the shadow kingdom

A not-insignificant minority of Americans (and certainly some abroad as well) subscribe to the conspiracy theory that the ruling political elite and our social betters of human civilisation are undercover reptoid aliens from the Constellation Draco.
Though the basic idea of snake cults has been attendant to human narratives since we began telling stories, its present polity was to a large part informed by the short stories of Robert E Howard and his protagonist Kull the Conquerer, the Atlantean (see also)—whom was a touch more introspective than Howard’s later character Conan the Barbarian, whose diplomatic mission to the Land of the Picts, the traditional enemy of Atlantis though there was then presently a thaw in relations, led to humanity’s premature encounter with the Serpent Men, a much diminished but ancient and still powerful race. Though not further developed in Howard’s own canon of works, the race appears in the Cthulu mythos (see previously here and here) before being touted as clear and present danger with wild and loaded accusations that leaders and celebrities were lizard people plotting for total subjection of their human chattel.

eurorando

Founded on this day in 1969 in a lodge on a popular hiking trail through the Swabian Jura (Schwäbische Alb), the Europäishce Wandervereinigung, the European Ramblers’ Association, la Fédération européenne de la randonnée pédestre was formed by founding members representing walkers’ clubs from West Germany, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg and Belgian.  Now headquartered in Kassel and with offices in Prague, more than fifty-eight area- and regional-organisations from thirty European states sponsor regular outings and maintain, marking and signposting a vast network of long distance hiking trails (some seventy thousand kilometres worth across an active membership of some three million individuals, see previously). The so called E-Paths are not for virtual exploration, but rather are trails that cross a minimum of three countries.

lion’s tooth

To discourage the agricultural practises that hold our environment in disdain the most—production of those staples for consumption in the West whose distribution network is so well established and seemingly seamless, that we as consumers can easily be blind to the human and ecological toll it exacts, a UK designer is developing a coffee substitute brewed from the roots of dandelions (previously here and here).
I’m a little skeptical and prepared for disappointment, inulin, the researcher’s target compound for extraction, we’re already familiar with in the form of chicory and camp coffee but the chemistry bears out and the roots do contain what’s metabolised as caffeine (my target compound) as well and would be willing to give it a try. It makes me wonder too how estranged in the first place might my beverage and its taste and aroma be already, encapsulated and shuttled through an inscrutable supply-chain estranged from the bean I associate with. The designer has additional, circular aspirations for composting the spent grains into a medium for home mushroom cultivation.

check digit

Whereas the title refers to a form of error detection, quality control through redundancy—the integrity of a numbering convention validated by a formulaic self-consistency, we were pleased to be elucidated in the origin of typeface E-13B, whose repertoire of characters, developed by Stanford Laboratories and General Electric in the late 1950s as a way to automate cheque-clearing, was the expression of a system developed for magnetic ink character recognition (MICR, a precursor to optical character recognition though in theory predating this earlier iteration that the technology was already acclimatized for).
E being the fifth font considered, B for the Beta-version, thirteen represented the size of the grid (see also, CMC-7 is the name for the parallel system utilised in parts of Europe and South America) for numerals and control characters: ⑆ transit, ⑈ on-us, ⑇ amount and ⑉ as a dash to break up long strings of numbers for human legibility. By measuring the resistance or conductivity at predetermined positions across the footer of the cheque, accuracy improved over other scanning techniques and human transcription. Little human intervention is needed, accounting for a fraction of a percent given the volume, though redundancies are still built in that requires a double-check and self-assessment.

e*vangelism

The Holy See, as Dezeen informs, is distributing a smart psalter as a wearable accessory that tracks the user’s worship and allow one to monitor the progress of each prayer—the act of reciting it, we presume rather than the missive’s to God’s ears, and synchronises with other mobile gadgets to post one’s devotion to social media.

The haptic interface is activated by making the sign of the cross or genuflexing and the price of the string of beads is the suggested donation of ninety-nine euro. What do you think about this? Uggh—I always felt that the nicest thing about praying was that one’s intercession wasn’t for public inspection, though the Pope has a very healthy and enthusiastic attitude towards technology and the internet so what do I know?  As a bonus feature, the eRosary which charges contactlessly and comes neatly packaged in a Bible, also tracks the wearer’s physical activity and counts one’s steps.

anapestic meter

Scholar Emily Nekyia Wilson’s modern translation The Odyssey has not only introduced the Homeric epics to a wider-audience, she is now, as Kottke informs, rather delightfully engaging readers to recount characters and episodes in limerick form in a lively and long thread.
One passage nicely summarises the short, tragic story of Odysseus’ youngest comrade, who managed to survive the Trojan War and accompanied the crew on the journey home to Ithaca as far as Aeaea, the Island of Circe (see previously), only to get quite intoxicated and fancied it a good idea to sleep it off on the palace’s roof.

Elpenor, poor idiot, got drunk,
and was sleeping up high in a bunk;
he fell out of bed,
went smack on his head,
and his hopes to get home went kerplunk.

Much more to explore at the links above.

a particularly american epidemic

From Nag on the Lake, in this short, filmmaker Patrick Smith assiduously cycles (see also) through two-thousand three hundred twenty-eight exemplars of firearms as representatives of the some three-hundred ninety-three million presently in the United States of America, equaling a gun and a bit more per everyone living in that country, including children and nearly half of the guns owned by civilians in the world.