chain-reaction

Via the provocatively peripatetic Dark Roasted Blend (which I’ve sadly overlooked for too long), I learnt that in Gabon in Western Central Africa research on a cluster of sites near abandoned uranium mines confirmed in the early 1970s the primordial existence of a previous hypothesised possibility of sustained field of naturally occurring nuclear fission. While it’s doubtlessly outstanding that some clever geologist might cross disciplines and posit that a spontaneous event and arbitrary arrangement, the composition of the veins of the underground especially so shortly after human had managed to harness this power artificially (in the mid-1950s) and go about finding evidence of it—it makes me think about those coal fires that have gone on smouldering because or despite of our estimation of it (scientists believe that this reaction lasted for hundreds of thousands of years, while our experiment has only gone off for a few decades), it is to my mind even more spectacular that this so far unique event is accessible to science with some degree of surety considering it happened nearly two billion years ago.
Although the geological record can to some degree be rewound back all those epochs—when Gabon and Africa was not where it is today or maybe under the oceans, there’s certainly no archaeological or even hard biological evidence that’s available as a point of reference. Only the mathematically reducible half-life of nuclear isotopes leave a trace that can be extrapolated. I wonder if it’s assumed that there’s a natural aversion to such a set-up, that entropy eschews this arrangement. Other than these obedient numbers that date and betray the rate of decay after the spark is ignited—plus exhausted mines when all the useful stuff is carted away, there’s little trace of this infernal landscape—expect that others have suggested that another, more violent spontaneous event a couple of billions of years earlier might have been responsible for the creation of the Moon. The majority of astronomers believe that a meteoric impact that’s marred in the Gulf of Mexico ejected the mass that’s now our natural satellite into orbit but a nuclear explosion along the Equator could also have produced it—and in Pangaea, Africa and South America were kissing-cousins. I wonder if such natural fission might be taking place on other planets and possible explain some of the unexpected. Be sure to visit Dark Roasted Blend for further wonderments and curiosities.

cognitive dissonance

By way of a book review that seeks to make the superficially blithe, a link taken for granted really, connection between our emotions and our physical well-being and resilience—these all being popular concepts that are well rooted in modern thinking—the brilliant Maria Popova of Brain Pickings delivers a surprising historical context and development that demonstrates that the relationship is not a straightforward one and not without coups and reversals of fortune.

Rationalist thinkers like René Descartes who doubted the world away to rid us of superstitions and preconceptions, unleashed a second rather unintended severing of the medical science, couched in terms of an imbalance in the humours, that was the basis for our understanding of the body and the mind—in the West—since Antiquity. The rejection of such tenets made the scientific method and progress a reality but left the place of emotions and mood untethered and out of place in a sense. Although we might be desirous to view the mind-body link has something continuous, even if presented through metaphor, romanticism and unscientifically, but it really was not until the middle of this past century when the connection was re-established and researchers deigned to take the matter into consideration with the pioneering work of an endocrinologist (one who studies of glands and hormones) from the Austro-Hungarian Empire called Hans Seyle (Seyle János). As a professor in the McGill University of Montreal, Seyle formalised the concept of stress as a biological response and driver and was responsible for making the idea pedestrian and accessible as well as international, the word being the same in all European languages. Unlike with present day jargon which is mostly new dressing for old wounds, like calling mobbing or work-place bullying by peers horizontal violence, introducing stress as bridge between emotional and physical health was not giving mankind a new buzzword, but rather re-legitimatizing, not rechristening, of a defunct system of correspondences that had previously only been admitted into health care as negative behavioural neuroses and psychosomatic, self-inflicted illnesses. Be sure to check out Brain Pickings for the full and fulfilling repertoire of literary discoveries.

maelstrom or ta-ta for now

Corporate Europe Observatory handily tackles the the hopelessly, visceral public (though deserved) mistrust on the end-stage rounds of the secret and privileged TTIP negotiations with a selection of fine new charts and graphs that distill the barrage of intentionally confusing and cross-purposed leaked propaganda that shows where the bodies are buried and what business groups have been lobbying most vociferously. Although the appointment of Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström hinged on greater transparency and more public-interest inclusion, this watchdog demonstrates that precious little change is forthcoming and the only arms that the people can take up against this wholesale selling-out is by staying informed through such advocating outlets.

5x5

margrave: picturesque gallery of the borderless borders of Europe

goldielocks: latest achievements from the Kepler Mission’s search for Earth-like exo-planets

stand-alone orchard: an artistic horticulturist is making a tree of forty fruits through grafting

kismet or tempest in a teapot: curated collection of mind-boggling nuclear testing certificates of participation

my beautiful laundrette: nineteenth century washer branded with the enigmatic name Vowel A

die stadt oder can't you smell that smell

From a Liverpudlian of renown (the smell would turn you too), I learnt of the lyrical farewell that Samuel Taylor Coleridge bid Köln, titled On My Joyful Departure from the Same City:

As I am a Rhymer,
And now at least a merry one,
Mr. Mum’s Rudesheimer And the church of St. Geryon
Are the two things alone
That deserve to be known In the body-and-soul-stinking town of Cologne.

I am far from sharing that sentiment and rather look forward to visiting again, but thought it a nice collection of lines nonetheless. Aside from the endorsement of the Basilica of Saint Gereon, one of the twelve ancient Romanesque churches of Köln, it’s interesting to think about how urban decampments might be remembered, bottled with a certain fragrance—which only one takes away with leaving them.

5x5

arbeit-leben-gleichgewicht: having homesteaded myself in Germany for over a decade I can relate to the feeling of being spoiled

fluid dynamics: curtain that turns one’s shower cabinet into a spiked chamber after one exceeds the allotted time to conserve water

tomatillo: miniscule ancestral tomato may save its supersized progeny—all our familiar grains, fruits and vegetables had equally humble beginnings

artisanal landlord price-hike sale: creative campaign to save a beloved Brooklyn corner-shop

cameo, intaglio: curiously shaped record albums

cytherean

From H’s parents, I received a Venus Flytrap to care for. Although I think we both have been blessed with green-thumbs, I understand that these plants are notoriously hard to care for, and I tried once before but I think I ended up over-feeding the delicate thing, so I’ve embarked on a course of study to improve its chances. I located a very good and comprehensive resource here and will take these lessons to heart, but there’s a pretty interesting story behind these not wholly sessile plants as well. Their native habitat is restricted to marshes in the Carolinas though propagated by fanciers all over the world—with varying success—and after devising the Theory of Evolution, Charles Darwin didn’t exactly call it a day but devoted his attention to the subject of locomotion in these plants—the mechanism and adaptive cultivation still something of a mystery.
And despite their very alien appearance, the plant’s name does not have anything to do with the planet Venus, rather it is the chomping jaws that suggest the clam from which the goddess was birthed. Although adjectival just Venus would, as before science saw the need for terms like Venusian, Martian or Earthling, things pertaining to Venus were unfortunately described as venereal, as Mars was martial. An old-fashioned adjective that’s rarely seen since we have Venusian—to avoid other connotations—comes from the island Cythera in the Ionian archipelago, near where the sea-shell emerged from the sea, buoying up the goddess. Curiously, the plant’s taxonomical name Dionaea muscipula, a daughter of Dione (namely the Greek counterpart Aphrodite) and “mousetrap.”

mensch und übermensch

I’d guess I’d need to categorise this as one of those things the more one thinks about it, the more manifest it becomes, and I had not given much thought to the thesis beforehand that comics as more than caricature or a stock-epithet is an act of cultural reclamation.

The rise of the genre parallels social and political movements that co-opted and perverted mythological themes, pantheons and notions of bodily perfection not in the classical, athletic and temperate sense but in terms of eugenics and dehumanisation. The bombastic fantasy of Richard Wagner and the Nietzschean Übermensch had been misappropriated and the medium of comics, drawing on real and imagined legendary sources and superhero avatars, is the taking back of such shared heritage—story-telling separated from propaganda. In the beginning, however, these characters sometimes volunteered for deployment—like in the 1940 first issue of Captain America, where the hero is portrayed as socking Adolf Hitler—sometime before the US had actually entered into the war and bucking popular sentiment—in protest to the country’s isolationist policies. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels even went so far as to ban the distribution of Superman comics under the Third Reich over intentional or perceived Jewish roots in Kal-El (close to the Hebrew phrase for “voice of God,” whom was saved from a dying planet in a space capsule but unlike Moses being found among the reeds), but the Third Reich was also very efficient on accentuating and bestowing otherness on people with traits that they would not readily self-identify with. The universes that comics contain is certainly a reaffirmation of narrative, allegory and inclusion and our alter-egos have a mythos that’s forward-going as well.