mason-dixon

Writing for Hyperallergic, Claire Voon informs that the US National Cathedral in Washington, DC will be in the near future anathematising Confederate flags hidden (and hidden in plain sight but certainly not the Easter egg that the Darth Vader gargoyle is) in the stained-glass windows dedicated to US Civil War generals Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Notwithstanding the inherent strangeness of having a federal church, I am glad that the staff are not merely redacting history but using the modification, defenestration as a platform for discussing the legacy of race and justice. What do you think? Undoubtedly, the Confederate flag is a symbol of hate but should we be shielded from a shameful past by editing out reminders? I feel that engaging a new narrative creates the platform necessary to commit such revision.

agronomy-om-nom

Kottke shares this interesting map (click to enlarge) that sources the major food crops of the world to the places of their origins. The organisation behind the chart, the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture, has a pretty comprehensive and in depth web-presence as well and certainly merits a visit for its discussions of gearing policies and markets towards resilience and sustainability.

katzenjammer, caterwaul

We found this homage to the felines of the internet too funny not to share again. This commercial from German grocery discounter chain Netto features most of the viral cats—even cats versus cucumbers, but sadly, Grumpy Cat is omitted in favour of other up-and-comers—nonetheless, getting across the message that the outlet can satisfy the most finicky of shoppers.

unobtainium

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) just presented four new names for hitherto unnamed elements—three for places: Japan, Tennessee and Moscow plus one in honour of Russian-Armenian physicist Yuri Tsolakovich Oganessian, responsible for discovering the heaviest elements on the periodic table.
Submitted for consideration for the public and the scientific community until November, these designations have not been finalized, and writing for The Verge, Elizabeth Lopatto has a few alternate proposals. Rather than Nihonium (Nh, which sounds rather bleak and nihilistic) for Ununtrium (eka-thallium or Element 113), Lopatto suggests Maneki-nekonium as most representative of Japanese culture, and introduces us to a new concept in the mono no aware (物の哀れ), an empathy for impermanence, like appreciating the fleeting beauty of cherry-blossoms and as poetic as Virgil’s characterization lacrimæ rerum—the tears of things, and an apt name as these new elements are all expected to be pretty unstable. Other ideas for Moscovium (Mc) include Kareninium (for Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina) and Honktonkine for Tennessine (Ts). What are your ideas? I cannot believe that another the latest naming-convention, science is allowing the public any input.

synchronicity or time and tide

If you are not already a regular listener, be sure to check out Futility Closet’s phenomenal podcasts. In their most recent episode, they tell the story of a multi-generational career of London’s last time-carrier, a dedicated woman who bore the precise time to subscription-holders up until the outbreak of WWII by consulting the only definitive source available, the Astronomer Royal of the Greenwich Observatory—who, in turn, stole the exact time from the heavens.
All Futility Closet shows are regaled with fascinating facts but what I find consistently intriguing is that their well researched topics invariably make us think about some aspect that hadn’t occurred to us beforehand. I knew that standardising civil time came with shipping and the railroads, eventually transforming into an oppressive bully that conjured up the idea of punctuality and made rushing a virtue, but never considered how reliable time-keeping devices were commercially available before the whole world was on a time-table. Even though the clocks kept very good time, there was no way for the owners of these fancy devices to set them to the agreed upon hour (no means of broadcasting time and tide and bell towers rang on their own schedule, as well) rendering them rather useless, so they engaged the services of said time-carriers in order to ensure that they were properly synchronised by means of a pocket-watch carried around the city in a handbag.

smarter than your average bear

It made me laugh how Bob Canada suggested that a potential buyer for this distressed property, the headquarters of the Longaberger company in Ohio, manufactures and direct-marketing purveyors of luxury picnic baskets, which has since seen a significant downturn in its market, might be Yogi Bear. Whatever the case, I hope the building is preserved—perhaps as a haunt for occupational-therapists, the basket-weavers.

these kids today with their y2k

Though I could not say whether the potential y2k cataclysm turned out to be a non-event because of assiduous preparation or the dire prediction of tigers falling from the heavens were somewhat exaggerated, but I do wonder if the anticipation and collective-relief was not somehow instructive on a sociological level.
Attuning us in a sense to future-shock, we were given a reasonably credible apocalyptic scenario that we each were able to do something about—other than repent. It is not as if we are powerless in the face of climate-change, political corruption or exploitive business, but there’s no tidy patch for it, deadline that everyone can agree on or easy to convey, process underlining problem. Computers would wink out of existence if the clock is dialled back and all those subsequent versions were never born. We dodged a bullet here. Now there’s talk of tipping-points and saturation, but we are just as readily shouted back from the ledge as we are led on. I wonder if those who survived such prophets of doom and lived to tell the tale have a different threshold for resignation when it comes to contemporary big problems than those who did not. What do you think? What do you remember about minutes to midnight on the last day of 1999?

from the blotter

The splendid arts and culture blog, Hyperallergic, has a weekly feature called Crimes of the Art, documenting offenses ranging from harmless vandalism, forgery to censorship and grand and daring daylight museum heists. Here are the latest cases on the docket but one can browse an extensive archive of past wrongdoings.