Six Things, Volume 55

Divaness | Paint | Ancient Earth | Eggs | Madeleine | Puzzles

Feb 18, 2024

This is quite magnificent. A blend of exhaustive research into an arcane subject and endlessly explorable infographic, it revolves around the modern singing trend for extreme ornamentation of a simple tune: namely, The Star-Spangled Banner.

Each of the 138 renditions examined is evaluated according to how closely it sticks to the original tune – for the unmusical, the visualisations make it all easy to follow (and sometimes excruciatingly entertaining).

The reference version is Whitney Houston’s 1991 rendition.

Some would say it’s been downhill from there.

Purists will gravitate towards Billy Joel’s almost fanatical adherence to the musical line. Fans of bizarre rococo excess will favour Chaka Khan’s superb-in-its-own-way shunning of it. Anthony Hamilton choosing to sing a completely different tune is also worth exploring.

For what it’s worth, the idea of singing anything in public, let alone something so emotionally charged in front of an audience of millions, is enough to bring me out in weird rashes, so regardless of the mild mockery inherent in this analysis, hats off all round.

Thing 2 – Paint

I really enjoyed this, by Ed Conway, about the importance of car coatings. As he says, ‘it will sound terrifically boring but … isn’t really just about paint’.

Material World

Watching Paint Dry

What follows is, on the surface at least, a story about paint, which will sound terrifically boring but, without wishing to give the game away, this isn’t really just about paint. In fact, it’s about everything. Look at the world from the vantage point of car paint and you begin to see various strands of the 20th century storyline unfurling: the early da…

2 years ago · 42 likes · 15 comments · Ed Conway

Thing 3 – Ancient earth

There’s a bit in one of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books where Arthur Dent, having spent a good chunk of time living in a cave on prehistoric Earth, decides to find out where that cave was and visit the same spot in the present day.

The fundamental interconnectedness of all things ensures that the door he knocks on turns out to be the door of the flat where the mysterious dark-haired girl he first encountered when she was asleep on the back seat of the car he got a lift in when he returned to the planet he thought had been destroyed by…

Perhaps I can spare you the full backstory.

The massive coincidence in question might also owe something to the fact that Douglas Adams was already well past the whooshing stage in the deadline cycle with this particular book, so a convenient dose of improbability was a handy way to allow for ridiculously implausible happenings so he could get the damn book written.

ANYWAY.

The point is that Ancient Earth is a map on which you can select any point on the planet and chart where it was at any point in history. I mean, it’s obviously in the same place but all the other places might not be, if you see what I mean.

Look, just click on the map and have a play.

This has all gone very well, I think.

Thing 4 – Eggs

Another beautifully presented infographic, this time exploring the wonderful world of birds’ eggs. Specifically, the variation in egg shapes across different species, and the possible reasons for it.

Related to this, may I recommend Tim Birkhead’s marvellous book about birds’ eggs, The Most Perfect Thing? I may? Thank you. In that case, I recommend it.