tatort oder der kommissar’s in town

Though truthfully I cannot say I consider myself a dedicated fan of the series—though I usually have it on in the background and make it a point to gyrate to the funky opening soundtrack—I think that I must give it another go after reading Dangerous Minds’ appreciation of Tatort, a crime-scene investigatory franchise that has regular parallel plot-lines in a dozen different cities within the German Sprachraum. The series has aired for four decades presently and its thousandth instalment is coming up soon. The tribute highlights some of the best episodes and offers a lucid explanation to the nonpareil format to outside audiences—however much we might already fancy ourselves forensics experts thanks to CSI and Law & Order. I have caught glimpses of familiar sights in the show’s extensive venues, especially Leipzig, beforehand—and although a recent chapter was filmed between Frankfurt and Wiesbaden, I was a little let down that Wiesbaden’s screen-presence was severely limited and confined to an underground carpark—though I could be reasonably certain I recognised it.

and the stars look very different today

The ever-discerning Kottke gives us a nice primer on the first confirmed, cautious measurement of gravitational waves, ripples echoing out across the Universe, only approaching a vanishingly small but just detectable undulation from what would seem to be the most violently explosive of events—the dangerous waltz and collision of a black hole and its dance partner.
This kind of carnage of the dance-floor, after indirect sightings and a needful component of the Theory of General Relativity was first proffered a century ago (there’s a nice vintage newspaper clipping at the link above) that although some measure of confidence was withheld and no one knew whether we might have to return to the drawing-board, produced an explosion so powerful as to be felt across space and time by a pair of super-sensitive seismographs. One possible inference of this space-quake is the existence of a heretofore hypothetical massless particle called provisionally the graviton. The particle responsible for imparting mass is thought to have none itself because gravity appears to have an infinite range, and objects tug on each other no matter how far apart.  What do gravitational waves mean to you?  The Universe is bumping us apart and pushing us together with these wave fronts all the time but we cannot experience them as our frame of reference is compressed and expanded to an equal degree.

olympic-class

Messy Nessy Chic furnishes us with an update on the anticipated maiden voyage of the Titanic II in 2018, a meticulous replica of the original announced by an ambitious Australian mining tycoon first back in 2012, on the centenary of the cruise-liner’s tragic sinking. The project has suffered some setbacks, and one does have to wonder about the wisdom or folly of tempting fate and declaiming another unsinkable behemoth, but the berthing and christening are being planned and the attention to detail in below deck is absolutely astounding. Please sure to visit the link for a large gallery of images of the new cabins, dining halls, gymnasia and grand reception area in comparison to the original historic photographs.

the island of doctor moreau or domestic-partnerships

Though I am no advocate for animal-testing nor place any stock on the pharmaceutical industry to regulate itself, perhaps the fear that a governing counsel in the UK might grant geneticists a purchase to explore hybridisation of beast and man may be misguided. The notion that animals might be breed as spare-parts or we might find ourselves in an awful transmigatory situation where a human soul might be trapped in the body of another species—or an animal’s mind in a person’s form.
It might be—however, a necessity that a single panel is convened to review proposals on a case-by-case basis and issue a verdict, as any codex would be insufficient to cover all the possibilities that are quickly growing and escape the peerage of science and ethics altogether. Proponents and sceptics alike concede life-saving advances have been won from animal-testing, though important questions remain regarding the efficacy and alternative routes that might have yielded the same benefits for mankind. Not to equate genetic-modification and the creation of chimera to the practise of husbandry, crop-cultivation or even natural selection (I think this argument is a thin and perhaps a lazy one), but our domestic familiars have been with us for a long time. Farming is an incubator for some of our most dire diseases but has also led to some redemptive advances, and it would behove one frightened by the headlines to remember that it was by the observation that milkmaids—having acquired a mild case of cow-pox, were somehow resistant to small-pox, and thus poising physicians for formulating the Germ Theory and the concept of vaccination (from the Latin for cow, vaca) and immunisation with antibodies eventually culled in chicken eggs. Insulin to treat diabetes was first isolated when doctors extracted a certain hormone that calves produced and tried injecting it in themselves and observed the effects on blood-sugar. What do you think? Is a counsel of experts superior to reactionary legislation or by this legal breach, are we just conceding any control in the face of progress?

décoration for the yellow house

Via Nag on the Lake we learn that in anticipation of its upcoming retrospective on the art of Vincent van Gogh, the Chicago Institute of Art has created his room in Arles, which can be rented by the public as sort of bed-and-breakfast experience. This is a delightful draw to get people learn more about the artist and his work, but as the Yellow House period bookends his descent (late summer to just before Christmas 1888, sunflowers to sunflowers) and mental breakdown, I don’t know if it’s the best accommodations for all and sundry.

cabbages and kings

From Wikipedia’s On this Day… sidebar, I learnt that not only is this the anniversary of anniversary of the congressional selection (contingent presidential election) of John Quincy Adams in 1825, when a three-way split among the united Democratic-Republican party, the Whigs and the National Republicans resulted in no candidate a majority in the Electoral College, it also marks the date when young Alessandro Ludovisi, styled Gregory XV, was elevated to pope in 1621, not through the familiar conclave but rather by acclamation—a voice vote. Although sometimes agreement is still measured by yeas and nays, Pope Gregory was the last pontifex vetted in this way. I wonder how public versus a secret ballot sits with one’s constituency. President Adams was not America’s only president to bypass the conduits of the democratic-process (such as it is—creating the modern day two party system out of Republican-backers who supported the defeated Andrew Jackson and the sore-winner Democrats) and the majority of politics (sacred and profane) take place in smoke-filled rooms.
The origin of that term is sourced to a meeting in Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel (Room 404, as when someone attempts to make some spurious connections) when the Republican National Convention failed to produce viable candidate to block Woodrow Wilson’s heir-apparent and Warren G Harding was tossed in the ring, also under special-appointment. Weary from WWI and more resolved to take a stance of not being World Police, Harding’s regime was popular at the time though his cronyism and involvement in the Teapot Dome Scandal (over bribes from the oil industry which was the most notorious until Watergate) rather tarnished history’s opinion of him. With only a reign of two years, Pope Gregory was not able to accomplish a lot—other than making the penalties for witchcraft a little less severe and reserving capital-punishment for those proven to be in league with the Devil and instigating reforms in the way papal elections proceed, giving us the ceremony and closed-door meetings that we recognize today.