mata hari or gene gene the dancing machine

Austria's talented entrant for the Eurovision Song Contest is highly deserving of all her accolades and acclaim and has managed to unite a big part of the world in respect.  The evening did not go so well for Russia and affiliates that took a sour-grapes attitude after being the brunt of much booing and jeers, not only the performance but also when the viewer and jury votes were tallied and anyone voted for Russia.

Russia distained the whole extravaganza, blocking the segment in national broadcasts when the Austrian power-ballad was aired and holding it up as emblematic of what the West and European Union represents and shamed any Western-oriented former satellite states for aspiring to such things.  Russian government officials went so far as to claim the contestant was part of US intelligence psychological operation, meant to demoralise and upturn the spiritual values of the Russian peoples.  Although I don’t believe that for a second, stranger plots yet have been hatched: Chuck Barris, host of the wonderfully bizarre Gong Show was in fact a spy and an assassin for the US CIA and the absurdists’ game show (and spin-offs, the Dating Game and the Newlywed Game) was a means for transmitting coded messages to other field operatives, though the agency disavows any knowledge of this.

tardy-slip or enten/eller

In a very beautifully terse and compact analysis, Maria Popova writing for Brain Pickings weekly thoughtful digest looks at the nature of happiness and discontent through the focused lens of Søren Kierkegaard's fragment of life: Either/Or.

Bracketed by brilliantly illuminating quotations, it comes obvious how ones hour by hour orientation, frantic and fearful of savouring the present for fear that it comes at the expense of the future or set-backs to earlier times or nostalgic for escaping achievements, estranged from the truth that that future is in fact the same as that moment we are wrestling into something productive. The treatise rings even more relevant today and I think that this is a book I would like to revisit, since it is one that is meant to grow with you—though not literally and more akin to engagement, I took the philosopher's words on absence semantically as non-attendance and know I did not get as much out of it as I should've more distracted by the Don Juan level at the time. We may all feel that such a struggle is pedantic and we do not have the time to be lectured about such daily challenges, sore that there is not a quick-fix, some enchantment to reverse this rush—though not many of us would like the hunting-trophies of the great here-and-now, but to be busy or otherwise engaged is a choice and such lessons are definitely something that one ought to keep in his back-pocket.

solo shot first

Groaning about the working title for the next episode of the Star Wars trilogy “the Ancient Fear” has elicited many comments on the subject of facelifts and remastering and general bad story-telling. Among things as bad or worse than the character Jar Jar Binks (though there was similar criticism for the Ewoks), the list includes Darth Vader having actually been the one to build C3PO, re-inserting scenes that were on the cutting-room floor simply because now the producers had better technical capabilities and the introduction of the midichlorians—the microoganisms that are the welders of the Force (the director's nod to the fact that a human being cannot remain healthy and functional without his hitchhikers in the form of gut-flora).
 I don't care for such trends at all—they did this not just to the Jedi but to the vampires and werewolves as well, implying that these powers are a treatable or manageable condition with the right drug-therapy and are not attributable to something supernatural. Fan at large Bob Canada also has a nice related review on kind of lame action figures that were brought to market for the prequels, including Ms. Jocasta Nu, librarian of the Jedi archives. Walk-on roles can be pretty fun, nonetheless.

crack-pot scheme

The ever-brilliant Colossal shares a thoughtful and patient post about the Japanese practise of kintsugi (golden repair)—rather than disposing of broken pottery or other objects or trying to conceal the chips and cracks and imperfections, the fine art of mending is intended to honour the history and trials of well-loved objects, putting the pieces back together again with jointing infused with precious metals. After the technique and philosophy was established, reportedly when a shogun in the fourteenth century sent a damaged porcelain tea bowl back to China, kintsugi became wildly popular with some breaking vases and urns on purposes so they could display the golden seams of wear and long-use.

foia or plenipotentate

RT reports (на панглийском языке) how new policies being instituted at the behest of America's Intelligence Czar are poised to seriously change the journalistic landscape of that country and make reduce the candor and transparency that is already lacking among officials:

it is not only grounds for dismissal with prejudice, to include imprisonment, for intelligence officers to speak to a member of the press, without out prior staffing, vetting—furthermore, under this blanket gag-order bureaucrats are prohibited (and retroactively, too, and ironically the new memo was itself leaked apparently—or at least previewed to focus audiences) to even acknowledge news items already in the public domain that have been not released via those official channels above. Nothing is so terrible to tyrants and their abettors as a free press. Even research meant not for publication but to analyze how current policies and procedures to determine whether they are either robust enough or overkill that cites leaked or cherry-picked (publicly compiled) information would be forbidden. The idea is not lend any credence to potentially damaging intelligence but will result in a chilling effect on meaningful dialogue—albeit that the last time officials (the authors of these new policies) tried to address the white elephant in the lobby, they ended up perpetuating lies to the American executive and legislature, and the rest of the world besides, concerning the scope and intrusiveness of their surveillance engines.

með lögum skal land byggja

As Scotland is herself poised for a referendum on whether to secede from the United Kingdom, the archipelago stretching to the ends of the Earth of the Shetlands, Orkney and the Western Isles also wants the question of its independence to be brought to a vote. The constituency’s motto is an Icelandic phrase, “with the law shall this land be embiggened,” and reflects historic and cultural ties to Scandinavian countries, especially Norway—having not become a part of the UK until the fifteenth century (actually as a dowry for the union of the Norwegian and British royal houses). The petition to instigate the plebiscite has already been signed by around ten percent of the population and if the measure is passed, the residents could then choose to rejoin Norway.

ad parnassum

Cornelius Gurlitt, son of art historian and dealer, Hildebrand Gurlitt, defamed for exhibiting so-called “degenerate” works in the 1920s, who hoarded a gallery’s worth of unknown paintings of unknown provenance in a small apartment in München, passed away following heart surgery a month after Gurlitt agreed to aid German customs authorities in determining which works might be stolen and help them locate the rightful heirs in exchange for the return of his collection—at least pending the outcome of the investigation. Unexpectedly, Gurlitt bequeathed this trove, including art by Chagall, Picasso, Monet, Delacroix, Dürer and Matisse, to the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern. The museum directors were rather gob-smacked with the news—as Gurlitt had no known association with the place, and disposition is to be determined, although the Bern collection already bears some affinity to Gurlitt’s own, including Paul Klee and Cézanne.