Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Icarus flew too near the sun
Into the blue his red wax did run

Franz Radziwill was not clear on some details of the Icarus mythogem.



He was not alone in this. Some Farangist duckspeaker at the Torygraph had a brainfart, and contributed to the gaiety of nations by retelling the story with a revisionist account of Icarus' construction materials:
"hand-made wings fashioned from wood, feathers and wax."
Also this revisionist version is Hubris-free; not a single Hubri is mentioned.

Now the rules of the Riddled Icarus Reenactment Club are quite clear: all entrants in the Closeness-to-the-Sun Trophy must construct their wings using only feathers and wax, as originally laid down by Ovid and Pseudo-Apollodorus. Otherwise it'll be open slather and hi-tech, all carbon fibre and monolayer boron-nitride, and the focus of the event would shift from human performance to technological innovation. Any wood means instant disqualification, as Swearing Bob discovered in last year's regatta. Space-Time Eddie was equally confused, but he confined himself to feathers and wax so he was not technically disqualified, although the Trojan horse he constructed out of them did not get very far off the ground.


Here's Breugel (Radziwill's inspiration) keeping it real.

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