Back in August of 1991, two astronauts sent the first email from a shuttle mission, via the AppleLink platform and a prototype “portable” Macintosh—weighing in at seven kilograms and boasting 256 kilobytes of Read-Only Memory. Since that first correspondence, astronauts on later flights and aboard the International Space Station have been equipped with email and internet capabilities—and now wireless networks that connect to the Earth at speeds comparable to high-end domestic telephony. Go to the story from The Atlantic to see an appreciation of this momentous dispatch, plus some bonus footage of a floppy disk being ejected in micro-gravity.
Thursday 3 March 2016
hermit kingdom or thirty-eighth parallel
With North Korea in the headlines again over ballistic missile testing and general aggressive behaviour towards its neighbours and the mounting calls for sanctions in response, I had been engaging in a little bit of research into the matter and came across a really astounding relic of bureaucracy in a presidential commission in South Korea charged with the administration of the five provinces of the North.
Although this powerless (as those lands are governed already by North Korea) shadow-government, called the Committee for the Five Northern Korean Provinces (์ด๋ถ5๋์์ํ) and established in 1949, seems today like a sinecure posting, I suppose following the aftermath of the Korean War, hopes for reunification and reconciliation seemed within reach and uniting the Koreas remains a goal for both sides—although the prospects for that seem to be receding. The constitutions of both states define their countries as the whole, undivided Korean peninsula. I wonder what these conscientious bureaucrats do all day, with no access to the provinces in their respective areas of responsibility, and having no jurisdiction in the arena of foreign relations, as that role is handled exclusively by the Ministry of Unification. The situation and perhaps the hope too is in some ways similar to the state of affairs for the divided Germanys but there was never such a government-in-exile, as it were, operating jenseits the border.
catagories: ⚛️, ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐, foreign policy, revolution, Wikipedia
Wednesday 2 March 2016
palm springs 92264
catagories: antiques, architecture
the drys or thank you for your interest in democracy
Thanks to a serendipitous intersection between two of my favourite blogs, Atlas Obscura and Nag on the Lake, I feel I have been roundly educated on the subject of prohibition. Though the temperance movement was not mandated on a nation-wide level and the thirteen year span in America where the manufacture, sale and distribution of alcohol was prohibited tends to outshine all others, Canada too had a robust anti-drink league and provinces voted individual whether to suffer or permit. Many other jurisdictions repeated this social-experiment, as well.
(It’s sort of like saying “the Civil War”—that time when Oliver Cromwell did battle with V for Vendetta, you mean?) The beacon that the US once was for tee-totalling is somewhat dimmed (depending on whom one asks, I suppose) but the Prohibition Party, whose rolls included the first elected female officer-holder in America, still exists and on a few ballots. Both entries made me think how although most would assume that the outsider party has a narrow scope and spent its clout decades ago (most supporters fled once Prohibition was repealed)—and the candidate prefaces his correspondence with “thanks for noticing the Prohibition Party,” their platform is in reality a broad and progressive one and not just for a pocket-constituency. Though health debate, decent, dialogue are hallmarks—and no one would deny them holding their position—I think that the majority can agree that “Make America Dry Again” is not a campaign slogan that most of us would rally behind.
le fromage, la lรฉgende
Via the ever-inspiring and inspired Nag on the Lake, we are treated to a very fine monograph on the limestone caverns of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon in the Aveyron region where the legitimate and right-honourable king of cheeses is cured, in accordance with age-old methods.
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ซ๐ท, ๐ง, networking and blogging
Tuesday 1 March 2016
here there be robots
I am pouring over this highly detailed map of the topography of Mars, deftly executed by hand by the graphic artist Eleanor Lutz, in the style of late Middle Ages surveyors—like the Mappa Mundi of Hereford Cathedral.
“Here there be robots” refers to the landing sites (or ranges) for the various probes sent to explore the Red Planet, echoing the phrases “here there be Dragons” (hic sunt dracones—which only appears once and on a globe) or the more common “here there be Tygers” and the widespread practise of fulling in terra incognito with sea serpents and other terrible beasts, though the surface of Mars seems to be a place relatively accessible to us. The map even includes histories on the place names and a table of geographic terrestrial equivalents, off-world features generally taking Latin nomenclature.
les propheties
Of course the prophesies of soi-disant seer Nostradamus are generally poetical ramblings of tenuous woo that each age can find some kind of resonance for, if one applies himself hard enough, but if not the most helpful of forecasts are mostly harmless fun.
catagories: ๐ซ๐ท, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐ง , foreign policy, myth and monsters
state of the cart
Though H and I usually eschew taking a shopping-buggy, using just a basket or a bag and preferring not to lug home more from the corner market than we can comfortably carry, the story behind the ubiquitous and often overlooked shopping cart, via the always interesting Presurfer, is pretty fascinating—especially for the insights into marketing and consumer-conscience.
An enterprising green-grocer from a small town in Oklahoma, drawing on his war time experience as a provisioner in the commissariat, realised that the standard arrangement of having clerks wait on one customer at a time was inefficient and that the self-service model was a far better one. Emerging from the Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression relatively unscathed, as people always need staples regardless of the economy, the chain of supermarkets the inventor and entrepreneur founded were holding on but just barely. In a flash of brilliance, the creator of the shopping cart found a way to persuade shoppers to buy more food (and differently packaged food, prepared meals and canned-goods) with each visit by lightening their burdens and giving their load to the steely sinews of an oversized basket on wheels. It would be hard to account for all the ways this invention changed our buying patterns and diets.