sinister: Rorschach-like battery of tests reveals how hand-bias shapes how reality is perceived
foley artist: absurdist gallery of the everyday items used by resourceful minds to create sound-effects
him that you call tiamat: protesting government support for churches, Iceland’s newest “religion” attracts more converts by refunding the tithe
perustulo: Finland plans to provide every citizen with a basic income
ancien rรฉgime: marketers newest cachet invokes the mood and trappings of pre-revolutionary France—the last time wage disparity was so high
Monday 7 December 2015
5x5
Sunday 6 December 2015
the fabulists or animal farm
As a freshman I can recall, in anticipation of reading the Platonic dialogues, that young, new students were warned off early on from drawing parallels of the trial and execution of Socrates and the judgement and crucifixion of Jesus—the comparison disdained as something obvious and sophomoric and rather a dangerous path to pursue. I of course was immediately drawn to the forbidden subject—completely new to me and probably nothing that I would have formulated on my own, but—wisely, I suppose, I kept that to myself.
Academics have come to recognize countless other messianic proceedings, both popularly and privately, and does tend to discourage reading too much into these dockets. One rather indulgent biography, with legendary portions and a lot of embellished and contradictory details of exploits and called a romance, addresses the life and career of a slave in Samos called รsop, whose fables with personified foxes, lambs, donkeys and other characters are so ingrained and indoctrinating that one would be pressed to fail at making the allusion. The talking animals explore power-relationships and this allegorical device is the only way a slave could possibly mock his social betters in a highly hierarchical society and hope to keep his head—though the allegory is a thinly-veiled thing and I always wondered about listeners not getting the subtext. No tyrant, however flattered and deluded, would exclaim, I think, “what do you I’m not the innocent little rabbit?” The life and times of รsop outside what is revealed in the fables is not really considered a reliably scholastic piece of work, there being too many versions and it’s mostly just lurid and with a lot of crude humour and misogyny, but the life of รsop is surprising similar to the two exemplars above—Socrates (also considered endearingly ugly) even composing fables in the style of รsop (many others have continued this tradition of the past three thousand years) as he’s awaiting his punishment, perhaps thinking that the direct-approach was the wrong way to go about things.
Most versions of the romance agree that รsop was born into slavery and sold to a wealthy sophist on the รgean island of Samos and was an extremely physically repulsive individual. Mute and without the power of speech at first, after showing kindness to a temple priestess, despite her being terrified of this ugly man offering help, the goddess Isis (figuring large in Greek culture also at the time) granted him not only the power of speech but also of eloquence. Glossing over the lewd episodes, รsop’s parables saved him in many situations and allowed him to show up the professors at the philosophical schools. The slave who was never allowed to purchase his freedom in the traditional sense but nevertheless enjoyed much respect and autonomy was himself put to death—on trumped up charges of slander, by being made to walk off a cliff in Delphi after having supposedly slandered Apollo. The gods, echoed by Socrates, have a tendency to mete out their own punishment without human help, and a slighted Apollo did not let offending mortals off that easily.
Saturday 5 December 2015
dies vitiosus
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐, ๐, ๐บ, networking and blogging
daytrip: the rosenau
After the outbreak of World War I made the British royal family much more reticent about admitting to their German connections, the property stood empty. As the Russian Revolution displaced other relations, however, the surviving line of the Romanov family and titular empress of the realm—with her ladies in waiting—was allowed to live there in exile, and in relative peace and comfort, having converted the library into an Orthodox chapel, until her death in 1938. Today, the castle and grounds are maintained as a state park and museum, and we’ll surely visit again for a tour and to see the gardens and their follies—ruins, grottoes and an artificial waterfall, in full glory. I knew some of this history beforehand, but it will forever strike me as incredulous that such events took place right down the road and garner little attention or fanfare.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐ท๐บ, Bavaria, revolution, Thรผringen
Friday 4 December 2015
5x5
figgy-pudding: a blithe review of the finest, right-proper Christmas carols
won’t you be my neighbour: Kottke directs us to a caring and thoughtful reflection on TV’s Fred Rogers
simulacraceae: a wildly imaginative piece on 3D printed gardening rooted in an exploration of pollinator-flower geometry
honey trap: farmers in Africa use fences of bee hives to deter elephants from wreaking their crops