juicy JUICE

The European Space Agency are committing their resources over the next decade to the development of a billion euro project to explore the Jovian system and its distinct, exotic clutch of satellites. The mission, tentatively called JUICE for JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer, will venture to the giant world and study the large Galilean moons, diverse and stranger yet though the sample of alien worlds is rather limited for humans, to see what secrets might lie just beneath the surfaces of Europa, Ganymede, Io and Callisto.

ESA will be supporting many other missions and research-projects in the interim, like expanding the International Space Station and diving into the dynamics of the Sun, and this meanwhile is a long time, more than a decade projected out with a travel time of eight years. It is rocket science and while I can only imagine the planning necessary to ensure a successful execution and timing (since with limited propulsion, the launch of space probes requires the coordination and cooperation of the gravity and alignment of the moons and planets for an extra tug and to reduce resistance), exploration at a pace that’s not propelled by threat or competition could become a bigger barrier to public interest than the complexities of the science. It is exciting and maybe the wait will be outpaced, boxed-in by advancing technologies in media res, but it is oddly responsible and mature burden that astronomers take on, like thinking about retirement, and becomes an instant legacy at the moment it is launched—an artefact tunneling through space and time, like the lighthouse beacons from the stars themselves that speak of the escaping past but not of the present or the more classic rides at amusement parks. Like the waltz of the epicycles, I suppose science has its measured pace too and will reveal discoveries and hopeful inspire throughout.

bookplate special

The always beautiful and superb Bibliodyssey is presenting a collection of vintage bookplates—ex libris, from the Latin for “from the books of...” and I thought that this label from the library of one William Livermore Kingman with the humble motto “I am but a Gatherer and Disposer of Other Men's Stuff” was a brilliant, steam-punk mission statement for blogging in general. Most of these examples date from the turn of the last century, and I wonder with such things as detestable electronic water-marks and embedded captioning whether people still create their own personal stamps. I can recall while I was at university going through a phase with woodcutting and pasting my mark in my book collection. Most of the time, the end results amounted to experimenting with different fonts and the playful, pun-motto of my alma mater: Facio liberos ex liberis libris libraque or I make free men out of children by means of books and a balance.

maying

Though the day will not pass without celebration and demonstration and maybe riots, in more than eighty countries around the world, there is no need for a general strike as 1. May is a national holiday. And although the roots of the of many popular movements can be traced back to upheaval and abusive working conditions in America, the International Workers’ Day itself a commemoration of the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, the US has seemingly for some time been peddling a smear campaign against a workers’ holiday and the striving for social justice that it represents, no to mention the older rites and traditions of the cross-quarter event. With the onset of Cold War polarization, the first of May across the Atlantic became known as “Americanization Day,” after having already established a separate labor day in order to minimize connotations with lurking Communists and Anarchists. Well before the threat of Soviet expansion was considered eliminated, the US dropped this celebration of manifest destiny, by name, in favour of calling it instead—and still to this day—“Loyalty Day.”

gerrymander or mayor mccheese

Perhaps the recent media disclosure that in fact Americans respect their own ideal of German prowess, engineering and discipline (irrespective of what kind of magical or wishful thinking that is) is more like the kiss of death—hitching the tenor and fatalism of American politics to how Germany and the current government carry on to handle an undulating, interest waxing and waning, crisis in the economic sector married to more profound and long-term questions of European identity, peace and cooperation.

The polygamist US is strange in courting another marriage of convenience with a partner that’s very coy and mutable: Germany either, as the hinge for the US election, represents deft leadership and resolve or Germany is the Bürgermeister of Euro-Town, the focus of the Red Scare rhetoric that was an early theme in the campaign—that European style governance was not working in Europe and certainly would not work in the States, and strident scolding from the President and monetary policy-setters about how Germany needed to act, not to mention the volleys from the credit rating agencies were landing on all sides. It’s like as if one was playing Battleship and the grid is all red-hits except for a Germany-shaped cut-out. I don’t think Germany wants the responsibility (in the rarified air of the democratic process) of king-maker or empire-wrecker, nor agrees to the dire hysterics of the moment, whether regarded through American eyes as a bulwark of self-control or as a Welfare Queen. Such is the statecraft of blame and deflection. Despite frustration and desperation, no one, from Germany and France, whose smugness may be a media construct, to Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Portugal and the rest have given up on their native talents and resources. Yanked on stage and ordered to dance, one would think that global financial maneuvering was old-hat for some of the designated trouble-economies. Borders have been re-drawn, crossing-wires or supplanting the signs of the Zodiac with one’s own corporate constellations. Certainly any of these countries have the sophistication, wherewithal and frame to play and win besides, this is not the top draw in Europe. There is also not the delineation of the Free and Imperial City of Detroit, the Principality of California or the Most Serene Republic of the Mississippi for market comparison. Inflated and artificial divisions press the attention of the public to this side show and away from the native resources that America sorely lacks. Instead of trying to affect a cultural and productive remedy, US political antagonists are yoking their prospects to a very cosmopolitan cause that is not Europe’s first priority.

east-enders

In order to ensure that security theatre see its caliber of performance bolstered by no less than the finest special effects and pyrotechnics, MiniDef is installing (with no pretense at discretion) an anti-aircraft missile battery on top of a residential estate in East London, where some seven hundred people live.

This vantage point affords security forces a commanding view of the games’ venues as well as urban airports, probably of the new US Embassy construction site too. The building of such a gargoyle is really the limit: no doubt everyone hopes that the event of the summer benefits one and all, but it is hard to accept that anyone aside from corporate sponsors and defense contractors are going to come through the hassle any richer for the experience. It is no great strain on the imagination to think up ways that this could go terribly wrong, and if such measures are deemed necessary and the threat is in any way tenable, shouldn’t the whole affair have been called off long ago, to spare the expense and all the humiliation for the regular people of London? There are easier avenues for the promotion of public safety—and imagine what’s not hailed in the news and carried out publicly if we are already privy to this—but the business of security has become self-perpetuating and won’t obligingly be forced back to its original confines.

brigadoon or unscheduled appearance

Though more concerned presently is on keeping Venice and other islands from sinking further below the waves, our favourite BLDG BLOG reports on the very curious case of the sometimes island of Ferdinandea. Presently a volcanic seamount in the Mediterranean off the coast of Sicily and directly north of the island of Lampedusa, which garnered attention during the revolutionary Spring of North Africa when an influx of refugees came into this nearest port of the European Union.

Ferdinandea’s most famous and prominent appearance was when it broke the surface in the year 1831, causing quite a sensation (quite expected for an island appearing overnight and without warning) with many scientists and celebrities visiting the tiny basalt shoal with two lake-like depressions and even sparking a minor international crisis over disputed claims: the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the United Kingdom, Spain and France all saw strategic importance in this little rock. Some were even alarmed that this outcropping might be the first stage of an entire chain of volcanic islands that would join Sicily to Tunisia, changing dramatically the definition of Europe and Italy’s crown. The tensions were soon quelled, however, when after five months, the island was reclaimed by the sea, almost as abruptly as it had appeared. Aside from a few rare intervening appearances, including an incident when the seamount was bombed in the shallows by American fighter jets, believing the marauding island was a Libyan submarine, Ferdinandea is lounging about six meters beneath the waves but could, at any time, rise again.