self-dealing

Whilst the US president is only bound by tradition and the Emoluments Clause, being unable to receive gifts from foreign powers nor himself being able to grant grace and favour appointments that would otherwise amount to bestowing title of nobility, the presidential cabinet of advisors and other appointees are subject to quite specific laws to stave off conflicts of interest and ulterior motives.
Aside from the other potential baggage that the presumptive Secretary of State, Top Diplomat, the head of a petroleum concern and decorated with Russia’s Order of Friendship—a high civilian honour, the appointee will also come into the office with stocks in his own company worth a quarter of a billion dollars.  Because of regulations in place (some might argue that the incumbent Secretary of State was given a pass since he receives ketchup royalties through his wife of a nickel every time so one uses it) the appointee will have to resign from the company and he will have to divest himself of all those pesky, burdensome ties to his former career tax free. We here at PfRC are not here to question anyone’s civic-mindedness and view public service as a noble calling which could well benefit from an infusion of experience from the private sector (no matter how corporate welfare might have supported his rise in the industry) but it seems to me that having several hundred million or billions even exempt from taxation would be motivation enough to take a turn in serving the public and one would not even bother invoking anything else.

retail therapy

Though I’ve always had an appreciation for the story behind the naming convention of IKEA furnishings—giving sobriquets rather than model numbers because that’s how the founder’s brain associated things, I am finding this new advertising campaign to be pretty funny and a nice complimentary look at the struggles we have sometimes with the accessories that we feel obligated to buy and assemble—despite the fact that we’re in sort of an admitted post-consumer, peak-curtains state. In addition to the cabinet or couch’s proper name, each item in their special-edition catalogue is given a description gleaned from the most common familial or relationship advice sought in Sweden. This tongue and cheek treatment comes to us via Bored Panda, which features some of the furniture giant’s other recent creative projects, including instruction manuals that turn the potentially frustrating and argument-inducing experience of putting together a HEMNES daybed into an act of foreplay.

linus and lucy

Among many other creative differences between Charles Schulz, the producers and the network that was to air it, the 1965 Charlie Brown Christmas special was, per prevailing industry standards of the day to include a track of canned-laughter, just to make sure that audiences when where and how to respond to the humour.  Roundly unamused by this suggestion, Schulz simply left the room and did not return to the studio for several minutes, and finding no need for explanation, the matter was dropped and thankfully never discussed again.

phubbing or the bowed head tribe

BBC Future magazine has a really fascinating article examining how language invents novel labels to delineate the rules of etiquette and protocol and how to characterise those who are seen as the transgressors. Public and private manners when it comes to engagement with one’s immediate surroundings and interlocutors or recourse to something or someone more interesting to be found at the other end of the telecommunications æther is a topic that perhaps is a little too close for comfort and the inspired terminologies—classifications like the phoney taxia of a cartoon coyote and road-runner, the former never giving up and the latter always evading capturing like some mythological beasts—which can indeed skewer their targets.
In Asia cultures, they recognise tribal and clan affiliation for the distant and distracted, though it’s Germany that’s putting cross-walk warnings on the pavement to reach inattentive pedestrians. Moreover, Germany’s Youth Word of the Year for 2015 was “Smombie,” a portmanteau of smart-phone and zombie. I had heard variations of these names beforehand that range from the self-effacing to the ironic to the cantankerous, something that an old man would shout—possibly not without warrant, but what most interested me was a new word for the very old concept of phubbing from Australia: phone snubbing. We’ve probably all been perpetrators or victims of the phenomena of sitting with some physically present friends or family and ignoring them in favour of one’s on-line ones. There’s probably a modern fairy tale with a nice morale to be found there as well. What’s your favourite label for those constantly networking and what would you choose for yourself?

tarkin doctrine or not the excuse you’re looking for

In a move that’s really too far—since despite all our differences and the politics of polarisation, fandom was supposed to be something transcendent—apparently Trump supporters are calling for a boycott of the upcoming instalments of the Star Wars franchise for its anti-fascist message—which has surely been the over-arching theme since a long time ago, with multiculturalism fighting against hegemony.
It’s a little pathetic that it’s taken four decades for some to pick up on this not so subtle message, and even more so that they’d want to cushion themselves with a “safe-space” from triggering dissent (real and imagined) far, far way. To reinforce that fact, the hashtag movement was soon co-opted by the rebel scum and the radicalized fanatics of hokey religions whose vile behaviour is a serious affront to the feelings of the US Kraterocrat-elect. Not wholly immune Jedi mind-tricks, it’s also a nice tantrum to distract from other, more serious accusations derived from new evidence that Russia helped throw the US elections in Trump’s favour.

7x7

book of days: the mysterious and enigmatic Codex Seraphinianus enters the wall-calendar market

the beaming: a stage-adaptation dramatizes a veteran National Geographic correspondent’s encounter with a lost telepathic tribe in the Peruvian Andes

event horizon: a look ahead at some of the astronomical happenings of 2017

line in the sand: in honour of the seventy-fifth anniversary of its Cartography Centre, the US Central Intelligence Agency declassifies a cache of ordinance maps

everything old is new again: a revue of the most sought after Christmas toys since 1983

operation: the several incarnations of the Wound Man of the Middle Ages, sort of like the Helvetica Man of yore

cash on delivery: first introduced in Hamburg, one shipping service is bring pedal-powered delivery to select urban locations in the US

salvataggio interno o zero my hero

I could be forgiven for the false memory and insistence that we’d in fact visited the oldest operational bank in the world in Siena—a victim apparently of the failed plebiscite for congressional reform but more on this later, having mistaken the layout of the ancient town square next to the signature campanile for the nearby city of Lucca, also host to a very venerable financial institution. The Bank of Siena is being denied a further deferment in order to refinance its debts and will probably throw itself on the mercy of the government to stay solvent—or at least not pull down scores of other banks with it.
While I am sorry that Matteo Renzi’s referendum efforts to reduce government gridlock did not pass and he’s resigning his commission over it, the dissolution of Italian government is a pretty routine thing and nothing to get all hot and bothered about. Perhaps this was the excuse needed to otherwise extort the veteran lender and her creditors. I am not sure of the solvency of Banco di Lucca but I suspect it’s faring much better, being attended by the relic, not of human hands, Volto Santo (see link above). Seemingly apropos of nothing, “by the Holy Face of Lucca,” was the favoured oath and battle-cry of William Rufus of England, by there might be somewhat of a segue to be found, as William II’s great ambition was to himself go on Crusade but didn’t live to see the Holy Land. As part of the Duchy of Tuscany, both the banks at Siena and Lucca from the end of the eleventh century for a generation or so were subject to the same embargo enforced in accountancy against the Arabic-Hindi numerals that the early Crusaders were bringing back with them. Traditional Roman book-keeping was Christian and eschewed the Muslims’ dread zero, both as a place-holder and as a concept of nothing, a dangerous gateway to negative numbers and creative ways of handling debts and deficit—so I guess the financiers won out the end.