5x5

found footage: transform crisp, high-definition videos into 1980s camcorder quality

23 and me: Æon magazine explores the ethics of genetic omniscience

used in a sentence: author composes stories taken from dictionary examples

huitzilopochtli, chutzpah: University of Connecticut fighting Hummingbirds

boondocks: a look at how language and culture define the Hinterland 

press-gang or 1812 overture

While the deportment of history—when one scratches the surface—shows affairs to be far otherwise, international largess, hegemony seems reserved as a soft-power to just a select few or active belligerents, an encouraging word to play along. Learning a little bit, however, about the long-lived British practise of impressment. Comparable to the phenomena that goes by the name of crimping or shanghaiing, so called press-gangs of the Admiralty, in lieu of a standing order for conscription or compulsory service, the privileged purchase of impressment was enjoyed from the times of George I until the early nineteenth century by English navies.
This practise of policing the idle and the incorrigible into service at sea was widespread and took place at sailors’ haunts by hook or by crook, with the poor having no recourse other than to oblige themselves to a fixed term aboard that was subject to multiple extensions with pay offset by half a year and no defined career track for non-officers. Any by-stander might fall prey to this scheme—especially merchant seamen that betray some degree of acumen. As tensions in European waters increased in post-revolutionary France, Britain believed it had a moral right to impressment, and revisiting one of the many issues left unresolved in the American War for Independence—once Canadian had had its limit with poaching—Britain refused to recognise the concept of naturalisation—that is, renouncing one’s subjecthood in order to gain citizenship and enter the employ of the more profitably import-export business. The acquisition of this labour-force (and of course the pay for commercial shipping was far better than service for king and country), in the pall of the Napoleonic wars, ignited the conflicts of 1812. The northern US states attested that such conscription was routine, sealed by a shilling sunk in a drink, while the South was vocally against this kind of slavery and the federalist prerogative. Never an attempt to reclaim the North American colonies but rather with the aim of destabilising revolutionary forces, this bone of contention and forced repatriation makes me think of the uniquely American habit (Uganda is also party, to the denunciation of the US) of universal taxation and burgeoning desire to leave it all. It strike me as if there is a bit of no quarter to be found here either, no matter what civil society has previously conceded to—like living off the grid or shedding one’s birth-rite. What do you think? Are we all still so impressed to allegiance to one system or other and left with little choice?

de minimis or new wine in old skins

In opposition to tenants and articles central to keeping the faith, there is the handy Greek term adiaphora that refers to those matters that one can leave or take—like, I suppose the holier-than-thou high-ground, that goes by cafeteria Christianity and related sleights. This originally Stoic concept means indifference—neither good nor bad, accepting of a certain latitude or license in organisation and practise—careful, however, not to pollute the conscious of one’s neighbour by lapsed and liberal behaviour. For something considered optional or neutral, there’s a pretty important lesson behind it—sometimes the law does deal with trifles.

you only live twice

Though by no means defined solely by any one role—which includes leading male in Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie and Darby O’Gill and the Little People, retired Scottish actor and producer Sean Connery’s most recognisable part was in the James Bond continuum. All future and past incarnations of the character the actor brilliantly limned are together to wish their primogenitor a hale and hearty eighty-fifth birthday.