scientists’ corner

Preeminent scientist Stephen Hawking’s ashes were interred with honours in the royal peculiar and hall of fame, Westminster Abbey today. In addition to recognising his contributions to the understanding of the Cosmos by according his mortal remains a special place (between Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton), the European Space Agency—after the service—beamed a recording of one of Hawking’s lectures, a missive of peace and hope, into outer space aimed at the nearest known black hole, designated 1A 0620-00, with his voice expected to reach the event horizon in thirty-five hundred years.

logophilia

We were hoping to enrich our vocabulary with this word of the day from Fancy Notions but then were a little deflated to verify that in fact aibohphobia is a deliberately constructed palindrome and part of a family of humorous phobias rather than a serious term describing the actual fear of things read the same in either direction.  It’s strange that we tend to give scary or adverse things Greek names. I think the term is ingratiating itself, nonetheless, as well as another word I came across while investigating: semordnilap. Palindrome spelt backwards, an example of a pair of semordnilaps would be stressed and desserts. Curiously, it should also be noted that there’s a genus of spiders native to Africa called Palindroma whose five species all have palindromic names, which I suppose would elicit a fear response in those disposed to arachnophobia.

low rent, high stakes

We were temporarily in denial about the images circulating—courtesy of the US Department of Health and Human Services—of the Trump mural prominently displayed in a detention centre for young boys housed in a former Wal-Mart in Texas, wishing it weren’t true but knowing deep down that there is not irony too dumb or cruel for that regime who are presently defending separating some of the same adolescents from their families by citing a Bible passage that was also used to justify slavery. The quotation on the mural—helpfully bilingual—is from the book ghost-written for the sub-literate slob The Art of the Deal, chapter ten, seemingly to inculcate the youths with aspirations for the American Dream shortly before their deportation.

8x8

i’m ready for my close-up: a selection of vintage Hollywood test shots

emeco: a look at the indestructible chair commissioned by the US navy in 1940 that could withstand the blast of a torpedo 
columbo: US ambassador to the Holy See, Callista Gingrinch, returns a pilfered letter penned by Christopher Columbus to the Vatican Library

fjallkona: Iceland picks a drag queen to be its national personification, the Lady of the Mountain

flare-up: periodically the Sun erupts

jankó layout: an alternative keyboard to the traditional piano format

pitchforks: main-stream media is ignoring the protests of poor peoples in the US

x-ray vision: Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers harness ambient radio signals and WiFi to see through walls

signs and symptoms

Though yet to implement as far as we know, back in 2016 an exploitative ride-hailing company (previously) applied for a patent for non-invasive artificial intelligence technology that would be enlisted to distinguish drunk passengers from sober ones. What do you think about that? In theory through the passive screening process, the company would hope to mitigate undesired outcomes.

cantiche

Though well within our rights to read Purgatory and the Inferno described in Dante Alighieri’s epic poem The Divine Comedy (previously) as metaphorical there have been nonetheless earnest and noble attempts, as Open Culture informs, from the Renaissance to modern times to diagram and map out Dante’s decent, guided by the Roman poet Virgil, into the lands of the departed. Check out more charts and infographics that illustrated Dante’s vision of Hell at the link above.

deep state

The always brilliant Nag on the Lake directs our attention to a very interesting Cold War chronicle, an office artefact that I’m regretting not having taken up and created during my own tenure, something reminiscent of medieval manuscripts or the Bayeux tapestry. Click the images to enlarge.

An anonymous general schedule (GS) analyst and conscientious bureaucrat like myself working at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas back in the 1980s during the Reagan-era illuminated his government-issued desk calendar (something which I usually rejected for reasons of unnecessary clutter and not necessarily speaking to my organisational skills) noting momentous occasions, personal achievements and airing his grievances with higher headquarters. Find more months in detail documenting the decade at the link above.