shamrock

My first reaction to this bit of table decoration was shock since I thought four-leaved clovers were lucky due to their rarity—something of an extension to the parable that Saint Patrick used the three-leaved clover to illustrate the Trinity to pagan Ireland, and each single leaf represented faith, hope and love and with a fourth, one could have good fortune as well.  Genetically mutating clover to produce leaves of four without fail seems like it would be rather tempting fate. Rather than outright meddling with Nature or gaming the system on an industrial scale, however, the ornamentation is a cultivar of the sorrel plant from Central America called the “iron cross,” and is technically one leaf with four leaflets. Botanists aren’t even sure whether it’s genetics or environmental factors responsible for the rare occurrence. I suppose our lucky charms are safe and secure after all.

411, 404

As we learn that US government websites are being savaged and historical content is being stripped away and sequestered from public-access—like reports on animal welfare for various commercial research facilities or weather or jobs statistics, so no one might be informed of realities inconveniently counter-factual to the official party lines, there was this one strangely prescient compilation that was a challenge to come by:
a freedom of information act (FOIA) request was filed in December of 2014 and was granted within a few months, delivering a list of all .gov domains that had been terminated for one reason or another over the past decade. There are some horrid examples of early web design brutalism that’s worth conserving for its own sake, and most—until now I suppose, had their content migrated and put under the stewardship of centralised web-masters. A few quietly disappeared, like wmd.gov (weapons of mass destruction, c. 2003-2009) that’s its own punchline, 404 error – not found, and I am sure that in this current political environment, Wokey the Bear and Ranger Smith’s fiddlers’ corner would be summarily embargoed.

daily digest

Via fellow freedom fighter and internet caretaker Madam Jujujive, here’s an annotated resource to bookmark to help one keep up with the current US regime. Who knows what horrors this brave chronicler will collect before the conclusion of this chapter? At the risk of being overloaded and underwhelmed, I am just grateful that we might take one day at a time and still be present in the trenches.

de stijl

Via Nag on the Lake, we learn that in honour of the centenary since the founding of the neo-plastic art movement in Amsterdam, the Dutch is giving its seat of government’s city hall ensemble in Den Haag a makeover inspired by the colourful geometry of leading figure Piet Mondrian.

after all, you’re my wonder wall

Swedish lifestyle and furniture giant offers a flat-pack solution to defending the US southern border which comes in at a price that’s below the other cost estimates, though there’s some assembly required. Another popular item new to the store’s catalogue is the Läddr, capable of scaling heights of up to ten and a half metres.

mind-body problem

A new rather disruptive theory being investigated by multidisciplinary teams of scientists in France and Canada suggests that consciousness, the mind (or at least one of the cognitive manifestations thereof) arose out of the brain’s own systemic dissipation—that is, subject to the laws of thermodynamics like any other coherent structure in the Cosmos, the brain’s own lurching towards entropy produces self-awareness as a by-product. What do you think? The study was too small to be conclusive and will need to be peer-reviewed. Within the mind’s suite of faculties, there’s not only consciousness but judgement, perception, memory, intuition and thought as well, and it would seem that to carry the reasoning out to its natural conclusion, the self-preserving quality of being conscious paradoxically propels the brain quicker into dotage by making it a more complex system.