Laughing Squid shares the opening of a special, long-running exhibit in the Victoria and Albert Museum on the history of so called Disobedient Objects, providing a virtual tour that includes instructions on how to make (hack) ones own gear of resistance, a bit ironic (or appeasing) for Her Majesty's Constabulary. The special-showing addresses social movements, protests and uprising through the artefacts of shanks, propaganda, personal protective equipment and other make-shift items from all over the world.
Saturday 2 August 2014
insatsu bunka
Friday 1 August 2014
croatia week: linguistic landmark
The written word, however, did not succeed in standising the Croatian language. Today, a Latin system of writing is employed, devised by Ljudevit Gaj who based his script off of the special letter forms and diacritical marks invented for Czech and Polish, and the language has, bolstered by national and literary identity, taken on a lexical standard, though much mutual-intelligibility is retained among neighbouring languages and dialects. I tried to learn a little bit and I think it accorded us some special attention for the effort, and would like to pick up some more for a return visit. Aside from the usually pleasantries and politely saying I want something, I remember the fun word for waterfall—Slap—and the term for feedback (Fragenbogen)—Upitnik, which sounds like something one would not want to solicit, being all up in another’s business.
Thursday 31 July 2014
think different
catagories: technology and innovation
croatia week: zadar or nunc dimittis
The city of Zadar has many fine churches with equally rich treasuries but one of the more curious is a reliquary of Saint Simeon (Sveti ล imun).
While repairing his ship, the merchant re-interred the body in a stone coffin in a graveyard for safekeeping. In the meantime, the merchant fell ill and came under the care of a some hospitable monks, whose churchyard he had covertly used as a hiding place. The monks had a prophetic dream that led them to the fresh grave and upon discovering the saint’s body and the wonders it worked, never allowed the treasure to leave. About two centuries later Elizabeth of Bosnia (Queen of Hungary and Croatia) attended mass where the relic was kept and a finger from the saint's mummified, incorruptible body.
It is hard to say why the queen was so possessed to do this capricious thing, but historically, she seemed like a real nasty character—ambitious and having her rivals' children killed, sort of a wicked step-mother figure who ruled as regent after the deaths of her well-wed husbands.
The story goes that Elizabeth hid the finger in her dress and it immediately started to decompose with squirming maggots and all the rigours of fourteen hundred years of deadness. Elizabeth ran shrieking down the aisle of the church and had to confess what she had done. Mortified, Elizabeth commissioned the finest sarcophagus to seal in the saint's remains (with reliefs depicting his miracles and curiously her attempted theft) and a fine church of his own in Zadar. Just afterwards, Venice loss its claim to its lands in Dalmatia.
catagories: ๐ญ๐ท, ๐, holidays and observances, religion
decamer
catagories: lifestyle, philosophy, religion
shelf life or slant operation
As Europe and the United States pledge to ratchet-up sanctions on Russia, making the state a pariah after the tragic airline disaster, which Russia appears to bear responsibility for arming pro-Russian rebellion forces in the Ukrainian Don-Bass region—including Germany’s stoppage of armament sales to Russia, there comes along quietly the provocative and shameful revelation that the US government is currently releasing stockpiles of munitions to Israel. The article is evasive and hardly unbiased but suggests that Israel either did not ask or does not need to ask to be re-supplied, since the rounds (stored in country) were due to expire, and rather than dispose of them, sell them to Israel and then re-stock the warehouses with more missiles and bullets—all consistent with US politic and the safekeeping of its interests, according to one source in the story.
There was once a bitter little quip that Israel is the only land in the Middle East not endowed with oil—which seems salient, consider how the West hopes to punish Russia—but there are offshore natural gas fields for both Israel and Gaza. Old animosities may be compounded by a race for treasure—especially if far-eastern petroleum faces an embargo. Israel is facing an energy crunch and its own deposits were not discovered until recently and will not be ready to be exploited for several more years. Russia was negotiating a deal to develop Palestine’s resources in January of this year, after the failure of British and American oil companies to secure an agreement with the Territory’s government—although it is unclear whether Russia would be allowed to manage such a project without the express blessing of the Israeli government
catagories: ๐ท๐บ, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, foreign policy, religion