choose wisely

While out on loan, the Nanteos Cup, conflated for around the past century with the Holy Grail, the was stolen last summer but is now returned almost one year later, reports the intrepid Atlas Obscura.
The wooden drinking vessel is reputed to contain a sliver of the True Cross and is imbued with miraculous healing properties and the Welsh Nanteos estate, which it’s named for, will lend it out freely to the sick in hopes of curing them. The Sturm und Drang of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle and Parsifal at the turn of the century was what benighted the cup and made it one more of the several hundred candidates (literal and abstract) found in Europe. Whatever the origin, it is nonetheless quite a treasured cup and a quite massive sting operation was launched in Wales, which led to its recovery, concluding with a shadowy, midnight hand-off.

eine milliarde dollar

As Germany pauses to recognise sixty years since its ascension into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the country’s ministry of defence is pledging to take on a more active role.

Acknowledging that security requires investment, although Germany insofar as being a reliable dues-paying member, protecting national interests could never be called a moocher, Germany will raise its pooled contribution to a billion euro annually, a round two percent of its gross-national output. It’s nothing to slouch at—the sum—of course, and it’s a matter of debate whether NATO remains divisive in a constructive way, but it does seem like a small ransom to bolster native industry, relatively. German maintains a separate, standing peace with the Bundeswehr as do most other coalition members, but such a budgeted outlay (notwithstanding collateral, hidden costs) makes me think of Doctor Evil from Austin Powers initially under-bidding his demands, embarrassingly, and only later to set a price more commiserate with the world after learning of the exponential inflation that had transpired. I suppose that such a commitment, no matter how it’s parsed, would play the same to the German public.

#grexit, #PRexit

Patriotism aside, the USA and the EU are in many ways organised around the same basic principles. Although I am sure that many would like to back away from such a comparison by pointing out important distinctions and the fact that the US is a more (or less, depending on one’s point of view) coherent bloc, despite or because of varying jurisdiction, taxes, etc.

The US cannot exactly boot out the recalcitrant and the under-performing and succession has been made an illegal-fiction—and while the fledgling EU has untried provisions to kick-out members or let them leave voluntarily, and perhaps more importantly, on balance with the insistence that this experiment will work, the ability to selectively invite new partners—which really isn’t a possibility for America—and the core of badly-behaving Europe achieve a new and hopefully better character in expanding its borders. Though many of the contiguous territory, in my opinion, are in far worse financial straits, the Colombian Union is baiting and beating up on one of its colonial outliers in insolvent Puerto Rico with mounting attention that may well match captivation that the Greek tragedy is providing.  Receivership does not seem like an option that will do anyone any good, other than the lenders of last resort.

5x5

ephemera: MOMA acquires beautiful set of postcards advertising the inaugural Bauhaus exhibition

mincome going dutch: Utrecht will test out basic income plus a look at historical experiments with eliminating poverty

redrum: food decoration inspired by Stanley Kubrick classic The Shining, via the splendiferous Nag on the Lake

proud as a peacock: charming round up of railings against the US Supremes’ decision to ban state-level curbs on marriage

neapolitan: biography of Rose Totino, patroness, of frozen pizza—plus a selection of inventive advertisements made with stock-images  

eyalets and encomia

Though now I know that the frigate on the obverse of the old drachma coin represents the vessel of the head of the Greek admiralty and freedom-fighter Constantine Kanaris, thinking on the possibly eminent return of the currency, the nature of nomos, numisma and the Union, the paradoxical Ship of Theseus—where one speculates if a boat is still the same boat if one has replaced a single nail, plank, sail, jib and mast, the entire deck and eventually though still called Theseus’ comprises none of the original composition.

Kanaris was celebrated by the Greek independence movement of the 1820s and 1830s for having destroyed a large part of the Ottoman Armada and eventually securing freedom from the empire. It’s enough fractious history for the West to understand the Holy and Roman Empire of the Germans and the associated Kleinstaaterei, but the parallel career of the land of the sultans, which was longer-lived, far vaster and far more heterogeneous is an equally if not more fascinating story. There was the same sort of mediatisation and devolution among kingdoms, principalities, duchies, condominia, and ecclesiastics but under other territorial titles—eyalets, sanjaks and beylerbeys. The Ottoman Empire, which grew from the ruins of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium), saw its decline and ultimate dissolution in the aftermath of World War I. There’s of course not a direct correspondence between contemporary imperium and Greek rebellion—just as the patchwork of Europe is not the apposite pole to the Ottoman Empire and trying to force the comparison is a disservice but maybe there is something to be gleaned from the dissection and reconstitution in the end.