zen den

As a bonus, through the final act of the most recent episode of This American Life, we are acquainted with the delightful yoga instructional videos (see previously) and classroom lesson plans from the studio of Cosmic Kids. The enthusiasm is contagious and some exercise routines are based on based on fairy stories, nursery rhymes and the contemporary re-tellings, and for this movie night themed show, they had the instructor take on a film for grown-ups, Thelma & Louise—not presented here but rather a quick regiment of basic poses (asanas) to practise and limber up to.

movie night

In an exploration of how film informs our sympathies and limn the present through memory and reinterpretation over the years, couching the present of the movie-makers in our own, This America Life producer Sean Cole digs up an obscure title from 1968, which despite its all-star ensemble cast was singularly bad to have not garnered much attention or conservation heretofore though presently in the redemptive and consoling way that cinematic homeopathy can arise to, even if the inversion of current climate. With several points of resonance to today (that year was also a particularly tumultuous time) we cycle through distrust in science, mask-mandates, downplaying the contagion (the vector being instead of bats a toucan), negative implications for the economy, retreating to a bunker and the suggestion that the virus was manufactured in a laboratory for nefarious ends—though the infection and its attendant co-morbidities result in euphoria and an altered outlook that is particularly communicable.

biomarker

Researchers—with due restraint and caution—have made the announcement that the concentration of the toxic gas phosphine (phosphane, PH₃) in the Venusian atmosphere, which should not be present at the levels they have detected in accordance with known chemical and geologic reactions, consistent with the presence of anaerobic bacterial life suspended (see also) at a tolerable zone within the thick atmosphere. There’s a selection of nice primers and more details of the unexpected finding at Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy at the link up top.

popish plot

Promoted and promulgated by English priest Titus Oates, born on this day in 1649 ( †1705), the ungrounded conspiracy theory gripped England and Scotland with an anti-Catholic hysteria from its 1678 circulation and was not easily dispelled despite, Oates’ eventual arrest and conviction of perjury for giving false testimony that led to the execution of twenty-two individuals. Capitalising on fear and suspicions—and guilt by affiliation, real or attributed—of the foiled Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and fuelled by the Thirty Years’ War, framed as a Hapsburg effort to stamp out German and British Protestantism, Oates’ sermons accused one hundred Jesuits and their supporters of plotting an assassination attempt against Charles II. Owing to the recent restoration of the monarchy, the government took any accusation with gravity and led to legislation excluding Catholics from the throne with the Act of Settlement of 1701, further giving rise to two political party factions, the Tories who were opposed and the Whigs in favour of prohibiting Catholics from rule.

recapitulation theory

Having before seen some of the precocious handiwork of Charles Darwin’s children, we enjoyed this curated collection from Open Culture of the early drawings of the immanent scientist whose offspring matured beyond test subjects and objects of academic curiosity into laboratory assistants and apprentice researchers themselves with several becoming scientists in their own right. Interest born to a degree out of melancholy and self-preservation, these illustrations and what they prefigure provides a nice counter-balance.  Much more to explore at the link above.