decade or joyful mysteries

I spied an unusual piece at the Flohmarkt today, which I was eager to learn more about. It is indeed a single decade (referring to the ten round beads around the circumference that represents one iteration of Hail Mary) rosary ring, but like traditional rosary are not to be worn around the neck, this counter is meant to be rotated with the thumb and forefinger.
Inspired by Basque and Irish designs for more discreet articles of the faith when practising Catholicism was persecuted, these were also distributed to soldiers going off to battle so as not to get tangled up, especially during WWI. One could keep count of the traditional five decades by moving the ring to the next finger.  I am not sure if this is one of those, since it has the microscopic inscription ITALY on the obverse but perhaps as it is intricately worked and I am happy to have learnt something more about praying the rosary.

go canada!

Collectors’ Weekly curates a fine gallery of the collected and concerted advertising campaigns of the Canadian-Pacific holiday-making enterprise.
From the earliest days when the trans-continental railroad was complete, the company ran a screen-printing workshop, employing some of the finest graphic artists, like Thomas Hall and Norman Fraser, to create iconic and timeless travel posters to allure travelers to venture far and wide within its expanded empire that progressed from trains, to planes, cruise-liners and even resort hotels. Be sure to visit Collectors’ Weekly to be treated to much more of this dazzling, vintage ephemera.

doctor zaius, doctor zaius

A Kazakhstani scientist with the alliterative name of Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov was a pioneer in the early 1900s in the field of artificial insemination.
Praised and later eulogised by sociologist Ivan Pavlov, Ivanov’s chief accomp- lishments were in the field of animal husbandry and of interest to horse-breeders, but reportedly his research also dabbled in controversy, hoping to create ape-human hybrids, called humanzees—for no particular reason. Early trials failed and the premature death of simian donors and the aftermath of the Soviet revolution put a stop to his further experiments. Contemporaries even composed an opéra-bouffe called Orango to lampoon and chastise Ivanov’s ambitions, but it was not staged until 2011 to somewhat less knowledgable audiences. Let’s be sure to thank the Frinkiac for the ease in finding this appropriate illustration.

hacktivist or equities and securities

The US Federal Bureau of Investigations dropped its suit against one global technological giant, served a backhanded measure of victory to the company for having the integrity not to relent in the face of the governments dragnet policies of surveillance, once the agency realised that there was a back-door way, a security flaw to exploit, to access a user’s data, telemetry, call logs and contacts despite (or perhaps in spite of) the company’s refusal to cooperate.
This one subpoena was arguably a matter of national security and public safety but there would be no way of putting this genie back in the bottle once even one exception was made. The company begged-off, in fact, that they were unable to engineer a work-around to the device’s security protocols, but now the FBI has contracted its work out to another company that could apparently bypass the safety measures, but no one is quite sure how. I find it a little incredulous that purely technical means were applied, but it’s hard to say—especially not that the FBI is magnanimously offering its newly-acquired expertise to help local law-enforcement to shoehorn their way into the phones and gadgets of relatively small-fry criminals (or suspected criminals) to keep tabs on their entire networks and supposed syndicates. There’s a legal provision that could be invoked called “equities review” that could force the former plaintiff to disclose what recourse they found that led to them dropping the case, arguing that it’s better for companies to be made aware of an exploitable flaw so they can patch it instead of affording a few then a lot of parties entry, but I suspect it will be hard to compel the FBI to reveal its sources and stooges.

billboard and hoarding

Though the ways advertising space is appraised these days might be somewhat transformed, I think we can all be nostalgic over Messy Nessy Chic’s appreciation of the faded art of hand-drawn artisanal signage with its distinctive type-faces.
Though it’s only an echo of the craft, we’re often treated to ghost signs or brickads preserved on the façades of older buildings after the business has long since disappeared or the nice, bold penmanship of daily menus written on blackboard easels on the sidewalks before cafes and restaurants. There are a few professionals who still ply the aesthetic but I am hoping that there’s a bigger revival.