army surplus

Cause certainly for alarm but no cause for surprise and not the first time that geopolitics have been used to leverage flagging economies, but just in case you we were unaware carnival barker Trump is exploiting regional and global tensions in order to bully allies into buying expensive American weapons systems.
This pitch is unoriginal, naturally, with all modern wars have been about expanding markets and fighting saturation, also known as peak missile defence shield. This arms race, however, comes at a very different time from when we were convinced of the last existential threat with data having replaced spycraft and elbow-grease and alteration far from the hallmarks of ingenuity but rather something that will violate the terms and conditions of one’s warranty, and of course statecraft a casualty of nativism and naïvism. As a collective civilisation, I think that the world cannot be put back in the mould of a military-industrial model and trying to compel others to return to this mind set and take up arms is nearly as dangerous as the incendiary posturing and unacceptable.

hertzsprung-russell

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares a truly wonderful tale about how scientific perspective evolves with new understanding and how curiosity has proven essential in reaching new heights that afford greater vistas.
The accidental story about the chain of collateral anomalies captured when observing another astronomical target in 1917 is a really resounding endorsement to aspire to the occasion no matter what one’s background is. With hindsight, we can see that the oddities noted a century ago are pretty solid evidence that a white dwarf (the stellar remnant of an imploded red dwarf) had recently ate and was still digesting its solar system. Though many projects are made of more mundane stuff than suggesting the existence of exo-planets decades ahead of the generally accepted thinking, there are numerous collaborative, citizen science endeavours achieving breakthroughs all the time. Do read the whole riveting re-telling at the link up top.  This is also your cue to dive into whatever archives at hand and be grateful for good record-keeping.

♄ ii

Not only have astronomers possibly deduced the mechanisms that generate and sustain heat to keep the subsurface ocean of the Cronian moon Enceladus from freezing over but can also extrapolate from their research that there has been a watery environment under the frozen shell for billions of years.
The satellite is named after the primordial giant (dread offspring of the Titans) that sparred with the Olympian goddess Athena in the Gigantomachy, and vanquished was buried beneath Mount Ætna. Attributed as the cause of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, scientists had their curiosity about the tiny moon piqued when they observed dramatic geysers of water shooting out of the southern hemisphere and seeding one of Saturn’s outer-most rings, and they thought an ocean might be hiding below as with Europa. Presumably, the age of the ocean would be long enough and stable enough to allow life in some form to gain a purchase and adapt to such harsh conditions. Looking out at this distance, delicate arrangement (though others might think that a barrier of ice is far more sheltering that the cold, open sky) makes me lament how careless we are with our ecosystem and hope that we might not have to learn the hard way.

war & pieced

Hyperallergic features a fascinating and therapeutic exhibit of quilts created by convalescing soldiers, put together mostly from remnants of their uniforms. Redeploying service members from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries British military adventures were encouraged to take to crafting rather than resorting to other, less healthy means of coping. Finished examples are exceedingly rare, but several samples have been brought together and put on display in the American Folk Art Museum in New York. 

shake ‘n bake (and I helped)

While I’d not want to risk alienating potential future sponsors, the profusion of mail-order meal services out there sort of baffles me—and I suppose in good faith I couldn’t accept their support since there’s no way such jostling and shuttling about staple ingredients repackaged could be ecologically excused—and I wonder what the allure is exactly. I remember reading once, and subsequently encountering many retellings in marketing contexts, how cake mixes and the like began to call for a superfluous egg because the extra effort lent a sense of legitimacy and accomplishment and appealed to bakers more so than the variety that did not.
Maybe the dining experience and our relationship with handed-down recipes are like that. I guess in that sense buying the experience, the virtual and vicarious reality, is what’s on offer and for myself, I’ll resort to processed foods, like boil-in-bag curries that allow me the pleasure of cooking rice to go with it or load-baring pizzas that I can flavor to taste, but I think I’ll not need a courier and a subscription.