four-and-score

No matter what your jurisdiction or cachet, it is well-nigh impossible to be much more exalted than when Easter Sunday corresponds with 04-20.
The annual observance is derived from what was a daily ritual among California high school students, announcing, in code, that they would gather at a predeter- mined location at four-twenty in the afternoon to smoke. This call sign was transposed to the 20th of April (American time and dating style) as a holiday for Cannabis Culture. In honour of this coincidence, I thought it apt to direct ones attention to the beautiful gallery of microscopic slides of the marijuana plant's morphology that the excellent website Neat-o-Rama featured a few days earlier. The images are truly astounding and appropriate, like this extreme close-up of a growing bud, which looks like the other-worldly hiding place for a cache of colourful Easter eggs.

rückstoß oder harmonium

Loans that the European Union thrust upon Ukraine in its moment of crisis were not exactly given without stint, since among the terms and conditions were pledges for austerity, if an any way the loans could counter-balance Russian calling in of debts and payments in arrears that would completely bankrupt the country. These measures have taken the form of closing down mining and factory operations in the eastward-leaning east—in what's being touted as necessary streamlining, which is sure to exacerbate already tenuous sentiment.

And while these economic proxies for actual conflict are happening, there is actual spoiling for battle, which in itself, I believe, is only a cover for economic rather than ideological stakes. Rather than allow a partnership from Lisbon to Vladivostok to come into being, which would certainly rival American chances to regain prowess in market terms and political influence, the US is pushing NATO to adopt a policy of sandbagging rather than one of bridge-building and would like nothing better than to invest in a few skirmishes along this border region, which despite the cost, will yield high dividends by preserving the status quo and giving the military-industrial complex another outlet. It's strange how demurring statecraft and chest-pounding have become, heels dug in without quite appreciating the ground stood.

völva

The fantastic site of strange and curious travel destinations, Atlas Obscura, is hosting a week dedicated to some of the celebrated and unknown marvels of Iceland. There are quite a lot sights to see on the remote island, both awe-inspiring or odd—or just plain inspired like the pictured on-going construction of the massive “Arctic Henge” monument in the aura of the aurora near the northern village of Raufarhöfn, whose layout is not only the cycles of sagas and epic poems expressed in monolithic architecture but also aims to become a pilgrimage sight for neo-pagan practitioners.

strahlende

320° Licht is a massive installation that maps beams of light on the cylindrical interior of a decom- missioned gasometer in Oberhausen (in the Ruhrgebiet) to create a dazzling cathedral from twenty-one high powered projectors. The project is just part of a larger series hosted in that tunneling venue called the “Appearance of Beauty,” ,,der schöne Schein.”

dovunque al mondo or rent to own

Last night I got a chance to spend a cultural evening out and saw moving production of Giacomo Puccini's Madame Butterfly, hosted in the very fancy venue of the storied state theatre.  I was expecting tragedy and melodrama, being an opera, but did not recall the actual story and subject, thinking wisps of what I remembered to be possibly a contemporary interpretation: an American naval officer is stationed in Nagasaki at the turn of the century, and through the US Consul acting as an intermediary, purchases a house staffed with domestics and is introduced to the breathtaking and available Butterfly. 
Despondent and restless though afraid to make a commitment, the Navy officer decides to wed Butterfly—at least until he can find a "proper American wife" and due to Japanese mores and marriage laws (as interpreted at the time by an Italian librettist) in comparison to the relatively stricter rules regarding divorce (but not polygamy) in America.  The officer, Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton speaks of a lease of nine-hundred ninety nine years with the option of quiting in the coming months.  Butterfly has already garnered her family’s displeasure by marrying a foreigner—a wealthy local businessman is also making overtures for Butterfly's affections but she rebuffs his advances, and covertly converts to Christianity for the sake of her new life, renouncing Buddhism and her ancestral, household gods.  A short while later, the officer is assigned to another port of call in the US and is away for three years.  Butterfly divulges to the Consul, whom she hopes to implore for her husband to return, that she had born the officer a son in secret.
The Consul does manage to arrange the officer's return, but the officer brings his new American bride with him and plans to take custody of the young child and raise him in America.   This modern opera is itself a direct adaptation of earlier stories, but I am not sure in what context and what allegorical elements are intentionally writ, how direct and literal, but it was certainly the musical element of the score that came across as most emotive. As the orchestra was striking its limbering cacophony before the curtains parted, those strains they played of the Star-Spangled Banner, the US anthem—were random exercises, like hearing snatches from the Miss Marple theme or scales during this warm-up—and not samplings from the liet motif. We'll have to have a night at opera together real soon.

sky of blue, sea of green

Kottke reports on an exciting application from the American navy which successfully demonstrates that the components of sea water can be easily converted into fuel—almost directly from the laboratory without intervening conceptional re-engineering. It seems nearly too terribly simple and straightforward to be true, a few more technical details found on the link. Though this engine, work-horse portends to be primarily a barge system, something for slowly but steadily transporting cargo en mass, if it delivers on its promise, I can imagine gondoliers—or private submariners below—punting about through urban waterways and the relaunch of thalassocracies, maritime powers that ruled the spaces between lands when it seemed that buoyancy mattered more.

call box

Locals, in Cheltenham just three kilometers from the GCHQ campus, believe that guerrilla graffiti
artist Banksy may have been behind this mural of authorities wiring tapping this phone booth. Area residents are delighted and the artwork has become a big tourist attraction.

kleinstaaterei

With the level of public will or involvement remaining unclear and the source of dissent an elusive factor—strange to consider in the first place that regions are careening towards the right to assert their independence with only the ultimate goal being to align themselves with another power in sight, the cities of Ukraine, though under the microscope and garnering much attention, do tend to be overlooked, imagined out of context, scale or compartmentalised.  Much is being said about psyche and exceptionalism, the economic importance of the industrial eastern part of the country, the need for stability and security thereof with also quite a bit of name-calling, like the US styling of counter insurgency efforts by the government in Kyiv as anti-terror operations or pledges to shore up debts, but there is little in terms, I think, in terms of profiles for these metropolitan cities, which have their own character and history.

Donetsk grew out of factory workers’ dormitories built by a steel and coal magnate from Wales named John James Hughes in 1869 (strangely, not long after hostilities ended), while under commission for the Russian Imperial Navy.  The settlement was originally named Hughesovka in honour of the Welch industrialist, who was a genius although functionally illiterate and could not read minuscule letters—Юз, yuz being the closest approximate sound.  Staffed with skilled and well-educated workers, the metalworks soon grew self-sufficient and with the Bolshevik revolution, the city’s name changed several times.  It seems hard for a boom town—especially one that has never gone bust, just like so many in this region, that is relatively young as well, to establish for itself an identity—and I am sure being known, by turns, as Yuzovka, Trotsk, Stalino and then after a tributary of the Don river, may have not helped with cohesion.  Looking on from outside, I am astounded by the vast swaths of land that continue to defy recognition and know there’s much unknown out there, aided and hindered by the tough schooling in geography that conflict teaches—since, although this rust belt (Donetsk incidentally won international recognition as the cleanest factory town in the world, in 1970) is emerging as the focus of attention, having of course existed all along (or at least since its founding, not all that long ago) and having existed as an independent entity even under Soviet auspices but it was easier to understand the map as a bloc, it is also a struggle to follow along with the series of contentions and we become prone to perfunctory judgments.