have some madeira, m’ dear

Expected to be a direct conduit between South America and Europe ready late next year, the underseas cable that Brazil is preparing to anchor over revelations that that country’s government was one of the many targets of American electronic surveillance is not only courting the interests of those who feel directly affronted and betrayed but also of some giants—not of the same spying-industry per se but at least of the enabling kind—of the internet.
The cable, side- stepping the American monopoly on trans-Atlantic submarine lines of communication, links the former colony with her metropolitan, Portugal, with a landing at Cabo Verde, another former Portuguese holding.  Called EulaLink, other nations too are interested in joining this network. I wonder, in response, what sort of slant-drilling operations might be enjoined to siphon-off some of this traffic. The terminus of the cable will be in the coastal city of Madeira—which made me think of the old tune that tells the story of a lecherous old man who tries to persuade an innocent young girl to dally a bit longer by plying her with drink: the result is that she does stay but her character is transformed to something akin to his own, which probably wasn’t exactly what he wanted. Maybe that is a cautionary tale for this enterprise.

matriculation

Among the more shocking and horrific acts that the Cosplay Caliphate has committed that no one could be blamed for averting their eyes from such atrocities—and children have even been allowed to hone their skills as future fighters—it is easy to overlook what’s truly subversive and cause to shudder in their dysfunctional state: the curricula of their educational system, such as it is.
When not busy as human shields or in paramilitary-training, the young boys (and only the boys, as females are to receive no instruction outside of religious-education and fulfil her obligation as a mother and a homemaker with divine “sedentariness”) are taught in the few institutions still standing that their empire stretches from China to the Mediterranean and indoctrinated fully and frighteningly in this world-view. Sadly this phenomenon is not unique and there have been generations that have had to be de-programmed before but the learned capacity for de-humanising those outside this movement seems distinctively terrible and this damage will be difficult but not impossible to undo. Faced with this nightmare, it’s little wonder that families wouldn’t risk life and limb to flee it for parts unknown and wrest any future from none at all. It’s absolutely despicable that opportunists have joined this flight, I think, and have compounded the woes of those seeking refuge, diluting and turning the sympathy of potential hosts and helpers. No nation has gone without great periods of upheaval—recently or in the fleeting past—and it is a universal obligation to recognise (especially for those whose disdain and brinksmanship fostered these problems to a degree) the humanity of others and not let our compassion be twisted by scepticism and suspicion.

gotham

The marvellous property-scout Nag on the Lake invites us to a rather breath-taking viewing of a unique bell-tower penthouse on Centre Street of Manhattan—where for price, the happy new tenants could enjoy panoramic views from the cupola of New York City. The Beaux Arts style building was built to purpose as the New York City Police Headquarters and served this role from 1909 to the early 1970s when the department outgrew its operations centre. In the late 1980s, the structure at the heart of the metropolis was converted into posh condominiums. This would be a pretty swank hideout for a brooding and mysterious superhero.

story hour

Via Neatorama, the Humane Society of Missouri is inviting young children into an animal shelter so that they can practise their reading-skills on an audience of dogs. Not only does the attention help acclimate and calm the animals, who may have been mistreated, back into the company of humans, the pilot-project also benefits the young narrators by giving them not only a highly receptive interlocutor that’s non-critical but also teaches them empathy and compassion, since we take in every stray ourselves. The Humane Society is hoping to expand this programme to all shelters in the state and bring cats into the conversation as well.

decodence or raygun gothic

I admit that the whole disappointment over hover-boards which didn’t actually hover and were powered by less than premium batteries that tended to explode underfoot, the paperless office that’s still of the future, but it’s easy to get excited over the heralding of flying cars.
Past the headlines, one realises quickly, however, that these vehicles of the future-past are not only airborne but also driverless. I suppose present that we have delivers the future that (no matter how unbidden) that we deserve, full of mass purveyance, skies already over-crowded with airliners unromantically shuttling people to and fro and relatively autonomous drones eavesdropping, delivering meals on demand (plus a few other clever missions), continued reliance on fossil-fuels, Big Data, Bigger Pharma, tele-presence instead of teleportation, contractual obligations to property no longer owned but licenced to us—and so on and so forth. I hope that our flying-cars don’t go down the same rabbit-hole and it is probably the responsible thing to leave the soaring up to machines less prone to pilot-error or dare-devil stunts, but I hope these aces don’t take us away from the controls altogether, making the experience just some expensive thrill-ride. What do you think? Please keep limbs inside the carriage at all times.

garden switchboard

For more than a century, botanists have known about the symbiotic partnership between fungi and plants—the networks of fungal mycelium bundled with the roots of shrubs and trees described as a “mycorrhiza” association that is mutually beneficial in helping the other extract certain nutrients from the soil. What researchers are just discovering, however, is the breadth and depth of those connections and the nature of that relationship that’s akin to a subterranean vegetable information superhighway: the long tendrils of the fungal mycelia link individual plants in myriad ways and are the lines of transmission for chemical signals through garden plots and whole forests.
In a fascinating overview from BBC Earth magazine’s archive, featured recently on Dave Log 3.0, ecologists examine how this fungal internet allows plants over great distances to not only warm one other of intruders, it facilitates the sharing of nutrients and even allows the older generations to aid new spouts with sustenance, sabotage of unwanted neighbours and even parasitic behaviours. I feel a little guilty for my potted companions now, who might feel essential restricted to solitary confinement. I suspect, however, there are other modes of plant communication. After seeing more devastating wildfires for Australia in the headlines, I learnt that not only are the eucalyptus trees evolved to be explosively flammable—not unlike the strange venomousness given to everything there—and many of the seeds of other trees will not germinate without a periodic scorched-earth policy (or alternatively, arson by self-immolation), further prior to the settlement of Europeans, the stretches of eucalyptus forest that are a familiar sight today did not exist. The Aborigines, who had been landscape artists for tens of thousands of years, were careful cultivators and kept the forests pruned back, favouring grasslands that acted as fire-breaks and foraging grounds for game. It seems the Aborigines knew the risk of letting Nature run its favoured course, and that begs the question: what is Australia’s (or any land’s) natural state—wild or tamed, either by exception or by tradition?