shirley temple or taste/ip

Via the always discerning Nag on the Lake, we are introduced to a clever gadget—a virtual cocktail glass—that uses a combination of lights, wafting aromas and most importantly a mild electric stimulation to the tongue and taste buds to convince us we are experiencing flavours that aren’t really there. What do you think? This gustatory hallucination apparently can transform a glass of plain water into a fine scotch, and I suppose as the technique becomes more refined and shared widely, it will be able to recreate the most subtle notes and expressions for those who cannot or should not partake of adult-beverages and seems like a better substitute than having a mocktail.

morning constitutional

Betraying an a mild arithmomanic tendency by finding and enshrining the number twelve in human humours and anatomy, we enjoyed the introduction to one Doctor Alesha Sivartha (the pen name most probably of a Kansas country physician Arthur E Merton) and his graphically striking if not of great literary or scientific merit—as so many books on theosophy with contrasting or complementary theories were being published in the same era—Book of Life: The Spiritual and Physical Constitution of Man.
The charts and diagrams certainly do espouse the convoluted heraldry of palmistry and phrenology (click to enlarge) more effectively than most other, wordy treaties on similar topics and offer an enticement for further study. Despite the profusion of such works and some outmoded notions that really date the good doctor, there’s a systematic approach to be found and an enduring legacy attached to it—maintained by one of Merton’s decedents, which can be found at the source link above.

reporters without borders

The PEN International foundation—the acronym originally standing for Poets, Essayists and Novelists, which I never realised, sort of like TED Talks (Technology, Entertainment, Design)—has since 1981 designated this day as a time to honour and support writers who speak for those silenced, fight against oppression and for the freedom of expression, often to their peril. Such gadflies, imprisoned or censored, have been supported by the organisation since the 1960s with special committees formed to advocate on behalf of inconvenient dissenters, but the Day of the Imprisoned Writer was established to show solidarity and to showcase the profiles of courageous individuals that speak up.  The day has now also come to commemorate all the journalists killed in the line of duty between this November and last November.

6x6

la collina dei conigli: rescued veteran laboratory rats experience the outdoors for the first time

synchronicity: Krista and Tatiana Hogan are twins joined at the head and share a unique brain configuration that allows each to experience the other’s perceptions and possibly thoughts
animoji sounds: a Finnish comedian and voice-actor named Rudi Rok gives the animated menagerie their roar

pylos combat agate: a tiny decorative seal from a Mycenaean tomb is changing conceptions about ancient artistic skills

se possible: Cards Against Humanity has purchased land abutting the US-Mexico border and hired a law firm specialising in eminent do
main to make building that wall as difficult as possible

sonata primeval: the sound poetry of avant-garde exile Kurt Schwitters that Brian Eno sampled from for his 1977 album Before and After Science

jeroboam, rehoboam

Deezen reports how the New York design studio of Dror Benshetrit permanently installed a giant wine rack for the vineyards of Brancott Estate in the Marlborough region of New Zealand’s South Island.
The geometric structure reflect the tidy grid of plants that the diamond-shaped frame towers over is titled Under/standing from a point of view posited by Buckminster Fuller that to truly understand an undertaking, one had to build it and stand underneath it—which is surely an inviting vantage. Viniculture has only been practised in the area since the 1970s but due to the strong contrast between hot, sunny days and chilly nights, the wines of Marlborough quickly garnered international renown for its unique and strong expressions.

corpus callosum

We appreciated being introduced to the philosophical tenants of bicameralism, which author and psychologist Julian Jaynes developed in 1976 best-selling work The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
Though the hypothesis, which holds that at the cusp of prehistory the human mind was in a divided state where functions are discrete and an individual would interpret cognition as one hemisphere as dictating orders and the other side as listening and obeying, is now generally not accepted by the scientific community it did appeal to me like the idea that consciousness is the brain’s response to the forces of entropy trying to tear down its complexity. Jaynes goes on to expound that the two chambers of the brain were not wholly disconnected and inaccessible to each other but rather that his supposed bicameral mind of the ancients experienced thoughts in a non-conscious way, being directed externally rather than exercising volition though commands emanate from the same source. Humans only truly became self-aware and consciousness emerged once the gods stopped speaking. What do you think? The epics do indeed contain volumes of encounters with the gods, disembodied voices and divine inspiration—but little textual evidence for introspection and reflection. The notions of being partial to left-brain/right-brain tendencies is enjoying a resurgence as are the possible relics of bicameralism of in mindfulness, religion, trance, hypnosis and deferring to outside authority.

wildlife crossing

With our yard overwhelmed once a year with toads creeping to the pond to spawn, this selection of speculative articles on how artificial intelligence and driverless vehicles might be programmed or one day on their own come to hold Nature in deference or reverence really resonated with us.  We will volunteer with others of course to help ferry them across but there is still an awful lot of carnage in the single lane road that separates the woody hills from the valley.
What if autonomous cars and lorries meant not only a sharp decline in the number of human deaths but also meant the end of roadkill? We imagine, given the relatively neat and tame environment of the streets, that learning to recognise erratic and wild animals—and surely this feature is already figured into the algorithms with stray pets as potential hazards—would present a big challenge but perhaps the machines will out-perform their operators. Though dodging deer and boar and livestock won’t necessarily restore the balance of the natural world that we’ve thrown into disarray and there’s even the potential for more suffering with more creatures crowded into less habitat, the idea that cars might respect animal right-of-way by taking different routes to avoid migratory or breeding paths was quite intriguing. Like the trolley problem of computer ethics, future vehicles might need the hint, the protocol that maxmising the number of lives saved outweighs human convenience or profit but once taught this directive, the lesson is not prone to being countermanded by greed or laziness. 

locavore or on the growth of plants in closely glazed cases

Writing for the Atlantic, Jen Maylack invites us to reflect on how a seemingly elementary idea, the not-so distant ancestor of the modern terrarium, changed the course of the world—heralding in not only global trade but also the spread of Western colonialism and the spread of invasive species.
As basic as the principle underlying it is the Wardian Case was so revolutionary as to be the realisation of all the past endeavours of the alchemists—achieving a hermetic seal, that is, staving off the advance of time that defines all us mortals—with just as far reaching repercussions albeit in an unexpected form: a self-regulating environment that would capture in microcosm a plant’s natural habitat and perpetuate it at least long enough for it to become a transplant in a botanical garden or another area that afforded similar climes and growing conditions. The invention of the portable greenhouse came about just in 1829 when a physician and garden enthusiast (with a special obsession for ferns), one Dr Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward, lamented how London’s polluted air was killing off his prized collection and learned through trial and error that if prepared correctly that the right moisture levels could be maintained within a closed-system, by extension enabling the possibility of long-distance shipping incrementally to our present world of year-around availability fresh fruits and vegetables, regardless of one’s location—which of course have collateral environmental and geopolitical costs associated with them.