tehdit

In an apparent about-face to the regime's earlier courtship of technology and telecommunications and in response to opposition politicians that have hijacked the internet as a platform for lies and libel, at least—according to the incumbents, the government of Turkey is looking to curtail freedom of expression on-line when the integrity of the public and republic is at stake, including the whole-sale blocking of certain popular sites.
The European Union is joining a chorus of Turkish protesters in revolt, however this individual-mandate, which Turkey wants to install as a way for policing the internet and dousing out sparks before the lead to righteous conflagrations, blocking the activity of certain persons or a link before they can blossom or metastasize—though blatant censorship is little different from roving arbiters and trolls that have door-stops within governments to get their way and can be scarier yet than calling twitterpation a “menace (tehdit) to society.” These laws are ostensibly meant for protection of individual privacy and dignity, adding a bit of amnesia to the internet which never forgets—which seems on the contrary like something quite positive and reasonable, since going back to the idea of an individual-mandate, great freedom also carries with it great responsibility—especially when evangelizing, but the potential for abuse is always there, as those most eager to do the judging usually have no business doing so.

zur farbenlehre oder roy g. biv

Marine biologists studying a specific species of mantis shrimp (Fangschreckenkrebse) that inhabits coral reefs—an explosion of colour, shade and shadow, have found that these crustaceans have some of the most advanced eyes compound eyes in the animal kingdom. These shrimp have sixteen distinct photo-receptive cells, ommatidium whereas human eyes only have four to filter for red, green and blue and contrast, to differentiate, to tune for three times more colours and perceive polarised light and across different spectra.

It's difficult to truly understand what this exponentially higher range of visual acuity means and hard to make parallels, it's not as simple, I think, as looking at a thermal image of something, donning night-vision goggles or being Geordi La Forge or Superman. It's been long known that bees and butterflies and other inspects have advanced visual systems that humans cannot imagine, except as a bewildering kaleidoscope, but researchers now theorise that the ability to perceive so many more aspects of the their environment, including time and tide and what's washed in with them, through their eyes, what humans know as reason and reflection, higher-level mental processes, are by the crabs and their kin just seen, intuited, with in their field of vision and require no further thinking.

menagerie

Beyond mermaids and unicorns—and even enjoying less widespread popularity than rarer chimeras like griffins, harpies or the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary (cotton, not so much a monster), there is a neglected bestiary, which the marvelous Atlas Obscura pays tribute to. My favourite creature enrolled here is the odd Lidérc from Hungarian folklore—a sort of familiar, hatched as the first of a brood from a black hen, after being incubated in a human armpit—according to some traditions.
This newly-hatched imp, industrious and loyal, eventually becomes also a curse and a liability. Though always at their master's disposal, such congress becomes a dangerous thing, but can be gotten rid of through a variety of equally specific rituals, like giving one's Lidérc an impossible task, like a logical feed-back loop that will eventually cause a fatal-error. It reminds me of the notion that vampires exhibit arithmomania and are compelled to count whatever is cast out in front of them, like grains of rice, or the Greek custom of setting out a colander during the Christmas season to trip up evil spirits, since they are obsessed with numbers and will try to count all the holes. They only make it as far as two, however, since three, the Holy Trinity, makes them disappear and start all over. It's interesting that monsters are framed with compulsions and I wonder what that means.

cold fusion

Kottke shares some interesting developments on the world-wide initiative to harness essential limitless energy with nuclear fusion by creating a wee constellation of tiny terrestrial (or at least mundane—that is, below the sphere of the Moon). The project has a commendable mission statement, as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor abbreviated ITER, or rather iter from the Latin for the way, it aims to bend physics to satisfy man's needs, like with Prometheus—punished for giving humanity the gifts and curses of fore-thought and fire, in a sustainable manner. Whether it is possible to contain this sort of power is uncertain, but progress seems in jeopardy due to the bureaucratic nature of such a collaboration.
Such a complex engineering project has even spawned its own form of currency to facilitate funding of grants, and I am sure that there are secreted cautions among the members, especially those who supply the world's traditional fuels—who spread rumours that bringing the CERN collider on-line would ingest the Earth in a microscopic blackhole. Kottke's posts are always value-added, waxing philosophical and triangulating with curious but cogent parallels, and wonders if in this case, it is not an effort better handed off to industry. Many of today's businesses, flush with money and not only interested in preserving the status quo (though dominance and vertical monopolies are not much different) might want their own stellar prestige project.