2024 (11. 233)

don’t crash the pips (11. 232)

Courtesy of our faithful chronicler, on this day in 1923 BBC sound engineering AG Dryland, not allowed access to the clock tower of the Palace of Westminster, climbed onto a rooftop opposite the Houses of Parliament to with a microphone and transmitted the bongs of Big Ben at the stroke of midnight live, in a tradition that’s occurred with few but notable interruptions since. A few weeks later, the Greenwich time signal began accompanying the chimes on broadcasts at the top of the hour.

la montaña sagrada or a funny thing happened on the way to enlightenment (11. 231)

Via a New Year’s obscure filmic tradition, we are re-introduced to the spectacle of Alejandro Jodorwsky’s (previously) 1973 Holy Mountain and considering a re-watch. The sacrilegious, surrealistic movie produced by Beatles manager Allen Klein with financial backing of John Lennon and Yoko Ono relates the narrative of a thief marketed as Jesus returned and collaborates with an alchemist (played by Jodorwsky) to transmogrify and transfix himself along with a constellation of characters representing the houses of the zodiac, ultimately breaking the fourth wall and give up this quest. Prior to filming, principal cast members underwent three months of spiritual training drawn from various practises including the I Ching, yoga, Zen Buddhism and the Kabbalah as well as communal living prescribed dosages of LSD and psilocybin. After premiering in Cannes, the Holy Mountain was screened in limited-release in New York and San Francisco in November and was not widely available until three decades later.

9x9 (11. 230)

unwound: a cartoon that speaks to the time-dilation of the Winterval—and the year in general 

politics or otherwise: year’s end Can’t Let Goes from NPR’s podcast contributors 

fast-forward: a century of New Year’s men’s party fashions

aitana lopez: the virtual, machine-generated influencers stealing jobs from humans  

cap d’agde: the restoration of the Art Nouveau Chateau Laurens—a palace also known for its connections with Catharism  

like a fridge in reverse: a visualisation of the science of heat-pumps—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links

fondue chinoise: a variation on the Swiss holiday tradition inspired by the Asian hot pot 

favourite global tech stories from publications not named rest of the world: like Bloomberg’s Jealousy List, staff compiles articles they wish they’d written—via Waxy  

cartoon cryptozoology: explore a chaotic archive of the earliest animations

high-voltage (11. 229)

Sometimes colloquially called in their native Australia as Acca-Dacca and named after their sister pointed out the label on the electric adapter of her portable sewing machine, thinking that it captured the sense of raw energy that her brothers Angus and Malcom Young wanted to convey, the band had their first official engagement on New Year’s Eve in 1973 in a nightclub in Sydney called Chequers (or according to other sources, an event for Bondi Beach lifesavers). In the early days, their stage personae consisted of glam rock outfits and super hero costumes and would go on to record their first studio album two years later. Their iconic logo was designed by typographer Gerard Huerta who also produced lettering and artwork for Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Blue Öyster Cult among many others and created corporate alphabets for Condé Nast, Waldenbooks, Calvin Klein’s fragrances and Swiss Army brands as well as mastheads for Time, Money, People, Working Mother and the Atlantic magazines.

synchronoptica

one year ago: same procedure as every year, an unreleased Blade Runner video game plus the first detailed views of Mars

two years ago: the first cases of COVID-19, Hogmanay, UN Secretary General U Thant, the outsider art of Louis Wain plus a laser display in lieu of fireworks

three years ago: the founding of Guinness, Kanji creation contest finalists plus Marshall McLuhan

four years ago: Putin begins his presidency (1999), more esoteric programming languages plus a New Year’s Countdown

five years ago: a pre-New Year’s Eve display, Japanese New Year traditions plus more countdowns

gromatici (11. 228)

A committed flaneur and a bit obsessed with getting my steps in myself, we were pleased to learn of the bematist-set—those specialist βηματισταί employed in Ancient Egypt and Greece—whom for one assignment at least proved to have accurately measured the distances crossed by the army of Alexander the Great—with such precision, it was said that they gauged their paces with an early odometer, suggested by Pliny the Elder and Hero of Alexandria, though no direct evidence exists. Later on the philosopher and polymath, with the assistance of a bematist, Eratosthenes pretty closely calculated the circumference of the Earth around 240 BCE. The first application—the above title—of this skill however augmented, was in land surveyors and tax assessors, possibly also with instrumentation aid and a professional class endorsed by attendant religious officers.

mcmxcvi (11. 227)

Due to the periodic nature of the Gregorian calendar, 2024 corresponds precisely to the year 1996, twenty-eight years ago. We can speculate further what historic events from that year might resonate with the coming one, like in January, with the re-election of Yasser Arafat as president of the Palestinian Authority, the February peaceful transition of power in Haiti and a ceasefire in Sarajevo, March’s intimidating military exercises conducted by China along the coast of Taiwan, April’s Hutu genocide in Burundi, the arrest of the Unabomber, Israeli’s Operation Grapes of Wrath as retaliation for terrorist attacks perpetrated by Lebanon, May’s Port Arthur massacre which prompts Australia to introduce a nationwide ban on gun-ownership, the truce in Chechnya or the election of Benjamin Netanyahu, July’s cloning of Dolly the Sheep, the re-election of Boris Yeltsin or the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta Georgia, August’s first three-parent human baby, November’s re-election of US president Clinton. We also have the choice of recycling the calendars from 1968 or 1940.

anlaut, rime, nucleus, coda (11. 226)

Though everyone can intuitively say how many syllables are in a word—until one begins to question oneself like being prejudiced towards a certain pronunciation—and I find myself mostly conscious of them when editing and formatting longer words, particularly German, ones that to be hyphenated to be broken up to fit on one line or not be orphaned on the page—linguists have a challenging time defining what this phonological unit really is and whether it exists at all. Easily enough meted out, with allowances for artistic license, in poetic transcription adhering to a prescribed meter and rhythm and clearly parsed in the dictionary, the practise of actual syllabification is difficult to resolve as the spoken emphasis and stress is often, maybe always at odds with the conventions of orthography.