namely: plutographic

Not to take any wind out of the sails of our celestial celebrity, via the Oxford English Dictionary’s daily vocabulary teaser comes a little jewel of a word, coined by the writer Tom Wolfe, plutography.

Though we are enduring another Gilded Age of extravagance, conspicuous-consumption and wealth disparity that really revivals the uneven landscape of the 1980s, the term by author of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and Bonfire of the Vanities it seems particularly useful and adept at describing the fascination held for the elites, especially as captured in the tabloid press and the syndicated series Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous of that time. Of course, we like to think that we’ve matured beyond such enthralments—but they’re still very much with us and romanced in myriad ways. Contemporary word-smiths would much more readily wield the unbound and blunt morpheme porn (as in poverty-porn for urban blight) to describe something we all recognise as vulgar and provocative in our social betters. Next time I see such an ostentatious display, I’ll call it plutography.

hella throughput

One other state assess to undergo privatisation, despite protests and public sentiment is the historic and busy port Piræus in Attica, one of the largest in the world and fount of Greece’s thalassocracy—a sea-going empire and later shipping tycoons and trade magnates and island-hopping around the archipelago. Piræus also happens to be the name of our second favourite Greek restaurant—having been recently unseated by a new favourite called Athen, being the German form of the great city Αθηνα and it strikes me as curious how different name cases come across in different languages with different conjugations and declinations, Athens sounding something akin to, “Let’s go to Walmart’s.”
Having the public relinquish a controlling stake in this venture is really torturous and I wonder how the past and the future will judge this decision.  Piræus is also known as the Lion’s Port—referencing a monumental fountain that stood at the harbour’s entrance from the third century BC to the late seventeenth century, when it was looted along with other spoils by invading Venetians during the War of the Holy League, the belligerents being Western Europe and Balkan rebels against the Ottoman Empire of the east. This ancient lion, somewhat defaced by the graffiti Nordic mercenaries excited over their war trophies, was delivered to the Arsenal (shipyard) of Venice—where it still stands along with other captive lions. The sobriquet is also still in place, despite the lion’s three centuries of absence, and I wonder if Greece has asked for it to be returned.

meanwhile, back at the agora oder unsichbares hand

I fear that the Greek people are being saddled with a curse that will survive many generations, sort of like predatory pay-day loan storefront lent legitimacy by central banks’ underwriting that traps people down on their luck in a vicious and unending cycle, pushed into a coup d’Etat. The most optimistic estimates predict, I heard, for repayment—just getting back to zero and being broke again (the condition that most countries cling precariously to) and not in arrears or receivership—is at best a hundred years and that is contingent on a period of peace and stability that has not been enjoyed in a long, long time.

The Greeks, of course, have a term for such hegemony already in their philosophical quiver—though in a different context—namely, Frankocratia, the period of rule by the Germans and the French (the Franks) with the mission-spill of the Crusades, and while I think it behooves one to have an abundance of caution when assigning blame, not because the affairs awash with pure intentions, but pointing the fingers at a an obvious villain tends to deflect attention from the real Putsch and even absolve the corporate interests behind everything. The Invisible Hand of the market. Meanwhile, Athens is in the process of readying a fire-sale of its heirlooms and heritage as collateral just to have permission to re-open their banks—including institutions that were profitable for the state, like the national lottery, airport administration and even becoming more restrictive to public right-of-way and beach access. Who knows what’s to follow? The privatisation process will be overseen by Germany, which has some experience in this field, having had established the so-called Treuhandanstalt (trust agency) to administer the transition of state-controlled industry into to the capitalist system after the reunification and four decades of East German pension funds and business paradigms had to be integrated. This programme has not been without its contentious detractors, hardships and heart-ache as well.

5x5

helm’s deep: South-westerns brace themselves for large-scale US military training exercise

jello submarine: iconic Beatles’ classic in gelatine form

freejack: via the mesmerising Mind Hacks, thieves come closer to prising open mental wallets

senor-shooter-interoperability: scary report about a German missile battery briefly commandeered

mappyland: a Swedish based service that renders stylish, sleek schematics of any place in the world

last stand, last straw

Although no excuse for unconscionably cruel and dishonest behaviour, a constellation of events coalesced in a prefigured, post-Civil War United States of America which saw the undoing of the aboriginal population in its near destruction with the years of Reconstruction. Of course, the introduction of Old World diseases and the conquest of land and treasure had been continuing a pace for centuries already but the disruption of factional fighting, subsequent redundancy of soldiers and redefined economies encouraged growth and expansion. Starting from the eastern seaboard, American Indians were being displaced farther and farther westward, with American territorial gains from the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican-American War. With a sight towards realising Manifest Destiny and control from sea to shining sea, suddenly those plains and prairies where the natives were exiled to were starting to look not so far beneath them.  Moreover many tribal leaders—as they had done during the Revolutionary War with Britain, had also chosen to back the wrong side in the Civil War, supporting the Confederacy not for ideological reasons or that they seemed necessarily more palatable, it was just that the Union had treated them so badly and trounced on all former promises.

This retroactive treason did not earn them much sympathy in the eyes of white America. The Industrial Revolution, with America pulling ahead of Europe for the first time with the production of steel, and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad also hastened settlement and re-settlement. Confined to ever-shrinking reservations, the Native Americans’ nomadic way of life, especially for the plains Indians and recent transplants who must have gone through their own trauma and shock in a strange environment, following the herds and rhythms of seasons was under threat. Said railroad cut across the remaining open spaces and brought ranchers who further delineated their parcels. As if it was not enough that these cultures clashed, with the ideal life of a settler becoming a farmer or cattleman tethered to one spot and homestead, the passengers riding the trains crossing Indian lands were encouraged to slaughter buffalo (bison)—not after they got to their destination or like being reminded to please have their pets spayed or neutered—but actively and from the window of the rail-car, mowing down as many of the beasts as possible as an act of aggression against the way of life of the Indians and to clear the area for ranch land. Though perhaps understandable, stories of savages attacking settlements and convoys were probably greatly exaggerated, but expansion and removal needed justification and all those Civil War veterans needed something to occupy themselves. Regiments took to protecting the settlers from potential raiding parties and to policing the reserves, in some cases establishing permanent forts and barracks located right on the reservation, as was the case in Little Big Horn. And surprise—there was gold in them there hills (the Black Hills being sacred to the Lakota peoples), according to one prospecting expedition escorted under the guard of the army—though that cache was greatly over-estimated as well. When the chiefs failed to avail their tribes to move along of their own accord, the Bureau of Indian Affairs handed the whole matter over to the army to dispatch with these malingers. In no sense was this pitch-battle in 1876 a last stand for Bvt. Major General George Armstrong Custer, but the Dakota, Cheyenne and the Sioux and compatriots fighting for their existence. Although this defeat of the US army has formerly been a co-opted as a rallying-cry, like “Remember the Alamo” (a battle sparked over the right to of white Texians to keep slaves), the victory, routing an entire advancing column, of the Native Americans was a pyrrhic one and just fuelled more resentment and fear in the public eye. In the immediate aftermath, a larger scale war ensued, making promises even more fragile and inspired America to later (with the death of Custer’s widow) hewn four colossal presidential busts in one of those hallowed hills—called the Six Grandfathers in their language—to promote tourism in the region.

celluloid ceiling or poison-pen

Via the always curious TYWKIWDBI, I learned about a new subtle way of gauging rather overt biases and sexism there is in cinema and storytelling in general, called the Bechdel test—named after a militant comic-strip but the creators acknowledge that the principle of the rule was already present in Virginia Woolf’s lament A Room of One’s Own.
The test has three simple criteria, which an astonishing amount of film cannot pass, whole or in part: 1) at least two women characters 2) the two women must have some sort of dialogue 3) the subject of that exchange must be about some topic aside from men—marriage or babies. It is really pretty amazing to think how in the exposition of the Star Wars saga or Lord of the Rings, there is no significant interaction among women.  Of course, it’s not meant to be an absolute  nor any sort of casting guideline and can be a template to examine inclusion and composition in other areas—and probably most importantly, it is a tool for advocacy and raising awareness of something that could pass as invisible and unchallenged.

missed connection

I am justifiably miffed and disappointed with myself for having missed the visit of His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama right here in Wiesbaden—for a dialogue on the occasion of his eightieth birthday (news article in German).

I saw the posters at least a week in advance—but, and I don’t know what I thought, like lions would be falling from the sky and that’s all anyone would be talking about, I guessed it was a telecast birthday greeting beamed from different gatherings around the world. After the fact—and I was even in town while it was going on in the Kurpark, I can see why the hosting of such an event might be kept low-key so as to not jeopardise any tenuous political- or business-relations. Happy belated birthday.  I ought have investigated and planned more carefully, especially if I am expecting the mountain come to me and then be absent myself. It’s nearly paramount to missing out on a visit by the Pope. This city always has something in the wings and next time, I’ll need to be more gracious and forthcoming—especially considering what others might have given for such an audience.

dwarf-planet or plutocrat

This week, the New Horizons space probe will have achieved its primary mission, after a journey of over nine years, powered by a plutonium reactor and carrying the ashes of its discoverer, and deliver the first detailed images and measurements of the planet that was downgraded after its launch, but will be traveling around fifty thousand kilometers an hour and barely have time to blink before it sails past. On its approach, it’s already beaming some amazing pictures back so astronomers believe that this one pass will afford them with a great trove of data to last for years. It is really remarkable that for the first time in decades, we’re going to be presented with an accurate portrait of another world—and not just an imaginative artist’s conception, with geographical features to be named. The hunt for Pluto began in earnest in the late 1920s when physicists grew fretful over the unexpected sideways orbit of Neptune that did not fit into the model of the solar system as described by the reliable, certain Newtonian mechanics that had been a sustaining grace for centuries.
The scientific community feared it would lend too much credence to that new physics of uncertainties and probabilities. Not wanting more revolt and upturning just yet—what with the age and world affairs and the ideas of Darwin still being fully masticated—astronomers hypothesised the existence of a yet unknown Planet X beyond that could account for Neptune’s odd behaviour. Fortunately (for Newton since the fate of scientific thought hung in the balance) the hunt yielded Uranus and it did mostly explain the outer planets’ orbits—however, there was a need (and public excitement to forward the cause and exploration) to call for a second scavenger hunt in the night skies for a consolation prize. The competition was fierce—since the discovery of yet another planet and immortality to be gained lay in the realm of immediate possibility, and interestingly as the hunt was on, science-fiction and horror writer H.P. Lovecraft captured it in his own mythos, calling it Yuggoth, before the planet was ever sighted (though naming-conventions were strict and there was probably no movement to name it as the Cthultu author had done). Planet X´ was first spotted by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930—while working at an observatory in Arizona—endowed by a wealthy Bostonian by the name of Percival Lowell expressly built to save the Newtonian system (as above, the naming-conventions were strict and one could not very well call a planet after a benefactor, no matter how generous—although it looks pretty sly how the astronomical symbol ♇ adopted was basically a monogram of Lowell’s name, once Pluto got its designation, suggested by an eleven year old from Oxford, Venetia Burney, grandniece incidentally of the Eton professor who named the moons of Mars Phobos and Deimos), whose ashes are being ferried to his discovery. That this mission even got off the launch pad at all is also a story of coincidence, timing and politics—more on these plutocrats at the link above. Afterwards, for as long as its plutonium battery lasts, New Horizons will pass into the Kuiper belt and study some of the nebulous, icy objects in this mysterious hatchery for comets.