5x5

volksmedizin: collection of unusual health tips from Austria

best face forward: social networking giant is developing algorithms to identify people from their backsides (auch auf Deutsch)

on the bedpost overnight: an absurdist’s look at paparazzi culture, framing celebrities with an old wad of chewing gum

cats and dogs: collection of foreign idioms for heavy rain

turnip princess: apocryphal assortment of newly re-discovered fairy tales

gorgon ou au revoir, ruby tuesday

The French edition of the English language daily, the Local, is tragically reporting that Ruby the Lamb, whose genes were spliced with those of a jellyfish in order to express proteins that would result in transparent florescent skin, was apparently inadvertently slaughtered and served to some hapless diner.

The poor little lamb was created, rather gruesomely, for research purposes (in order to better study organ transplants by allowing doctors to observe them directly) and local authorities are prosecuting the matter as a contravention of environmental regulations against genetically modified foodstuffs, though Ruby was probably safe to eat, chimera-experts opine. The vampire lamb pictured is still at large.

tadpoles and marginalia

Though rarely presented unmediated in its direct and unadulterated form, having been glossed and thoroughly pardoned by Church and civic scholastics through commentaries, the major difficulty in reconciling the philosophies of the ancients within the framework of medieval societies was the general notion of a detached, rational (and arrived at by rational means) divinity—as opposed to a personal and intervening one—and the idea that the soul was unperishing but not in the sense of individual souls.

Thomas Aquinas (influenced in turn by the translation and commentary of Moorish thinker Ibn Rušd called Averroës, who argued that reason and received holy scripture partook of one and the same truth, and that religious symbols and rituals were more expedient means to arrive at this truth since most people did not have the time or ability to figure this out on their own) was instrumental in bringing the traditions of the classics into the fold—but the differences were not resolved exactly, nor were they ever but rather minimised and marginalised. Plato, through Socrates, was probably most suppressed and kept under wraps for millennia, due to the fact he believed in the transmigration of the soul and there was already more than enough problems to go around with heretical sects that shared this belief in reincarnation. The teacher could be safely excised from the lesson but not so much for his student, Aristotle, whose practical contributions could not be ignored and medicine, forms of government, poetry and theatre all hinged and were beholden to the overall cosmology.

Though Aristotle, departing from Plato, did not believe that contemplating the Forms (that is the perfect, idealised and immaterial abstraction that are the templates for all the imperfect, corruptible earthly manifestations of things) was all that beneficial from a political point of view, Aristotle did nonetheless think the theory had weight. Parallel to the injunction of Averroës that there was only one self-same truth that could be arrived at by different approaches, it follows (I suppose, though highly contentious and probably best left alone as it was for centuries) that souls—disembodied—will be aspiring towards one Reason, pure and immediate intellect unburdened by personalities. The same otherwise, reincarnation where one does not remember one’s past lives although choose them seems pretty much the identical argument and conclusion. Rational thought and logic is the same for all and imagination is pared away—that Form of—say—Frog, the abstraction is something absolute and unaffected by whatever figments we might entertain, be it Mister Toad from Wind in the Willows, the celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County, poor frog on a dissection table or frog in the wilds. For all the variety, they all partake of Frog (except maybe the toad), and are distilled into one abstraction that would transcend and even reject the individual paths that we took to get there.  I do not know if this dispassioned, rational sort of after-life would appeal to those expecting reward or punishment.  What do you think?  Would this sort of tempered enlightenment be any different in the end? 

5x5

wet-blanket: the concept of cooling the mark out is the opposite of cheering-on, warming-up

effigy: from our wonderful friends at Nag-on-the-Lake, the Donald in piñata form

http 403: the Caliphate is making everything forbidden

religious pluralism: images of amazing ritual costumes of the neo-pagans of the British Isles

armillary: nicely curated collection of star maps from Atlas Obscura

elite and anodyne

Though one thinks of the format of the seven-segment display to have been a fairly recent concept, it predates the electronic control-panels, trusty alarm clocks, pocket calculators and home entertainment gadgets by decades—the design first patented in the USA as early as 1908 with illuminated instrument panels following just two years later. The rendering of numerals—calculator spelling with 1337 and the like—in such a manner was not thrust upon the public all at once, however, with the advent of the liquid crystal display (LED) but was already a familiar sight on the vertical totems of petrol stations, quoting the current price and in the distinctive flip-flap boards of departure terminals.