publish or perish and the girl with kaleidoscope eyes

After quite a few years of being rather coy about his research and conclusions, Charles Darwin was finally persuaded to publish his seminal work on 24 November 1859—On the Origin of Species—when fellow naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, whom had independently arrived at the theory of evolution through the study of geographical dispersion of creatures great and small, released his paper on the “introduction” of species.
Wallace’s brilliance and impetus lies tarnished due to Darwin receiving the credit for the theory—or rather by modern estimates as for contemporaries, he was quite magnanimous and didn’t stint sharing and deference, and even ensured the penniless Wallace was awarded a proper pension in his later years—and for rather incongruous beliefs that he held, estranging the scientific community to a large degree. Though the sort of morbid curiosity with mediums and psychics was wide-spread at the time and surely a lot of people were at least closeted conjurers, Wallace approached charlatans as assiduously as he conducted his biological observations, quite taken by trickery and sleight of hand and also was a victim of trolling, baiting by the Flat-Earth association and vocal anti-vaxxer. Quite apropos—also on this date, as celebrated by the Google Doodle, in 1974, the fossilized assemblage that her discoverers called Lucy—after the Beatles’ song, was found in the Afar lowlands of Ethiopia, marking an important and accessible milestone in the way we understand evolution.

emporia

Here is a select list of singular gift-shops and boutiques that are for the most part just behind the box office of some fabulous websites—awaiting your perusal after you’ve taken the tour and seen the exhibit There’s some thing there for everyone sure to inspire an idea or two—especially for those difficult to find gifts for:

the boing boing store: full of creative and educational ideas for happy mutants

the grommet: brimming with special crafts and powered by citizen commerce

kikkerland: thoughtful little gifts, perfect for Secret Santa gift exchanges or stocking stuffers

wireless: I loved getting this as a spare but interesting to leaf-through catalogue in the mail, thinking these are things to own, or at least borrow

threadless: a huge selection of artisanal, unique shirts, pull-overs and posters that I have always had a soft spot for

5x5

spectropia: this Victorian séance guide promises to deliver ghosts everywhere, and of any colour

the bitten word: fantastic recipes from a couple resolved to put their cooking magazines through the paces

osmosis: researchers in Sweden radically create the world’s first cyborg plant

rub-a-dub: the king of Sweden calls for a global ban on bathtubs for environmental reasons

but first a word from our sponsors: at least one internet giant is moving to ransom access to email unless subscribers disable ad-blocking software

matriculation or the kids are alright

When it was first published in September of this year, I really assayed and digested the lengthy and circumspect piece by The Atlantic called The Coddling of the American Mind, however the gravity of the situation remained in some higher orbital—to me—at least until recently through an interview with an American zookeeper to a British and international that zoos in the US, while preserving their educational utility as a destination for field-trips, strongly tended to shy away from displaying exhibits that suggested evolution and climate change for fear of causing offence. I realise that the transition from being students, participations and citizens to being consumers of educational and democratic experience is not exclusively an American problem and has no respect for borders or other enshrined approaches—though happily there’s still pushback, but obviously the American sandbox is the best environment to try to understand how this situation—the creation of pockets of refuge, whole institutionalised swaths of up-and-coming society that go coddled and unchallenged—came about and what consequences it could have.
The solution is not clear, I thought, and could only be described in terms of greater polemics, disparaging wealth gaps upheld with one’s all, and the fact we’ve grown accustomed to the passive recruitment of what resounds with us (what we’d like to hear re-enforced at the expense of dissenting alternatives) and the fact it’s never been easier to enlist in any crusade with only a modicum of personal discomfort—also never easier to condemn heretics and traitors to the cause. Of course, there has always been charismatics, people who fancy themselves above being challenged and certain mouthpieces for campaigning, and the whole of American society is far from sheltered and protected from the affronts of the Classics and the micro-aggressors, but never was there the fostering of a culture that would construct that best of all possible worlds. Not to suggest that organised religion is fully exonerated, but such a mindset seems to me to be partly responsible for the success in indoctrinating and the follow-on radicalisation of many individuals, who are unable to see further than than these familiar horizons. One of the greatest dangers and fount of all sorrows is the expectation that the world conforms to our our standards. The brilliant science-fiction writer Douglas Adams, in his Salmon of Doubt, puts this paradox another way—rather succinctly, with a self-aware puddle, at first in awe and rather self-sure because the hole it finds itself in fits the puddle perfectly and then in panic as the puddle realises that its universe is shrinking, along with the puddle itself.

expanded universe

Via Boing Boing, we rediscover the lost intervening episodes of the Star Wars saga as captured in the imagination of luminary Alan Moore, acclaimed as the best in his genre and creator of other classic, brilliant franchises such as V for Vendetta, the Watchmen and contributing writing to other more mainstream storylines as well. This treasury of short vignettes features five abstracts of the stories with weirdly psychedelic panels.

trump card

Thanks to a superb essay from Dangerous Minds, suffragans now have keen insight in the platform and the policies of America’s favourite rogue presidential contender, who can apparently combat terrorism solely by dint of his uncanny instincts of just feeling there’s bound to be an attack.
Just as the Führer’s stellar rise as the soi-disant “messenger from nothingness” was guided by a higher power—confirmed, I think, as one of the candidate’s personal heroes by his response of “you tell me” to interlocutors whether his plan to force Muslims to register themselves into a national database wasn’t something akin to the Nazis’ treatment of the Jewish population, attributed his coif and political successes to mysterious, Americans may be courting another equally occult and charismatic disaster. Apropos, Karl Marx once declared: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy—second as farce.”