remember... the force will be with you, always

This cruel year is taking too much and has given precious little back—and I didn’t suspect that we’d all be so steadily churning out obituary columns in sad celebrations of amazing and inspiring careers.
I remember seeing Carrie Fisher in The Blues Brothers very young and couldn’t reconcile why Princess Leia had such a pivotal ‘cameo’ in that film, and I think Fisher wouldn’t want us to be able to reconcile it—as the ambassador not only of the type of Hollywood royalty that’s rare and precious these days but also the delegation from Alderaan, never feeling resentment over being type-cast with a role she was happy to reprise, as the heroine of an otherwise all-male adventure that wasn’t the distressed damsel just waiting to be rescued. Her status as an icon didn’t diminish her other talents and candour about the important stuff and will be profoundly missed, joining that ensemble cast of stars and oddities that live on in their legacies.

butterfly kisses

A place calling itself the Imagineering Institute is marketing a sleeve for one’s mobile gadget that will telegraph one’s kisses to far-off loved ones.
Apparently, the silicone surface will precisely reproduce the tender pressure of the lip muscles for those on both sides of the exchange. The input/output device, called the Kissenger (the kiss-messenger), will also monitor the blood pressure and the galvanic responses of the users for clinical trials and see if they can make the virtual experience indistinguishable from the authentic one—or even offer competition. What do you think? I am afraid more action-at-a-distance peripherals might soon follow.  It can be awkward enough to be within earshot of a conversation that can sound very one sided, and I could just imagine being next to a stranger puckering-up for an air-kiss.

6x6

shadow-casting: projecting the shade created by New York City’s skyscrapers

buzz-kill: cosmic radiation may inhibit cannabinoid reception for astronauts

panopticon: Lithuanian studio produces a tapered mirror to be seen from all angles

ball-peen: a quick tour of the Hammer Museum of Haines, Alaska—conserving humanity’s oldest tool

geocentric: confound your geographic prejudices by looking at maps oriented differently

azotea ajardinada: Spain to put mobile gardens on the tops of buses and bus-shelters 

mmxvi: annus horribilis, annus mirabilis

december: Pioneering US astronaut John Glenn passed away, as did America’s TV Dad, Alan Thicke. Doctor Henry Heimlich also left us, as did Zsa Zsa Gabor. Over a billion user accounts are compromised by a once pioneering search engine. Carnage and destruction continue in Aleppo as Syria, all the global powers’ proxy-war, is poised to fall to the entrenched government.  A truck ploughed through a crowded Christmas Market in Berlin.  Sadly, singer George Michael passed away as well as icon Carrie Fisher with her mother, Hollywood legend Debbie Reynolds, joining her the next day.

november: Donald J Trump defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton as the forty-fifth presumptive to the office of President of the United States of America. We had to say farewell to America’s TV Mom, Florence Henderson. Janet Reno died, and we had to say good-bye to Andrew Sachs, who played Manuel on Fawlty Towers. Retro funk and soul performer Sharon Jones passed away as did Leon Russell though not of precisely the same genre. Poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen left us. Fidel Castro expired aged ninety, on Black Friday and cause of death was declared as America’s return to greatness.

october: It was announced that Bob Dylan will be awarded the Nobel prize for literature. Hopefully prematurely, obituaries for the Great Barrier Reef circulated, the cause of its demise being coral-bleaching.  A craze of dressing as scary clowns and frightening people has spread globally.

september: Meaningful global climate accords held in Paris are put into force, although later in the month carbon dioxide levels surpass anything experienced in the course of human events. NASA launches a probe to study and return with samples from an asteroid with a high potential to impact the Earth—in the twenty-third century, possibly either nudging it closer or pushing it further out of bounds.

august: Gene Wilder left us. Brazil hosted the Olympic Games. The actor that portrayed R2-D2 Kenny Baker sadly departed, as did host and political discussion moderator John McLaughlin. Costa Rica powered itself with renewable energy for one hundred days and hopes to wean itself off of fossil fuels completely.

july: A wholly solar-powered aircraft becomes the first to circumnavigate the globe. We had to say good-bye to Elie Wiesel. During Bastille Day celebrations, an atrocious terror attack occurred on promenade of Nice, setting off a summer of terror across Europe. An abortive coup d’état rocked Turkey and a political purge followed, exacerbating an already tense situation. The African Union’s fifty-four member nations issue a single passport that allows holders to travel visa-free within the bloc.

june: After two decades of construction, the Gotthard Base Tunnel under the Alps in opened. The UK voted to leave the European Union. The promising actor Anton Yelchin who played the new Chekov was struck down far too early. Boxer Muhammad Ali departed.

may: Presidential elections in Austria are too close to call, and the contenders a member of the Green party and a far-right candidate will hold a run-off later in the year. Nationalism is on the rise throughout the world. Super Tuesday’s delegates are awarded to Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump.

april: The pop megastar Prince passed on. Der Süddeutsche Zeitung along with a consortium of other news outlets publish millions of leaked documents implicating many heads of state and prominent figures in the Panama Papers scandal. For the first time in history, capital punishment is outlawed by more than half the countries in the world.

march: Coordinated bomb attacks take over a hundred lives in Lahore and Brussels, and ISIS claims responsibility. Sadly, comedian and show-master Garry Shandling passed away. World-renowned architect Zaha Hadid also left us. Myanmar sworn in its first democratically elected president in half a century.

february: For the first time since the Great Schism of 1054, the leaders of the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches met and committed to an Ecumenical Declaration. Writers Umberto Eco and Harper Lee passed away on the same day. Heretofore theoretical gravitational waves were observed for the first time.  A huge swath of Canadian temperate rain-forest will be protected forever and called Spirit Bear. Bolivia and Peru also reached a deal to protect Lake Titicaca.

january: Davie Bowie tragically passed away, as did musicians Glenn Frey and Natalie Cole. There’s an outbreak of the Zika virus, causing panic in the sub-tropics and prompting many couples to postpone having children, due to the risk of birth-defects. Brutal and powerful Mexican drug-trafficker Joaquín Guzmán is re-captured after his escape from a high-security detention facility. The International Atomic Energy Agency declared that Iran has complied and dismantled its nuclear weapons programme and instructed the UN to lift sanctions. 

i want to believe

As a gift, we got a really out of this world bottle of Outer Space Vodka, touted as filtered through four billion year old meteorites and as best enjoyed by Earthlings when released from a cryogenic freezer—which is a bit unclear if it means reanimated terrestrial astronauts or a cold beverage. For the latter case, we received the perfect solution earlier this year with this other present of a raygun gothic silicon ice tray.

wattway

Over Christmas week a Norman village of about thirty-five hundred residents unveiled a one kilometre-long stretch of road that is cobbled with solar-voltaic panels.
Though the region is not famously sunny, the power generated is projected to kept the village’s street lamps burning with a surplus for other utilities. And despite the first of its kind experimental thoroughfare (Wattway it is called and is the innovation of a veteran firm specialising in asphalt) costing five million euro to pave, a trial of the next two years that will look at durability and energy returns may mean this small village in the Orne will be truly trail-blazing in the near future. Perhaps electric vehicles can be made self-charging.

pause for station identification

Please enjoy our tireless troupe with their interpretative Yule Log dance as you while away the holiday hours, or if care for more sedate spectacle, please check out this extensive bulletin-board of various artists’ take on the tradition—whose proceeds help young people like us off the streets by teaching them how to code. Thanks for visiting, as always, and happy holidays and may all your wishes for this season come true!

summary judgment or a betrayal of crust

If you haven’t already discovered the sheer hilarity of being an privileged witness or court observer to the Honourable Judge John Hodgman’s docket, I strongly encourage you to experience justice being dispensed first hand. In the tradition of television jurisdictions, plaintiffs—generally couples or neighbours, bring their cases, played out in extended podcast form, and pledge to abide by the court’s ruling.
All the episodes I’ve so far been catching up on are very entertaining with the right balance of lunacy and obscure cultural grounding, but I thought one case in particular would be a good introduction for those just getting acquainted with internet justice: a complex web of deceit is woven when a married couple want to give a gift subscription to a pie-of-the-month club but decide to do the baking themselves. After continuing this ruse for over half a year, one wants to come clean and confess but the other promises to take the secret to his grave.