mumblety-peg

Ginglymoid and ginglyform are infrequently invoked anatomical terms that derive from the Greek γίγγλυμος for a hinge. These skeletal structures refer and describe specifically to the type of joint that permits movement along one plane only—like the knees and elbow, differentiated from the ball-and-socket joints of the hips and shoulders, which were dubbed synovial by Paracelsus, most likely arbitrarily.

crypto-currency

Well before the stellar—and perhaps ultimately not unlike the ascent of Icarus—rise of one form of trusted electronic money that we are presently witnessing, there were quite a few antecedents including the primogenitor, DigiCash, invented by computer scientist and cryptographer David Chaum back in 1989.
Very much ahead of its time, Chaum’s idea evolved from a need he recognised in 1982 to protect the privacy of individuals conducting online transactions and devised a way to digitally commit to a deal by negotiating between public- and private-key security that was selective about the exposure of details and terms. The early form of electronic payments and exchange was wholly anonymous thanks to a system of protocols maintained across a network, much like its descendants. Though Deutsche Bank was one of the currency’s early-adopters, DigiCash went bankrupt in 1998 having come to the market prematurely, before the integration of the internet with electronic transactions which lagged behind. E-commerce is older of course than on-line shopping with clearing houses for bank transfers, automated teller machines and credit card infrastructure but it’s really amazing to think how different our relation to money and trade was back then and how little the underpinnings have changed.

four of pentacles

Well prior to digital image editing, art student Bea Nettles undertook in the early 1970s the project of creating the first complete tarot card deck in photographic form. The Mountain Dream Tarot was an inspired vision and the resulting suits, not just the trump cards of the major arcana—improvised, intuitive and idiosyncratic but following the standard, established iconography—evoke a haunting feeling in keeping with the esoteric nature of cartomancy and employ models, props and backdrops from Appalachia.
The fifty six cards of the minor arcana (whose production must have been painstaking and required dedication and planning) are the wands symbolising the peasant class and the faculties of creativity and willpower, the coins or pentacles representing the merchants and material possessions and physical health, the cups or chalices of the clergy for emotion and love and finally the swords of the nobility or the executive that represent reason.  Be sure to check out the link up top for more information and to see a whole gallery of the cards.

belenismo

We thought that this matchbox Nativity scene designed by Pepe Cruz Novillo in 1968 for the company “Fósforos del Pirineo” was a strikingly cute ensemble. Novillo designed logos and icons for the post office, railways, political parties and the police forces in his native Spain as well as designs for peseta notes and is worth the effort to seek out, recognising how Novillo’s ubiquity and style lent the country a sort of corporate brand. The safety match company is still in business and served as a canvas and experimental format for artists for decades.

watchmen on the walls of world freedom

With the passing last week of the anniversary of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy I was exposed to the undelivered speech he was headed to the Dallas Trade Mart to present. Referencing the Bible passage “for it was written long ago: ‘except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain,’” Kennedy declares the United States to be “the watchmen on the walls of world freedom” and was to address interventional and containment strategies. One paragraph in particular underscored the relation between rhetoric and action in geopolitics:

I realize that this Nation often tends to identify turning-points in world-affairs with the major addresses which precede them. But it was not the Monroe Doctrine that kept all Europe away from this hemisphere—it was the strength of the British fleet and the width of the Atlantic Ocean. It was not General Marshall’s speech at Harvard which kept Communism out of Western Europe—it was the strength and stability made possible by our military and economic assistance.

Had JFK been able to speak to his audience, one wonders what other memorable phrases his oration might convey. It’s difficult to imagine how far rhetoric has atrophied and one wonders if any crowd would be held respectfully rapt at attention. With so much emphasis on the faulty metrics of GDP—gross domestic product—and how much misplaced esteem that carries it the eyes of others, I came across another set of remarks and while presented to an audience gathered at the University of Kansas four years later—the words seemed yet rarefied and a stranger to the geopolitics of today. Our well-being and good will is still prone to be subsumed with the struggle. Campaigning Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy spoke with aspiration that the wealth and attention gap that threatens to pull the country asunder can be remedied and redressed. Here’s a short selection, with “our Gross National Product, now, over eight hundred billion dollars a year” being a refrain throughout the speech:

I think we here in this country, with the unselfish spirit that exists in the United States of American, I think we can do better here also.

I have seen the people of the black ghetto, listening to ever greater promises of equality and of justice, as they sit in the same decaying schools and huddled in the same filthy rooms—without heat—warding off the cold and warding off the rats. [The preamble of the presentation discussed the abject poverty he witnessed in rural Mississippi and on Native American reservations.]

If we believe that we, as Americans, are bound together by a common concern for each other, then an urgent national priority is upon us. We must begin to end the disgrace of this other America.

And this is one of the great tasks of leadership for us, as individuals and citizens this year. But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction—purpose and dignity—that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over eight hundred billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product–if we judge the United States of America by that—that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

equal opportunist

As part of National Native American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Dear Dotard invited honourees for a reception at the White House whose role as Navajo code-talkers helped relay planning and operations messages between theatres in a fashion impervious to enemy interception.
Despite the poor optics of holding the exchange squarely underneath a portrait of Andrew Jackson—a rather monstrous individual who as president signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830 and displaced millions on the Trail of Tears, the event seemed fairly well contained and not in danger of derailment—until Trump went off script, presumably recognising that the Navajo tribe were in fact not migrants. “You were here long before any of us were,” he said but unable to resist tossing out a racial slur directed at an opposing voice: “We have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas.” I would imagine that the collective response of the Native American community would be that difficult to decode.