wireless or not to scale

From the prolific and always interesting antiquarian JF Ptak comes this interesting cartographical representation of the US that graced the cover of a door-to-door salesman's guide from 1937.
The states (and poor Canada up there like some lost vestige of a listening-audience) are depicted proportionately according to radio-ownership, so the sales force better understands their prospects and potential leads. While we like to fancy such remapping regions to different scales to be something very modern and original, here it is during the high of the Dust Bowl and waning years of the Great Depression (threatened to return by successive recessions and joblessness), with some places already awash in the electronic smog of the airwaves capturing one aspect of the times. Be sure to visit the website for more finds and ephemera that reveal the escaping past.

terza rima or remote-sensing

One of BLDGBlog’s latest brilliant postings celebrates the endless capacity for curiosity by way of the site’s trademark speculation and triangulation to arrive back at the momentous bleep and bloop that heralded our first encounter with gravitational waves and the new, unimagined frontiers that that discover opens up for astronomy.
Like radio telescopes limning a whole heretofore invisible spectrum of the heavens and pushing our sight further than the aided eye could do, gravitational astronomy might transform that relatively static backdrop of the stars into something dynamic and constantly churning. But I digress from the original digression which was the author’s own awe and wonder compared to the formative efforts of Galileo to understand the cosmology and meteorology of Dante’s vision of the Underworld. This serious and infernal undertaking supplied the applied-sciences quiver of ideas for the Renaissance Man more mundane inventory of innovations. As alchemy anticipated chemistry and the pharmaceutical disciplines, I wonder if this sort of devoted dissection on the part of one’s readership and fanbase is what's needed to help us find the edges, as it were, and forward the cause of progress.

boot-strap or res publica

Despite the highly contentious levy—often described as the death tax and going by several other dread monikers depending on the jurisdiction and particular gentry of the society in question—not generating much revenue for any particular host government, most seem to want to cleave to this particular regime, regardless of the benefits. Undoubtably the greatest inheritance that one can receive from his or her parents is in one’s genes and in not expected wind-fall, but complaints about the system seem to not go wholly unfounded when some launch arguments about expectations to pass along some of those earnings to successor generations without contest.
Perhaps—albeit inviting a logistical and actuarial nightmare—wealth bequeathed ought to be assized by age, progressively, and not by amount. The beneficiaries of the nouveau riche surely attain a different perspective than the impoverished aristocratic class, and this egalitarian-thinking does not always yield classlessness, nor perhaps should it. Despite the flaunting of the middle-class (and its academic nature) as something that ought to be upheld, American society remains averse to this sort of social structures and even the term class—though it's the most vocal and venomous and it's punishing effects. However inheritance tax might be assessed and collected, it seems that it provides little for government coffers in return for the debate and heartache that come with the discussion and at best ought to be used as a softer way to peddle equality. For good or for ill, no one ought to be held to account on the success or failure of the preceding generations but perhaps a little social-purchase could be engineered drawing off the capital of old-money and dynasty, if inheritance tax is something to be pursued at all. What do you think? Is it a lot of fuss and bombast about nothing or really a way of ensuring the established lines of aristocracy remain in power?

doxological

With the papal-visit in Mexico wrapping-up, The Atlantic’s recommended Lenten reading, I think, takes on greater dimensions in Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory. There was also a cinematic adaptation called The Fugitive starring Henry Fonda. Inspired by an actual sojourn on the part of the author in the Mexican state of Tabasco when the governor was cracking down on the influence of the Catholic church, an anti-hero known only as the “whiskey priest” faces dogged persecution worse than Jean Valjean when the character resolves to conduct underground services and hold confessions despite the government’s suppression of the faith, forcing priests into retirement, burning churches and destroying relics and other religious paraphernalia. Though the struggle of the seriously flawed main figure—whom no community wanted as his activities attracted unwanted attention and a state-sanctioned inquisition that led to more killings and destruction—was condemned by Church censors for sacrilegious and agnostic portrayal, I agree that it is a good-read especially when one considers how broken resolutions (first for New Year’s and then for Lent) are compounded and confounded and the physical articles of faith are denuded among other claimants and one only has one’s own time in the wilderness as a measure.

majuscule and minusclue

A bicameral system of writing has two cases for its letters, usually distinct in form and not only size—like Latin-, Greek- and Armenian- derived alphabets, whereas Arabic, Hebrew and Persian make no differentiation.  I wonder if that makes reading a particular challenge, like the cursive-hand that is reportedly incomprehensible to young people.

Aside from æsthetic prerogatives of font and layout, mixed cases probably were cultivated for the sake of speed when copying out a running script—as opposed to headings or chapters that dominated most inscriptions, and the conventions were propagated with the printed word. Individual rules of orthography are as varied as language, where sometimes all nouns are germane or sometimes demonyms, the months and days of the week go with no special consideration and certain symbols and ligatures often only take one form, like the Eszett (ß) that’s never at the front of a word or the Latin alpha that can be single- or double-storey. If rules of capitalisation prove too complex, especially given an international venue, something called a “kebab-case” is employed where dashes replace spacing and no words are writ-large. Using underscore in a similar way is called snake-case. Not to dispense with proper punctuation altogether, words whose meaning changes with capitalisation like Mass (liturgy) or mass (physical property) and Hamlet (Danish prince) or hamlet (small village)—plus many others, especially having to do with place—is called a capitonym.

papa was a rodeo or rhinestone cowboy

Revisiting one of Collectors’ Weekly brilliant show-and-tell session, the surprising tale of the association of country-western performers with rhinestone and over the top outfits is revealed, with a debt of gratitude to the self-styled rodeo tailor, Nudie Cohn.
Inspired by the attire of burlesque shows and surely some of his homeland’s traditional garb, the bootmaker and tailor’s apprentice from Ukraine (Nuta Kotlyarenko) opened up a store in North Hollywood for his fabulous get-ups in the 1940s and after a bit of networking successes, Nudie’s custom suits became all the rage, sported not just by the likes of Roy Rogers, Hank Williams, Gene Autry and Johnny Cash but also by Elvis Presley, Elton John, David Cassidy, Tony Curtis, Bob Dylan, Gram Parsons, and John Lennon, as well. Cohn’s story is remembered by his granddaughter who grew up in the family boutique and has lots of interesting details to share about delivering special products and making everyone feel pretty glamourous. Someone really ought to make a movie out of this story.

we don’t need no stinking badges

Dangerous Minds shares an amazing assortment of alternative merit badges from artist Luke Drozd that awards decorations for subversive areas of study like espionage, home-dentistry and a host of paranormal abilities. Far from advocating delinquency, this collection of accolades—which does not discriminate between what mischief boys and girls ought not to emulate—it shows that demerits can sometimes be their own reward. What sort of life-skills would you like to see included in order to advance up the ranks?

périphérique ou les grands ensembles

Photographer Laurent Kronental spent the better part of the last four years assiduously documenting the anchor residents of the large housing estates that began to ring in the Parisian suburbs from the 1950s through the 1980s, the urban veterans that have remained amid a mostly transitory population.
These images not only capture the grandeur of the architecture but through the personal stories of the seniors serves to dispel ideas that might have been formed and fuelled about blight and “no-go” zones, and while not presenting a false-face on the challenges that these housing projects have endured, suggest that the utopian ideas within the brick and mortar might not be altogether a matter of the distant, marginalised past after all. Be sure to visit the link above for a whole gallery of photographs and to learn more about the artist.