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gom jabbar: The Guardian features a tribute to the Aquarian coming of Age science fiction masterpiece Dune, fifty years on and examines its legacy, via Super Punch

our castle and our keep: exquisite off-the-grid motor home converts to an enchanted castle at rest, via the enchanting Nag on the Lake

all work and no play: free to download 1998 board game based on Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining

o double-good: a look into the recent incorporation of milk as a staple food, via Neatorama

mathmagic land: dividing one by nine-hundred-ninety-nine quattuodecillion—nearly infinity—spits out the Fibonacci sequence

taxa or nomina dubia

Harking back to a time when humour was considered both an indemnifying and heuristic tool even in academic circles, stuffy, impenetrable old Michel Foucault deferred to the classification of the animal kingdom not down Linnaean lines but rather thus, alluding to the comprehensive Jorge Luis Borges having himself been influenced by the oriental method:

• A: Those that belong to the emperor
• B: Embalmed ones 
• C: Those that are trained 
• D: Suckling pigs 
• E: Sirens 
• F: Fabulous ones 
• G: Stray dogs 
• H: Those that are included in this classification 
• I: Those that tremble as if they are mad 
• J: Innumerable ones 
• K: Those finely drawn with a camel hair brush 
• L: Et cetera 
• M: Those who’ve just broken the flower vase 
• N: Those which from a distance resemble flies 

Of course, funny, quirky examples and illustrative scenarios are the staple of educational programming nowadays, but aside from embedding riddles or marriage proposals in research abstracts, it’s just done done to be provocatively jokey in serious scholarly discourse. The unlikely comic trio of Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard were meant to be attended to with a slight smirk in order to get to the respective punchlines, rallying a tradition that goes back all the way to the deportment of Socrates but oversaw the end of that light-hearted tradition. Respectable, peer-reviewed academics, however, took a very dour and austere turn once we were able to give to everything a precise and interrelated place. Gilbert and Sullivan’s Major General’s Song is probably the best lampoon of this new science and new learning. Information animal, vegetable and mineral. I hope we can better balance going forward not hamming it up with engaging an audience that’s not restricted to the Ivory Tower.

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szene: via the Everlasting Blort, a fine gallery of the Swiss rebellious rocker subculture of the 1950s

guano islands act: the happenstance and acquisition of the US minor outlying territories

sibyl’s leaves: the Athenian Oracle, an early nineteenth century precursor to question-and-answer websites—all you wanted to know but were afraid to ask

velvet underdogs: right proper send-up for the much-maligned medium

patrimoine mondial: though Hanseatic Hamburg, Champagne and Burgundy are getting deserved attention, UNESCO’s latest inclusions go much farther 

grexit, stage left

Naturally the chorus of international observers and lenders bemoaned the Greek referendum up until the last moment after the polls closed and the ballots counted, crying that such a move to distance itself from the European Union, notably a political experiment and not an economic bloc primarily, did not behove the country and would not give them a better bargaining position. I don’t know that I would place much trust in any of the oligarchs championing one course of action over the other, since they undoubtedly have obscured agendas and some stand to benefit regardless—or in spite—of the outcome at the expense of others.
Sovereign debt was not what brought Greece to wrack and ruin, and after six years of being in arrears with economic contraction and punishing privations and in an even sorrier state—who could blame the people for vocalising one way forward when a decision was forced upon them, steering towards the sea-monster Scylla and knowing there would be sacrifice to avoid sure destruction if they got too near the whirlpool of Charybdis, like Odysseus and his crew—but rather the world-wide recession is to blame. perpetrated by market bubbles that exposed borrowing countries to faults in EU refinancing mechanisms. Obfuscation also on the part of the supranational banking sector, shoring up Greece’s portfolio for an EU who wanted to hear exactly that—not a Europe without Greece or a Greek state that was only on the periphery, like the other Balkan marches. The parallel is imperfect, chiefly due to Greece’s dues-paying membership in the EU, but a sanguine and constructive comparison is to be found in Argentina’s bold decision, facing bankruptcy a decade hence, to unpeg its currency from another sort of hegemony, the US dollar, and face down months and years of chaos and hardship, to emerge the more robust for the dare—though an opportunity arguably squandered by not undertaking more lasting reforms in the good years. If Greece does adopt this tacking manœuvre after all, let’s hope it does ultimately flourish.

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first rule – don’t talk about fight club: bacterial cock-fighting may lead to new antibiotic therapies, via Dangerous Minds

don’t pay the ferry man: mysterious figuring punting in an Australian lake dressed as an undertaker, traveling via open casket

nightmare of dishpan hands: vintage laundry shaming

disrobed, disarming: 3D printed model of the Venus de Milo allows art history scholars to guess what she might have been doing with her hands

gravity assists: a thoughtful explanation and reflection of the slingshot effect in space propulsion via BLDGBlog 

malkunst oder we’re having a heat-wave, a tropical heat-wave

I have always had a fondness for such murals cast onto the rather monotonous concrete (Beton) façades of buildings—celebrating perhaps a hobby of the owners, industry, religious and regional motifs, hope or hospitality, especially vintage 1960s and 1970s (during the rebuilding boom mainly of the post-war period) for their abstract, modern design—and have used a lot of these images previously, like this homage to pigeon-fanciers or this mosaic on the side of the bank in Bad Karma and many others that I struggle to find as I have not bothered curating them properly.
On the hottest day since a dozen years, when the mercury rose to 40º Centigrade (an unnatural, wilting and disgusting 104° Fahrenheit) we ventured out to have a refreshing dip in a pool in a the nearby village of Schönau.
 Along the way towards the bathing installation (which was quite nice and didn’t feel overly crowded even though everyone else in a twenty kilometer radius had the same idea as us), I noticed quite a trove of such decorations, and I knew that I had to return, despite the unflagging heat, and take a few pictures before the go the way of the Gartenzwerge (lawn gnomes) or church bells (something that people aren’t always sentimental for or even tolerant of) and are torn down or spackled over in the name of progress.

siss boom ba

Just in time for US Independence Day (and probably equally valid for Bastille Day), Mental Floss presents an animated field guide for identifying the various standard effects used in pyrotechnic displays. I never knew that they had specific names, other than “ohh” and “ahh.” The image used of a frozen firework in bloom is a long-exposure image captured deftly by the brilliant photographer David Johnson at a show in Australia with more examples at the link.

manifest destiny

Though the timing and the title of columnist Dylan Matthews’ piece for Vox, ‘Three Reasons Why the American Revolution was a Mistake,’ is perhaps a little overboard and ire-drawing—surely begging commentary that begs whether one actual read the article, it is something that’s worth the read and reflection.

Albeit that the world would be a very different and not necessarily better place if many uprisings and coups d’État, Putsch, pronunciamientos and other peaceful, textured and dyed revolutions had or had not transpired and we can never know, but it is not misguiding to suspect that the universal abolition of slavery might have been a quicker and more peaceful matter had the colonies not seceded—and despite national myth-building, this was very much a motive. The native population too might have received better treatment. The above would be more than reason enough and thirdly, the received politics also goes without saying, that the framework of democracy where no one is de facto illegitimate leads to loggerheads and partisanship. What sort of alternate history can you imagine?