libelle

My father snapped this very good close-up photograph of a brilliant metallic red dragonfly (Odonata Trithemis kirbyi) resting on the antenna of their (hopefully) parked car. He told me it flew away as he was reaching for his camera but then returned seconds later to patiently pose. My mother suggested that it was one of those experimental spy drones from DARPA (DE), miniaturized and disguised as birds and bugs. Though the engineering seems far too advanced, I wonder where the fearful sandbox of field-testing might be.

tv tray or serialization

As a little kid, I can remember being very engrossed, as I think a lot of kids were, at the breakfast table with the ingredient lists and nutritional information on the back and sides of cereal boxes.

 Letting my coffee cool a bit this morning, I wondered if people, especially kids, indulge in this sort of distraction. I bet parents would regard this innocent distraction more welcome than the chamber music of texting or the private dinner-theatre of web-browsing. I’m guilty too, not always able to pull myself away from the screen (it’s funny how so much of our time is spent staring at quadrilaterals—cereal boxes too—but without even seeing the rectangular frame. I do continue to pour over food labels but the message has changed a little: the names of the additives don’t seem quite like a sea-monkey kingdom potion (although not everything need be a sinister let-down and there’s some magic yet to be found in preparation and the recipe but there are more hacks and fillers rather than kitchen-witchery) and thinking about the provenance, packaging and the poly-lingual labeling is more interesting. I suppose, in the end, there’s not too much difference in how one chooses to take one’s morning briefing.

eurotrashing or the columbian union

Although the most recent rhetoric against the general deportment of the body eurotique has been toned down somewhat—or at least, transmuted into a pseudo-intellectual soapbox about the urgent need for urgency and action, it is still very much cachet in Anglo-Saxon political debate and attacks to summon up the Continental, European leanings of one’s opponent—thereby ending all possible discussion.

The spectre of socialist regimes and bloated bureaucracies and welfare states are yet ammunition enough for a moment’s deflection at the expense of a distant and abstract punching-bag. One, I’m sure, can expect the criticism of the European club to become harsher and more pointed as the election season in America approaches. Meanwhile, the dissonant coda to all these judgments from critics, skeptics and sophists is that the EU government and member states ought to be converging towards a so-called United States of Europe, with common policies and standards.

I cannot imagine, however, a more disjointed and decodified union than America. The EU is not demanding that Alibamo impose the same sin-taxes as Nieuw Amsterdam does—or that Tejas or Øklahomå adopt their standards for vehicle registration plates or levy duties on income, retail sales or property uniformly either. Hopefully, once all the shouting is done with, people will realize that there are aspects, both traditional and experimental, about Europe and its organization worthy of emulation.

retracta and rokovania

I wonder sometimes whether journalism is investigative, self-promoting or merely stumbled upon. I suspect that it is usually the later, rather than the first, and sometimes more notice is made of the breach, the pass rather than keeping to the ceremony of record-keeping and minutes-taking. The nearly universal ascension to the ACTA (EN/DE) treaty happened without notice nor a blip on the RADAR of main-stream journalism and only the rage and defiance of a few brave and informed souls in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe. Now, a bit wiser but still without the leave of the news, protests are being staged in London and other capitals against some of the provisions of the treaty, including in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.

The Slovenian signatory, the ambassador to Japan, has released a public apology (in English), first to her children and then to her fellow-citizens for having committed their futures to such a far-reaching atrocity in one of the most articulate, heart-felt and honest statements from a politician that I have had the pleasure of reading in some time. All statecrafters ought to take note. It is the public's duty to snoop around what makes the headlines and is writ large and one cannot rely on go-to journalism to reveal every back-room deal that is coming out of Davos, the EU Parliament or the US Congress, which have all been scuttled in the media as something dull and irrelevant by design, but some of the terms of ACTA would make such snooping harder, and hopefully these rallies can draw the needed attention to what national leaders are consigning their people to.

blackout warden

Although the White House and the US congressional contingency sponsoring SOPA has flinched, abandoning language that provides for a government firewall that blocks out whole swathes of the internet, nodding to some expert testimony and perhaps in hope of appeasing protestors who demonstrated how DNS blacklisting could invite more security problems and damage the architecture of the internet, the remaining provisions of SOPA are still devious and misguided and give Hollywood too many choke-points (any link), to stifle creativity and reporting. On Wednesday (18. January), many diverse websites are going dark in protest to this bill’s impending passage, to illustrate how broke down the internet could become if America enacts this law. People world-wide ought to join in, because the internet knows no borders, and no one suffered the privations or propaganda that tried to quell past and more recent uprisings. America fortunately does not control the internet, though maybe pressure is mounting for the US to act as if it does, and ought to receive a strong signal that such meddling in media and in politics and in the economy is unwelcome, especially through such cowardly, backdoor channels.

link round-up: sonnenblume and phases of the moon

Here's a smattering of some of the more interesting items I stumbled upon or was clued on to over the past week:

Although the sunflower was probably domesticated in the New World before maize, it took a Lenten loophole of the prohibition of cooking oil in the Russian Orthodox church to really make the plant commercially recognized. The invention of cholesterol too played a big role in giving farmers a valuable alternative crop for off-seasons, when practicing crop-rotation. The circuitous history of the flower is fascinating.  It is a sight to see driving through the countryside and seeing vast fields of big sunflowers angling their blooms away from the roving sun throughout the day. It made me think about another inspired discovery of a young inventor, who designed a more efficient photovoltaic array after hiking through the wintry woods and noticed how the trees might try to maximize their sun-exposure.

After the Feast of the Assumption (Maria Himmelfahrt) last week, earlier this week was the celebration of the coronation of the Queen of Heaven, which Wikipedia explained brilliantly, and though true to form in scholarship, sweetly, I thought. I am really enamoured with that website and its dedicated band of contributors, and not just for all the new things that one can learn every day, but also how individual entries are galloping towards completion and perfection, and how challenging certain topics and aspects can be to define, like the meticulous and continuous revisions that go into the gloss of Lolita.
And here was a very cool and inventive gallery of photographs of people posing with the Moon. I want to do this next time we're camping.

honored matres or overseas telegram

A local research and development firm in Minnesota is promoting wireless internet via strobe-light and is installing the modem-based systems that works off of the same principle as Morse code: ceiling lights flicker on and off faster than the human eye can detect (though I imagine there might be subliminal residuum) transmitting signals--internet content, to a counterpart modem connected to a computer that can interpret these subtle oscillations. The company seemed to primarily take on this experiment in municipal office buildings in order to find a solution to diminishing band-width as WiFi, Bluetooth, cellular phones, G4 and VLAN compete for space above the general din--and also to create dual-use lighting elements for public spaces, which are always on away way, to provide connectivity without additional power consumption.

Moreover, I believe it is important that technology drifts away from WiFi and "electro-smog" in general. There's not so much discussion anymore about the dangers of cell phone usage and cell towers muddling-up honey bee navigation systems, however, wireless internet is even less tried and proofed, and I cannot imagine it is exactly beneficial to have trillions of bits of data tunneling through one's body from all sides at all times. Central to the Dune series of novels by science-fiction writer Frank Herbert, was the prohibition against "thinking-machines." Though hardly luddites, humankind had to revolt against artificial intelligences in order to save themselves, and maybe in the future, there will be a similar effort to outlaw all things wireless once ill-effects are realized and cultivate such smarter alternatives.

and the bells have flown to Rome

Merry Christmas, peace on Earth and goodwill toward all--and thanks to everyone for visiting our blog.  Seasons greetings!

making a list, checking it twice

Brilliant artist Ape Lad imagines that the next cable dump would be the ultimate disclosure of Santa's exhaustive annual performance appraisals, and shares his vision with Boing Boing, which is hosting a lot of excellent, on-going discussions on the topic and reporting from fresh angles.

scan-tron or à pois rouge

For laureates in most other disciplines, there is somewhat of a probationary period for they are bestowed with high honors. The co-inventor of the process of in vitro fertilization (I like the German term: Retortenbabies, test tube babies) had to wait until the first offspring was a well adjusted adult with healthy children of her own before receiving the Nobel prize. Another dynamic scientific duo from Manchester also had to wait four years or so after their initial experiments and documentary on the material properties of Graphene, a wonder-substance like the advent of coal-tar, synthetic rubber, Bakelite and nylon that is the shearing off of graphite into one-atom thick layers of carbon atoms arranged in a honey-comb.

With proper alchemistic alignment, this substance could yield better photovoltaics and room-temperature super-conductivity. This material, by the way, is the velvety leavings of the lead of a pencil every time a mark is made.

Though I really have grown fond of the original stock background, I have been thinking of repapering the place, maybe brighten it up a bit. I think I would like to keep the King of the Mountains theme. Here are a few candidates.

iconoclasts or have a nice day

One of the oldest registered trademarks, aside from the canting found on coats-of-arms and municipal and national regalia, is the simple red triangle of Bass Ale.  While a geometric shape does not corner any exclusivity and does not exactly evoke a refreshing beer by association, I rather like the accessible logos that enforce a name or functionality, like the Shell of Royal Dutch Shell or the diamond shape on Collins Gem publishers.  There is apparently a premium to having an iconic symbol or even sensible name anymore, considering the names of showboat medications and finance and telecommunication companies that play on false Latin and superlative words. 

Over-reliance on symbols and metonymy also has its drawbacks and can easily slide into the non-sensical.  The German government, for instance, is currently debating a proposal to augment its religiously executed hygenic checks of commercial kitchens with a smiley face based rating system.  The details have not been entirely worked out, but like a Michelin Guide, restaurant doors will display a scoring of smiley faces based on their cleanliness and rather subjectively on the quality of their cuisine.  The schedule and content of health inspections will not be changed, but finding are distilled and projected for potential guests, in smiley form.  It's this extra level and potential for obfuscation that is crazy-making.  Documentation from inspections could be made public, in their undigested form, for the perusal of the morbidly curious.  Unsafe restaurants are not allowed to stay in operation, and the smileys do not make the inspectors' visits more rigourous.  Probably no diners want to peek in the kitchens of the favourite restaurants and would rather remain blissfully ignorant and not be made to guess at what criteria distinguishes 4 smileys from 3.5 smileys.