sign of the times

London-based artists Scott Kelly and Ben Polkinghorne are installing conspicuous banners in the midst of scenic locations all over New Zealand that make the helpful recom- mendations for similar destinations that we tolerate or disdain on-line (though not appreciating how such algorithmic shrewdness that we’re only privileged to be manipulated landscape the internet) so that visitors might mediate more on the environmental impact of their tourism and lifestyle choices. Like a garish and annoying pop-up advertisement, there are ways of course to bat it away or otherwise remove it from one’s field of view and get at the desired content but one still has to contend with that just out of the frame it’s there—like the fairway that surrounds the Egyptian pyramids or the Vatican that’s never the subject of the composition but are nonetheless fraught.

reference desk or site-seeing

From Life Hacker we get the incredibly useful tip that the whole of Wikipedia is available as a data dump any time by going here. It is currently some fourteen gigabytes of compressed information, unzipped to around sixty and can easily be tucked away onto a USB drive to have a version at one’s disposal whether on-line or off to satisfy the curiosity of the moment or merely for the pleasure of pursuing daisy-chains of related ideas down rabbit holes.
It’s a little too big to tote around on one’s mobile devices (and should one try to employ an abridged version, it feels like defeating the purpose with limitation) but the Wikipedia app is worth having—only taking up nominal space and having a very tight turning-radius owning to the fact it’s not laden down with the usual advertisement targeting software—and has a quite interesting feature, provided that one is will to share one’s whereabouts with Wikipedia: it informs on what locations in one’s physical proximity have articles written about them and what heading one should take to visit them. It’s quite useful for orientation and sight-seeing when in a new place for the first time and is really the only tour guide that one needs.

truppenübungsplatz

Earlier in the week, I was visiting the NATO training grounds and mission support installations at the northern and southern boundaries of the two hundred and thirty square kilometre base in Grafenwörh in the Oberpfalz in eastern Bavaria. Conducted under the auspices of the US Seventh Army since 1945, Prince-Regent Luitpold designated the land outside of the village as the best-suited terrain for the principality’s soldiers to drill in 1907 and commissioned the construction of the reserve.
The water tower remains the landmark of the post—Tower Barracks, and the village is pretty charming as well. Luitpold, who presided over Bavaria in the name of his nephews Ludwig and Otto who were both deemed unfit (mad) to reign due to mental incapacitation, made several miscalculations and miscarriages including the military build-up that made the Great War an inevitability, eventuality instead of an possible outcome which are certainly of immeasurable geopolitical importance.

Included in that registry of miscalculations too was perhaps the royal decree that denied Friedrich Trump repatriation to his home in Kallstadt near Darmstadt for his failure to  discharge his military obligations to hearth and Heimat back in 1905 (Austria had ceded the western part of the Palatinate to Bavaria in 1816 and remained part of that kingdom then Bundesland through 1946).  Dear Leader’s grandfather had to once again leave his roots in Germany (after petitioning for the right of residency) and return once again to America to realise his own destiny.

and many pleasant facts about the square of the hypotenuse

Via TYWKIWDBI, we discover that a century of study and conjecture mathematicians have teased the secrets from a thirty-seven-hundred-year old Babylonian clay tablet and revealed that not only were the fundamental principles of the Pythagorean theorem known and applied earlier than expected, that indispensable ratio among the sides of a right-triangle providing that c²=a²+b², but moreover the artefact represents not only the world’s first trigonometric table and also the only completely accurate one—owning to the way the Babylonians counted in base-sixty instead of base-ten number-systems, which we retain in the way we reckon time and the degrees and minutes of longitude and latitude. This anonymous tablet predates the work of Hipparchus of Nicaea by more than a millennium, whom history has called the father of the branch of mathematics and credits with the invention of such preternaturally useful navigation and surveying tools like the astrolabe and the first star charts. The discovery is not just a revelatory in that it shows that these underlining principles were known to architects and astronomers far earlier than we believed, but there’s also the insight that these triads, the values of the sides of triangles, were derived ratiometrically—that is without inscribing a right-triangle in a circle.

cross-over episode or malleus maleficarum

I’ve been enjoying listening to the History of Ancient Greece podcast researched and presented by Ryan Stitt that reminds me very much of the History of Rome series that got me back into the genre in the first place.
Recently, one of Stitt’s presentations on classical tragedians ended with a short introduction from fellow-blogger Samuel Hume on his project The History of Witchcraft: A Podcast History of Magic, Sorcery and Spells. I’ve been enjoying the first few episodes and look forward to progressing through the catalogue for this series as well. Listeners will get their share of bewitching, possession, curses and rites, but only a witch-hunt can uncover witches and the anecdotes and institutions portrayed are a fascinating, sorrowful look at how societies can punish those who don’t know their place and how the chauvinistic male psychic is particularly affronted by strong women.

psa

The US National Archives and Records Administration of course has an extensive collection of preserved films—including a sub-genre of instructional animation—from which our friends over at Muckrock have plucked their nominees for the most surreal out of over a century of bizarre cartoon-making. Including Private Snafu but mostly comprised of non-canon After School Special characters I’ve never heard of, it’s an interesting and indulgent way to examine how state-controlled messaging and motivation has changed and evolved over the years.  Watching one video of course cues up related items, so you can compose your own highlights reel. 

pogrom und pulverkessel

Twenty-five years ago this week and just separated by double the amount from World War II in 1992—a couple of years into the reunification, the Lichtenhagen district of Rostock experienced horrendous xenophobic riots. Despite thousands of by-standers applauding the attack of a hi-rise complex sheltering asylum-seekers with Molotov-cocktails and stones, no one was killed but the onslaught that lasted several days and tragically inspired parallel attacks was nonetheless a very dark moment in recent German history and seemingly one whose lessons were squandered.  Ignoring early rumblings that indicated the tensions in the city between residents and refugees were growing, government and law-enforcement authorities carry much of the blame for their inaction.  The focus of the pogrom, the first act of its kind since the war, was the so called Sonnenblumenhaus, which the state government had designated for the sheltering of some three hundred asylum-seekers per month while their applications were vetted.  As the world came to terms, however, with the new realities of a collapsed Soviet Union, the system soon became overwhelmed with over eleven-thousand individuals, mostly Roma from Romania, living in the building and camped out on the surrounding grounds.  Instead of increasing support, services were cut and living conditions soon became intolerable.  Police were inattentive to maintaining the peace and provocateurs grew emboldened, going so far to recruit outsiders that also haboured such feelings of hatred.  Unfortunately these episodes have become frequent occurrences and the culpability falls on all of us. 

5x5

universal translator: what is this dog’s urgent message?

cirque du toile: a fun appreciation of the printed fabric through history up to the present

equestria: a neural network is trained to name new Ponies—previously here 

regret avoidance: lottery mania illustrates how people make economically disadvantageous choices

jōkotō: cutlery company designs delux scissors styled as the iconic katana blades of samurai