incunabula or roger ramjet

 A six hundred year old copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle (DE/EN), Liber Chronicarum, an illuminated world history and one of the earliest printed books in Europe, turned up in Utah. Hearing of such finds really validates poking around flea-markets and even hording a strata of forgotten things in one's own attics and basements. I was not really cognizant of what the chronicles featured, nor of the fantastic wood-cut illustrations, brilliant like the animation style in The Point! or School House Rock or Fractured Fairy Tales, which feature a few cities not too far away, like Bamberga (Bamberg) and Herbipolis (the Latin name of Würzburg). In fact, I think I have this same illustration of Würzburg framed, stashed away some more, although I am sure it is just a nice print and nothing cannibalized from a book.
Also, in deference to the fiftieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's space flight, which was among all else a huge feat of engineering for the Soviet Union and certainly a chance for communism to shine, the cosmonaut was instructed to equip himself with symbols of the party, including a copy of Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto.

Because, however, the volume was the wrong dimensions to fit into his suit's cargo pocket, it was not destined to be the first book in orbit. Gagarin, rather substituted a copy of Moby Dick (which does not seem too svelte either) at the last minute before boarding.

tripolitania

Via Mindhacks, the dispatches and observations from the situation in Libya from the perspective of a sociologist found at Revolutionology are dense accounts and explanations about the atmosphere that could foster an uprising--in the country's here and now and not in some sort of hypothetical land painted in broad strokes like its neighbours, matriculating classmates of Reform 2011. It is difficult to penetrate the propaganda from both camps, which is moreover clouded by outside arbitrators whose vested interests may not be readily apparent. Lack of clarity makes criticism in general, rebels too weak or without a popular mandate for change or that the de jure government is beneficent or whether either party wanted or needed outside intervention, suspect and contentious. It is especially interesting in the light of the truce apparently brokered by the African Union, though the UN resolution was acquiesced to as well.

The map of Africa and the map of Libya is being filled-in by the news, rebellion, partnership and colonial posturing. The AU's peace is promoting protection for civilians as well as providing a forum for settlement or even surrender, but with NATO patrols still on-going, sometimes treaties also have locked swords--or locked shields.

memory alpha

Though I am sure that the competition has already seen its victors, this work by John Martz, Trexels, which catalogues (coming down in eight-bit harmony--click on the poster to see the full Space Invaders effect) many of the memorable characters from all the different Star Trek series, it is still fun to peruse the collection and remember the Horta, tribbles, all the doomed red shirt ensigns, Klingon poetry, Cold War space opera, Romulans, Borg Picard, the Q-Continuum, Guinan, Wesley Crusher, the Wild West of Deep Space 9, or when Mister Data was obsessed with Sherlock Holmes and when Lieutenant Broccoli had holo-diction.

Can you name them all?  It is sort of like looking back at the bestiary of creatures and enemies from Legend of Zelda, and a very nice tribute to the classics and classic story-telling.

en prison, la partage

Not that I believe there was ever any cunning and masterful strategy infused into the socio-economic-fiscal-dogmatic standoff that is presently looming in America's capital and coursing through all of the extensive system of moneyed and political tendrils throughout the world, mostly such acts, either symbolic or feckless or both, usually are center-ring of this circus.

There are too many other events of greater pitch and movement, however, than this ill-conceived and manufactured crisis--not that forcing the issue won't have devastating effects privately and publically. For all the suffering, anxiety, delay and inconvenience, all tremolo-complaints, really, until they become the big-picture which is certain, caused, this shutdown will be no solution to the fiscal impasse. Already, even if the shutdown does not happen, it has had affect, stymieing the business of government with all attention focused on what Congress will do, and panic descending into chaos has set in: Washington, DC will be severely curtailed should this happen, but so too will those peculiars of the US military and State Department, overseas outposts and embassies where all services are federal, and there is already panic buying at the company stores, the commissariat, with check-out lines snaking around the building. If the Congress begrudges federal employees those lost wages during the possible closure, y2k-like hysteria, looting, riots and pillage cannot be far behind. Though war-fighting will continue not so fleet-footed without the bureaucracy to support and justify it, America's governmental absolution, shirking its duties to its people, is rather embarrassing.

Debt and misappropriation will still be a drag on employment and making families whole and gainful and still insurmountable by any estimation or exotic mathematics. Lashing out over the funding a few social-engineering projects while gaps in taxation and enforcement--or wholesale corporate welfare at the expense of public good--is as desperate and frantic as some of the lightly-mentioned problems over the next rise: default and slipping confidence that America proposes to bolster its coffers (war-chest, rather) with creative marketing, like selling phantom gold reserves from Fort Knox or its massive pile of student loan debt as promissory notes.

tilting at windmills

Google, who is also the underwriting force behind an elusive armada of server barges that form the vertebrae of the internet's infrastructure and redundancy that float on the waves and are powered by the motion of the oceans, in sponsoring a photovoltaic park in Brandenburg--the company's first such venture in Germany. Google cannot be faulted for the timing of this project, as advocates and detractors disagree on energy policy and whether the country can be self-sufficient without nuclear energy and without importing power at a premium.

Formerly, Germany was a power-exporting country and for a place where sunlight is sometimes also at a premium and wind is not guaranteed and derives nearly equal parts from renewable, low-impact sources as it does from all others, and I believe it can easily match and surpass that deficit by practicing a bit of conservation and intelligent channels to distribute resources. Government mandates and schemes like carbon-credits have good intentions, though efforts to meet baseline standards and swap environmentally responsible behavior for pollution elsewhere is sometimes a shell-game, companies and institutions usually do not go beyond the requirement and sometimes unfortunate tradeoffs take place, like ethanol in gasoline making foodstuffs scarcer or those LED traffic lights that do not generate enough heat not to freeze over in the winter. Though regulation and practice should not be opened up to entrepreneurial reinterpretation and redrafting, to turn laws in favour of corporate interests, a bit of work in tandem could make for more efficient systems and fewer tough choices for all.