cliffhanger

Loggerheads, not develop- ments or discourse regardless of tone, concerning the state of the budget and forward-policy regarding taxation and funding for prosecuting wars of all ilk in the US is diabolical in the detail and shortfalls, and despite whether trailing or leading discussion and coverage of the issue, I suppose that these particulars do not matter overmuch nor ever survive the next cycle of austerity American-style.

A polarized, frightful and fear-mongering legislature, with an array of cadet tentacles and inventive pseudopodia (ψευδοπόδια, false feet), is projecting away from any language of compromise, familiarly and characteristically stalling, a move taken from a playbook that could be transposed anywhere and for any episode, showdown that has passed recently and for the foreseeable future. Such inflexibility and laming division allows government to conveniently ignore the mandate of the people who they are supposed to represent and stoke other external pressures, like business and the markets, which always trump congressional indolence and force many hands. It is a vicious cycle of dismantling and up-building inverted, where the conventions razed or raised are the opposite of what’s in anyone’s long-term interest and more and more dulling with each passing deadline and limit.

central equatoria or space-time coordinates

We mostly take for granted the fact that we live in charted territory and that almost any route imaginable has been scouted out, the path is well-worn and clearly marked, and that the starting point and destination have fixed addresses, precise under any number of conventions, by the postal system, government and satellite telemetry. The planet’s newest nation, South Sudan, however (and with its capital Juba situated in a district called Central Equatoria, one might be excused for thinking one ought to be able to pin point whereabouts precisely), possesses a paucity of cartographical information about itself, which is a disservice to the young country in terms of understanding demographics, infrastructure and its own resources and moving forward after years of strife.

The lands of South Sudan, including geological data (albeit dated and limited) concerning where mineral and oil wealth might be found, have been mapped to a certain extent before, but since gaining independence from Northern Sudan, all records have been sequestered there and the former powers are not willing to share, possibly begrudging the break-away state success by ransoming decades old geological surveys, not to mention street maps. Students from universities in Juba and Berlin aim to stake South Sudan’s autonomy further by creating a new, advanced atlas of country and the environment, and they hope this collaboration helps the people not only better understand and describe their urban landscapes and know the value of what may lie undiscovered underneath but also understand how best to work the land (mapping in depth the crops that are grown on farms and how different seed fare) in a sustainable way and better care for the environment. Surveyors are constantly re-assessing and re-evaluating plots and parcels, and it is a base of knowledge that certainly deserves re-thinking from time to time but usually not something reinvented or made from scratch—questions of ownership of these charts and tables aside. Maybe having to literally and figuratively map one’s world is an occasion to treat those emergent features with utmost care.

selected traits

I have noticed an overarching theme in portrayals of the near future, usually of the dystopian or post-apocalyptic varieties, which include as a strange, albeit convenient, deus ex machina of a human sub-species with telekinetic or telepathic powers. Cinematically, to me, this seems as troublesome as the paradoxes of time travel, and it seems terribly unlikely that such a patently useful and fulfilling trait would evolve or a mutation pedigreed. I think man has little impetus to evolve, because environmental factors and disadvantageous qualities can and should be accommodated. It’s hard to say what humans would have tended towards, left to the brute elements, had empathy and industry not converged along with natural developed, and we probably would not have liked it—especially since evolution is not a matter of wish or sophistication but practicality and claws and fur and spider-sense, I think, would return long before the debut of psychic powers.

currier & ives

Over yonder on the indices Mental Floss, contributor Glen Gower (the self- described Cliff Claven of Caroling) features some of his favourite trivia about Christmas carols gleaned from an amazing list of curious facts he is busily compiling. It’s fascinating and some that struck me so far is that O Holy Night was the second song to be broadcast over the radio in 1906, and that Do You Hear What I Hear? was written in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that Silent Night (Stille Nacht) exists as a song in over one hundred forty different languages and has been declared by UNESCO as a treasure of intangible cultural heritage.