Patterned after the Monday Demonstrations that brought down the regime of East Germany, the PEGIDA (Patriotsche Europรคer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes—Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident, the West) marches are growing in numbers and frequency but are still rivaled by counter demonstrations. The German government, rightly, condemns the movement as racist and xenophobic. Trying to lend a legitimising air to thuggish and insular attitudes that were first championed by football hooligans (at least in costume, one has a better idea of what one is up against), these marches are hardly proving to be a civil way to channel frustrations or fears, what with public opinion splintered, calls that immigrants refrain from conversing in their native language at home and arson-attacks on refugee housing. I believe there are two very different things occurring here and bigots always capitalize on this confusion: immigration politics are not threatening to displace one’s culture and the level of interaction that all of these marchers have had with any form of Islam is limited to seeing families out in public and making assumptions, which does not exactly equate to an agenda of systematically imposing one’s way of life and values. Petitioning one’s government over real concerns for reform is one thing and resorting to violence and fear-mongering is quite another. Ideology and identity are not the same thing—but both run both ways.
Monday 15 December 2014
iconography or graven images
A very interesting set of quite different factors and historical influences came together, I recently learnt, in the fourth century to establish rich artistic traditions that allowed the Buddha, the Christ and the panoply of the Hindu gods to be portrayed in human forms for the first time and in a manner that was cultural diffuse and immediately recognisable. Though these movements took place around the same time, the religions were at different stages of development and acceptance at this point—what with the Brahmin’s gods already enjoying milennia of devotion, Siddhฤrtha Gautama having achieved enlightenment some eight hundred years prior and the latest incarnation of the Abrahamic faith in its fourth century. Despite these difference, they all started adopting pictorial representations around the same time.
A maturing network of international trade is of course a contributing factor, as being able to mediate on a shared image of how Jesus and company ought to look rather than relying on more abstract translated texts and interpreted teachings would spread these big religions and ensure their survival, but it is not the whole story. Before we got to the images of the serene Buddha and Jesus Christ in his characteristic poses, the story of these two was communicated through symbolism, teaching aides that represented the bodhi tree, the footprint of Buddha or the Cross, the sign of the fisher of men. And while it does seem natural and an effective step that the adherents of Buddhism would create figures of a limited and iconic variety for the benefit of foreigners being introduced to the philosophy, for Christianity it was a break with ancient traditions and taboos of not depicting God or His manifestations. The decision to show Jesus as a man may have happened in part because Constantine around this time declared that faith the official one of the empire, and Romans and Greeks, used to having statues of Dionysus, Hercules or Nike decorating their villas with triumphant flair, thought it was acceptable to have even more glorious statues of Jesus on display. As with Buddhism, the move was probably also good for the edification of foreign-speakers. Some three hundred years later, during the first few decades of the faith, Islam restored the proscription again representing the divine by human-hands by issuing currency for the Caliphate that only bore the word of God, instead of coins bearing the image of the head-of-state or other trappings.
jack and jenny
Camping at the end of the travel season in Normandy, H and I had a little fright late one night at a campgrounds that we had nearly to ourselves. There was an awful clanging of a metal trash bin from over by the restroom building.
Friday 12 December 2014
impulse engines
Wired! Magazine’s science desk has an interesting profile on the research of two astrophysicists from Harvard aimed to identify theoretical hypervelocity stars.
catagories: ๐, ๐ญ, ๐, transportation
santa’s little helpers
Writing for The Daily Beast, columnist Sally Kahn reminds us how big warehouse distributors exploit workers, especially those brought on to take up the holiday slack, with a telling decision upheld in the courts.
Though happily in Germany, these elves can go on strike—and over lesser injunctions—for America’s sweat-shops there seems to be little hope, and no great change of heart for these grinches seems forthcoming. This stint is not an insignificant one, not paying workers for the time at the end of each shift they spend being subjected to mandatory screenings and searches to make sure that they are pilfering any merchandise, especially considering that this same company will be awarded (for its tracking and logistics expertise) government security contracts and help maintain that list of who’s been naughty and who’s been nice.
Wednesday 10 December 2014
load of guac
catagories: ๐ฑ, food and drink
wmf or brรธderbund
Via Pre-Surfer comes a fine and heart-felt tribute from The Atlantic for the quirky galleries of clipart that came bundled in software suites, which are effectively being euthanised as one of main libraries of illustrative materials is being discontinued. Though better alternatives can be summoned-up with increasingly less effort, there is something a touch nostalgic to making do with a limited number of choices and the stock images that graced business presentations and school projects until just recently. I suspect that the genre might be perpetuated elsewhere, however, as linotype, stencil and other techniques are still used and appreciated. Fittingly, the eulogy is delivered in the media itself.
back-lot or quadratura
Berlin’s film museum, the Deutsche Kinemathek, is celebrating the work of set-builder and stage-crafter Sir Ken Adam, who conceived some of the most memorable, iconic and colossal cinematic backdrops of the past fifty years. Adam’s vision of the White House War Room for the Stanley Kubrick classic Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb even had the newly-elected real-life, Hollywood president convinced that was the command-and-control centre he’d inherit when he took office. Adam created the atmosphere of epics like Ben-Hur, several James Bond films and other cult movies. Quadratura is an Italian term used to describe the technique that applied perspective and foreshadowing to flat surfaces to create the illusion of depth and space.