carbon-sink

The Times of India has a tantalizing little article to re-calibrate the direction of environmental research, turning it back towards carbon-sequestration through a study on ant colonies. Of course, forests and coral reefs perform the same function on a much larger scale than one teeny-tiny bite of breath at a time—trapping whole bucket-fulls of greenhouse gases at once, if left alone.
Careful atmospheric measurements and observation suggests that the creatures make a mortar of limestone to shore up their tunnels and nests. Such examination of ant farms is really a foil to one of the greatest contributing factors to environmental change—behind industrial pollutants and ecological destruction: through mechanised and deep ploughing and tilling, layers of carbon-dioxide that would otherwise mellow underground is released by the acre. I do not believe that the ill-effects of modern cultivation is just the undoing the carefully coordinated work of ants and other chthonic beings.

claire obscure

In as much as the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and wife in Sarajevo was not the sole catalyst and cause of the outbreak of World War, I appreciated the message of a documentary produced a few years ago that conveyed that those preceding years were not just a prelude, the eve of war. Aside from advances in mechanization, transportation and the migration of populations from rural to urban-areas, a singular event did lead to the diversion of much of that new and untempered energy towards the build-up of navies and military power: shortly after the invention of the airplane and the science of aerodynamics, French inventor and aeronaut Louis Blériot successfully flew across the English Channel (La Manche) in the summer of 1909.

Though celebrated on both sides for this great achievement (Blériot was encouraged by a £1000 prize offered by a British tabloid to whomever could manage such an impossible task), more sombre-thinkers realised that this feat meant the end of Britian’s imperviousness, separated from the rest of the violent continent by a natural moat and an admiralty unmatched. Seeking to exploit this newly discovered weakness, other nations quickly sought to bolster their sea-power, and England wanted desperately to maintain its supremacy, whatever might attack from above. Defensive or offensive, sadly, such contingencies ache to be used. Inspired by the disruption patterns in Nature, the zebra and the great spotted and striped cats, a group of artists, under the leadership of Norman Wilkinson, were commissioned to disguise the fleet in what was known as dazzle camouflage. The striking geometric patterns and colours were not to conceal but rather confuse, by making it difficult to discern speed and heading—making the job of a marksman, whether from sea or air, much more of a challenge, often wasting rounds by misjudging distance. The practise continued until the beginnings of WWII and the advent of radar that replaced range-finding. Pablo Picasso asserted that he and others of the Cubist movement (that occurred around the same time leading up to WWI) but possibly, it was the other way around. I wonder what other seminal events might be bound up in other colourful techniques

idem or a mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido

I can remember driving around the countryside in the mid-nineties, long before the days of content-on-demand and in a region whose FM stations did not match my tastes in music exactly with a lot of Country-Western and white-people Gospel, and discovering the wilds of AM radio, who devoted swaths of the programming-day to conservative then liberal tirades—sometimes confusing liberal with libertine.
I found it formative to be exposed to all sorts of alternative points of view—that sometimes retreated to conspiracy-mongering. Everything was open to dissent, however, and like a canon of nostalgic music to draw on, I wondered really what it means nowadays to have entertainment on demand for material that one has not been exposed to before—since we are getting worse, I think, at being very original or anything but derivative. Regardless of how dogmatic or admitting of disagreement these shows really were, I do remember how they characterised the opposition, especially avid followers of one figure in particular—as Ditto Heads. That seemed particularly fitting, and though of course the phenomena still exists, that term has fallen out of favour—because, perhaps, that's what the Medium (another term those shows used for the monolithic main-stream) has become, a media-echo of re-blogging and without much endurance to keep up a rally and when there's only flitting narcissism and everything true becomes a nice back-drop to frame it in.

trip-wire

Just after Israel asserted its independence from American hand-wringing and revealing itself as not another fawning lap-dog, telling the US never to second-guess its handling of security—an internal affair—again, it has been revealed that the intelligence apparatus of Israel closely monitored the communications and negotiations between the US foreign minister as he tried to help broker last year a peace settlement between Palestine and Israel, soliciting support from various regional players.
Of course, the US has gotten many bitter tastes of its own medicine, polling parties for willingness to cooperate with their policies and corporate dictates—or knowing the price of success and how cheaply others may be bought, or whether, by this intelligence algorithm, other measures will have to be introduced. Toppling tragedy could only follow, because naturally any such enlightened, knowing how political sentiment will bear out, that materiel-support will continue, and timing aggressions when America is too overcome by other events, would choose such a moment to prosecute its aims.

arm-chair coaching or ARG:GER

I realise that this speculation is a little behind in coming, but we watched the final match at a Public-Viewing in Rovinj while on vacation, and I continued to be fascinated by the fact the tense stand-off, also being followed by two living Popes, who happened to hail from the countries of the opposing teams, and how such a coincidence of events will never occur again. The Argentine pope had earlier pledged neutrality, asking for no divine intervention, but I don't know what the thoughts of the Pope-Emeritus from Germany were on that subject. They may have watched the game together, though their minders suggested that play started well past their bedtimes.