link roundup: five-by-five

wayback machine: a brief profile of the independent internet archive and its mission

tunnel-vision: magnificent GIFs by Florian de Looij

boo-boo: neuroscience theorises that saying ouch helps one take one’s lumps better

pop art: BBC Four documentary on Kraftwerk

quotative like: linguists explore novelty in the vernacular

by special arrangement or jesus and mary chain

As the press and public are starting to have misgivings and doubts concerning the real agenda and who’s to gain and who’s to loose over a trade deal that’s been couched in no real debate, shrouded and perched on high above the law of the land, the Holy See has also made known its stance, sharply criticising this polarizing trend that comes at the expense of the poor, the environment and any hope for mobility. The treaty’s secretive drafters, however, apparently have listened to the outcry and have made concessions—providing heads of state and high officials with special visiting hours to inspect the contents of TTIP, by appointment only, during a given window of time, in US embassy compounds and under the constant watch of consular staff (according to a .PDF leaked to Der Spiegel).

magical mystery tour

After the box-office success of HELP! there was a pitch to the legendary film director Stanley Kubrick to cast the Beatles in a production of the Lord of the Rings saga. The Tolkien estate eventually rebuffed the proposal, but just imagine how our conception of the characters would have been otherwise, not to mention the scoring. Incidentally Carl Sagan had approached the band about including the track Here Comes the Sun on the golden records carried aloft on the Voyager space probes. The Beatles were enthusiastic and honoured but for whatever reason, their record label refused. That would-be first encounter would have been surely even more monumental and definitely immortal.

speech is silvern but silence is golden

The superlative Brain-Pickings shares yet another absolute jewel from the desk of Lewis Carroll (Charles Ludwig Dodgson) in his short pamphlet, probably written as a more sensible and kinder counterpoint to the thicker, authoritarian guides to correspondence of the day, called “Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing.”

While it is true, especially among the shrapnel of sharing, that for some, words are little projectiles to shout out demands and twice-divorced from communication—and of course contextual communication, sometimes only requires a gesture, a sort of disembodied body-language but that’s not the courtesy and consideration that Carroll is concerned with, I believe. Despite how some bookkeeping techniques might sound dated and the epistolary arts might be a moribund thing, Carroll’s advice rings surpassing true, even today. Careful reading and restraint is emphasised.  Sometimes—day-to-day, I guess, we only need such short barking dispatches or confirmations but I think what we write, say day-to-day is not just a reflection but is the same as what we hope to compose in a thoughtful and polite way. This excellent analysis is also a point of departure for exploring what else the don thought about politeness and good, humanising manners.