minor arcana

For the eighteenth iteration of James Bond in the film Live and Let Die (1973), producer Albert Romolo Broccoli (not to be confused with an Alan Smithee credit, a pseudonym adopted by individuals wanting to disown the movie) commissioned from Salvador Dalí a deck of tarot cards to be used as a prop for a pivotal scene featuring a psychic played by Jane Seymour. Over budget, the studio went with another artist in the end but Dalí nonetheless completed his assignment, limning all the seventy-eight trump and numbered suites.

geometria et perspectiva

From Public Domain Review, we are introduced to the strikingly modern and abstract art work of illustrator and scholar in the traditions established by Albrecht Dürer in his only known, extant publication, Lorentz Stöer (*1530 - †1621).
The 1567 volume is thin on words, the full title being Hier Jnn Etliche Zerbrochnen Gebeẅ, den Schreiner in eingelegter Arbait dienstlich, auch vil andern Liebhabern zu sonder gefallen geordnet vnd gestalt, Durch Lorentz Stöer Maller Burger Jnn Augspurg—that is, Geometry and Perspective: containing various ruined buildings useful for parquetry as well as for the enjoyment of other aficionados, so arranged and presented by the painter and Augsburger himself, and the colophon that labels the polygons and with the oddly challenging motto “Who would do right by everyone? No one would dare try!” and no other text, just a series of brilliantly coloured architectural studies, the geometric solids ideal subjects to demonstrate multi-point perspective, shadowing and foreshortening. Explore the entire book at the link above and learn how to order these images as prints.

crtl-alt-right

A bit late to the party for International Caps Lock Day, a social engineering media giant has announced its new preferred form of address, a shouty, all majuscule style, the preferred copy of over-amplified right-leaning demagogues and their supporters, who assuredly need more accommodation.
And a platform—representation is important. Though brand-redesigns (see also here and here) are not always the bellwether of imminent collapse, one can pray for the sweet release of oblivion and hope that FACEBOOK will go the way of once-pioneering, ubiquitous America Online, that brought in mixed case plus punctuation, stylised as Aol., a decade ago shortly before its downfall.

monster mash

While somewhat deflated to learn that the secret ingredients of horror icons Boris Karloff’s and Vincent Price’s respective recipes for guacamole sauce (a redundancy since the spread is Nahuatl for avocado sauce) was not the exotica of a magic potion or witches brew, I was quite happy to encounter another instance of people engaged and enraptured not by what’s on the menu per se but rather by how one does food and how there are given set of norms for behaviour and etiquette.
I can’t say whether or not it’s a phenomenon specific to any one culture or subset but it strikes me that Americans are particularly sensitive to it—with the deportment of presidential candidates scruntised for “authenticity” by the way they wield fairground fare more memorable than any excerpts from debates. I wonder what that says about the state of the polity. Do check out the recipes at the link up top but also know that placing the avocado pit in the bowl of guacamole, contrary to testimony, will not keep it from turning brown.

heliosheath

Some six years after its companion probe (a lot of erata and embarrassment here but worth remembering for the government shutdown) crossed the threshold into interstellar space, Voyager 2 (having taken the scenic route) some nineteen billion kilometres (sixteen light hours) from Earth exited the heliosphere, the protective envelop of charged particles emanating from the Sun that demarcates our star’s sphere of influence, one year ago. Transmitting valuable telemetry on the shape and nature of this bubble that in one sense defines the Solar System, researchers have been pouring over the data from Voyager 2 during the ensuing months and have gained some insights what little eddies and gyres that our Sun produces in the vastness of space.

don’t you remember the fifth of november

Enshrined the following year as a commemoration of thanksgiving for the failure of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up the House of Lords and reinstate a Catholic monarchy and exported to America as Election Day, the once rabidly puritanical celebration and partisan scapegoating (previously) has evolved into a festival recognising the role of the subversive underdog and donning the mask of Guy Fawkes, the chief co-conspirator has become a symbol of protest and rebellion for any number of causes.
The preamble for the parliamentary act set forth that “many malignant and devilish Papists, Jesuits and Seminary Priests, much envying and fear, conspired most horribly, when the King’s most excellent Majesty, the Queen, the Prince, and he Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, should have been assembled in the Upper House of Parliament upon the Fifth Day of November in the Year of our Lord One thousand six hundred and five, suddenly to have blown up the said whole House with Gunpowder: An Invention so inhuman, barbarous and cruel, as the like was never before heard of.” Though no penalties were prescribed or meted out for failure to participate, the associated legislation directs church ministers to hold a special service on this anniversary and read the text to the parishioners. This requirement was annulled with the repealing of the Act in 1859, a decade after the Universalis Ecclesiæ was issued by the Vatican, restoring episcopal hierarchy in the country and recognising the legitimacy of the royal family. Though like Guy Fawkes Day the parade and associated events (Operation Vendetta) has transcended its founders’ and organisers’ original mission: at first meant to protest the secrecy and censorship of the Church of Scientology, marchers now rally for social justice.

ψηφος

From the Greek for the study of pebbles (used for ballots in ancient Athens—the English word itself having Italic origins, ballotta, a little ball and hence the phrase “blackballing”), psephology is a sub-branch of political science that tries to account for election outcomes in language of socio-historic studies through research and reporting on voting registries, franchisement, polling and the influence of lobbies and special interest groups in politics.
Coined for the nonce in the late 1940s, the word term was introduced by Scottish classicist WFR Hardie when fellow academic and member of JRR Tolkein’s roundtable (the Inklings) Ronald Buchanan McCallum called on him for a word to denote the study of referenda. Poltical correspondents, analysts, demographers, policy wonks and pundits could all be called psephologtist—that is, pebble-counters.

positive externalities

Though we are familiar with the concept of sin-taxes and the notion of factoring in social cost into the price regime of consumption by means of a carbon-tax which has a diverse cast of proponents (and conversely incentives to make the more expensive choices for the sake of greater society), we had never heard of a Pigovian subsidy broadly applied as the name of this corrective measure.
Conceived nearly a century ago by Cambridge economics professor Arthur Cecil Pigou (*1877 – †1959), its first incarnation was a proposal to reveal and offset the hidden costs of alcohol on civil societies by levying taxes that would help fund law enforcement, first responders and insurance underwriters who have had to foot the extra bill of accident and absenteeism from intoxication. People then and now are reluctant to find correlation outside of their immediate horizons, and Pigou tried couching the argument in more concrete terms, social benefits and ills being notoriously hard to measure in a field that lobbies in numbers, citing unregulated industry for creating the deadly smog that beset London with direct costs built-in for inaction in terms of health and sustainability. Do give the entire podcast a listen and learn more about a real-world experiment whose time has finally come around.