sanctuary

The diplomatic tensions between the US and China are rising over the yet unclear deportment of a vocal dissident. I am not sure what to think about this. I do not know enough about the situation to be able to penetrate broader judgments that span from unwise meddling to enshrining basic human rights.
 It is exceedingly difficult to assay the situation, especially when all parties are not exactly forthcoming. I was encouraged at first that the US State Department seemed to fake left and then indicate that it might not kowtow to other pressures and more practical considerations. I feel sympathy for this activist and his family and their grander cause, which surely touches a billion souls, but at the same time I have to wonder how it might play out if the situation were reversed. Months ago, there was an international outcry over the detention of a provocative artists and many politicians plied their resources into gaining his freedom, but just as countries resign at the futility of opposing American policy—pointedly demands for the sharing of flight manifests and financial transactions with the US Department of Homeland Security at the risk of being labelled a rogue nation or merely going-along-getting-along through secret deals for very public treaties—that would bring down all the wrath that can be mustered on malingers. How would American react to China railing against the detention of a figure like Bradley Manning, the Wikileaks informant who has been tossed in an oubliette somewhere—much less extracting him with an ambassadorial cavalry? What constitutes an internal-affair, and can the determination be made in the face of hypocrisy?

juicy JUICE

The European Space Agency are committing their resources over the next decade to the development of a billion euro project to explore the Jovian system and its distinct, exotic clutch of satellites. The mission, tentatively called JUICE for JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer, will venture to the giant world and study the large Galilean moons, diverse and stranger yet though the sample of alien worlds is rather limited for humans, to see what secrets might lie just beneath the surfaces of Europa, Ganymede, Io and Callisto.

ESA will be supporting many other missions and research-projects in the interim, like expanding the International Space Station and diving into the dynamics of the Sun, and this meanwhile is a long time, more than a decade projected out with a travel time of eight years. It is rocket science and while I can only imagine the planning necessary to ensure a successful execution and timing (since with limited propulsion, the launch of space probes requires the coordination and cooperation of the gravity and alignment of the moons and planets for an extra tug and to reduce resistance), exploration at a pace that’s not propelled by threat or competition could become a bigger barrier to public interest than the complexities of the science. It is exciting and maybe the wait will be outpaced, boxed-in by advancing technologies in media res, but it is oddly responsible and mature burden that astronomers take on, like thinking about retirement, and becomes an instant legacy at the moment it is launched—an artefact tunneling through space and time, like the lighthouse beacons from the stars themselves that speak of the escaping past but not of the present or the more classic rides at amusement parks. Like the waltz of the epicycles, I suppose science has its measured pace too and will reveal discoveries and hopeful inspire throughout.

bookplate special

The always beautiful and superb Bibliodyssey is presenting a collection of vintage bookplates—ex libris, from the Latin for “from the books of...” and I thought that this label from the library of one William Livermore Kingman with the humble motto “I am but a Gatherer and Disposer of Other Men's Stuff” was a brilliant, steam-punk mission statement for blogging in general. Most of these examples date from the turn of the last century, and I wonder with such things as detestable electronic water-marks and embedded captioning whether people still create their own personal stamps. I can recall while I was at university going through a phase with woodcutting and pasting my mark in my book collection. Most of the time, the end results amounted to experimenting with different fonts and the playful, pun-motto of my alma mater: Facio liberos ex liberis libris libraque or I make free men out of children by means of books and a balance.

maying

Though the day will not pass without celebration and demonstration and maybe riots, in more than eighty countries around the world, there is no need for a general strike as 1. May is a national holiday. And although the roots of the of many popular movements can be traced back to upheaval and abusive working conditions in America, the International Workers’ Day itself a commemoration of the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, the US has seemingly for some time been peddling a smear campaign against a workers’ holiday and the striving for social justice that it represents, no to mention the older rites and traditions of the cross-quarter event. With the onset of Cold War polarization, the first of May across the Atlantic became known as “Americanization Day,” after having already established a separate labor day in order to minimize connotations with lurking Communists and Anarchists. Well before the threat of Soviet expansion was considered eliminated, the US dropped this celebration of manifest destiny, by name, in favour of calling it instead—and still to this day—“Loyalty Day.”