path of totality

This 1982 reflection on witnessing a total solar eclipse by Annie Dillard, excerpted by TYWKIWDBI, is pretty alluring and seductive, making me want to experience the coming eclipse in person too. Although very young and far away in New Mexico from where one might experience civil twilight, I still have a vivid recollection of setting up a pinhole projection with my Mom on our driveway and being amazed to see that little sliver of a shadow bleed over the white disc of the Sun—the colours seeming strangely saturated like watching the skies in the spring two years ago.

It did not look like a dragon, although it looked more like a dragon than the moon. It looked like a lens cover, or the lid of a pot. It materialized out of thin air—black, and flat, and sliding, outlined in flame... You have seen photographs of the sun taken during a total eclipse. The corona fills the print. All of those photographs were taken through telescopes. The lenses of telescopes and cameras can no more cover the breadth and scale of the visual array than language can cover the breadth and simultaneity of internal experience... But I pray you will never see anything more awful in the sky... It is one-360th part of the visible sky. The sun we see is less than half the diameter of a dime held at arm’s length...

The mania is appreciable and can certainly understand the pilgrimages that people undertake. Indulge oneself with the essay printed in its entirety at The Atlantic, available through the day of the eclipse. Make the effort to be there if you can.

wayback machine

Brilliantly, as Waxy informs, the Internet Archive (previously here and here) is curating daily snapshots of a dozen of major internet properties (CNN, Reddit, YouTube, Amazon, the BBC, Yahoo! News, et al.) of how these web sites looked a decade ago. The historical chronicle elicits a sense of nostalgia and contextualises where we stand now.

fangoria

For World Emoji Day earlier this week (we’re still on the hunt for whoever is behind these endless and arbitrary celebrations) Apple released a preview of the way it’s rendering some of the cache of newly approved icons from the late June meeting of the Unicode Consortium—in case some of this seems familiar, it ought to. Though it was mostly squeezing some extra mileage out of old news, there was one fine coda to the story that no one could have anticipated by reminding the world that added to our visual lexicon, there’s now a zombie—coinciding with the death of the filmmaker George A Romero who famously gave culture its undead touchstone first directing the independently produced Night of the Living Dead (zombies were never mentioned in that movie, only ghouls) in 1968 and five subsequent spin-offs plus hundreds of homages. Thank you for all the nightmarish inspiration and requiescat in pace (seriously, do that), Mister Romero.

sea of time

Though not quite the phantas- magorical conveyance of the Beatles that had its animated debut on this day back in 1968 at the London Pavilion, a former dance hall in Piccadilly Circus that was the venue for many film premieres, the Golden Submarine is a race car that is celebrating its centennial this year—we learn via Messy Nessy Chic. The stream-lined, steam-punk dragster was built for the Illinois circuit back in 1917 by Barney Oldfield and Harry Miller with rigorous safety components added to the aerodynamic foil (actually put through the paces in a wind-tunnel) and enclosed, protective cockpit.

aye, aye captain!

Speaking of Bikini Bottoms (which makes one wonder if there’s not some sinister message behind the world crafted by a marine biologist turned animator), our faithful chronicler, Doctor Caligari, points out that today among many other things in 1999 (not counting the pilot that first aired in May of that year), the Nickelodeon network premiered SpongeBob SquarePants as a regularly scheduled programme. Whatever opinion one has formed for the show, its longevity, I’d venture, does demand some respect.

post-modern prometheus

Over the coming year ahead of the bicentennial anniversary of its publication, we learn courtesy of BCC’s Inside Science, that Arizona State University in collaboration with many other thinkers are releasing a special annotated, transmedia edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus to encourage the vital political dialogue that is corollary to ethics and literacy in the sciences as well as celebrating all its influences and derivative works. The prescience of this cautionary tale has yet to be fully unpacked and its resonance and currency in today’s scientific milieu when one can without asking permission but perhaps forgiveness seemingly easily de-extinct not only woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers but also Neanderthals is certainly to be heeded.

grey poupon or an american in paris

Though nothing of substance is to be gained by entertaining Dear Leader at least while pacified by the pomp and circumstance and thronging crowds he demanded for his own inauguration—and while I can only hope in the same circumstance, we’d be noble enough to take one for the team and lure him away (Germany’s already gotten her lumps), he cannot concentrate on dismantling the tenuous gains towards a more equitable, charitable and cherished world we’ve made in the past decades. France’s traditions too are made of stronger stuff that this blemish will fade fast, and though the temporary relief is surely a welcome one for the US the cost does seem rather steep for a sleep-over. Superficially, some are comparing France’s new maverick president to Dear Leader for a shared flair for optics and betraying favouritism for certain journalists, but I think it’s huge stretch and insult other than to contrast Monsieur Macron from this classless Enfant Terrible and his mobster family.

6x6

t-kimono: classic garment re-tailored in partnership with a Norwegian studio

born on the fourth of july: many argue that independence is contingent on international recognition, via TYWKIWDBI

snarknado: flooding in the US carries buoys of fire-ants, via Super Punch

the mother of invention: expectant father Philippe Kahn came up with the idea of the camera phone to share his daughter’s birth in real-time, via Dave Log v 3

crystal ball: to the uninitiated, these fortune-telling booths of Hong Kong could be offering any number of professional services, via the Everlasting Blört

ostinato: a custom-build instrument designed to produce that tension-building music for scary movies 

stop, collaborate and listen

I enjoyed reading about these rather timeless tunes that were sampled from elsewhere from Mental Floss.
Though most I think know that the anthems of the US are not original in their scoring and reflect a kind of awkward musical appropriation, I had never known that the carol “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” or in Charles Wesley’s first composition Hark! how all the welkins (heavens) ring, glory to the King of kings, was set to the tune of the popular Gutenberg cantata (der Festgesang) by Felix Mendelssohn that celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of the printing-press, that’s a fitting bombastic torch-song tribute to the printed word, first performed in 1840. The carol’s lyrics were adapted to the tune fifteen years later as part of a Christmas medley.

kwyjibo

We discover, through the work of faithful chronicler Doctor Caligari, that among many things, The Simpsons had aired its pilot episode on this day in 1990.
The episode, Bart the Genius, was written before Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire which was considered a special and not to many a canonical instalment, and therefore doesn’t include Santa’s Little Helper, and is the first one to include the opening sequence. Having cheated on an intelligence test, Bart finds himself sent to a school for the gifted and talented, although quickly discovered, he found himself inspired to turn the phrase “eat my shorts” and classify a kwyjibo as a dumb, balding North American ape with no chin.

shōgatsu

In what’s become a sort of annual tradition, Spoon & Tamago are featuring a gallery of some of their favourite New Years’ postcards (年賀状, nengajō) for this upcoming year of the Fire Rooster. Although since 1873 Japan has officially adhered to the Gregorian calendar and celebrates the new year on 1 January, tradition still has a place for the lunisolar procession of the Chinese zodiac—which heralds in the year (and a second inflammatory one) of the rooster on 28 January with a week of festivities. Let’s hope that we’re getting an especially lucky sign this time around.

nineteen-wonderful

In case you had forgotten the about the pure, unbound theological and metaphysical bizarreness that comprises Rankin and Bass Christmas specials, here’s a brief plot summary of Rudolph’s Shiny New Year. Spent from having just helped deliver Christmas gifts, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer finds himself again in contract by Father Time, seeking his help urgently to find the missing Baby New Year—Happy, before the strike of midnight on New Year’s Eve, else the year will never progress with the incumbent never able to retire.

Father Time conjectures, rightly, that Happy, bashful, has hid somewhere on the archipelago of years past, where superannuated, old Babies-New-Year step down to rule an era similar to their calendar year. Having enlisted extra help, they locate the baby only to see him abducted by a vulture called Eon the Terrible, who is predestined to expire at the passing of the year and is determined to stop the procession of time to avoid dissolution into ice and snow. The vulture is a bit endeared to Happy and by being persuaded to release the baby back into Rudolf’s custody, is spared his fate and Happy is flown back to Father Time’s castle to herald in the year ‘Nineteen-Wonderful,’ Rudolph adding that he wishes it a shiny one.

mmxvi: annus horribilis, annus mirabilis

december: Pioneering US astronaut John Glenn passed away, as did America’s TV Dad, Alan Thicke. Doctor Henry Heimlich also left us, as did Zsa Zsa Gabor. Over a billion user accounts are compromised by a once pioneering search engine. Carnage and destruction continue in Aleppo as Syria, all the global powers’ proxy-war, is poised to fall to the entrenched government.  A truck ploughed through a crowded Christmas Market in Berlin.  Sadly, singer George Michael passed away as well as icon Carrie Fisher with her mother, Hollywood legend Debbie Reynolds, joining her the next day.

november: Donald J Trump defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton as the forty-fifth presumptive to the office of President of the United States of America. We had to say farewell to America’s TV Mom, Florence Henderson. Janet Reno died, and we had to say good-bye to Andrew Sachs, who played Manuel on Fawlty Towers. Retro funk and soul performer Sharon Jones passed away as did Leon Russell though not of precisely the same genre. Poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen left us. Fidel Castro expired aged ninety, on Black Friday and cause of death was declared as America’s return to greatness.

october: It was announced that Bob Dylan will be awarded the Nobel prize for literature. Hopefully prematurely, obituaries for the Great Barrier Reef circulated, the cause of its demise being coral-bleaching.  A craze of dressing as scary clowns and frightening people has spread globally.

september: Meaningful global climate accords held in Paris are put into force, although later in the month carbon dioxide levels surpass anything experienced in the course of human events. NASA launches a probe to study and return with samples from an asteroid with a high potential to impact the Earth—in the twenty-third century, possibly either nudging it closer or pushing it further out of bounds.

august: Gene Wilder left us. Brazil hosted the Olympic Games. The actor that portrayed R2-D2 Kenny Baker sadly departed, as did host and political discussion moderator John McLaughlin. Costa Rica powered itself with renewable energy for one hundred days and hopes to wean itself off of fossil fuels completely.

july: A wholly solar-powered aircraft becomes the first to circumnavigate the globe. We had to say good-bye to Elie Wiesel. During Bastille Day celebrations, an atrocious terror attack occurred on promenade of Nice, setting off a summer of terror across Europe. An abortive coup d’état rocked Turkey and a political purge followed, exacerbating an already tense situation. The African Union’s fifty-four member nations issue a single passport that allows holders to travel visa-free within the bloc.

june: After two decades of construction, the Gotthard Base Tunnel under the Alps in opened. The UK voted to leave the European Union. The promising actor Anton Yelchin who played the new Chekov was struck down far too early. Boxer Muhammad Ali departed.

may: Presidential elections in Austria are too close to call, and the contenders a member of the Green party and a far-right candidate will hold a run-off later in the year. Nationalism is on the rise throughout the world. Super Tuesday’s delegates are awarded to Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump.

april: The pop megastar Prince passed on. Der Süddeutsche Zeitung along with a consortium of other news outlets publish millions of leaked documents implicating many heads of state and prominent figures in the Panama Papers scandal. For the first time in history, capital punishment is outlawed by more than half the countries in the world.

march: Coordinated bomb attacks take over a hundred lives in Lahore and Brussels, and ISIS claims responsibility. Sadly, comedian and show-master Garry Shandling passed away. World-renowned architect Zaha Hadid also left us. Myanmar sworn in its first democratically elected president in half a century.

february: For the first time since the Great Schism of 1054, the leaders of the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches met and committed to an Ecumenical Declaration. Writers Umberto Eco and Harper Lee passed away on the same day. Heretofore theoretical gravitational waves were observed for the first time.  A huge swath of Canadian temperate rain-forest will be protected forever and called Spirit Bear. Bolivia and Peru also reached a deal to protect Lake Titicaca.

january: Davie Bowie tragically passed away, as did musicians Glenn Frey and Natalie Cole. There’s an outbreak of the Zika virus, causing panic in the sub-tropics and prompting many couples to postpone having children, due to the risk of birth-defects. Brutal and powerful Mexican drug-trafficker Joaquín Guzmán is re-captured after his escape from a high-security detention facility. The International Atomic Energy Agency declared that Iran has complied and dismantled its nuclear weapons programme and instructed the UN to lift sanctions. 

lamp under a bushel

Having just learned of the name of the decoration myself through its gentle lampooning on BBC Radio 4 Friday Night Comedy, I appreciated reading more about the Christingle, featured as Atlas Obscura’s weekly object of intrigue. The comedian in the show could only justify adorning an orange with a red ribbon if one wanted to distinguish it from other oranges whilst one is attempting to retrieve it from the airport baggage claim conveyor belt.
Now we know, however, that a German Moravian (Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine) minister in the sixteenth century invented the Christingle as an allegorical device for children to teach them about Jesus—the red ribbon symbolising Christ’s blood and the candles’ flame representing enduring joy, the oranges being introduced later. The skewers of dried fruit or candies represent the bounty of the world and the four seasons. Also known for their advent stars, I wonder if this other Moravian tradition might spread as well, but perhaps not for all times and all occasions, like in the movie theatre—which the comedian above was reprimanded for by ushers for partaking in.

7x7

so disappoint: vast gallery of retail fails of products that did not live up to expectations, via Boing Boing

a la carte: NYC Public Library system is transcribing historic menus to see how diets and tastes have changed over the years, via the always marvellous Nag on the Lake

exhibition, exposition: collection of creative art installations from the past year

found footage: honoured among the worst films ever made, Turkish ‘Star Wars’ is being conserved

no static at all: despite lack of enthusiasm from the listening public, Norway’s FM radio broadcasts are about to sign-off

entropy, zoetrope: hypnotic biological simulations that are collaborations from Max Cooper and Maxime Causeret

intercalary: artsy and hopeful collection of calendars for chronicling 2017 

meme-base or selective pressures

Courtesy of the always engaging Waxy from Andy Baio, we are treated to a year-long retrospective, parsed out on a daily basis, from New York Magazine’s select/all crew in the form of a memetic calendar. This is really brilliant: one can go to any date and see what was transmitted and trending on or around that day and be reminded of some of the accounts of pith and moment captured—despite the life-cycle and how meaning and context flees—that tell of the events of 2016.

great leap forward

The Atlantic presents a rather sweeping, comprehensive list of political, foreign policy milestones and anniversaries that will occur in the upcoming year, illustrating how fraught diplomacy with compounded legacies not easily shaken and those foundations probably ought not to be tempted.
February marks a quarter of a century since the European Economic Community embarked into a new system of greater legal and political integration—beyond trade deals, with the Maastricht Treaty, which led to the creation of the contemporary EU, though it now stands at a crossroads. It is the centenary of the Russian revolutions of 1917 that created the Soviet Union as well as the fiftieth anniversary of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Of course cultural movements and revolution don’t exclusively cause contemporaries to confront (and tackling “on this day” is only contending with a shadow of the original event and certainly not its precedents—and perhaps in the moment of memorial, not its antecedents either) the past only on round birthdays (there are many more events covered in the article) and the nostalgia for chronicle and a surfeit of past to the fill the present has become a sort of a touchstone lately—and hopefully the trivia can tease out some curiosity into the deeper history and influences as well—and perhaps shows that the whole jabberwocky of bookends needs respect and continual servicing. What do you think? Perhaps there’s also a strong desire to step away from a present in hopes that we can bound it—and whatever slurry of 2016 won’t wash into the new year.

7x7

book of days: the mysterious and enigmatic Codex Seraphinianus enters the wall-calendar market

the beaming: a stage-adaptation dramatizes a veteran National Geographic correspondent’s encounter with a lost telepathic tribe in the Peruvian Andes

event horizon: a look ahead at some of the astronomical happenings of 2017

line in the sand: in honour of the seventy-fifth anniversary of its Cartography Centre, the US Central Intelligence Agency declassifies a cache of ordinance maps

everything old is new again: a revue of the most sought after Christmas toys since 1983

operation: the several incarnations of the Wound Man of the Middle Ages, sort of like the Helvetica Man of yore

cash on delivery: first introduced in Hamburg, one shipping service is bring pedal-powered delivery to select urban locations in the US

6x6

miracle on thirty-sixth street: the tangled story of the popularisation of Christmas lights by a Thomas Edison hanger-on, via Strange Company

ground level ozone: following Rotterdam, Beijing has installed an air-pollution scrubbing tower that is improving atmospheric quality and reducing smog, via Nag on the Lake 
gentlemen only, ladies forbidden: for a taste of what a Trump administration might mean for America, one should look to his golf resort in Scotland, via Boing Boing

biomediated structures: Martian rover Spirit has stumbled across a landscape that looks a lot like terrestrial hot springs and may be a sign of ancient life

facepalm: an illustrated 1644 treatise aims to codify the universal language of hand gestures

eat an apple every day then see the doctor anyway: an appreciation of the art of the fruit sticker plus a calendar for this ephemera that might encourage healthier eating habits

turkey in the straw, turkey in the hay

Reeling collectively still with the news of the untimely but recent natural death of Courage—the first turkey that was graciously pardoned by President Barack Obama in a strange ceremony that annually reasserts the dominance of humans over overfed domesticated fowl, we learn, via a historical newspaper clipping spotted by Weird Universe that the tradition of clemency (and I’d like to see a turkey that could commit capital crimes) is a fairly recent one.
Until the administration Ronald Reagan, turkeys presented to the White House were in general not allowed to retire to greener pastures and were dealt their death knell at the hand of the president. I had believed it was at least as storied and established as some of the other strange folk-practises that the US has cultivated—seemingly for lack of the mythos of other, older nations, like having a groundhog forecast the weather or Columbus Day. On the occasion of Eisenhower’s gala feast, as the article states, an animal psychologist urged him to subject the sacrificial birds to hypnotism in order that they be killed more humanely and so they’d taste better, having not been seized with a rush of adrenaline before going in the oven. With the long life of Tater and Tot secured just yesterday, Obama has set free his last turkey and I wonder if going forward, whoever goes afoul of the court won’t be able to count on its mercy.