the drum major instinct

Via Kottke, we find that a thoughtful individual who knew that Dr Rev Martin Luther King JR was highly critical of capitalism and the urges that it brings out in people countered the rather tone-deaf word from the sponsors of the national sportsball by overlaying the rest of King’s sermon (delivered sixty years to the day prior at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia) taken out of context over their own commercial.

It often causes us to live above our means. It’s nothing but the drum major instinct. Do you ever see people buy cars that they can’t even begin to buy in terms of their income? You’ve seen people riding around in Cadillacs and Chryslers who don’t earn enough to have a good T-Model Ford. But it feeds a repressed ego.

See both versions of the advertisement and listen to the whole sermon at the link up top.

our daughters’ daughters will adore us

Today marks the centenary of some women in the United Kingdom securing the right to vote in the United Kingdom. As with most European nations, suffrage came as World War I was reaching its conclusion and during the inter war years that followed and marked a significant turning point but not the culmination of a decades’ long struggle for equal voice and representation.
After having expanded the vote to all males without qualification due to manpower shortages during the war-effort—occupational credentials having hitherto been a voting requirement for the unlanded, parliamentarians realised that they could not maintain the fiction that women, who were also stepping up to fulfil vital positions in industry and research, were incapable of political engagement. Negotiations ensued and the Representation of the People Act 1918 was passed that provided women who were married to householders or were heads-of-household in their own right, occupiers of property with an annual rent of at least five pounds sterling, graduates of a British university and over the age of thirty (for men, it was twenty-one) could vote. Momentum continued (though not without backbiting and periods of regression) and in November of the same year, an act was passed allowing women, twenty-one years and older, to stand for parliamentary elections and be elevated from within to ministerial positions. A decade later, the Equal Franchise Act made all terms and conditions the same.

äquidistanzprinzip

The Local (Germany’s English language daily) alerts us to the fact that this moment, Monday 5 February 2018, marks the last time in history that the period of time Inner German border (deutsch-deutsche Grenze) stood was greater than the amount of time that Germany has been reunited. The BDR and the DDR were separate political entities for a longer period of time but there was no physical barrier until 13 August 1961. Visit the link up top for a selection of pivotal moments in the twenty eight years, two months and twenty-six days of the Wall’s existence.

mensis intercalaris

Previously we’ve discussed how the sixty days or so that mark the dreariest winter season went by without record until King Numa Pompilius (in the days pre-Republic) instituted calendar-reform measures to augment the fair-weather ten month calendar that the Romans had been using since the city’s founding, recognising that dates were being constantly recalculated as the seasons drifted into one another and that the civic uses of a calendar expanded beyond its agricultural roots, but we didn’t know the whole story nor of their superstitious aversion to round numbers.
Ianuarius and Februarius (from the word februum, a device for ritual purifications and figuratively marked the time when fallow fields were tended to and when olive trees could be pruned) were added as the last months of the year, and to coincide as closely as possible to the passing of the lunar year, they assigned each month either twenty nine or thirty-one days on an alternating basis. To mathematically align with the 355 days of the lunar year and the twelve observed cycles of the Moon, however, one month would have to have an even number of days, so February became the odd one out. The insertion of intercalary time was still necessary to manage the procession of the seasons but instead of a leap-day like we award February with on a regular basis, the Romans adopted an entire leap-month called Mercedinus—“work month”—which should have been used judiciously every other year to keep everything in sync. All time-keeping decisions, however, were invested in the pontifex maximus, and as an active politician usually held this esteemed position it was not unheard of exercising this prerogative as a punitive or prolonging measure to increase or curtail the administration of consul members, at the expense of accuracy in tracking time. When Julius Caesar took power in 46 BC, he decreed that Rome stop this caprice and adopt a solar calendar that is more familiar to the modern civil calendar, based on Western traditions. 

feline fugue

Reflecting on the universal appeal of music, researchers at the University of Wisconsin wondered back in 2015 if a sliding set of parameters could be introduced to resonate with non-human animals for real human compositions. Adjusting tone, pitch and tempo, an audience of cats became visibly involved, as compared to works arranged for human ears, which elicited little to no notice. How do your companions, of any variety, react to this recording?  Learn more about the experiment and research at the link above.

xxoo

In an era—perhaps just a bit more enlightened –when we are at one and the same time keenly aware of the routes and vectors of disease transmission and are beginning to understand the complexity of the micro-biomes that inhabit us and promote health and inhibit infection, it’s strange to consider the US National Pharmaceutical Society’s endorsement for this germ-chastity screen for a couple to kiss through—it also reminds me of a modern counterpart in this kiss by wire.
Much illness came about due to over-sanitary conditions and we are stronger for exposure and we benefit by cross-contamination and swapping the survivor-stories among one’s beneficial bacteria. One can even arrange a transplant procedure from a donor to rehabilitate the health of one’s gut floral that’s been compromised by diet, disease or over-medication. And like yesterday’s over-emphasis on sterility, we’re facing a similarly (probably much more dire) threat with the abuse of antibiotics which has severely dulled their efficacy, and seemingly the only thing that might rescue us until we can develop new weapons against pathogens that we’ll use responsibly (and we were warned) is our shared herd-immunity, perhaps with some unfiltered kisses.