point nemo

Mental Floss features an interesting article on a collection of the most remote human settlements. I always enjoy perusing such profiles of remote and lonely places and despite the forlorn familiarity, it’s always fun to learn more.
The list’s ostensibly top of the pole of inaccessibility is Tristan da Cunha—which is far closer to South Africa than the Island of Saint Helena, where Napoleon spent his exile, that it’s administratively coupled with—the British having bought the archipelago from Dutch Cape, first evicting a trio of American squatters who claimed the Refreshment Islands as their own, of Good Hope so the French might not use it as a staging platform for a rescue operation. Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, the main village, was evacuated in the early 1960s when a volcanic eruption threatened to engulf the whole island, and when residents returned to find a city-limits sign installed on a path leading into town, I recall reading once, there was a minor clamour over this bureaucratic insistence, as no one happen there without great determination.

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over-extended: the Swiss will vote to effectively ban banks from creating money by lending more than they have in reserve

noch einen koffer: chilling contingency plans to destroy East Berlin in the event the Cold War turned hot

superlatives: the top fifteen Colossal vignettes of the year

360°: Slate has a whole uplifting calendar of daily goodness for the past year

port-of-call: these giant, wanton cruise ships look like Star Destroyers trawling the canals of Venice

hey mister tally man

Via the inestimable The Browser comes a really fascinating piece on the supply chain logistics of the banana trade and the demands it manufactured to satisfy. Like the Egg Council, Juan Valdez and the California Raisins, who really can be bullies and not just advocates for farmers, Big Fruit created various banana republics in the process of perfecting its delivery techniques, inciting coups throughout Central America and even precipitating the Cuban Missile Crisis and enduring tensions, all in the name of ripeness and minimal flecking.

The other aspect to this drama lies in the monoculture of the produce—at least as it’s presented to shoppers in the West. Whereas we might have an embarrassment of choice when it comes to apples and oranges, exotic bananas are all clones of one cultivar—threatened with extinction with the irreversible march of one fungal disease. The way bananas are marketed and grown make them especially susceptible to being wiped out by pandemics, and interestingly the type of banana consumed just one human generations had vastly different characteristics—fruitier and creamier and with a much slicker peel, and hence all those jokes about slipping on a discarded skin that seems physically impossible in the supermarkets of today.

loose change or standard operating procedure

Surely one of the great tragic coincidences of recent times and a great bounty for conspiracy theorists was that the fledging European Union in late summer of 2001 was poised to assert its supranational judicial rights and challenge the US on certain relics of legislation that gave America relatively unfettered access to European and global channels of communication.
The terror attacks of 9/11 took place and the EU dropped its suit against Project ECHELON, an intelligence scheme, programme stood up by the Five Eyes of the Anglo-Saxon partnership to spy on the Soviets in the late 1960s, once—a week after filing, the whole matter was overshadowed and charges rather reversed. Back in 1998 and the following year, Swiss and then New Zealand (a reluctant junior member of the Five Eyes community herself, though many others I suspect are envious of that cadet role) counter-intelligence suspected that their faxes were being compromised and a series of headlines and nascent exposés (titled among others, “Big Brother without a Cause”) hinted at the existence of this programme and that its mission had expanded far beyond its original reach, snooping on bank activity, internet traffic, satellite telemetry and business communiques. Though progenitor of other initiatives and a mark of enduring awareness of the surveillance state and dragnet and data-warehousing techniques, the existence of ECHELON was not confirmed until August of this year—owing to the disclosures of the Fugitive Snowden.

the international society for the suppression of savage customs

Whereas previously European powers had been content to take out rat-nibbles of Africa on its coastal edges, towards the end of the nineteenth century, a constellation of circumstance coalesced and set off the so-called scramble for the Dark Continent. A collusion of the Ottoman Empire gradually ossifying, the Industrial Revolution and the voracious appetite to exploit new resources, and the Civil War in the United States that disrupted the cotton market for English importers (and the later effort to establish alternate supply-lines in the colonies that caused the oversaturated exchange to collapse) and empire-envy by the latecomers—Germany and Belgium, poor-relations—caused Portugal, fearing more intrusion on their age old bailiwick on all territory since the expeditions of Columbus to the east of Cape Verde Islands (that is—the entire “unclaimed” hemisphere outside of Europe to India and the Far East, while Castilian Spain could claim the Americas), to convene a summit.
Hosted by an ambitious Berlin and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, this meeting would codify how Africa would be governed and the spoils partitioned. In his Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad referred to the Berlin Conference (oder die Kongokonferenz) facetiously by the above title and it really became a brutal seizure very quickly. With all of the vast continent already claimed—with the only the outpost of Liberia and the unconquerable Ethiopia (Abyssinia) remaining independent, Belgium and Germany had to settle unknown central Africa and relatively undesirable and out of the way lands. The formal suppression of Africa proved not only an alternate vent for Europeans to carry out latent hostilities, fighting by-proxy, but became a foil as well to counter-balance the advancing clout of the US and the Soviet Union after the Great War, and the process of decolonisation did not begin for most lands for at least six decades and more after the Berlin Conference—if ever.  Moreover, dividing up lands without respect to other affiliation and along arbitrary boundaries has led to no end of ongoing strife and suffering.

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we’re walking in the air: a fine retrospective on David Bowie’s magical Christmas classic

random-access memory: a lesson in boosting one’s rote and recall from a eidetic, Major System grand champion

resolutions: adorable and mesmerizing animated work-out GIF

monkeyshines: an update on that dapper primate that ran amok in an IKEA three years back

darth trump: seamless mash-up of megalomania

leader board or it’s the plumber, i’ve come to fix your sink

Although pandering and sycophancy takes place during every political campaign (remember Joe the Plumber) and democracy and civics is not so broken and beaten down that such demagoguery will carry the day, I do really fear for what choices America might commit itself to. Albeit one is generous to call the political views of this serial-candidate—having threatened to contend in every presidential election since 1988—a platform, there are some serious concession to people’s basest insecurities that’s sure to resonate, despite how fraught with disastrous and back-handed consequence those plans are.

viennese sandbox: schönbrunn palace

As if the Hofburg was not palatial and accommodating enough, the imperial dynasty of the Hapsburgs also had a summer residence, just on the outskirts—seemingly at least, buffered by the huge, ancient gardens and grounds that include a menagerie of statuary and fountains, a hedge labyrinth and some architectural follies like artificial Roman ruins—and overlooking the city.
This baroque household boasts over fourteen hundred rooms and is crowned from a considerable distance by a structure known as the Gloriette a top a high hill.
The slope where the pavilion (the term means little room in Old French) stands offers an amazing, encompassing view of Vienna below was originally planned as the site of the palace, and was erected as a monument to serve as a focal point, a setting for dining al fresco, and as a dedication to a Just War (jus bellum iustum)—the worthy conflict goes unnamed (possible to honour all righteous indignation) but probably referred to Empress Maria Theresa’s own handiwork that allowed her to retain her power:
the War of the Austrian Succession, a global conflict that broke out on unexpected fronts, precipitating the French and Indian Wars in North America, Prussia and English-Bavaria, Russia and proxy-wars in the Far East.
A top the Neptune Fountain, the Gloriette was constructed from left over materials that went into building the artificial ruin and originally cannibalised from the defensive compound, Schloss Neugebäude, by then already suffering from neglect and disrepair and modelled after and constructed on the site where the Ottoman armies of Suleiman the Magnificent encamped during the first Siege of Vienna.

sens critique

Though going forward won’t bring anyone back and I am probably betrayed some dreamy optimism when I hope that policy will change for the better, but to learn nothing just is further insult to the countless that have perished and suffered in the power-vacuum, voided by Western adventures, that the cosplay Caliphate has come to occupy. Refugees cannot be be conflated with a group of loutish terrorists that ascribe to noting loftier than the charisma of some bully with a vague vision, since the refugees are for the most part fleeing the same violence that visits Beirut and Aleppo on a daily basis. Some might argue that strict border controls will cause more suffering for those in transit and makes little sense as those radicalised individuals could already be present since months at their target location (plus there are always ways of inserting oneself into the massive throng of humanity on the march, such hostile and unneighbourly acts would topple the core values of the European Union, etc. etc.), however adopting a different approach may be necessary. Perhaps all borders should be closed and in order to help the most vulnerable and those with no means of securing escape (a smuggler, a bus ticket, a place on a rickety boat), refugee commissions should travel to Syrian camps for displaced persons and satisfy their quota by referring however many, once properly assessed and vetted. No one would be compelled to make the treacherous journey, no middle-men could skim profit, no terrorists could peddle their ideology and fewer opportunistic, economic migrants would join the ranks of those legitimately and immediately threatened. There are enough inchoate threats as it is, and perhaps if not dealing with an uncontrolled stream of refugees coming into the country, authorities could have been allocated resources to monitoring domestic threats that were already present and in the works. The nihilistic following does not hate the freedoms that their host countries enjoy—as difference and descent would in no way be tolerated by their home-nation regimes—and the attitude characterised by liberty seems sometimes just that. In as much as we Westerners might criticise African and Middle Eastern people for not doing more to save their homelands from tyranny, corruption and oppression, we are not terribly heroic when it comes to defending those cherished freedoms (until a common threat comes along) either. There’s precious little protest offered up against poverty and self-interested policy decisions (which helped to create this dread tension in the first place, as above) and corporate ploys that degrade and estrange the democratic process. Aujourd’hui nous sommes toutes les parisiens.

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?

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pachyderm: Icelandic cliff-face looks like an elephant

hello – you have found my shop of rare and wonderful things: Super Mario style map of Twin Peaks

glyph-list: latest issue of emojis to supplement your vocabulary, via Kottke’s quicklinks 

det var helt texas: in Norwegian vernacular, the state’s name signifies being unbalanced

hot or not: Canadian prime-ministers ranked

hinweisgeber

Just following a significant operational disclosure revealing the structure and extent of the US admin- istration’s military drone program, Transparency International Germany awards its Whistleblower prize to a former drone jockey stationed at the secretive base in Ramstein for exposing how deeply the installation is mired in the controversial drone war. Germany has been given to question whether hosting the such operations is not a violation of its own laws and principles, despite a regular litany of denial on both sides that’s by now twice-spent any credence. A French chemist is also being honoured in the ceremony in Kaiserslautern for demonstrating the grave toxicity of a popular herbicide.

chancel, chancellery

The predominant theme of German news and discussion panels has been refugees and immigration for weeks now and is demanding an increased sense of urgency due to its unrelenting stream of asylum-seekers and families fleeing war and institutional poverty and the change in weather that assuredly guaranteeing no happy-campers, sheltered in to a large part in tent-cities or cavernous warehouses. The rational that buoys compassion is that Germany’s ageing population needs an injection of young, able-bodied adults to supplement their workforce (and retirement scheme) in order to maintain the competitive economic edge that they’ve enjoyed for the past couple of generations.
Germany’s young breeders apparently are not working hard enough to replenish the labour-pool. Employment-models suggest that the influx of refugees (many of who purportedly will not stay in Germany but be resettled elsewhere in Europe) has not yet reached that threshold of sustainment and whatever money and resources spent are a good investment, but I wonder if that welcoming reception might change once the requirement is met—or when the demographers realise that their constructions and projections are not valid gauges of future job-markets, what with robots threatening to take-over vast parts of certain jobs-sectors. Aside from worries over the effect on housing-market (and the question of adequate, affordable accommodations), there are significant challenges ahead with integration and assimilation that are only just now being broached—although wholly unaddressed by one particular group, those migrants—not necessarily from those same regions but grouped together as such I’m sure. I wonder what this silence means—whether or not the more established immigrant population is reaching out to newcomers and being forthcoming with assistance and sponsorship, or whether there’s a widen rift, agonising whether these late arrivals might upset whatever social-acceptance that they’ve gained, feeling their benefits under-threat. Maybe that’s an aspect just not being reported but I don’t know. This image, first discovered by the fabulous Nag on the Lake some time ago, is a public-service announcement from the Scarfolk Council, which is unfortunately caught in a Doctor Who-style time-loop and forever condemned to relive the decade of the 1970s and importantly makes us confront our own selective humanity.

boom! bonk, bonk on the head

Vis-à-vis the mounting refugee situation as hundreds of thousands families and individuals fleeing war-torn Syria and other regions transit through Asia Minor and the Balkans or risk a harrowing trip across the Mediterranean—trafficked or through their own determination—for Germany and to eventually be resettled, the ever brilliant BLDGBLOG presents a sort of alternate and modern historical study with the manner in which the US dealt with its own possibly bidden (Germany’s is considered inviting too) crisis for the care and housing of migrants, especially of unaccompanied minors that surged on the Mexican border from points further South, quickly overwhelmed accommodating institutions.
Cynical as it sounds, finding storage solutions for surplus is pretty dehumanizing and the notion of a generation brought up by ghost-malls and derelict warehouses makes me think of that Star Trek episode where the “onlies,” the children are the only one left in a dilapidated, crumbing world—without the “grups” to take care of them. While searching for a pharmaceutical answer to immortal youth, a plague was inadvertently unleashed that attacked any grown-up, past puberty, and caused them to succumb to the disease within seven days. As childhood spans several centuries, with the pre-teens protecting the younger ones and the whole planet having fallen to wrack and ruin, until Doctor McCoy isolates a cure and Starfleet dispatches teachers and counselors to the planet to help rebuild it. Temporary shelters—hopefully without the potential of becoming a more permanent limbo—are not much better in Germany with up to ten thousand refugees daily entering Germany and corralled in empty sports halls and other locations, quickly over-crowded and with inadequate facilities. No amount of shuffling and hide-and-seek will address the underlying geo-political causes but may result in more dignified housing for both new-comers and established residents, already struggling with exorbitant rents and gentrification.

attica or cultural studies

Though best remembered international for stellar performances of roles that were not able to contain her energy and talent, stock-characters in good but less acclaimed films like the happy hooker in Never on a Sunday, the good-time girl-type, naughty nun, or gal Friday in Topkapı, Greek singer and actress of the stage and screen, Melina Mercouri, had another equally impassioned calling as a politician. Finding herself exiled, stateless—her passport having been revoked for outspoken socialist sentiments against the junta government of a cadre of conservative colonels who overthrew the liberal government in 1967, while away on performing on Broadway, Mercouri—along with other prominent members of the Greek diaspora focused attention and shame on the military coup d’état.
Despite tepid support in Greece and an overall laughable platform that no one took seriously, the junta lingered on and on for seven unbearable years—not ousted until their adventures with a one-Greece-policy by invading the Cyprus that was so poorly executed and resulted in the partition of the island nation rather than its annexation. Once Mercouri could return to Athens, this “last Greek goddess,” as she was nicknamed, decided to focus her energies on rebuilding her homeland—which had suffered considerably in the intervening years with dismantling of cultural capital and censorship. When questioned on her credentials for entering politics as an actress, Mercouri retorted by questioning what qualified lawyers to represent the people. Mercouri went on to become the Minister of Culture, and lamenting that it was always just the chiefs of finance that met and that money was not certainly everything—a pretty bold truth to speak, especially in the present atmosphere where Greek financial ministers are characters people might actually recognise by name—and called together, for the first time, all the European ministers of culture and the arts. The legacy of this summit survives today in the rotating European Cultural Capital and the open dialogue it invites with a less rarefied form of diplomacy that everyone can appreciate. Mercouri was also the first voice in a growing choir of protests and calls of vandalism to have the so-called Elgin marbles returned to the Acropolis and for the protection, stopping trafficking and the repatriation of other national treasures.

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undersea kingdom: discovering a little known, imaginative Disney theme park in Tokyo

gazetteer: beautifully crafted maps for abstractions

the peasant-look: ethnography of Ellis Island immigration told through striking portraiture

votive-offering: celebrity prayer-candles

hen house: deluxe daycare facilities for pampered pet chickens

day-trip: bonn

As H was away this weekend for a conference in Berlin, I thought it would be fitting for me to take a trip to the other Federal City (Bundesstadt), Bonn, former capital of West Germany, to scout out the area. Before coming to Bonn, on the Rhine’s southern reaches of megalopolis of the industrialised Ruhrgebiet and surrounded by the Siebengebirge—the seven verdant peaks with picturesque valleys, I stopped in the vineyard village of Königswinter and climbed the first ascent of the Drachenfels, the dragon cliffs.

There was a funicular train or donkeys for hire for journey but I passed those to try the steep hike myself. It was very beautiful with the Post Tower of Bonn’s skyline already visible and a host of castles and fortifications hewn out of the mountain-face but on this day, I only wanted to make it to the first station and hold off on exploring the whole trail until we could see it to together. Having learned about this strange attraction quite by accident and then having planned this little trip, I could not skip a visit to the bizarre, Art Nouveau temple to composer and myth-maker Richard Wagner, the Nibelungenhalle, dedicated in 1913 by a devoted fan-club on what would have been Wagner’s hundredth birthday. The interior included a lot of documentation apologising for the “Swastika” motif—explaining it was ancient Germanic rune and had a series of murals of the saga of the Ring Cycle.

The woman at the counter turned on the music after I had come in—being the first visitor, I suppose, and there were a lot of random, non-contiguous artefacts present that made me think of the curating work in the museum of the Colossus of Prora which was a lot of fun to try to unravel but I suppose sadly it’s not there any longer since there converting the Nazi resort to luxury apartments. After viewing this altar, one was to walk down through an artificial grotto (which was a little a frightening because it was not illuminated although one could see the way out ahead, one had to trust that the path was manmade and free of obstacles) that led to a small garden and then quite inexplicable to a good old-fashioned roadside reptile farm, with lots of anacondas and pythons curled up and rest and a couple of lively crocodiles.

I walked back down to the Drachenfels base camp and proceeded on to the main attraction, Bonn, only a few kilometres away. Bonn was chosen to be the capital for symbolic reasons, a small city and not the nearby Köln or Frankfurt or Hamburg that might have seemed more reasonable, because Berlin, east and west, was enshrined as the true capital and the situation was understood as only temporary.

Had a larger, more prominent city been created as the West German Hauptstadt, then Berlin might have lost its rightful place, though the temporary situation lasted for over four decades. Also the industrial heft of the Ruhr region and its natural resources was a point of contention just after the war. I enjoyed a very nice stroll along the Rhein and up and down the length of Adenauer Allee, the once and present corridor of power and governance, with six federal offices still stationed along this boulevard and venue also to the representative second residence of the Chancellor and cabinet.

The route paralleling the river, begins with the castle since turned into a university and concludes with a United Nations campus housing nineteen institutions. In between were the former residences of the chancellery, which were disappointingly inaccessible it seemed—although I was excepting to be able to traipse through the rumpus-room, I did think I might see the bungalow up close and not through a fence with bales of razor-wire. I also passed the zoological museum that hosted the Bundesrat and Bundestag for the first few years of the provisional government.

A stuffed giraffe and other taxidermical creations were witness to proceedings as they could not be removed from the gallery without being decapitated. Despite not having access to the halls of power, it was nonetheless, an interesting experience to reflect on everything that had transpired on this one street. Aside from the secular, recent history, I was surprised to learn of Bonn’s religious connections and significance as the seat of the archdiocese and did not have the wherewithal to explore the old town too much—there was some festival that rendered the market-square pretty hectic and crowded—but it did of course seem worthy of further investigation, with Beethoven’s home, its Roman origins and fortification and many corporate headquarters as a sign of homesteading in the former capital as prognosis for what’s yet to come.

unknown knowns or ignotum per ignotius

After being rather gobsmacked on learning that there was a single term, adiaphora, that could be used to describe all those non-essential conventions of a faith, I found myself looking askance towards my own humble quiver of vocabulary, to discover an antonym for omnipresence. An individual or a system described as parviscient could be said to know very little, but as the term is derivative (a back-formation) of all-knowing, it also suggests fancying oneself to be quite clever in one’s ignorance. There are a lot of awkward situations that could be diffused with such a word.

your princess is in another castle

Via that other intrepid adventuress, Nag on the Lake, we are invited on field-trip with the team of explorers of Atlas Obscura to Saint Petersburg to see the conservation efforts of a group of nostalgic and impassioned group of college students, which has produced a vintage arcade experience.
Visitors are immersed in an ensemble of loving restored and playable games and refreshments that capture the ethos of the Soviet Union during the ‘70s and ‘80s. This unique installation (which is presenting some major maintenance challenges) consists of gaming machines that were not only about fun and fantasy—commissioned in accordance with the wishes of the state, there was little time or tolerance for anthropomorphic mushrooms and damsels in distress and these games rather emphasised hand-eye coordination, strategy and team-work over competition. Although no one can say for certain as the provenance of the games is a classified matter, they were probably designed and programmed in the same facilities and by the same computer scientists that were charged with the maintenance of the Soviets’ nuclear weapons arsenal.

press-gang or 1812 overture

While the deportment of history—when one scratches the surface—shows affairs to be far otherwise, international largess, hegemony seems reserved as a soft-power to just a select few or active belligerents, an encouraging word to play along. Learning a little bit, however, about the long-lived British practise of impressment. Comparable to the phenomena that goes by the name of crimping or shanghaiing, so called press-gangs of the Admiralty, in lieu of a standing order for conscription or compulsory service, the privileged purchase of impressment was enjoyed from the times of George I until the early nineteenth century by English navies.
This practise of policing the idle and the incorrigible into service at sea was widespread and took place at sailors’ haunts by hook or by crook, with the poor having no recourse other than to oblige themselves to a fixed term aboard that was subject to multiple extensions with pay offset by half a year and no defined career track for non-officers. Any by-stander might fall prey to this scheme—especially merchant seamen that betray some degree of acumen. As tensions in European waters increased in post-revolutionary France, Britain believed it had a moral right to impressment, and revisiting one of the many issues left unresolved in the American War for Independence—once Canadian had had its limit with poaching—Britain refused to recognise the concept of naturalisation—that is, renouncing one’s subjecthood in order to gain citizenship and enter the employ of the more profitably import-export business. The acquisition of this labour-force (and of course the pay for commercial shipping was far better than service for king and country), in the pall of the Napoleonic wars, ignited the conflicts of 1812. The northern US states attested that such conscription was routine, sealed by a shilling sunk in a drink, while the South was vocally against this kind of slavery and the federalist prerogative. Never an attempt to reclaim the North American colonies but rather with the aim of destabilising revolutionary forces, this bone of contention and forced repatriation makes me think of the uniquely American habit (Uganda is also party, to the denunciation of the US) of universal taxation and burgeoning desire to leave it all. It strike me as if there is a bit of no quarter to be found here either, no matter what civil society has previously conceded to—like living off the grid or shedding one’s birth-rite. What do you think? Are we all still so impressed to allegiance to one system or other and left with little choice?