sentimental journey

Once Protestantism took hold in large swathes of northern Europe, particularly in England, the pilgrimage undertaken to exotic lands fell out of fashion, people of means needed to articulate another rite of passage that would fulfil this lost outlet. Almost immediately, the notion of the Grand Tour was invented as an authoritative substitute, since one could claim instant superiority in matters of taste and worldliness over one’s neighbours for having seen the masterpieces of the continent first-hand and having even brought back some art as souvenirs.

Though such deportment would have been non- permissible beforehand on the Camino de Santiago, such gap year trips were also seen as not only edifying but also the chance to discretely work whatever hot-blooded passions (associated already with Mediterranean climes) that might need to be exorcised to avoid any scenes at home. The odd and singular aspect of these sojourns was that the itinerary was squarely planted in Catholic lands, which were considered the subversive enemy for the reformed countries of the north—almost as if the most popular tourist-destination for Americans during the Cold War was Stalingrad, immersed in the culture of an ideological nemesis. Many Britons and others felt it was unpatriotic to indulge the sights of the south, but a domestic tourism industry was not developed until the French Revolution made travel impossible, and the Low Countries as well as Scotland and the fjords of Norway were discovered by people who had not previous ventured outside the capitals. After matters had settled down a bit and travel to Southern Europe was again possible, people complained of the changed character of tourism—there were just too many of them and one could hardly be enraptured by art and architecture in a pulsing, pushing crowd of sight-seers. The elite among the holiday-makers began turning away from these cultural enlightening itineraries in response and began to focus on natural destinations, like the beaches and mountains, leaving the cities and museums for the masses.

king-biscuit flour-hour

One of my all-time favourite blogs, the always inspiring Nag on the Lake, directs us to an interesting chapter in American history told through the flour-sack dress.
What I found really striking and unexpected was how the manufacturers wanted to extend a sense of dignity to their resourceful models and included instructions for removing the inked on company logos and provisioning information, so one was not an unwilling, walking advertisement. Further, anticipating this need for thrift to remain for the foreseeable future, having spanned from the time of the Great Depression through the rationing of World War II, the manufacturers introduced an array of fabric patterns (at considerable expense, I am sure) that were really dazzling and on-par with the most spectacular store-bought textiles and clothing. That’s pretty keen and it would really be something if modern businesses could be as considerate for their loyal customer-base and if the modern consumer was as driven to make-do.

being there or eaches teaches

In celebration of ninth year of publication, the Maria Popova of the gorgeous and insightful Brain Pickings is marking the occasion by reflecting on nine important lessons learned distilled in her thousands of hours of reading, writing, synthesizing and sharing.

All of these teachings are important touchstones of the fulfilled and examined life but I think number six, presence is far more rewarding an art than productivity, is especially resonant as it’s become acceptably fashionable to talk of growth and becoming as some abstraction that’s somehow out-of-time and contained, couched in delay, deferment and distraction that’s producing something for the sake of production. This message is punctuated with the memorable quotation from essayist Annie Dillard, “how we spend our days is, of course, how spend our lives.”

5x5

pachyderm: Icelandic cliff-face looks like an elephant

hello – you have found my shop of rare and wonderful things: Super Mario style map of Twin Peaks

glyph-list: latest issue of emojis to supplement your vocabulary, via Kottke’s quicklinks 

det var helt texas: in Norwegian vernacular, the state’s name signifies being unbalanced

hot or not: Canadian prime-ministers ranked

temporal excursions

Though perhaps not presented in the most rigorous format, Neatoramanaut Rob Manuel does offer a rather compelling and intuitive argument regarding the strictures of time-travel—wherein a back- to-the-future scenario plays out more like being visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past with one being unable to interact or change history in any way.

Scientific minds, worried about paradox and the space-time continuum collapsing due to an essential violation, believe that the fabric of the Universe already enforces a sort of chronological censorship in so far as travelling backwards in time would only admit of self-consistent ventures. In other words, time-travelers could not take a trip to the past and attempt to change any outcome without the Universe conspiring to preserve the time-line, likelihoods going out the window as probability bends to favour more and more improbable events in order to stop an impossible one for occurring. Actually succeeding with the assassination attempt or any number of interventions, despite all the inherent good behind it, would after all have negated the motivation to create a time-machine in the first place.  What do you think?  Are there ways to get around clumsy paradoxes? 

5x5: halloween edition

monster parade: ghoulish GIFs for thirty-one days of horror

tidings: collection of vintage Hallowe’en postcards

psychopomp: high-fidelity hardware that aided mediums during séances

a costume, not a culture: just because one can append the word sexy does not mean it’s a good idea for dress-up

revue: from Atlas Obscura’s crypt, an archived celebration of the season

the hunting of the snark

First sighted and described through second- or third-hand accounts in the third century BC, the unicorn—or monoceros was for centuries embellished with the rich lore of mythology, though this legendary creature had no truck with myths and heroes as it was believed to be very much part of the animal kingdom, though cryptic and elusive. The creature even figured, in its classic form, in the ancient iconography of India, whence the original came. Being unable to observe the shy creature in its natural habitat and unable to produce a specimen, big-fish stories circulated of the fierce and violent steed, who might only be tamed in the presence of a virgin—apparently also a a rare beast that couldn’t just be left in some forest as bait, what with dragons to be appeased.

Received Arabic advanced pharmacology further articulated the healing, anti-venom potency of its horn—the ivory and medicine derived from it is called alicorn, but most medieval had to settle for the horn in powdered form—for which they’d pay handsomely. The possibility of being drugged while wined and dined by potential rivals was a very real fear for the nobility—which such murderous intent not relegated to the underclasses until modern times. And up until the time artist Albrech Dürer was able to issue thousands of copies of his prints, people in Europe seemed willing to accept the traditional accounts of encounters with what to modern ears becomes instantly a rhinoceros and not some lithesome horse with a horn. Whether the public grew sceptical, especially with the increasing conflation with Christianity as an excuse for the inability to deliver evidence of an actual unicorn, or whether it had already been poached to extinction, I cannot say, but some enterprising Dane saw an opportunity and went whaling off the coasts of distant Greenland, hunting an even more unlikely creature, the narwal, and passing of its spiral tusk as the genuine article. Those with means paid even greater amounts for prized exemplars of horn. Eventually this ruse was revealed by a Danish physician after having been allowed to continue for decades, however, the public fascination was not diminished but rather encouraged by this confirmation. There was a strong belief among natural scientists that all terrestrial and aquatic animals had counterparts, like the behemoth and the leviathan or landlubbing people and merfolk. Acknowledging that there was such an incredible fish to be found only made people more convinced that the unicorn was still out there to be found.

bug bounty

Boing Boing, via Ars Technicia, has an interesting primer for the zero-day market, which the industry and regime-appointed czars are reluctant to address or even acknowledge.
A “zero-day” is a software vulnerability, identified by hackers but not publicly disclosed nor yet exploited, which is sold to the highest bidder—which is often a competitor but increasing includes zealous or repressive governments hoping to shore up a munitions’ dump that’s basically a kill-switch (or back-door) for the internet—on the tenuous promise that the discoverers won’t reveal the security weakness or act on it for their own benefit, and hence the name because communications platforms and companies that manage the underlying architecture of the internet would have no time to react or patch the fault, the bugs once it comes to light. This brisk, underground market represents a huge, welling threat with more than speculation becoming a commodity but the actual means of offense and defense. In their naïvety, governments are fueling this trafficking by hoping to preserve a systemic integrity but end up diluting everything in the process.