guillemets

Used in a number of orthographies around the world instead of or in combination with quotation marks, the term is a diminutive of Guillaume (William) after the pioneering sixteenth century French printer and font-founder Guillaume Le Bé—France being the primary place where they are employed, though the nested quotes are used elsewhere and in other ways, including in Japan and China where « » sets off the title of a book or album, in Portuguese and Swiss German (called Möwchen, little Sea Gulls) to indicated a reported quotation within a quotation, and inwardly pointing » « to bracket off direct speech. In Quebec, a singular right pointing guillemet itératif is used as a ditto mark.

don’t @ me

While the earliest known attested use is to be found in a fourteenth century translation of a Greek chronicle with the at symbol substituted for the α of amen for unknown reasons and in commerce as a glyph representing the unit of volume and mass the arroba on the Iberian Peninsula—about two stone or twelve kilograms before signifying a going rate, despite its inclusion on most Western keyboards, it remained something of a mystery until the widespread use of the internet and social media. Traditions outside of English general ledger accounting (and in reality everyone prior to email) perceived the rather useless upper carriage key as something twee mentioned in a typo—as in Afrikaans, Dutch, Finnish, German, Macedonian and Polish where it’s a tail of a pig, puppy, cat or monkey. Astutely in Norwegian, Welsh, Korean, Esperanto, Italian, Hungarian, Ukrainian and Belarusian it is the word for snail, whereas in Catalan, Hebrew, Swedish and Slovak it is the word for a pastry roll. Though informal stylings probably prevail, in the Kazakh language, @ is officially called айқұлақ—that is, the Moon’s Ear.

liquid television

Via the venerable Cardhouse, we are invited to indulge in a bit of forgotten nostalgia in the complete mini-series—the arc of narrative with cliffhangers clocking in at just over six minutes—of The Esperanto Family airing on MTV, with other cartoon friends including Æon Flux, Beavis and Butthead who unjustly received more attention thanks to the network’s doting, in 1990 from the brilliant Joe Horne, creator of The Specialists and Stevie & Zoya. The narrator is John Joseph Lydon—also known as Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols.

tulipenmanie

The market bubble peaking, according to available records and sales ledgers, on this day in 1637 before bursting, rampant speculation (see also) and deviation from intrinsic value, with single flower bulbs selling for what a skilled artisan or trader could expect to earn in a decade in his trade drove the Dutch Tulip Craze, generally understood as the first stock market crash. With a newly liberated—no longer the Spanish Netherlands—and wealthy populace captivated by an import from the Ottoman Empire that could be cultivated and coveted unlike any other flower endemic to Europe, increased demand attracted as many professional brokers as tulip fanciers to the marketplace, complete with abstractions including short-selling and futures contracts. Once the bottom finally fell out of the trade amid distress and recrimination, those left holding flowers and bulbs in the end were left with little recourse as no court was willing to enforce the terms of a contract, declaring the debts incurred through gambling and not subject to commercial law.

palais bulles

Originally commissioned for French industrialist Pierre Bernard, the villa overlooking the bay of Cannes designed by Hungarian architect Antti Lovag (*1920 - †2014), the Bubble Palace (see also), an ensemble consisting of various swimming pools, water elements, an amphitheatre and ten living units in Théoule-sur-Mer, was acquired by recently departed fashion mogul Pierre Cardin as a holiday home. It is now up for auction. Much more to discover at the link above and the property’s French language web site.

blast shield

On the six-month anniversary of the explosion that rocked the city of Beirut, we are directed towards an appreciation over the over-engineered, monolithic grain silo in the harbour, made to withstand not only the bombardment of the wind and sea but also the pressure and possibility of dust explosions, whose eastern-facing cylinders sustained and deflected the brunt of the powerful shock wave, sparing the port and the city even more destruction. The design of this half-a-century old piece of infrastructure stands—though battered—in stark contrast to the mismanagement and cronyism that resulted in the deadly and debilitating detonation and should be preserved as a monument to recovery and reform.

¡ay caramba!

We enjoyed this news segment from 1990 about some school districts banning Simpsons t-shirts and other merchandise over messaging and to assuage parents’ fears that such taglines might stoke rebellion. There’s some real Stranger Danger and Satanic Panic energy (a vibe that unfortunately is pretty tenacious) in the reporting—by a national media outlet—and some heavy moralising with the profusion of marketing tie-ins including bootleg goods (see source link above) that came out with the phenomenon not even a year old.

[the facebook]

With origins in a website called “Facemash” which culled photographs and profiles of students from nine sorority houses on the campus of Harvard University published in the campus’ face books—a callbook or an annual distributed shortly after matriculation to help students get to know one another and presented them to be rated in terms of attractiveness circulated on the schools listservs that nearly got its author expelled violating individual privacy and breaching the network host’s security protocols, Mark Zuckerberg generously offered to digitise the student directory as a universal face book within Harvard. The university agreed and website thefacebook.com was launched on this day in 2004. Though membership was initialled limited to the college, the speed and spread of registration soon saw expansion to other prestigious universities and shortly thereafter most schools in the United States and Canada.