Thursday 5 November 2015

three-ring or alas and alack

Atlas Obscura has an interesting, involved biography of the complicated and convoluted live of Mad Monk Rasputin’s daughter, Maria.

The entire article is a rewarding read and not to reveal too many spoilers, after being transplanted from rural Siberia to Saint Petersburg for cultural refinement and fleeing the Revolution after her father’s mysterious assassination, Rasputina first found work in a cabaret act in Bucharest, all the while continuing a rapport with her murdered father through sรฉances—who apparently offered dubious romantic advice, carrying on with a confidence-trickster who impersonated an impoverished Romanov family member. In the mid 1930s, Rasputina immigrated to America and worked as a lion-tamer, until being mauled by a bear put an end to that career-path. Afterward, she worked as a riveter in a Los Angeles shipyard during World War II while publishing her life story until compelled to retire due to her age, though still hale and hearty. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Rasputina supplemented her pension by giving psychic-readings, complete with trance visitations of candid First Lady Betty Ford.

bellhop or to infinity and beyond

Gizmodo offers a challenging but rather intriguing primer on the nature of infinity—which is not a number itself or some threshold, unless posited as the point at which parallel lines verge together, and the idea that infinity is amenable to being doubled or tripled through a quantum mechanical demonstration that makes a classic thought experiment seem not so rarefied or cheeky.  In 1925, mathematician David Hilbert pondered the following brain-teaser: supposing there is a grand hotel with an infinite number of rooms which is always booked and has no vacancies, but a guest desperately begs in the lobby for a room for the night. The hotel staff can still oblige, despite the occupancy and the infinite inconvenience, since in a countable infinity, there is always a +1, by have the guest in room number one move into room number two, and so on. By a countable infinity, and there are several different types of infinities, Hilbert means an enumerated set, that one could walk the corridors counting off room after room—though one might never reach the end—and also room-service is not logically bamboozled as they know the new whereabouts of every visitor and N+1. Then suppose an infinitely large tour bus with an infinite number of guests pulls up in the parking lot. No problem still, says management, as everyone in an odd numbered could move to an even numbered one and the vacated rooms—bogglingly, free up accommodations for the infinite number of new arrivals. This shifting works, logically and in quantum states where vacancies are created, because the countable infinity—once taking on more guests, while still assigned to a numbered room, Hilbert’s Hotel becomes another sort of infinity—the kind that is innumerable, something that can’t be counted in a discrete way because there always room in between—like the number of points on a line—being infinite and a point being that which has no part, something dimensionless. Paradoxical things may appear only academic when first puzzled to their conclusions but it is pretty astounding and reassuring to find that there is potentially real application for these concepts.

Wednesday 4 November 2015

peacock throne

Dangerous Minds has a very nice tribute to the the flaired back wicker peacock chair—known as the Philippine or Manila but originating in China, that was reserved for the select and makes an appreciable seat of authority and smartly frames the subject. Popular from the mid-twentieth century onwards, the exotic chair was part of the furniture for the parlours and studios of American celebrities and public-figures—perpetuated by iconic photographs of the owners sitting—as if commissioning for a portrait. Though not a wicker peacock chair—relatives and neighbours had them, I do remember growing up with a papasan in the living room—which was just as brilliant, classic and more comfortable, I imagine.

5x5

steckdose: a comprehensive overview of the world’s plugs and electrical sockets with some interesting historical background

up-market: manufacturers respond to the middle-class dearth in buying by creating more luxury lines of their standard-issues

swedish fish: arcade veteran Activison scoops up Candy-Crush maker

the adventures of harry mudd: Star Trek spin-offs that were never produced, via Neatorama

sequential hermaphroditism: one of the oldest trees in Europe is in parts changing genders

Tuesday 3 November 2015

squadron 40 – diiiive!

Today is International Men’s Health Day, designated by the United Nations, as well as Culture Day in Japan and Election Day in the US. Moreover, Mental Floss has collection of a cavalcade commemorations that occur throughout the month. There’s Aura Awareness, since this time of year the Aurora Borealis sometimes dips low enough in the Northern Hemisphere for us to see in Germany (notwithstanding the foggy mornings), World Vegan Day, Guy Fawkes’ Night and Fibonacci Day. One celebration that was overlooked, however, is Prince Vultan of the Hawkmen Day. “What—Gordon’s alive?!” Remembering that old bird really binds together the string of holidays and all the themes (Movember, thanksgiving and gratitude, creative writing, revolution) of the month quite nicely.  Now, Flash Jump, everyone!

Monday 2 November 2015

marrakesh express

There is a strange and tense notice being placed on the official announcement that Afghanistan stands ready to accept back all those newly-arrived deported from Germany, helping to alleviate a system already overburdened by deferring to refugees from more eminently dangerous war-zones.
The press seems to be deriding the declaration as if it were mock- charitableness and a mock-decision, citing past examples of the Afghan government extorting monies from Britain and Scandinavian countries in the form of a fund for reintegration—otherwise refusing to allow back its citizens whose asylum claims were denied, as if they had been radicalised by their abroad. Afghanistan, however, has offered no resistance and only caution that migrants should not be compelled into a second exile and careful measures should be instituted to those ends—with the additional burden of proof of country of origin, who’s posing as a Syrian hoping to garner more favourable treatment—and the whole discussion significantly began over a week hence when the Chancellor made a side trip during her visit to China and both governments implored Afghans not to undertake the journey, as their manpower and political will were needed back at home in order for the country to thrive. Obviously draining the ablest (since it takes some motivation and means to coordinate passage) is ultimately a disservice to one’s homeland. What do you think? Does this accord signal a shift in Germany’s welcome-policy, a refinement of responsibility or both?

Sunday 1 November 2015

illudium q-36

While Germany’s Energie-Wende is set to wean the power-hungry nation off of traditional nuclear power (though the change initially demanded that Germany import nuclear-generated electricity from France, fire-up coal and coke plants that had laid dormant for dozens of years and the renewables conduit is making some conservationists angry over environmental and scenic impact), research into alternative forms of nuclear power production is not a completely taboo subject.
As Business Insider reports (with a lot of thorough and accessible background on the science), the University of Greifswald in partnership with the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics is about to bring on-line its experimental Wendelstein 7-X, a fusion reactor—also known as a stellarator, mimicking what happens inside a star, as opposed to fission reactors that harness the energy produced when large, unstable radioactive materials break apart. The one billion euro facility, just completed, is the largest of its kind and hopes to one day sustain a continuous and contained plasma-discharge that will usher in the next generation of large-scale, sustainable energy-production.

arcana and hour-glass

The esoteric roots of the Third Reich—which misappropriated and ruined a lot of heretofore widespread symbolism—was based in a selective but seemingly innocent cultural revival and revanche of Germanic interest after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire that began with the folk- and linguistic studies of the Brothers Grimm. Once a lexical tradition—though borrowed and forced to fit a unified agenda, a practise perpetuated to awful extremes in just a short amount of time, other aspiring mystics found niches that could be capitalised upon in similar ways.
As nationalist sentiments simmered, parlour-games like astrology and divination seemed to be too entrenched with foreign influence and a domestic, German versions of the signs of the zodiac and tarot-readings (and the I-Ching) was readily adopted. The individual responsible for this new set of symbols was an Austrian occultist named Guido von List, who became obsessed with the cult of Odin. Stricken with cataracts, von List identified himself more and more with the Norse god, who had traded one eye for wisdom and insight, when a surgery left him temporarily blind for a period of almost year. During this time, von List found the meaning of the runic alphabet revealed to him and subsequently published his pamphlet on the Armanen Runen, which while based on the established signs, widely distorted their accepted meanings. Most familiar and infamous, the swastika was an international symbol, maybe one of the Indo-European people’s most ancient and enduring symbols, that meant “gift” or good-luck, almost universally. The English term for Hakenkreuz (the hooked cross or the cross with serifs) retains the original Sanskrit meaning of good fortune, which almost makes it seem as if the symbol were defamed twice over.
The dual lightening-bolts that came to represent the Schutzstaffel (the SS) singularly represented the sun and not victory (Sieg), as von List attributed being unable to foresee the consequences. The interpretation gets even more far-fetched with the Hagal rune—แšผ being the sign for hail or a snowflake enlisted, strangely, as a mark of solidarity and faith. The rune for a yew-tree which originally connoted a measure of protection was somewhat sequitur associated with the pharmaceutical arts (as was displayed on the apothecary shingle for many years) but then แ›‰ (Algiz) was expanded as the Lebensrune to indicate life and parturition and its inverted form แ›ฆ was forwarded to mean death. The sign was the badge of those charged with administering the Lebensborn programme and became a common way on headstones to indicate date of birth and date of death, instead of the traditional * and ✝. The above snowflake rune, Hagal, was accorded with the high-status of signifying fidelity because it contained both life and death. Despite the dubious and engineered heritage, masses of people took this home-spun fortune-telling and the trappings of new iconography very seriously and as a source of national identity, and once a new regime adopted these badges of power, they already had an air of legitimacy.