machine of the year

The franchise quite the subject of speculation and a holiday dinner topic of discussion not reserved just for those in business of superlative journalism, annuals or even necessarily consumer electronics, TIME magazine—breaking with a tradition stretching back to 1927, for the first time on this day announced that to a computer would go the distinction on this day in 1982, ahead of the publication of its 5 January 1983 edition. Introducing the special issue’s theme, the publishers wrote that “several human candidates might have represented the year,” with reportedly Steve Jobs quite upset he didn’t receive the honour, but the panel decided that the hardware would be best viewed by history as limning the times and marking the beginning of an era and way of life once the exclusive domain of hobbyist into something more accessible (see also) and mainstream. Though perhaps not as pervasive nor fully articulated, the kernel of most things we do with computers—the Cloud called mainframes back then and algorithms less opaque. Articles for the magazine that uniquely covered the only human-made object to be awarded the honour were composed on typewriters and layout done by hand, though in that coming year, the departments would begin to use word-processors.

the year in photos

2021 beginning a continuation of the previous year in many ways and not the grand departure we were counting on, changes and improvements are incremental rather than escapingly exponential and so appreciated, these collections of superlative images that chronicle the course of the past twelve months. There were of course too many arresting and consequential photographs to include them all, but this one picture framed by Don Seabrook of after school band practice addresses that stepwise nature of best-practices trialled and abandoned, sometimes without explanation, like those directional arrows in supermarket aisles that aren’t apparently needed any more or the rules of masking at restaurants and how safety bumps and personal mitigation-measures up on the limits of science. Much more to explore from Kottke at the link up top aggregating the lists from various news outlets.

fyc

Recorded earlier in the studios of Prince’s Paisley Park outside of Minneapolis and released on this day in 1988 as a single featured on their later anthology The Raw & the Cooked, the Fine Young Cannibals’ hit (Birmingham musicians David Steele and Andy Cox) peaked only at number five in the charts at the time but would gain much more stature in later years and has since become instantly identifiable with those last years of the decade.

✝ j.m.j. ✝

Venerated on the Sunday between Christmas Day and New Year’s (or traditionally, before 1969, on the first Sunday after Epiphany), the Feast of the Holy Family is celebrated to honour as a familial unit Jesus, His mother Mary and His step-father Joseph—presenting their relationship as a model for good Christian families, though relatively little is mentioned canonically about the upbringing of Christ after the Nativity. A popular art subject from the late fifteenth century onward, sometimes the depictions went beyond the nuclear family with Anne, Mary’s cousin, and John the Baptist included—though never later portrait studio editions with his four brothers, James, Joses, Jude and Simon and unnamed sisters.

a ‘savage stenographic mystery’

Reminiscent of another challenge recently recalled involving shorthand and its devotees, we learn courtesy of Strange Company that not only did author Charles Dickens make an early living as a court-recorder using the brachygraphic system of Thomas Gurney (trained as a clockmaker and developed his shorthand out of a fascination with astrological symbols, realised that there was little financially to be gained from scribbling and sensibly returned to the horological industry) and continued to use it for personal correspondents and manuscript (supplementing the character-set with glyphs of his own invention), there are moreover writings of the studied and celebrated novelist yet to be deciphered. There’s an appeal with an honorarium attached for decoding a passage in a text known as the Tavistock Letter and call for help in general in completing the canon.

fait accompli

Having persuaded the Supreme Soviet to vest within the office of president (a different entity altogether from the Presidium whose chair was sometimes conflated by Western governments and press) all executive powers for an amount of time not to exceed two years—like the Roman tradition of appointing a limited-tenure dictator, during this time of transition and upheaval, incumbent just since mid-March of 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev, his position strengthened by withstanding the failed August Coup but unable to reverse the party’s decision for dissolution, announced his resignation as commander-in-chief at the Kremlin before television cameras broadcasting internationally on this day in 1991. Expressing remorse for the breakup of the union, Gorbachev at the same time welcomed the reforms of a market-economy, greater political and religious freedoms as well as the end of the Cold War and its attendant brinksmanship, the Supreme Soviet the next day voted itself out of existence, allowing the Soviet Union to expire at midnight 31 December (Julian Christmas of course falling on the seventh of January on the Gregorian calendar but not reinstated as a holiday until 1992, with New Year’s the big celebration—see also) with the Russian Federation the successor to all Soviet Institutions.

next generation

The culmination of three decades of research and engineering expected to be transformational to science, the James Webb Space Telescope (see previously) launches from the spaceport of French Guiana carried aloft by an ESA Ariane rocket.  The array of mirrors folded and slowly unfurling during (a Korsch telescope—that is, a triple-mirror anti-stigmat) its month-long trip, unlike its predecessor the Hubble which orbited the Earth and made good at an operating temperature of a balmy twenty celsius, the JWST will seek out the second Lagrange point from our planet (one of four foci with gravitation equilibrium) with the flare—the noise and light pollution of the Earth and Sun to its back to see clearer and further in the cold of space, better able to discern non-luminous objects that are more visible along infrared bands. In addition to peering back in time and charting our stellar origins, the unimpeded should allow researchers to glean the chemical composition of the atmospheres of exoplanets and search for biomarkers. The countdown itself is already a white-knuckled event and it will be months before the JWST goes on-line and relays its first images, but it will give us a new perspective on the Cosmos and our place in it.

weiße weihnacht