Patrick Byrne

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A crash involving a lorry and two cars is causing severe delays on the M11.The accident has partially blocked the southbound carriageway between Junction 13 for Coton and Junction 14 for Girton.Severe delays are expected and it is reported that traffic is queuing along the road.

In 1979, director Francis Ford Coppola, in the grip of clinical manic depression and anxiety over his incomplete opus Apocalypse Now, and while purportedly under the influence of his girlfriend, screenwriter Melissa Mathison, proposed making a “ten-hour film version of Goethe’s Elective Affinities, in 3D“.

There is more here.  And here is the famed Walter Benjamin essay on Elective Affinities.

The new and excellent Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings biography of Benjamin has a good discussion of that essay.

Horse head squirrel feeder.  Who could possibly want such a thing?  Is that the result of a fixed point theorem?  Aren’t fixed costs God’s way of keeping such nasty stuff away from us?:

You have a Creepy Horse Mask, why not the squirrels in your yard? It turns out it’s even funnier on a squirrel. This hanging vinyl 6-1/2″ x 10″ squirrel feeder makes it appear as if any squirrel that eats from it is wearing a Horse Mask. You’ll laugh every morning as you drink your coffee while staring out the window into your backyard. Now, if only the squirrels would do their own version of the Harlem Shake video. Hole on top for hanging with string (not included).

For the pointer I thank John De Palma.

There will always be a place on Pylon of the Month for the snatched pylon pictures taken through the window of a moving vehicle, but this month's pylon is most definitely one of the most artistic to have featured on the blog.  With the metallic sky in the background and the contrast with the brown of the landscape, it really does reach new dramatic and artistic heights.  It was taken by a fan of the website and if it catches your eye then you can see the picture with a bit about the back story here and another photograph in the sequence is here.  The pylon is to be found in the Corbières in southern France, near the village of Fabrezan and I think it is the first French pylon to feature on Pylon of the Month.  So I'm pleased to be doing my bit for the entente cordiale one hundred years after the start of the of the First World War.  If you are thinking of heading to the area then as well as pylon spotting, you will surely be aware that this area is famous for its wine.  In fact, one of the favourite red wines in the Pylon of the Month household, Chateau Sainte Eulalie is from very close to this pylon and we visited it a few years ago whilst on holiday near Carcassonne.  We buy it through the Wine Society (which I can't recommend highly enough) and according to their website:

Château Sainte Eulalie is an outstanding estate run by a young and enthusiastic couple, Laurent and Isabelle Coustal. The domaine was first established in the earlier part of the 20th century, but it has been since this dynamic pair took over in 1996 that it has gained its excellent status.

As always, it is amazing where a pylon picture will take you and I'll leave it there as I head back to a warm fire for a glass of red wine.

Postscript

As this is my first French pylon, I thought that I would try an experiment and get Google to translate this post into French.  I'm not expecting a great result but if any French readers want to offer a better translation then I will be happy to improve it.

Il y aura toujours une place sur pylône du mois pour les photos des pylônes arrachés de pylônes prises à la volée par la fenêtre d'un véhicule en mouvement , mais le pylône de ce mois est très certainement l'un des plus artistique ont présenté sur le blog . Avec le ciel métallique en arrière-plan le contraste avec le brun du paysage qu'il fait vraiment atteindre de nouveaux sommets dramatiques . Elle a été prise par un fan du site et si elle attire votre attention , vous pouvez voir l'image avec un peu de l'arrière histoire ici . Le pylône se trouve dans les Corbières dans le sud de la France, près du village de Fabrezan et je pense qu'il est le premier pylône français à figurer sur pylône du mois . Je suis donc heureux de faire ma part pour l'entente cordiale 100 ans après le début de la de la Première Guerre mondiale . Si vous envisagez de partir pour la région, puis ainsi que pylône taches la chasse aux pylônes, vous serez sûrement au courant que cette région est célèbre pour son vin . En fait , l'un des vins rouges préférés dans le pylône du ménage mois , le Château Sainte Eulalie est de très près à ce pylône et nous avons visité il ya quelques années en vacances près de Carcassonne . Nous achetons par la Wine Society (que je ne peux pas recommander assez fortement ) et en fonction de leur site :

Château Sainte Eulalie est un exceptionnel domaine dirigé par un jeune et enthousiaste couple, Laurent et Isabelle Coustal . Le domaine a été créé dans la première partie du 20ème siècle , mais il a été depuis cette paire dynamique a repris en 1996 qu'il a acquis son excellent état ​​.

Comme toujours , il est étonnant où une image de pylône vous prendre et je vais le laisser là que je me dirige vers un feu chaleureux pour un verre de vin rouge .

 

Despite all my good intentions, November has almost passed by without a pylon and so here is one that I hope will also do for the festive season ahead.  There aren't any suitably wintry photos in my pending tray, but then I realised that a Meccano pylon would be perfect for Christmas.  It was built by Ken Senar and came to my attention via Ralph and Sue's Meccano website http://my-meccano.co.uk. If you have buying Christmas presents for children on your to do list and want to play your part in inspiring the next generation of engineers (and in the UK we need to raise our game on this front) then you could do worse than looking here for inspiration.

According to Wikipedia:

In 1901 Frank Hornby, a clerk from Liverpool, England, invented and patented a new toy called "Mechanics Made Easy" that was based on the principles of mechanical engineering.  It was a model construction kit consisting of perforated metal strips, plates and girders, with wheels, pulleys, gears, shaft collars and axles for mechanisms and motion, and nuts and bolts to connect the pieces.

That is the same Frank Hornby behind Hornby model trains and if Meccano pylons don't inspire you, then you might be relieved to know that you can but Hornby pylons for your model railway kit.

It hasn't been a great month for pylons in the news.  In Ireland, Somerset and Suffolk/Essex the tension between those who want electricity lines to be buried to preserve the landscape and those who will have to pay the extra cost of burying and then maintaining them continues.  I wouldn't want pylon lines running through some of my favourite parts of the UK, but given the pressure at the moment to drive down energy bills there has to be a recognition that infrastructure costs cannot be ignored.  In December 2012, the BBC reported that Ofgem had permitted £12 to be added to energy bills for the next eight years to pay for upgrades and maintenance and so pylon controversy looks set to continue for the foreseeable future.

I don't want to end on that rather downbeat note and so I'll finish by mentioning this 'Electricity pylons in the mist at dawn' Christmas tree decoration which is the perfect present for pylon fans everywhere.

Hey everyone! I hope that tonight, like me, you have rented a great Halloween movie from Chinese Good Show Sir.

To my great surprise I’ve realised that this in fact isn’t the original and somehow a familiar man-tiger has made its way into the Hammer Horror classic The Devil Rides Out!

Have a good evening and please remember not to pick up any Clavicles of Solomon that you might find. Who knows when – or how – the great RX might be conjured!

This month's pylon comes to you from the M5 motorway.  It follows in the fine tradition of pylon photos taken whilst travelling, with the earliest example (from July 2009) being this one on the M6 motorway.  The fan of the website who submitted this month's photo said:

This was photographed from the M5 whilst coming home on Friday evening.  I can't quite remember where it is but my best guess was somewhere between Gloucester and Birmingham.  I was actually trying some arty shots of the sunset, but the pylon sort of strayed into my shot.

So a serendipitous photo rather than a planned pylon photo shoot, but Pylon of the Month is more than happy to accept any submissions whether deliberate or accidental. As the M5 has cropped up I feel that a bit more information is called for and I'll start with some construction history.  It is a rather messy story, but it starts in 1962 with the construction of a two lane motorway in Worcestshire and in the same year a section near Filton in Bristol was also opened.  This latter section of the M5 began addressing the traffic problems in Bristol dating back to the 1930s.  More details of the construction history and a rather splendid photograph of the first cars (led by the Lord Mayor of Bristol in his Daimler) precessing down the new Bristol section of the motorway via flickr and brizzle born and bred.

In other pylon news this month, the bad weather in Scotland led to sheets of snow and ice damaging eight pylons in Argyll as reported by the BBC and many areas were without electricity for days.  Even if you aren't the biggest fan of pylons, you miss them if they meet the fate of the one below and your electricity supply is cut off as a result! 

There is plenty more that I could report but I'll leave it there this month.  You can after all get too much of a good thing, or as the saying (via Mary Poppins) goes in our house "enough is as good as a feast".  If you want to hear Mary Poppins say it herself then you can hear all four seconds of it here. 

In my group at least half of these don’t count as weird at all.  Yet I had never thought of this one, “They’re All Hanging Out At the Edge of the Galaxy”:

This interesting solution to the Fermi Paradox was posited by Milan M. Ćirković and Robert Bradbury.

“We suggest that the outer regions of the Galactic disk are the most likely locations for advanced SETI targets,” they wrote. The reason for this is that sophisticated intelligent communities will tend to migrate outward through the Galaxy as their capacities of information-processing increase. Why? Because machine-based civilizations, with their massive supercomputers, will have huge problems managing their heat waste. They’ll have to set up camp where it’s super cool. And the outer rim of the Galaxy is exactly that.

Subsequently, there may be a different galactic habitable zone for post-Singularity ETIs than for meat-based life. By consequence, advanced ETIs have no interest in exploring the bio-friendly habitable zone. Which means we’re looking for ET in the wrong place. Interestingly, Stephen Wolfram once told me that heat-free computing will someday be possible, so he doesn’t think this is a plausible solution to the Fermi Paradox.

Once again, air conditioning really does influence location, at least if this is true (which I doubt).  The other ten are here, and the pointer is from George Dvorsky.