the day the music died

On this evening in 1959, a chartered 1947 Beechcraft Bonanza (the six-seater light aircraft still in production, making it the longest continuously distributed model in history), took off in blizzard conditions from the Mason City Municipal Airport, piloted by Roger Peterson. Shortly after takeoff, the plane crashed into cornfield outside of neighbouring Clear Lake, Iowa, killing the pilot and compliment of passengers, Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper—J P Richardson.

la fête de la chandeleur

While parts of the world are obsessing with weather prognosis as determined by a groundhog, in France (and other Francophone parts, I’m sure) Candlemas (the presentation of Jesus at the Temple,
inducting the infant into the Jewish faith and community) is attended with the Festival des Chandelles. In addition to a rainy day (quand ii pleut) signalling further forty more days of stormy weather (depending on who you ask), the days is also marked by making crêpes and galettes, which symbolise the waxing Sun, harking back to pre-Christian syncretism, and the coming spring after a long winter.

social capital or the dunwich horror

As social media behemoth Facebook is proving that bad behaviour does indeed pay, profits up and still the darling of uninventive advertisers, grifters and undermining elements despite the disdain it has for its critics and its users’ privacy and well-being, more and more studies are demonstrating the positive benefits of cutting the platform out of your routine.
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.” It has not been quite a year yet since I was persuaded to deactivate my account—rebuffing the cloying pleas to come back—and there was a time early on that I thought that the platform could have if not reformed and redeemed itself could merely demonstrate that it wasn’t something sinister and merely a wanton utility, an agnostic force majeure like other technological giants, but it’s since squandered that hope and I’ve not regretted the decision. “An isolated person requires correspondence as a means of seeing his ideas as others see them, and thus guarding against the dogmatisms and extravagances of solitary and uncorrected speculation.”

your feedback matters

Tedium treats us into another deep-dive—this time on the ostensibly quaint suggestion box, which for all its simplicity and peril of not heeding what it advice it solicits or fails to manages just to inform and propel the whole reputation-based service economy. The origins of inviting feedback are murky but one of the earliest examples can be sourced to a Shogunate of Edo-Era Japan.
In August 1721, public petition boxes called meyasubako (目安箱) were installed, and the government acted on one popular recommendation and opened up a free hospital the following year for those without means. Development is traced through modern times but one kind of has to balk at what companies demand presently with circumspection since a large part of the utility of the device lie in its honest appeal with the perception of safety and anonymity and with no fear of recrimination—which is largely stripped away with most interactions, either overtly or covertly. What do you think about that? Though our opinions and customer satisfaction is very much sought after and we’re seemingly encouraged to speak up, the voice we’re given is open to act and is an immodest request on the part of the facilitators to push research and marketing off on employees or paying customers.

frauenstimmrecht in der schweiz

Though the national referendum failed to pass with around sixty percent of the eligible voting population siding against it, on this day in 1959, the women of Vaud (Waadt) were enfranchised and could stand for public office. Other cantons over the ensuing decades eventually conferred suffrage to all residents, with the supreme court of the confederation ruling that the smallest, Appenzell Innerhoden (Appenzell Rhodes-Intérieures), must extend women the right to weigh in on local affairs in 1991.