liartown, USA and codename: SPENCH

The happy seekers at Boing Boing share a wonderful Tumblr cascade (not necessarily safe or appropriate for work or people without a sense of humour that ranges from crass to subtle) from Sean Tejaratchi whose eclectic genius for mashups and original juxtaposition creates some very funny reinterpretations.

I especially like some of his re-imagined signage, animal memes and, further back in the archives, movie-teasers and television series, like Marple after Dark and Gypsy Cop. It’s been said that the Tumblr platform is a backlash against the social, over-exposed blog, and while niche audiences entice further exploration, some things are definitely for sharing.

sampo

Reexamining the contents of old shipwrecks may be lending credence to ancient Nordic legends of a mystical stone, claimed to have the properties of revealing the angle of the Sun even under cloudy conditions, and thus direction for sea-navigation. A certain variety of crystals, called Icelandic spar, is common among the manifests of sunken ships and researchers have re-discovered that the crystals can be used to reveal the direction of weak and scattered rays of light, and thus bearing and course, if one applies the proper triangulation to correct for the polarization-effect. Such a tool (Zaubergerät) could have been instrumental in the Norwegian Vikings reaching North America, centuries before other European explorers and centuries before the invention of the magnetic compass, navigating stormy seas with seasons of short hours of daylight.

stella! or fiat means of payment

The EU monetary union and its currency, the euro, has deeper roots, reaching back to the nineteenth century with attendant problems and complications, and was directly inspired by a earlier coalition by the name of the Latin Monetary Union. Founding members Switzerland, Italy, France and Belgium decided in 1865 to tether their respective national coinage to a certain ratio of silver redeemable in gold, which was legal tender among all members.

Later Venezuela, Spain, Greece, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Romania, Bulgaria and the Holy Sea joined—with even the United States of America seriously considering taking part in the grand experiment. I never realized that the national pride of the franc, peso, drachma and mark was not so long-lived and had been sublimed before. H told me about this earlier attempt but I never knew what the union was called. The currency, however, had barely overcome many structural challenges before its dissolution during the inter-bellum years. The ultimate failure was due, in the main, to an institutionalized practice of and market for debasing. Though the coin’s face value was honoured universally, some mints were debasing their coins (some of the usual suspects were the greatest offenders), using less precious-metal content than prescribed. Other opportunists, notably the Germans, took advantage of this differential in specie, exchanging coins from countries out of compliance for more valuable bullion. By the same reasoning contemporarily if one could have all of one’s wealth expressed with pennies and had a buyer for the zinc and copper, one could see the value almost double. Despite all its failures at conception, the Latin Monetary Union had a long run and I wonder what lessons are applicable to the current situation.

street smarts

Not to disparage conventional wisdom since there is much to be culled from a rare quality called common-sense and knowing better, but folk-neuroscience has practically invaded all aspects of public dialogue and holds up a very inaccurate but tantalizing fun-house mirror to ourselves.

Stock phrases and jargon, I think, are good vehicles for a whole host of excuses that prompt us to look in possibly the wrong direction. Self- assessments are imbued with the stuff of expediency, culture, what’s psychologically plausible and stereotype, and then become a template applied to the inner-workings of others and rarely, ironically to ourselves. It is a positive development that we can defer to our brains as captains of our destinies but more understanding, as social and political animals, is needed before we can really apply these sort judgments for anyone.