писанка: a collection of traditional Ukrainian folk design on egg shells ahead of 8 April Orthodox Easter
walking simulator: virtual tourist have free range over the landscapes created for immersive gaming experiences—even the old, abandoned levels and worlds from long shelved titles
worldcon 76: finalists announced for the 2018 Hugo Awards for science-fiction and science-fantasy plus the 1943 Retrosepctive Hugo Awards, via Super Punch
rotten tomatoes: the US has decided it will no longer regulate genetically-edited crops if it can be show that the tweaks are just a short-cut to selective breeding programmes, via Slashdot
fermi’s paradox: an illustrated lesson in astrobiology from Maki Naro and Matthew Francis
tears of a clown: downfall of a once flush service-sector career field
a is for attenborough, b is for brexit: design agency counters with an alternative abecedarium of twenty-six coins to the Royal Mint’s rather pedestrian release of the A to Z of Britain
Monday 2 April 2018
7x7
Saturday 27 January 2018
embers
Centralia, Pennsylvania has been a subject of fascination for us for a while, depopulated to all but six of its residence due to a coal seam fire that has been smouldering underground since 1962 and there’s little indication that the conflagration will burn itself out soon.
Until receiving this update on one local institution that’s still thriving and creating community despite the want of one, however via Things Magazine, we would have assumed that there was nothing holding the town’s diaspora together. Even after the relocation of members of the congregation to other parts of the state, people kept returning to the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church for mass and other celebrations, despite the governor claiming imminent domain and the prerogative to evict remaining people. A visit by the major archbishop of the eparchy in 2015 even got the church and ghost town designated as a place of pilgrimage, with officially sanctioned tours scheduled.
Monday 28 August 2017
love chechen-style or broken-window, broken-home
Rewarded with unfettered license to play-house with his country in exchange for loyalty towards Moscow, after months of brutal treatment of gay men Ramzan Kadyrov, we learn via Super Punch, is back with more social-engineering initiatives with televised reunions of divorced couples. As ludicrous and as much like the premise of a reality TV programme as the Council for Harmonising Marriage and Family Relations, which brings together former estranged partners under the auspices of it being better for the children and children raised by single-parents are more likely to turn to terrorism (apparently), may seem, it’s deadly serious like broken-window policing policies and ex-husbands and –wives have no say in their forced co-habitation, which is strictly monitored by prying-eyes, and refusal to participate could carry consequences that would potentially rival the most abusive husbands.
Thursday 2 July 2015
tantric
Thursday 5 March 2015
nave and apse
Saturday 31 January 2015
ra-ra-rasputin, russia’s greatest love-machine
I am not sure what impression that I had formed of Grigori Rasputin beforehand other than him being some creature of the court of the Romanov’s—maybe a charlatan, and spiritual-healer and advisor to (and perhaps lover of) the Russian queen. Aside from the biography presented in the lyrics of the Boney-M song, I only based my knowledge of the so-called Mad Monk from the passages in The Tin Drum where the little hero’s mother is similarly enchanted by Rasputin’s story and led down the road to ruin.
It really struck me, however—given that the belligerents of the Great War were almost all a part of one big family feud—oh bother, there’s Cousin Willy sounding off again, no member of the royal houses were heard to say a word to stop the fighting, save for Rasputin, who foretold the end of the Empire—though perhaps already obvious to the neutral observer. I had also assumed that Rasputin was executed by the Bolshevik revolutionaries along with the rest of the Romanov family, but—and again, the true reckoning is obscured—His Majesty’s Secret Service, it seems, either pulled the trigger or at least provided the weapon in the assassination of Rasputin in the thick of the war in 1916. Rasputin’s warnings to the Romanov’s maybe were dissuading the Russians from entering the war, and with the tide shifting in favour of Imperial Germany in that year, the British knew that they could not hope to contain them if they were only challenged on their western front.
catagories: ☦️, 🇩🇪, 🇬🇧, 🇷🇺, 🌍, 🎶, 📚, 🧠, foreign policy, myth and monsters, religion, revolution
Thursday 8 January 2015
iconodule
Celebrated on the first Sunday of the Great Lent (1 March, this year), the Feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy celebrates the restoration of icons, holy images, to the Church, and the victory of the iconodules—those who venerate images, the iconophiles over the iconoclasts who considered the practise idolatry.
catagories: ☦️, 🇬🇷, 🇷🇺, 🇹🇷, 📐, philosophy, revolution
Sunday 4 January 2015
epiphany, theophany
Among other solemnities, which include priests making the rounds to homes of parishioners, the Orthodox priest will also bless a special batch of holy water that’s known as the Waters of Theophany and shared from the fount by the faithful. A greater ablution will take place afterwards, with a procession proceeding to the nearest natural reservoir, a lake, a harbour, and a cross will be cast into the water. In Greece particularly, this is done to calm the waters and make it safe for sea-travel after the stormy winter months and disperse the gremlins called καλικάντζαροι that bedevil ships. Parishioners will dive in to retrieve the cross and return it to the priest for a special blessing.
Saturday 21 December 2013
ped x-ing or hand-jive
The X in X-mas comes from an initialism of the Greek name for Christ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ, a shorthand employed by Biblical scholars and others to abbreviate things to do with
Jesus or the Cross (writ both large and small—Celtic monks in Germany
monasteries incidentally invented a lower-case script with punctuation
for the Greeks to make reading easier) and these signs and signals are
reflected in the iconography of Jesus and the saints in hand-gestures that amount to a sort of finger-spelling. These poses, each understood to audiences in a specific way, were in turn a traditional and long-established system of rhetorical gestures used by speech-makers in Antiquity to cue their listeners to something important or to mark a transition.
Monday 1 April 2013
iconostasis
The inside of the church, which is duplicated on an upper and lower storey, symbolic of Heaven and Hell, has an impressive array of icons covering the back wall (an iconostasis) and donated fixtures, including one faithful reproduction of the Hodegetria (the iconic canting of “she [the Virgin Mary] showing the way”) of the Mother of God of Smolensk, that tradition holds was painted by Saint Luke and made its way from Constantinople to Russia via a very circuitous route.
According to different sources, the revered icon was destroyed either during the Russian Revolution that followed just a few years later or during the German occupation in 1941. The relic, however, could have been hidden for safe-keeping as its own copy, like some of the other treasures originally plundered from Byzantium.
Saturday 1 December 2012
good saint nick
There are quite a few superstar saints but I think it is a challenge to find one with a more universal following and elaborate traditions than Saint Nicholas. Santa Claus or Father Christmas is a distinct and perhaps a bit of a derivative character, and while not just some corporate stooge, brainchild of Charles Dickens and Coca-Cola, nor ambassador of globalism as he’s sometimes unfairly made out to be, should not be confused or unused interchangeably with the original. The rituals that commemorate his approaching feast day (6. December) have intricate and escapingly elaborate basis in episodes of the saint’s life and enduring influence, and though abstractions and in some cases misunderstandings, I think that this level of detail and heritage keep the holiday and what goes with it inviolate and not usurped by commercial interests or whittled away. The weirdness and confusion of the holidays keep them intact and alive. Nicholas, whose name means “victory of the people,” was a bishop in Myra, Lycia (now Derme, Turkey) and was known for his great charity and playing secret-Santa for the needy, especially for finding creative ways to help those too proud to take hand-outs.
Wednesday 20 April 2011
a moveable feast
catagories: ☦️, ✝️, ✡️, 🔭, holidays and observances
Tuesday 14 September 2010
grecian formula
catagories: ☦️, 🇬🇷, economic policy