λ

Prior to 1917, it was generally accepted that the Universe was in the big picture at least in a static state, infinite in both time and space and ageless until Albert Einstein equations governing General Relativity imitated that the Universe was expanding. To preserve the appearance of an eternal Universe that would not either collapse under its own weight or keep on growing more and more rarefied forever, Einstein fiddled with his own math a bit by inserting a cosmological constant to compensate.
Designated by the Greek letter lambda (before it came to symbolise wavelength), it would counteract the attractive force of gravity to avoid a Big Crunch before the idea of a Big Bang was proposed. The paradigm shifted a decade later with the proofs of astronomer and priest (whom one would think to be partial to a static-state) from Leuven called Georges Lemaître that showed that the Universe was expanding—two years prior to Edwin Hubble’s observational evidence with the red-shift. Einstein recanted and went on to nominate Lemaître for a prestigious science prize. Father Lemaître passed away in 1966, shortly after the detection of cosmic background radiation, the afterglow of the Big Bang, which reaffirmed his conjecture that the Universe was not ageless. Elegant as they were, the mathematics formulae did not quite dispense with the fact that the Universe was not as disperse as it ought to be and another contrivance like the cosmological constant or epicycles before had to be invoked or inveigled in order to account for the rate of expansion: dark energy.

de americaensche zee-roovers

Without the contributions of a Flemish chronicler and ship’s surgeon Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin, our pirate lore and tales of swash-buckling would be rather impoverished.
Having himself enlisted as a privateer with the buccaneering Sir Henry Morgan, later reformed as the lieutenant governor of Jamaica, Exquemelin appeared on the muster rolls of several vessels operating in the Caribbean over a period of several years, with a significant hiatus before retiring around 1670 to commit his pirate biographies to paper. The Buccaneers of America includes some pretty fantastic accounts and recalls stories of the daring raids by Captain Bartholomew Sharp, the demented treatment of prisoners by Alexandre Bras-de-Fer (Iron Arms) and the infamous cannibal François Lolonois whose conceits inform our own ideas of how pirates ought to behave. The urge for embellishment and mythologizing becomes appear almost right away with subsequent printings and translations betraying a complex bibliographic history and wild tales of adventure on the high sea being inserted on the foundation of Exquemelin’s reported experience.

ideation

In order to help the public visualise the mental health crisis being silently, uncomfortably weathered in the UK with suicide being the chief cause of mortality among males (three-quarters of suicide are carried out by men) under forty-five, a broadcaster has lent the roof of its headquarters tower to make a harrowing and arresting statement. Each of these eight-four figures—the number chosen as it represents on average the number of suicides in the UK per week, and each figure is based on an individual whom we have lost to suicide and tells his story.

cracking and packing

The term for establishing a political advantage for a partisan group by manipulating the boundary delimitations of electoral precincts known as gerrymandering saw its minting originally on this day in 1812 with a political cartoon by engraver and illustrator Elkanah Tisdale run in the newspaper Boston Gazette.
The caricature of a map of the districts of South Essex of the state of Massachusetts threated by a monster, a legendary salamander of medieval bestiaries—rendering what’s known as a persuasive map—was prompted by Governor Elbridge Gerry’s decision to redraw the area’s balloting zones to tilt favour towards the controlling senatorial party, the Democratic-Republicans. The portmanteau entered common-parlance by 1848 and occasionally other political bosses earn the suffix –mander for forwarding similar agendas. Incidentally, the Federalists, who advocated for a stronger central government, won the election and Gerry and his cronies were unseated though Essex county remained under Democratic-Republican control.

eine richtig gute laune der natur

Though perhaps not a global brand (but that status probably works to the advantage of the drink’s image and reputation), the soft-drink Bionade is certainly popular in Germany and across Europe and rather famously rebuffed efforts by one of the world’s major cola licenser’s to buy the rights to bottle it and it was first formulated and is still produced today just around the corner in Ostheim vor der Rhön.
Back in 1995, worried about the solvency of the family brewery and anticipation a trend of healthier living, the Braumeister sought to diversify by offering a non-alcoholic beverage that adhered to the German purity regulations that govern how beer is brewed and produced an organic, fermented drink which after a battery of experiments yields a bit of glucose rather than alcohol and flavoured with a secret recipe of fruit and herbal essences. Culturally, thanks in part successful marketing campaigns and product-loyalty by an identified demographic, the drink has earned the earned the cliché of Bionade-Biedermeier—sort of like Champagne-Socialist or Bourgeois-Bohemian but a gentler rebuke. Bionade comes in several varieties including Holunder (Elderberry—said to boost immune-response), Lychee, Orange-Ginger, Black Currants, Quince with Herbs and Strong.