loose change or standard operating procedure

Surely one of the great tragic coincidences of recent times and a great bounty for conspiracy theorists was that the fledging European Union in late summer of 2001 was poised to assert its supranational judicial rights and challenge the US on certain relics of legislation that gave America relatively unfettered access to European and global channels of communication.
The terror attacks of 9/11 took place and the EU dropped its suit against Project ECHELON, an intelligence scheme, programme stood up by the Five Eyes of the Anglo-Saxon partnership to spy on the Soviets in the late 1960s, once—a week after filing, the whole matter was overshadowed and charges rather reversed. Back in 1998 and the following year, Swiss and then New Zealand (a reluctant junior member of the Five Eyes community herself, though many others I suspect are envious of that cadet role) counter-intelligence suspected that their faxes were being compromised and a series of headlines and nascent exposés (titled among others, “Big Brother without a Cause”) hinted at the existence of this programme and that its mission had expanded far beyond its original reach, snooping on bank activity, internet traffic, satellite telemetry and business communiques. Though progenitor of other initiatives and a mark of enduring awareness of the surveillance state and dragnet and data-warehousing techniques, the existence of ECHELON was not confirmed until August of this year—owing to the disclosures of the Fugitive Snowden.

bib fortuna

H and I are getting very excited about seeing the next instalment of the Star Wars saga. I decided to pose a selection of my collection of action figures from the franchise (old and dear friends, every one), first featuring just a few of those characters with walk-on parts who were only in one scene—albeit no less iconic, and those various costumed variants, suited up for action on different fronts.
I wonder if having a new hat, helmet is still a valid reason for marketers to introduce a new toy, which had little impact on directing decisions—assuredly it is and always was but times seemed simplier back then.  Nonetheless, the merchandising possibilities (though that might well be the unknown power of the Dark Side) seem really enthralling.

kleinstadt

The ever-inspired Nag on the Lake shares a nice travelogue that profiles just a hint of some of the nicest small towns around the world to visit, including her own Niagara-on-the-Lake.
All the destinations look inviting and it is certainly a noble effort in keeping within small-town criteria (rather hard to define, especially considering international variance and considering how small towns grow into big cities) that may be a little of the tourist-trodden path and it invites greater inclusion. I can think of a lot of additions. The only place that H and I know from that list is the magical Rothenburg ob der Tauber here in Middle-Franconia. The immaculately preserved medieval centre of the town is quite a draw for tourists, however, and despite the vociferous authenticity, there’s somewhat of a theme-park, Truman Show atmosphere about it—not that it is not worth seeing and experiencing, quite the opposite. What small towns would you recommend?

5x5

mandelbrot: elegant, shuffled fractals of gears

imperative: the moral dilemmas of self-driving cars

gender neutral: as a concession to how people actually use the Queen’s English, the singular they is now admissible in print—according to some sources

festoonery: clever, cheerful hospital Christmas décor

skywalker ranch: the European Space Agency’s upcoming ExoMars mission will include a moisture-farming unit

lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate

Via the go-to web-presence for all things weird and wonderful, Dangerous Minds, comes builder Mihai Marius Mihu’s rendering in LEGO the Nine Levels of Hell of Dante Alighieri’s epic poem Inferno. It is with interest that the Romanian artist denies any scholarly insight into Dante’s work, having eschewed reading it and rather sought out only abstracts found on-line as his guide for this allegorical descent, for his interpretation—not wanting to be textually-biased. These panels make clever use of the medium and strike me as inspired ways of visualising each of the circles and their associated mortal sins.

the international society for the suppression of savage customs

Whereas previously European powers had been content to take out rat-nibbles of Africa on its coastal edges, towards the end of the nineteenth century, a constellation of circumstance coalesced and set off the so-called scramble for the Dark Continent. A collusion of the Ottoman Empire gradually ossifying, the Industrial Revolution and the voracious appetite to exploit new resources, and the Civil War in the United States that disrupted the cotton market for English importers (and the later effort to establish alternate supply-lines in the colonies that caused the oversaturated exchange to collapse) and empire-envy by the latecomers—Germany and Belgium, poor-relations—caused Portugal, fearing more intrusion on their age old bailiwick on all territory since the expeditions of Columbus to the east of Cape Verde Islands (that is—the entire “unclaimed” hemisphere outside of Europe to India and the Far East, while Castilian Spain could claim the Americas), to convene a summit.
Hosted by an ambitious Berlin and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, this meeting would codify how Africa would be governed and the spoils partitioned. In his Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad referred to the Berlin Conference (oder die Kongokonferenz) facetiously by the above title and it really became a brutal seizure very quickly. With all of the vast continent already claimed—with the only the outpost of Liberia and the unconquerable Ethiopia (Abyssinia) remaining independent, Belgium and Germany had to settle unknown central Africa and relatively undesirable and out of the way lands. The formal suppression of Africa proved not only an alternate vent for Europeans to carry out latent hostilities, fighting by-proxy, but became a foil as well to counter-balance the advancing clout of the US and the Soviet Union after the Great War, and the process of decolonisation did not begin for most lands for at least six decades and more after the Berlin Conference—if ever.  Moreover, dividing up lands without respect to other affiliation and along arbitrary boundaries has led to no end of ongoing strife and suffering.