encounter at farpoint

One of my favourite bloggers, Bob Canada, presents a very thoughtful and well- constructed anniversary tribute to Star Trek: The Next Generation, which premiered on 29 September 1987, exactly twenty-five years ago today. It is hard to believe it has been that long ago and does make it seem like something’s a-miss with the whole space-time continuum.

buddhist “iron man” found by nazis is from outer space

In the 1938, an archaeological expedition was sent from Nazi Germany to Tibet as part of Heinrich Himmler’s Ahnenerbe programme, a project that sought to validate Germany’s hegemony through cultural and historic research of what was considered Aryan and some very creative and convenient revisions.

Much of their work involved fascination for mysticism and the occult—real Indian Jones stuff, and on this mission, members of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and scientific community brought back a trove of artefacts, including portraits of supremacy (studies of silhouettes and cranial measurements), seed samples from native grains, the robe of a Dalai Lama, volumes of holy books yet to be translated, and one iron rendering of the god Namtösé, one of the four heavenly kings of Buddhist mythology, which was catalogued as the “Eisenmensch.” The actual headlines used could not be improved upon.  They probably brought back this one statuette because it had a swastika, a traditional symbol of good fortune, inscribed in his chest but were unaware of the most unusual material that it was formed out of. University researchers in Stuttgart (where the idol ended up warehoused and nearly forgotten, sort of like the closing scenes where the Ark of the Covenant ends up) have just matched the thousand year old composition of the extremely hard iron to extraterrestrial origins and the makeup of other scattered fragments of the Chinga meteorite impact event over China and Mongolia eons prior. This was certainly not the first example of ancient peoples using meteoritic metals or possibly revering them by is probably the only graven image worked from such a piece from space.

post-meridian or l’isola del tesoro

Here is a brilliant graphic for the Treasure Island music festival held in the bay of San Francisco, on the artificial island of the same name built to host the World's Fair and Golden Gate Exposition and was used later as a naval station and numerous times as a film-set. The over turned ship is of course a visual reference to the Pirates of the Caribbean saga. I find that series infinitely watchable, especially for its rather convoluted storylines, and that particular maneuver to escape the Doldrums and the prior marooning of the captain on a deserted isle where he was made to face splintering alter-egos reminds me a lot of the Umberto Eco of the long, complex reminisces woven for the shipwrecked and stranded nobleman from The Island of the Day Before (L'isola del giorno prima). The ill-fated expedition was seeking out the Prime Meridian and anchoring skies, in an astronomical sense, and the forsaken character, alone with his memories, believes the archipelago straddles the International Date Line, with neighbouring shores just out reach in yesterday and tomorrow.

discontiguous

A few weeks ago, during the run up to municipal elections, I noticed this billboard—for what turned out to be a study proposing that Bavaria could manage for itself independent of the rest of Germany, posted on a concrete column at the intersection that tends to host political posters, though not exclusively.

My confusion subsided and I hear a bit about the arguments therein on a radio interview. There is no active separatist party or movement. There is, however, a more vocal coalition for the partition of Franconia, given its separate and historic cultural identity, from the Free State. Such sentiments are dismissed at the peril of the metropolitan entity, I think, but I did not think anymore about talk of secession until Scotland’s polite bid for autonomy started to figure more prominently in the news. Now, the Spanish region of Catalonia is pressing for self-rule as the rest of the country is under threat of laming policies of austerity and a surrender of its own sovereignty to a larger, umbrella confederation. The borders of Europe respected today are heirs of a long and complex history of wars, dynasty, union and omission, and I wonder how economic insecurities might contest anachronisms and relatively recent consent to rule and tribute. The parsing of this patchwork of nations may return with popular support, but is it truly a disburdening to distance oneself?