forty-winks o siestario

Demonstrated health benefits aside (provided that one’s work and life framework can support it), the Spanish government is considering labour-reforms that may curtail the tradition of the siesta. Interestingly, as ingrained as it seems in Spanish lifestyle and it is common-place across the Mediterranean as a way to avoid working through the hottest part of the day, the connotation of the prolonged afternoon nap with that country probably has more to do with advertised or perceived business-hours than cultural prevalence, the extended lunch and workday being formally instituted in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, when it was necessary for everyone to hold multiple jobs to make ends meet.
As there was little in the way of public transport, workers were granted a two or three hour break to make it to their second job and to work a full-shift, hours extended until late in the evening. The situation was exacerbated when Spain’s time zone was aligned with Berlin—out of solidarity with Nazi Germany though geographically much closer to London. As economic conditions gradually improved, this work-schedule took on the reputation of labourers being able to sneak home for a nice long and refreshing nap and worked until later in the night. The reality, however, sociologists believe is that the siesta-ideal is far from practical and is exacting too high a toll on workers and their families. The Spanish word for the concept of a power nap is siesta poderosa. In reality, few live close enough to their workplaces to consistently get away and take advantage of siesta-time and it causes havoc for your children and parents—rarely being able to settle down and turn in until after midnight. What do you think? Compared to counterparts in other European countries, Spaniards are just returning from lunch as others are getting ready to go home for the day, and for more and more something to be envious of. Alternatively, we could all institute a culture of napping and be a bit more flexible with what we think of as an honest day.

whether square-cut or pear-shaped

Geochemists at the University of Bristol, concerned with the mounting problem of what to do with spent radioactive material, have found a novel way of sequestering small bits of it safely to create gemstone batteries that could last for potentially thousands of years, corresponding to the half-life of the nuclear waste used to generate the modest but enduring charge. The waste is vapourised and inserted into the stone, which as the hardest substance in nature, are not prone to degradation or leeching out any radioactivity. There are hurdles to overcome, to be sure—not the least being the casing to house a gram of the nuclear cell is prohibitively expensive (but maybe cubic zirconia would be just as sturdy a substitute) and the output isn’t nearly as robust as most modern applications demand, but one day perhaps our cybernetics (pace-makers, auxiliary memory enhancers, bionic livers) or our robotic domestics might be powered by a little spark of radiation trapped inside a diamond.

the ghost of christmas pluperfect

Collectors’ Weekly has a nice reflection on the diaphanous and sparkly things that have fuelled how we frame Christmas time, hitting on how strange it is to think that our shared nostalgia—even having lived in Germany for all these years, a place stepped in its own tradition and exporter (in the Victorian Era—and much later, their glassmaking expertise) of many of the standard customs—for the most part don’t reach back to time immemorial but rather to post-war America and Mid-Century Modern style.
Despite all the fossilised lyrics of carols, in fact, almost all that’s not the reserve of the space-race and the burgeoning atomic age seems to be sourced back to the nineteenth century, and with Christmas’ revival (which quickly became something terrible and consumer-oriented), Victorians sought to keep it something pure and authentic—turning away from machines and mass-production and launching the Arts and Crafts movement. The spectre of materialism was always there but was particularly difficult to stave off after the austere years of all manufacturing going to the war effort and then industry finding itself surfeit with raw materials and excess capacity and beat swords into plow-shares—and tinsel and coffee-makers and vacuum-cleaners. Santa Claus was even accredited as an astronaut (and as a cosmonaut) to be tracked by NORAD. Reaching back even further, the holiday, supplanting Saturnalia, has always had its share of ulterior motives and customs that have the most curious and conflated origins but it’s no reason to humbug Christmas—nor to despair over its meaning and its keeping
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manual communication

Thanks to the marvellous Madam Jujujive, we appreciate that of course hearing impaired communities would also be interested in nominating and selecting words—or signs of the year. For its inaugural honour, the Swiss Deaf Association chose to bypass other novel gestures (Gebärden, signes, segnes, segni) such as the way of expressing vegan, Netflix or deportee and went with the sign inventedfor Donald Trump. Referencing the hair of course is brilliant but I could think of cruder but deserved ways of getting the message across just as quickly.