the good lord bird

Having commenced his raid the night before—considered to be the overture to the US Civil War—with the kidnapping of the officer-in-charge, great-grandnephew of George Washington and the seizing of ceremonial weapons presented to the first president by the Frederick the Great and the Marquis de Lafayette imbued with mystical powers, taking more hostages and capturing the federal armoury and seizing rifles for a revolt of enslaved individuals (having failed to enlist the support of Fredrick Douglas and Harriet Tubman who thought the exercise suicidal), the early hours of the second day of the taking of Harper’s Ferry in 1859 by radical abolitionist John Brown first brought a train-jacking which spread the news of this insurrection by a social justice activist whose notoriety very much preceded him—having worked to turn unincorporated territories like Kansas towards the side of freedom rather than slavery.

Delayed until sunrise but otherwise unmolested, the engineer dispatched telegrams to summon the cavalry. The reinforcements that Brown expected did not materialise and soon the white residents of Harper’s Ferry besieged the armoury, forcing Brown and his compatriots to retreat to the firehouse and repel the counter-attack as best they could but were eventually forced to retreat. Having received updates throughout the course of the raid, President Buchanan (whom had previously put a bounty of Brown’s head) sent in federal troops and put the town and garrison under the command of future leader of the Army of the Confederacy Robert E. Lee. Imprisoned and later arraigned in nearby Charles Town, Virginia—now West Virginia, Brown was found guilty of treason and conspiracy against the Commonwealth and condemned to death by hanging on 2 December. The execution was witnessed by a crowd of spectators that included John Wilkes Booth, future assassin of Abraham Lincoln (see also), and though the gathering was kept well back in order to prevent Brown from delivering a final, fiery speech (his last oration in the courtroom was considered by many as nonpareil in American history—he was able to pass along a note to his gaoler that encapsulated his reaction in brief: “I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty, land: will never be purged away; but with Blood. I had as I now think: vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed; it might be done.” Whilst most Northern anti-slavery advocates were sympathetic with Brown’s failed call for uprising, it was condemned in the same circles for being brash and foolhardy, Southern plantation-holders whom did live in fear of a revolt took the coup’s lack of widespread support as an affirmation for the status quo. For Union soldiers, the death of this fighter for freedom became a cadence call: “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, his soul goes marching on,” to which at the suggestion of a friend, fellow abolitionist and woman’s rights activist Julia Ward Howe took the tune and reworded it as the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” as an equally stirring but slightly more reverent tribute in 1861, just as the civil war began.

chernoff faces

Via the New Shelton wet/dry, we are introduced to the ideograms invented in 1973 by statistician and applied mathematician Herman Chernoff to express multivariate data as the human visage, recognising that the mind could be easily overwhelmed or misled by numbers and odds but are generally good at reading faces and detecting even subtle change. Data is carefully mapped and projected on the facial features, eyebrow weight and slant, mouth, and can be used to convey complex outcomes, like understanding one’s investment strategies or the consequences of opting in or out of programmes for stakeholders at all levels. The style reminds us of the Squigglevision technique used on Dr Katz and we wonder if the earlier encoding work of Carl-Herman Hjortsjö might have fed into Chernoff’s reseach.

valerie and her week of wonders

Debuting in theatres on this day in 1970, the cinematic adaptation by director Jaromil Jireš of the eponymous 1935 novel Valerie a týden divů from Czechoslovakian surrealist writer Vítězslav Nezval, the disorientating horror film is considered a pioneering part of the scene’s New Wave movement (see also). This exploration sexual awakenings through a vampiric lens blends in elements of classic folklore structure, including a talisman in the form of heirloom earrings, stolen, bartered-over and ultimately swallowed for protection. Below is the movie in its entirety dubbed into Italian and with English subtitles.

the great dictator

The same age and born into similar life circumstances and the only other who could pull off their signature facial hair, produced much to the consternation of his native UK as they feared the political satire ran counter to their policy of appeasement (though by the release date—on this day in 1940, that attitude had very much shifted) so changing venues to American cinemas—who maintained a stance of neutrality—the debut of the comedy-drama was a rousing condemnation of fascism and antisemitism. As skewering and honest in its assessment the film was—Chaplin playing both the protagonist and antagonist in the roles of the cut-throat dictator and the downtrodden Jewish barber (with cases of masquerade and mistaken identity), the creator later admitted that had he known the true scale of the horror of the concentration camps at the time, he would have never made the film. Below is a clip from the final address, with the Great Dictator recanting all he’s done.

we like to call it keen-wa

We enjoyed this latest comic from xkcd courtesy of Language Log which also clued us into the fact that there are crib notes for each that don’t belabour, insult or kill the joke but rather enhance it through thorough explanation. We also liked the suggested subtitle / bonus question: “Do you make a distinction between shallots, scallops, and scallions? If you use all three words, do they all have different meanings, all the same, or are two the same and one different?” More to explore at the link above and at Randall Munroe’s (previously) web comic, whose title is not an initialism for anything but rather letters with no phonetic pronunciation.

catch me when you can mishter lusk

Post-marked on this date in 1888 along with a parcel reportedly containing a preserved human kidney and addressed to chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee (return address “From Hell”), the letter ostensibly from the individual responsible for a series of gruesome mutilations that terrorised London identified only as Jack the Ripper is one of the few pieces of correspondence surrounding the unsolved killings that are considered authentic—with the same reservations that it might be an attention-seeking hoax like the thousands of communications received by newspapers and the police.

Though seemingly of the same provenance and style as two previous missives, the “Dear Boss” letter—which established the by-line—and the Saucy Jack postcard which a journalist later recanted, having confessed to a colleague as having made them up to solidify the narrative and place it all under one heading, directed towards The Star of London and Central News Agency, this penultimate letter was never fully repudiated and subject to on going study and public fascination. The writer notes, “I send you half the Kidne I took from one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nice.  I may send you the bloody knife that took it out if you only wate a while longer.”

6x6

mega project: unrealised plans from the 1930s to divert the Thames and reclaim land in central London—via Things Magazine  

messiner effect: researchers achieve room-temperature super conductivity with a novel metallic hydrogen alloy—via Kottke 

crying wolf: a misinformation training exercise (see also) in Nova Scotia goes awry—via Super Punch  

sea of seven colours: a tour of a pristine island reserve off the coast of Colombia 

minuet: Коробейники was not Tetris’ only theme tune  

karlův most: deconstructing and rebuilding a fourteenth century bridge in Prague to span the Vltava

the age of consent

Released on this day by London Records in 1984, the synth-pop trio Bronski Beat’s above titled debut album was in reference to legal and social reforms in much of continental Europe that decriminalised homosexuality and harmonised the age of consent with that for heterosexual relationship, legislation which the United Kingdom did not ascribe to at the time. All members of the band were openly gay and their music contained commentary on politics and gay-related issues. Their one charting song “Smalltown Boy” is featured on the record, an eventual anthem addressing hardships of coming-out and experiencing homophobia, released also as a single earlier in the year.