docket or kangaroo court

Throughout the Middle Ages in Europe until the Enlightenment, it was not uncommon to see animals put on trial, often times provided with a defense counsel, and with due-process served, summarily executed.

Often the allegations levied against these barnyard creatures was for injuring their master, destruction of crops or for being barren—but sometimes the scope of the law was extended to more esoteric miscarriages, with pets charged with being familiars of certain known amici curiae, wolves along with their human avatars tried for being werewolves, and there is documentation of a rooster in Basel being burnt at the stake for the unnatural accomplishment of laying an egg, which hatched and loosed a cockatrice—a bipedal dragon with a chicken head, on the village. At least the domesticated poor beasts had a court-provided advocate in most cases.

five-by-five

vive le drone: the French have a healthier relationship with their eyes-in-the-sky

♀: the recently concluded seven year European Space Agency mission to our sister planet also looked homeward for signs of life on Earth

woongemeenschap: university students in the Netherlands can stay rent-free in retirement homes for keeping the older residents company

revisionism: wikiwashing is a thing

carbon sink: scientists found that a fern pasture carpeted the Arctic ocean millions of years ago, giving the world the stable climate we’ve enjoyed up until now 

bell-hop or pole-position

It struck me as an odd coincidence that I would be addressing the same subject about driverless cars with a co-worker on the way into work this morning—first commiserating how the lanes and the concept of right-of-way kind of get tossed aside when people are in a rush, and then moving on to the feasibility of self-driving automobiles and the question of fault for misjudgment and malfunction.

I declared, with auto-pilots already being tested in trucking, once, just like with the horseless-carriage, the infrastructure is established, human drivers won’t be street-legal for very long, operating under impulsive and unpredictable protocols. Like with those swarming insects or birds of a feather that someone manage to avoid collisions amid the chaos and guided by an instinct or perception that we cannot penetrate—in fact, the only accidents that seem to transpire end up on our windshields, the traffic of the future won’t admit any margin of operator-error. How do you feel about that? Are we being robbed of a freedom, leisure or will the idea of allowing people to maneuver lethal machinery without controls in place seem barbarically irresponsible and a dare-devil stunt that no one would voluntarily attempt? I especially liked futurist Mister Musk’s analogy to an old-fashioned elevator (lift) operator and how those bedecked and courteous engineers were replaced by push-button automation. I think this machinery behind the scenes is a good comparison for what we may be leaving behind.

shareholder value

Around a year and a half ago, while strolling through Frankfurt’s old warehouse district, I had the chance to see the new headquarters of the European Central Bank under-construction. Just now, regaled with protests to mark the occasion, the fancy and sleek building saw its grand-opening—or rather its christening, baptism with due remonstration since it’s not really an inviting place for the rabble—although I quite liked the old HQ, though I suppose it was too humble and retiring for this flag-ship role. Though the core thrust behind the Occupy and Blockupy movements is unchanged, it’s rather thought-provoking how the message has become more focused, not only targeting monumental disparities in wealth and opportunity but more specifically how this and other institutions have straitening outlays of austerity—which can translate into even greater, generational handicaps.

five-by-five

swag: a gallery of uniquely-crafted cases for one’s cellular phone

exorcist: haunted dolls command top-dollar in on-line auctions

aptitude: prospective employees of Thomas Edison were subjected to a grueling battery of questions

charlie magnetico: Jim Henson created cyborg muppets to lead seminars for Bell Telephone Systems

the dream sequence always rings twice: an unsettling short film where the protagonist is the subject of everyone’s nightmare

mondknoten und nutation

Europe will be treated to a partial solar eclipse on Friday, 20 March, which is also the Spring Equinox—with some lucky souls on Svalbard and the Faroe Islands losing daylight to the Moon’s shadow completely.
Weather permitting, for one in the western part of Germany, the event will start at 09:24 (earlier for those more westerly and later for those more easterly), reaching totality at (some 80% in Germany and France) at 10:32 before going on the wane for the next hour. Researchers in Germany are interested, among other things, in observing the dip in photovoltaic power production. The southern hemisphere will be treated to a similar spectacle in September of this year.

mister linea

I remember this character’s misadventures and continuous strolls watching Pinwheel on Nickelodeon in its earliest days—when the network shared the same channel as A&E (Arts and Entertainment), which would begin broadcasting in the evenings, but I didn’t know the name of the series until I stumbled across this brilliant little tribute from Laughing Squid.

The interstitial stories were told in a single, unbroken line and grew out of an advertising commission for an Italian kitchenware manufacturer. Sort of like with Mister Bean or other universal sketch-programmes, whose dialogue was sparse and relied on physical humour, Mister Linea spoke only gibberish—which was meant to sound like a mock Milano dialect, but I suppose I thought that that was Italian—just like I believed the nonsense the Swedish Chef was the Nordic language—but that was part of the appeal, to believe that one could understand a foreign language. Be sure to check out the link for video resources and more backstory that will bring back memories.

five-by-five

dingoes ate the baby: the fingerprints of koala bears and humans beings can superficially appear identical and have led to forensic confusion

les cahiers: writer André Gide’s rich daily journaling routine offers some very wise and abiding reflections on sincerity and originality

fantascope: collector Richard Balzer, avid accumulator of Magic Lanterns, has a nice show-and-tell about these forerunners to film and video

johnny highwaycone: pioneer of the American transportation system

let me see you shake your tail-feathers: peacocks’ plumage make sub-sonic sounds