golden years

Though governments still will enunciate the fact that a huge class, cadre will reach retirement age all at once and stop contributing to state pension schemes and leave the labour force all at once—which is the greater threat to those funds solvency—it seems more convincing to instead raise a spectre that all can relate to, perhaps out of fear of derision should one group (to which a majority of officials surely belong) be made to bear the entire burden.

Increasing longevity is cited as the prevailing argument for raising the retirement age, and while many people are living much longer on average than the sixty-five years of age that was suggested in the late nineteenth century as a social safety net was stitched together, that milestone was understood as the threshold of feebleness and general uselessness and rather not as the mark whence one had contributed his or her share to the system and could enjoy the next third or more of his or her adult life in retirement. Notching up the age redefines sixty-seven or however much it climbs as the new redundancy and further fails to respect the fact that there are profound differences, dependent on one’s employer and career-path, in benefits and retirement packages. Those best equipped and willing to keep working are reaping those years of good custody and care, and those who continue working are the fittest among us to begin with. On the other hand, those compelled to keep up their jobs because their pensions would provide insufficient income or are just counting the days have not only been robbed of a sense of purpose, no reciprocity lays ahead. What do you think? Though the welfare and will may be there to increase our useful life-spans, it seems to come at the expense of our Golden Years.

go-pro or pencil-shavings

Researchers are exploiting the amazing properties of the recently discovered carbon-foil graphene to mimic the behaviour of tendons and muscles that can tense and relax at the slightest prompt, be it moisture, pressure or light.
Once these little works of origami were better understood, range of motion could be configured in such a way and programmed to demonstrate certain strengths and agilities. The elusive class of carbon—distinct from the graphite that’s in pencil lead and diamond, had been guessed at for many years and even predicted the material’s robustness but no one could imagine how one could sheer a surface layer so thin as to realise all those assets until Manchester physicists Andre Geim with associate Konstantin Novoselov applied some office tape to a pencil-sketch he’d been making, balled up the tape and rolled it in his fingers before tossing it into the waste bin. Prompted by his partner, Geim later retrieved the bit of cellophane tape—which is a pretty nifty job in materials engineering itself being pressure-sensitive and will produce x-rays if used in a vacuum—to discover that a layer of grapheme had been preserved. Together awarded the Noble Prize in 2010 for this discovery, a decade prior Geim, making him the only laureate to hold both honours, was presented with the Ig Noble for his study on levitating frogs with small magnets. Though this imaginative parody of the pomp and circumstance international committees whose recognition can take decades or more seems to suggest a certain dastardliness in the sciences and humanities, it is quite the opposite in nomination and presentation, crediting achievements that first make one laugh and then think.

trapper-keeper or mixed-media

The ever-brilliant and stunning Colossal curates a very fine exhibition the schematic and stratified collages of artist Augustine Kofie, whose exacting planar work evokes other assemblages and pastiches but harks back as well to an interesting but receding niche when what we call data occupied physical space and needed to be corralled and organised in particular ways. It’s the odd bird, I think, who harbours nostalgic feelings for carbon-paper and filing (though working for the American government, the paperless office is still in the future) but it is really poignant to study the architectural cross-sections of note-pads and linotype folders and wonder where the intersections between storage and figures now stand.

5x5

unrepresented: via the intrepid Presurfer, profiles of non-existent countries

feathering one’s nest: archaeologists discover a wealth of paper ephemeral in generations of roosting birds in the roof of a Moscow area cathedral

defence of driving: bizarre, vintage missionary meets Martian drivers’ education film

artist’s rendering: comparative visualisation of five hundred exoplanets

outrageous fortune: historic figures that gamed the system and the legacy of ancient lotteries

minstrel show or executive function

Via the always brilliant Mind Hacks’ Spike Activity that encapsulates weekly developments in neuroscience and psychology come an interesting study that the chemical signals that the blood delivers to the brain are not merely the well-travelled troubadours with reports of far-off happenings and fuel sources they they are generally taken to be but rather selective in their service.
I was always grateful that our bodies were smarter than us. Blood flowing into the folds of the brain does not just blindly acquiesce to the demands of the neurons, it seems, but rather can itself dictate what parts of the brain receive nourishment and assert a political influence after a fashion over the choices we make and priorities assigned. The circulatory system (which also pushes lymph) does not take orders from the brain from conception but like language and motor-skills, is also a learnt behaviour, which really is saying quite a lot about self-discipline. What do you think? What if it’s true that the blood can veto our will or lack of resolve?

gold from the waves, manna from heaven

In one of the darkest ironies that are apt to occur when the sciences and politics collide, chemist Fritz Haber’s double-edged contributions to human understanding enabled the world’s population to increase four-fold in a little more than a generation, giving arguably mankind the means to eat itself out of house and home, and from the same discovery, engineered by his own hand, a more violent and immediate process for mass-slaughter. Under the tutelage of several prominent professors and with a background in the dye-business (albeit organic), Haber invented a method for creating artificial ammonia from from the nitrogen and hydrogen given up already to the atmosphere by plants to return to the fields as a synthetic fertilizer—immediately changing the nature of farming, its scale becoming industrial and less labour-intensive. Awarded the Nobel Prize for this accomp- lishment, which sustains today over half the global population, whom wouldn’t have been born without the food-security Haber helped put in place, the scientist turned to his real passion—which was his quest to harvest grains of gold from the ocean, and Haber proved it was feasible although ultimately economically untenable—before turning to his next commission. As gunpowder was originally a by-product of the ingredients that went into natural fertilizers, Haber’s process of fixing nitrogen was also quickly recognised as a conduit for new weapons that might prove advantageous in the awful trench warfare of World War I that was turning into a impasse, with no progress by either side. After having created untold futures, Haber oversaw the first volleys of poison gas attacks in an unending chain of destruction. Haber also developed the gas mask at this time, anticipating that his methods would be incorporated broadly. Aerosols would figure in both achievements, giving rise to pesticides for growing crops and the gas-chambers of World War II. With a career so haunted, no wonder such an important figure in the coursings of modernity is hardly remembered.