cony Guppy. The Peel Trident (first spotted on gmtPlus9). The Fuldamobil. The Nobel 200.The Ligier-JS4. A Felber Autoroller. The Goggomobil Coupé (an audio ad for the Goggomobil). The Vespa 400. The Brutsch Mopetta. The Brutsch Rollera. The Mini Lulu. The Zundapp Janus. The Autobianchi Bianchina. And the FMR Tiger Tg500.

The modern: The Scootcar. The Ford Ka. And of course a JIMWICh favorite, the Smart Car.
- posted by JIMWICh on 2/20/2001 12:41:37 AM

Karin Fantus was nice to send me a postcard today introducing me to the online site presenting the bicycle paintings of artist, Taliah Lempert. On one level, I love that several of the paintings in her gallery include Stingrays, including two with Schwinn Krates! But her work also succeeds in transcending her subject.

In choosing the bicycle as her focus Lempert has created a remarkable body of work that plays off its varying forms and shapes as well as its relationship to the human figure and its ubiquitous roles within society. Her style is fluid and painterly, often creating abstract compositions through the use of cropping, angles, and perspectives. And since many of the paintings are bicycles of friends, they are also very personal tributes to the subject's owner.

Her site also has an archive of her past works where each painting includes a page on the bike's owner and background and the process of its creation. You can also read her resume, a statement of artistic intent, publications that have featured her work, awards, and information on buying her paintings and prints.
- posted by JIMWICh on 2/18/2001 4:21:25 PM

While some adults appear to go nuts over the latest sports car, luxury sedan, or SUV, I find myself yawning. You see, I had my peak machine ownership experience at the age of nine in 1970. I became the owner of a Schwinn Orange Krate™, a configuration of metal and plastic so beautiful, so sublime, that no car, yacht, or jet today could elicit the same feeling of coolness that I had when I brought that bike home. It was the pinnacle of bikedom. American astronauts were walking on the moon. And I was riding on my Orange Krate.

I found an old black and white photograph of my Krate that I'd taken with my 1966 Model 20 Polaroid Swinger. I added back the groovy color with Photoshop. The Polaroid Swinger was a pretty sweet product itself. It's photographs were pretty lame, and you had to wipe them with a nasty fixative, the caustic smell of which I can still remember. Here's a bikini-clad hipster Swinger commercial from the mid-60s (in RealPlayer format). Here's it's bouncy themesong, "Meet The Swinger" (audio track only in .wav format). Wow, no wonder I had to have one.

For several years Krateboy has maintained Stingray Universe, devoted to Stingrays and Krates. He still has the letter I sent him in 1996 in which I told about how much I loved my Orange Krate.

Lots of people are restoring Krates. Schwinn is even manufacturing a new Orange Krate, though in some fit of corporate madness, they've left off the massive five-speed Stik-Shift™. Man, the Stik-Shift™ was one of the things that was most cool about it! That, and the spring suspension on the front fork. Oh, and the little front wheel with its drum brake. And the rear Racing Slik™ and shock absorbers...

Stingray Universe tells the history of the Stingrays and Krates and a great archive of photos and links, including a number of vintage Krate ads, as well as links for the Raleigh Chopper. The English-made Chopper was another tricked out bike of the era that captured the musclecar aesthetic for the cul-de-sac set. There was even a girl's chopper. And in Europe, German kids were hot for the Chopper as well! Check out the boss sissy-bars looming behind these zwei Kinder!

The Vista was another bike with a frame similar to the Krate and a seat that looked like the Chopper's.

There were several Krate models, including the red Apple Krate, the yellow Lemon Peeler, the green Pea Picker, the white Cotton Picker. I left my Krate in the standard config, though I did add a speedometer. But evidently some kids tricked their Krates out Mod style. And I swear I had the exact same pants as the kid on this Manta Ray! I also had a vest, a wide white leather watchband, and clog-heeled tu-tone suede shoes. I'll stop at that before I get into the red, white, and blue peace sign fingers sew-on patches, etc..
- posted by JIMWICh on 2/17/2001 10:03:58 PM

One of my very favorite streaming net radio sites is NativeRadio.com. Their mix is an eclectic blend of native traditional, folk, blues, rap and more. They're currently netcasting in high-quality streaming MP3 on their high-bandwidth station (this stream is recommended for DSL, Cable Modem, and above), as well as in two streams suitable for lower speed net connections, Universal Bandwidth Station and Universal NAMA (Native American Music Awards) Station.

The site highlights the musicians, their albums and concerts, and just as importantly, their message. The site also features the cover art and artists who have created it.

Another interesting facet is the site's focus on the history of the indigenous people of the United States and their 500 year struggle for justice. Among the site's features are photographs, spoken word, and Native American news. Available on the site is information on contributing to Native Americans' causes. These include the ongoing plight of the Anishinabe-Lakota political prisoner, Leonard Peltier. Incarcerated for the past 24 years, the United States government has admitted on numerous occasions that they do not know who is responsible for the crime he was convicted of.

Peltier's imprisonment has been acknowledged as a violation of human rights by such figures as the late Mother Theresa, Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Amnesty International, the European Parliament, the Italian Parliament, the Belgium Parliament, the Green Party, 50 members of U.S. Congress, Robert Redford, the National Congress of American Indians, and Jesse Jackson among others.
- posted by JIMWICh on 2/13/2001 11:07:43 PM

Wovoka was a Paiute mystic whose religious pronouncements spread the Ghost Dance among many tribes of Native Americans in the late 1800s. Born around 1856 in a part of western Nevada that is now Esmeralda County, Wovoka's father died when he was about fourteen years old and he was subsequently raised by a nearby white rancher and took the name, Jack Wilson.

When Wovoka was about thirty years old, he began assembling numerous Native American cultural traditions into what became the Ghost Dance.This was a very sad and tragic time for Native Americans. During this time they were being systematically driven from their ancestral lands, their ancient ways being stripped away as they were killed, forced to flee, or confined to reservations. At this time a northern Paiute named Tävibo delivered an ominous prophecy, saying that the earth would soon swallow up all the white people, and all the dead Native Americans would emerge to enjoy an Earth free of their oppressors. Tävibo urged his followers to dance in circles while singing religious songs, and this ritual began to spread to parts of Nevada, California, and Oregon.

In the late 1880s, Wovoka began issuing similar prophecies, linking this message of imminent salvation with righteous behavior among Native Americans. These millenial prophecies shared some aspects with Christian millenialist movements and prophecies, and some historians attribute this to Wovoka's contact with the Christian faith when growing up on the Wilson ranch.

One artifact of Wovoka's prophecies is a letter, The Promise of the Ghost Dance (The Messiah Letter), obtained by James Mooney, an ethnologist with the Bureau of American Ethnology, who was sent to investigate the Ghost Dance movement in 1891. By the early 1890s, the Ghost Dance had spread throughout the American West. Mooney took a number of photographs, documenting the Ghost Dancers and their chants:

Ghost Dance - Women Chanting with Arms Raised

Man and Woman Chanting

Sioux Ghost Dancers at Standing Rock Reservation, North Dakota

The Arapaho Chant

The Kiowa Chant

The Sioux Chant

The Cheyenne Chant

The Plains Chant

Hunkpapa Lakota Chief, Sitting Bull was murdered at the Standing Rock Reservation in the government's attempts to ban the growing Ghost Dance. On December 28, 1890 the Lakota, Chief, Bigfoot and 370 of his people were ruthlessly massacred by machine gun as they lay huddled against a creek bank at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. This terrible chapter in the genocide of the Native American peoples was a cruel indication that Tävibo's and Wovoka's prophecies of a coming millenium would not occur as foretold. Wovoka quietly lived out the rest of his days as Jack Wilson, dying in 1932.
- posted by JIMWICh on 2/12/2001 11:52:27 PM

Rural Studio was started in 1993 by Samuel Mockbee and Dennis K. Ruth, two architects and professors at Alabama's Auburn University. The purpose of Rural Studio was to improve the living conditions of the rural poor while giving architecture students hands-on experience in actual design and construction.

Mockbee won a MacArthur Fellowship in 2000 for his remarkable work in experimental architecture combined with worthy social goals. He and his students have designed and built an astounding range of houses, buildings, and structures in rural Hale County, Alabama, one of the nations most poverty-stricken regions. Centered in Newbern, a town 160 miles from the Auburn campus, students under Mockbee's direction work with local residents, utilizing a variety of novel, discarded, and scrap materials and objects in their architecture. The unique styles they've produced, which one article dubbed "redneck modern," are a synthesis of the familiar and vernacular forms of the region, combined with soaring and dramatic modern aesthetics.

I'd first run across the work of Rural Studio a couple of years ago in Worldstudio Foundation's publication, Sphere. There were photographs of the Harris House (The Butterfly House), built for under $30,000, which had a beautiful and unusually pitched roof.

Balsawood model of the Harris House
Harris House Interior

Other projects of Rural Studio have been:
The Akron Pavilion
The Bryant House (Front View , Rear View)
The Yancy Chapel, (Entrance, Another View)
The Children's Center
The H.E.R.O. Playground.
- posted by JIMWICh on 2/8/2001 10:32:50 PM

Planet Earth's full of interesting and unusual geography, but among the more forbidding is found in the northern part of Madagascar. The Ankarana region's Tsingy de Bemaraha Strict Nature Reserve is a 50 square mile area where the Tsingy pinnacles are found. Tsingy (or pinnacle karst) are razor-sharp limestone outcroppings created over eons by water erosion. The name Tsingy comes from the Malagasy language and means, "walking on tiptoe." All but impassable, the Tsingy is home to a number of rare species including lemurs, some of which live in the island forests which are completely surrounded by the imposing rocks.
- posted by JIMWICh on 2/6/2001 7:19:08 PM

Science News, always a great source of strange nature stories, recounts in January 20, 2001; Vol. 159, No. 3 the December issue of the German science publication, Naturwissenschaften where researchers gave details on a species of Malaysian tropical ant that has a unique response to the flooding of their nests. The article, entitled, "Communal peeing: a new mode of flood control in ants" pretty much says it all. The ants organize a peeing brigade!

Catalaucus muticus make their nests exclusively inside the hollow centers of giant bamboo stalks. Heavy rains can create trickles into the colony, where it threatens the ants' larvae. Researchers, Ulrich Maschwitz and Joachim Moog of Franfurt's J.W. Goethe University say that workers first try plugging up the entry to the colony using their heads. But, unfortunately, as ant heads generally make poor corks, some water manages to flood in anyway. When this occurs, their clever recourse is to bail out the puddle using the only means available - their diminuitive bladders!

The researchers documented this process by first creating a miniature ant-scaled deluge, using a few milliliters of colored water. Over the next forty-eight hours, the ants managed to bail out the wee puddle by gulping and peeing over 3,000 droplets! Other ants species studied as control subjects, failed to utilize the ingenius urinary civil defense plan, and so the scientists concluded that the Malaysian bamboo-inhabiting species is alone in its use of water sports as a survival mechanism.

JIMWICH exclusive: Photo of the Malaysian Bamboo Ants' Flood Response Corps. in action.
- posted by JIMWICh on 2/4/2001 4:36:57 PM

Wow, they just don't write childrens' stories like they used to.

Struwwelpeter (translated in English as Shockheaded Peter or Slovenly Peter), was Heinrich Hoffmann's illustrated set of childrens' stories, written in the mid-1800's and published in Germany in 1900 under the name, "Der Struwwelpeter: oder lustige Geschichten und drollige Bilder für Kinder von 3-6 Jahren" (Frankfurt am Main: Literarische Anstalt von Rutten & Loning, 1900).

Foreward
Struwwelpeter
The Story of Cruel Frederick
The Dreadful Story of Pauline and the Matches
The Story of the Inky Boys
The Story of the Wild Huntsman
The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb
The Story of Augustus who not have any Soup
The Story of Fidgety Philip
The Story of Johnny Look-in-the-Air
The Story of Flying Robert

The stories were also translated into English around the same time and published under the title, "Slovenly Peter or Cheerful Stories and Funny Pictures for Good Little Folks" (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Company, n.d.)

Robert Godwin Jones, of the Virginia Commonwealth University has created a very extensive site on the stories, complete with the original German illustrations, English translations, and related links.

Even the legendary American writer, Mark Twain, created a translation.

Shockheaded Peter has also been turned into a "junk opera" and has toured the world to rave reviews.
- posted by JIMWICh on 2/3/2001 4:01:23 PM

Perfect for February - Marvin, the depressed web server.
Link via John Brewer.
- posted by JIMWICh on 2/2/2001 2:03:31 PM

Okay, so it's Groundhog Day again, and of course our favorite groundhog, (no, not that tophatted poseur in Pennsylvania), the one and only Mr. Woodczuch saw his shadow. He always sees his shadow! What a scam, claiming we'll have six more weeks of winter because he's frightened of his shadow. Just to catch a few more zzzz's is more like it. Varmint slacker.

But I'll bet you didn't know groundhogs make for some good eatin'! I found this delish-sounding recipe for "Contry-Style Groundhog" (sic). But here's my question - What the hell else kind would there be?! I think it's unlikely you're going to run across any nouvelle cuisine involving our myopic rodent friend. Where on earth would you find Smoked woodchuck tarte fine with caviar crême aigrelette, let alone a vegetable croustillant with semi-smoked groundhog on an anise sauce? Those would just be wrong.

Nope, you've got your basic old everyday Fried Woodchuck and then you've got your Groundhog Burgers. But I did happen across the slightly more upscale Grilled Groundhog and the highfalutin' Oat Fried Groundhog. Then there's the mildly exotic Oriental Groundhog, and for heaven's sake don't forget the the favorite dish of apocalyptic cultists everywhere, Waco Groundhog in Sour Cream.
- posted by JIMWICh on 2/2/2001 12:09:01 AM

February's a dismal month for the most part. So here, let me make it even more wretched and unbearable with a few cover songs in Real Audio from Fade To Black's Hall of Shame:

Let's start with something truly ludicrous - Buffy and Jody's portly drug dealer/butler, Mr. French throwing down It Ain't Me Babe.

Mr. Spock, aka "Leonard Nimoy," butchering Proud Mary. Someone should definitely roll this one into the river.

A frightening Phyllis Diller failing to satisfy with (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction. Well no wonder...

Hooo-Weee! Why if it ain't Andy Griffith's chicken-fried House of the Rising Sun. Pass the gravy.

And where your average heavy metal band might attempt to put on a dark satanic image, sundyskool crooner, Pat Boone actually manages to create a very real and palpable hell with Enter Sandman.
- posted by JIMWICh on 2/1/2001 12:02:39 AM

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