shangri-la or public-burden

Although with very different issues at stake, a series of referenda (plebiscites) put to the people have been returned, I think, with a degree of timidity—like Switzerland’s recent rejection of a basic income for all, the cession of Scotland or of Catalonia, and I wonder what this bodes, bold or dull, for up-coming votes, like for the US electorate or the potential UK withdrawal from the EU.
Of course, sometimes a departure is a foolhardy thing that fortune does not necessarily favour and there’s little leverage for polemics and convincing in defeat—but, as hackneyed and exhausting as being told votes are historic and come with a mandate can be (I doubt that anything so momentous would be left in the hands of the public) maybe our conservative posture is indicative of what meaning we attribute to democracy and how much personal liability we are willing to accept. What do you think?

hochwohlgeboren

The German president will be tendering his resignation and not seeking a second term. While there are some good candidates for Gauck’s successor being proposed, including co-chairman of the Green Party and direct-democracy advocate Cem Özdemir or Christian Social Union leader Gerda Hasselfeldt, I still tend to think (although more persuaded that the position is more than just a ceremonial one) that one of Germany’s noble families, given the affection that the country has for Her Majesty, could enjoy a more or less hereditary office and discharge a service to the public. I think royals must be naturally gracious hosts and could execute those duties expertly and without political baggage.

patrimoni dell'umanità

For the first time since 2000, Italy is not nominating any new sites or intangibles during UNESCO’s World Heritage annual call for submissions, begging off by saying the nation with the most treasures ought to take off a year and perhaps give the rest of the world a chance—though I am sure that they would not welcome being edged out by China or Spain (ranked seconds by different counts).

Not to fret, however, as Italy is already slated to present the picturesque town of Ivrea (near Turin) next year—not for its medieval sites, five lakes or its historic and epic food fight, the Battle of the Oranges (la battaglia delle arance), that dates back to the thirteenth century—worthy candidates all, but rather for its industrial heritage as the seat of Olivetti business machines since 1908 to the modern day.

terminal, process, decision

The latest comic from Randall Munroe is in keeping with his best xkcd strips in putting forward something rather thought-provoking bound up with the humorous side. This flow-chart helps one pinpoint the age of a globe or world map that’s otherwise undated through the quirks of geopolitics, (click on the image to enlarge) whose overlap and historical context are pretty fascinating to think about, especially when presented as parallels and culs-de-sac.

hinn best land sem solinn skinner uppa

In 1868, swelling with pride over expansionist’s ambitions and the recent procurement of Alaska from an imperial Russia fraught with the sorry prospects of a fire-sale and the acquisition of a few Caribbean properties from the equally distressed Danes, the spree did not end there and not only tried to annex Greenland (an offer repeated during the Cold War) but also Iceland, as Neatorama reminds. The case for annexation was based mostly on the decades’ old accounts of travelogues, which was probably the source for the idea that the two were ironically named to dissuade prospectors, and though the soon to be independent island would have surely been a jewel in imperial America’s crown, the Icelanders weren’t having it. Fortunately, after such outlays on dubious returns, the US Congress was not buying this proposal either and the purchase was not pursued further.

tabula rasa

First spotted by the ever-observant Nag on the Lake, we learn that a grade school in Bristol wanted to honour one of the sons of the city by naming a new wing on their campus after the street artist Banksy. In gratitude and under the cover of darkness, the elusive graffiti-tagger graced one of the walls with a signature doodle—and the invitation to add to his illustration and the important lessons that sometimes it’s easier to beg for forgiveness rather than ask for permission, especially when one expects the later answer to be negative.
I am hoping that no one ever tries to aggressively out the artist’s identity and he remains like the Edgar Allen Poe birthday toaster and not like my spying the individual responsible for covering advertising columns around town with biblical verses at work, thinking the job was executed so quickly that it must not be the product of human hands, and being rather disappointed.

belles-lettres or diplomatic provisioning

As much as penmanship is a vanishing art, so too is the is legible and literate eye for penetrating not necessarily historic documents of great importance and concern—as the discipline of diplomatics mostly concerns itself with, but also for the everyday that’s receding out of our scope of what’s readable.
Like how I’ve heard that parents can use cursive as secret hieroglyphic code (like spelling out matters that aren’t meant for sensitive ears), we can’t train our gaze to the compact and economic handwriting that fills up older postcards and other correspondence when paper was more a premium commodity, rather than just an unpolished draft and cue to toss away. A diplomatic transcription is a faithful reproduction of a manuscript with no effort to bring it in line with modern conventions of modern copybooks. I suppose such calligraphy will never be wholly unbroachable to us in the future—thanks to advanced optical recognition, but I do wonder about the fate of collected letters and other non-ephemera. What do you think?

reformer or lolled

Though perhaps less famous in the annals of religious reformation movements, the Lollards—under the leadership of theologian John Wycliffe—ought to be better remembered than the movements on the continent that are heir to them.
More succinct than the ninety-five theses of Martin Luther, which may or may not have been posted publically on the door of the Wittenberger Dom though certainly posted to the Archbishop of Mainz on All Hallows Eve in 1517 (enough to get Luther in hot water), the Lollards compiled a list of Twelve Conclusions that was definitely nailed to the doors of Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul’s in early Spring 1395, and was a similar litany of accusations before the practise of selling indulgences took off and convinced Henry VIII to stand his ground against Church authority. As a prologue to their general beliefs, the Lollards rallied against the Church’s meddling in temporal powers, conquest and crusade, celibacy in the priesthood, exorcism and veneration of relics as witchcraft and idolatry, and questioned the need for the Church to mediate between God and man—even producing an unsanctioned edition of the Bible in English for home-use. The knights of this brotherhood were called Lollards rather pejoratively (but like the Quakers or the Shakers, they were happy to run with this name) and gruesomely after the babbling imitation of the gravediggers that bore away Plague victims, who were deputised to administer last rites—to mumble, as in lullaby. Suppression, intrigue and rather disproportion responses sent the Lollards underground but ensured that this resurgence and received tenants would be retrieved by later Protestantism.