the east is red one

On this day fifty years ago, carried aloft by a Changzheng (long march, CZ-1) rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre of Inner Mongolia, China became the world’s sixth space-faring nation (see previously, the UK launched Ariel 1 with American cooperation) with the Dongfanghong I (东方红一号, meaning the eponymous national anthem during the Cultural Revolution, 1966 - 1976) which the research vehicle broadcast continuously back to Earth (along with telemetry data) on an ultra-shortwave band during its planned twenty-day life span. Though the tune is used by broadcasters as an interval signal, like the pips, and remained popular with the public, it was dropped later in the decade with the ascension and reforms of Deng Xiaping in favour of the original “March of the Volunteers” for its associations with purges, imprisonment and factional strife. In May 2016, an updated version was circulating on the internet “The East is Red Again,” suggesting that Xi Jingping is the political heir of Mao Zedong, whom while the mentions of the songs went down a memory hole, Xi failed to refute the comparison.

stunt-double

Quarantined stuntmen, bruh... pic.twitter.com/nYSOqzAzBs

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) April 22, 2020

Via Cynical-C, we enjoyed this flowing, action packed montage nearly as much as this other collaborative and international bucket brigade, of stunt performers self-isolating, yet keeping their talents exercised.  The earliest practitioners of this discipline were the acrobatic acts of travelling circuses and were known as cascadeurs, trained to fall according to a pre-arranged sequence.

the mitigation of world tension through the exercise of humour

With its act of secession from Key West tolerated as a boost for tourism and the above motto, the Conch Republic declared its independence on this day, St. George’s Day, in 1982. While motivated out of genuine displeasure on the part of residence regarding inconvenience incurred with federal authorities combating the narcotics trade, the movement’s organisers, a “Sovereign State of Mind” have portrayed the micronation as a prevailing attitude and way of life exclusive to the Keys and have subsequently staged and invasion and surrender ceremony with a brokered peace. Though unimpeachably a nice place to live, the Conch Republic’s break-away status has only made its relationship and allegiance to Florida closer.

yngismeyjardagur

According to the old Icelandic calendar’s reckoning, the first Thursday after 18 April marks the first day of the month of Harpa, Sumardagurinn fyrsti, a public holiday—the beginning of the Náttleysi (nightless) time.  Meteorological projections for this season happen to align with folk beliefs that project that summer will be a mild one should there not be a freeze on the night before.

open office

From the latest link round-up (a lot more to explore here) at Pasa Bon! comes this ambient office noise machine—fully adjustable and importantly mutable once one has had enough—for those of us pining in a sense for the familiar routine of going into work and dealing with the patter of colleagues, traffic as the white noise that would at other times be a jarring distraction. I for one have never had to try to function in a sea of infinite cubicles and am not feeling compelled to ever not in the future telework—and hope that no one else is put in harm’s way by returning prematurely—and am grateful for that but do miss a bit of the atmosphere and commiseration.

hydrological regime

While meandering for just over a kilometre, the shortest river in France that we visited several years back dwarfs these watercourses, it is nonetheless interesting to hop about the map and consider these shortest of rivers around the globe and wonder how we define our topography. For instance, the pictured Ombla, stout though only thirty metres in length, satisfies all the essential criteria plus supplying neighbouring Dubrovnik with drinking water.  More to explore with Amusing Planet at the link above.

we have met the enemy and he is us

First observed on this day fifty years ago and now celebrated in every polity around the globe as the largest secular holiday of them all, organisers in colleges and universities brought out roughly twenty million individuals into the spring sunshine to peaceful demonstrate for environmental reform.
The original impetus was a devastating oil spill of the coast of Santa Barbara, California that was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of marine creatures during the previous winter with city solemnly marking the one-year anniversary of that disaster in January with an Environmental Rights Day, further advancing the idea for a day of action generally for ecological responsibility and justice. For the occasion, illustrator Walt Kelly created an anti-pollution poster with his comic strip character declaiming the above quotation, parodying a missive sent by Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry (older brother of Commodore Matthew Perry) to General William Harrison on his victory, more confident and less contrite, in the Battle of Lake Erie—another environmental mess we are trying to remediate—“We have met the enemy, and they are ours.”

do the sabre dance

A short movement in the final act of his ballet Gayane, premiering in Moscow in 1942, composer and choreographer Aram Khachturian (*1903 – †1978, the Georgian artist’s music later denounced by the state as “anti-people”) lamented how this one section based on an Armenian folk dance deflected from the rest of his repertoire, in 1948 becoming a jukebox hit in the United States and elsewhere and being reinterpreted by various charting artists, including a lounge and boogie version in the early 1960s.