après moi, le déluge

A brotherly syndicate is apparently poised to rally its religious wing in order to subvert the Pope’s stance on environmental conservation. Business magnates that rely on cheap and dirty exploitation of Nature in order to ensure their profits don’t much care for the Pope’s message and hope to counter any reforms that might come about in policy changes, both publicly and privately.
Some conservative religious leaders have rediscovered a nascent and absolving argument that mankind ought not to presume it can alter God’s creation in any way, and that any ecological crises we witness and choose to append an anthropogenic label on is false and prideful. These rapture-ready flocks, I think, are easily led down the path of such irresponsible, selfish thinking—après moi, le déluge, “after me, [comes] the Flood” and just might adopt that sentiment of French King Louis XV of self-enrichment at the expense of others and future generations (which a lot of politicians and business leaders have honed). Many in the US already dismiss the Pope’s entreaties for charity and redistribution of wealth as communist-leanings, probably because, thanks to American exceptionalism, even the poor regard themselves as “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” and are just waiting to claw themselves to the top. I hope such attitudes don’t spread and this proxy war for the status quo is not prolonged.

oh, du fröhliche!

For this first weekend after the New Year finding many agonising over resolutions, Brain Pickings presents a nice book-review of a vintage, seminal work by Friedrich Nietzsche called Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft—usually translated as the Gay Science.

This happy discipline is itself derived from a Provençal term—gai saber—needed for the art of composition, which was already popularised through parody by writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, who coined the phrase appositely as the “dismal science,” sure that poets were supposed to be tortured, wretched souls. As the name implies, it is on the balance a positive and optimistic work, and Nietzsche, on the occasion of the New Year, resolves to be a yea-sayer and presents ideas that echo in famous and constructive lists of resolutions of other authors, thinkers and celebrities that the article also features. The Gay Science is often summarily dismissed as being the first instance in the philosopher’s body of work to contain the phrase “god is dead,” and although Nietzsche, as a secularist, wants to find the divine in ourselves that was imparted to us before we can intelligently discuss true deities, I think that the statement is amplified far beyond its tenor. The “dead god” is the departed Buddha and the vignette paints a swirling image of madmen desperately searching for religion but only finds worshipers bowing to the flickering shadows projected from a statue of the Enlightened One—and for this, Nietzsche makes us all accomplices.

false-flag or the real mcguffin

Even though it seemed that a disguntled former-employee of the entertainment concern was behind the hack attack against the movie studio’s estate and not factions of cowboys Juche sponsored by an obliviously angry and belligerent government of the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea, the US has decided to impose the already political-isolate with more punishing sanctions.

Even though North Korea’s involvement of prizing into a gossip column of a Japanese company was not cleanly exonerated and the general conduct of the nation is pretty inexcusable, this resolution, though typical, strikes me as suspicious. Either—and this a real possibility, there is either more at stake behind these cyber-skirmishes that’s being held back, or—which the whole business is starting to absolutely reek of—this is a carelessly crafted plan to tame the Chinese dragon, a creature conjured up by Western conspiracy and appetite in the first place, indirectly by winning over its perceived partners that it cannot influence in other ways. It is not exactly like earlier shameful episodes where the world’s will was drawn together with fabricated stories about weapons of mass destruction ready to be released in Iraq, in this Hack-attacky II, there’s no time to bother with such theatre, since I am sure that there are already test-audiences that panned it. First, however, destabilising Syria, Kiev, next making a pariah out of Russia, then making friends with Cuba, it does seem like the next step in their minds would be to drive a wedge between regional partners.

epiphany, theophany

The feast of the Epiphany—or Dreikönigstag as it is known in German, celebrates the arrival of the Magi to greet the infant Jesus and marks the twelfth day of Christmastide. On the eve of the holiday, priests bless frankincense (Weihrauch), gold that decorates the church and the chalk used to inscribe the initials of the Three Wisemens over the thresholds of the community, the names Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar also being an abbreviation for Christus mansionem benedicat—“may Christ bless this house.” One of the original purposes behind this pageant was to publicise the date of Easter and thus the liturgical schedule of the new year, before the availability of calendars. Eastern traditions also observe a similar feast on 6 January—though the Julian calendar in the present century is thirteen days ahead of the Gregorian one, though it is called Theophany, which is closer to the Greek source word meaning God’s shining forth.
Among other solemnities, which include priests making the rounds to homes of parishioners, the Orthodox priest will also bless a special batch of holy water that’s known as the Waters of Theophany and shared from the fount by the faithful. A greater ablution will take place afterwards, with a procession proceeding to the nearest natural reservoir, a lake, a harbour, and a cross will be cast into the water. In Greece particularly, this is done to calm the waters and make it safe for sea-travel after the stormy winter months and disperse the gremlins called καλικάντζαροι that bedevil ships. Parishioners will dive in to retrieve the cross and return it to the priest for a special blessing.

big fat surprise

A study, heavily laden with footnotes and cross-references, from the British Medical Journal suggests that all the lies the public have been fed regarding diet and nutrition over the last five decades or so was more or less experimental in nature—with the subject of study being more marketing, agricultural surplus and farming lobbies rather than health and well-being—and could neigh equate with mass-murder. This rather short analysis has been bantered about in the news for the past few days and subject to quite a bit of elaborate and imaginative conclusions, which was the stuff of the fringe-community previously, for going against the rubric of the Food Pyramid.

The article is not a summary dismantling of the pseudo-science, sponsored studies and poor sampling techniques that launched a thousand fad-diets and ensured that despite what appear to be good-faith remediation, we are as a whole, much unhealthier than ever before, but it does open the way for rigourous and humbling studies to follow. What do you think? Were we just naïve in believing that we not are surrounded by touts and hucksters—untouchable even in more wholesome rackets? Is this bit of righteous arson just clearing the stage for the next round of opportunists, as usually what’s quality isn’t worth the investment?

sea of serenity or columbiad

Though the first steps and thoughts uttered on the Moon are much celebrated and well-known, the final reflections of the last human to walk on the lunar surface are also profound and poetic. As he was getting ready to return to the lander 13 December, 1972—just over forty two years ago, astronaut Eugene Cernan mused:

‘...I'm on the surface; and, as I take man’s last step from the surface, back home for some time to come—but we believe not too long into the future—I’d like to just say what I believe history will record. That America’s challenge of today has forged man’s destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. “Godspeed the crew of Apollo XVII.”’

It always strikes me how short of period those missions spanned, in the crippling, unhappy days of the Vietnam War, and the reference-realisations that we thought we needed and had a really good reason for the exploration and the whole retroactive time-travel associated with adventures and imaginations that only seemed to have crept in one direction.

Humans first landed at the Sea of Tranquility (Mares Tranquillitatis) carried aloft by the orbiting command module called the Columbia after the Columbiad, the giant space-canon in Jules Verne’s book From the Earth to the Moon (which bears a lot of other similiarites to the actual missions’ execution), and humans left for the last time from a canyon called Taurus-Littrow in the Mares Serenitatis, the Sea of Serenity. Though never meant to be a party-crasher as the programme held its own and in many ways surpassed the achievements of the Americans—and in the first act of cooperation with the US, Soviet mission-controllers released the flight plan of its latest launch to ensure the safety of astronauts, Luna XV overlapped with Apollo XI and the first manned landing on the Moon. The Soviet module collided with the side of a mountain was it was coming down at the moment when the Apollo astronauts were first emerging from the lander for their walk-about.

Had the Soviet mission—the third attempt aimed to bring back rock samples, been a success, it might have still been overshadowed by humans presence, but the programme might have demonstrated that the same feats could be accomplished without risk to life and limb, being the first space programme reliant on advanced robotics and computers. IX having landed successfully on the Moon some three years earlier, II having rammed into the Moon a decade prior, while the first mission overshot its mark and became the first satellite to orbit the Sun and others—continuing until later summer of 1976—taking photographs and measurements, delivered roving vehicles and did succeed in returning soil samples, the scientific value—for the cost—of Luna XV would have outshone Apollo. If this pace and urgency had been sustainable, and even friendly as it later became, I wonder where we might be now. I hope too that we have the patience and the ambition to realise the vision that the last human to walk the Moon expressed.

pontiac rebellion or sons of liberty

Not to shatter any illusions, but one of the underlying motivations for the American Revolutionary War that cast off the yoke of British colonialism and set up a republic by and for the people in the face of monarchy—sorry San Marino, you apparently don’t count, before all that championing of the unreasonable nature of taxation without representation, was a touch less savoury.
Founding myths are important, obviously.  Proxy guerrilla warfare was staged against the British by competing powers in Europe—notably the French (spiraling debts incurred over these engagements led to France’s own revolution), the Spanish and the Netherlands who stood to gain with the UK tied up in internal conflicts—ensured that the conflict would continue, even after the concession of self-rule for the North American Colonies. Before these high-minded casus belli were discovered, however, it was the Crown’s irksome insistence to keep its word on treaties established with Native American tribes that was a sore point of agitation for settlers looking to expand their holdings. Because of growing tensions and potential exploitation of Indian lands, a series of royal proclamations decreed that there could be no private property deals between the colonists and Indians and that land corporations, like the Ohio and Illinois companies, would arbitrate the transactions—not that these companies were above suspicion themselves. Plantation owners seeing their aspirations mired in more bureaucracy rebelled for deed and title.