the bitter end

The New Bedford Whaling Museum of Bristol County Massachusetts is hosting a special exhibit celebrating the authoritative guide to knots and knot-tying, written and extensively illustrated by native son Clifford Warren Ashley. The sailor and knot-expert proctored with many crews and crafts people (from butchers and bakers to electricians and veteran knitters) to document knotting skills that were often very idiosyncratic and did not exist outside of their trade and are systematically classified—by later scholarship—according to their Ashley numbers along with histories and contributions to general terminology. As opposed to the standing end that is the free part of a cable, the bitter end is in ropeworker’s speech the part of the rigging tied down to the mooring (the bitt) and has taken on a figurative sense as well. Be sure to visit Hyperallergic at the link up top to learn more and perhaps to practise one’s own dexterity.

going up

In an age where all career-futures and succession-planning are subject to the whim of progress, it could be forgiven that we’ve made certain apparent redundancies the poster-children of this precarity as a way of inserting our own hopes and insecurities into the discussion.  We discover, however via Messy Nessy Chic, that we’d be somewhat premature to count elevator-operators among the casualties. These profiles of a by-gone era preserved, though an exceedingly rare treat to discover, in New York City’s skyline are really engrossing and speaks to the importance of tradition and the investment in what’s classy—though I could see manual robotic attendants being installed to operate this antique machinery or replaced by volunteer enthusiasts yearning for human-contact as well.  I hope, nevertheless, that such touches are preserved and appreciated.

current state of affairs

Status quo is a shortened version of the original phrase in statu quo res errant ante bellum meaning to maintain the way things were before the war and broadly refers to upholding accepted social and political norms. There is also a qualified sense of the term, the Status quo of the Holy Land Sites, which is an understanding and compact amongst the religious communities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem for their simultanea, that is places that are sacred to multiple faiths, that are not under a single recognised religious authority.
Originating from a eighteenth century decree from the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, the arrangement has stood in essentially its original form until the present day and provides that the keys to the Christianity’s holiest sites have been kept in the same local, Arab clan for generations and that no common property may be altered in any way (especially to the impediment of pilgrims and holy rites), sometimes to the detriment of ancient structures needing upkeep, and is embodied by cedar wood ladder under a window of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre that has been on-site since 1757 when a mason was engaged to do some restoration work on the ledge. This bureaucratic impasse, known as the Immovable Ladder (literally in Hebrew, “The Status Quo Ladder”), is symbolic of the internecine conflict and irresolution of the six Christian religious orders that share the space, but also reminds visitors that consensus and cooperation are also sacrosanct and inviolable, as well as something surpassing tolerance for one’s neighbours.

heat-exchange or household atomics

Via a regular Slashdot contributor, we learn that China will expend a great deal of time and effort researching into the potential revival of a Cold War era source of harnessing nuclear power using molten salt as a coolant rather than water.
The molten salt fission reactors were abandoned in the 1970s due to technical hurdles which today seem like far less of an obstacle and now it seems like an attainable, highly efficient fuel source. The higher melting point of salt allows for the accumulation of a vastly greater reservoir of heat to power turbines and the resulting nuclear waste is calculated to be only a sliver of that of conventional plants. There’s also a great interest in minimisation this sort of reactor for use in powering unmanned aerial vehicles, lift-off modules and eventually passenger aircraft that could circle the Earth multiple times at super-sonic speeds. Salt-based fission is likely safer and the public might be less risk-averse since there is the radioactivity involved is less energetic and an accident, especially for a drone, is more like dropping a hot-water bottle rather than a burning log.

pass the dutchie on the left hand side

The Oxford English Dictionary’s choice for word of the year, youthquake, is drawing a lot of criticism that the institution is stodgy and out of touch but we’ll stick our necks out for them, begging off that all the good alternatives, like post-truth and fake news (recall when that was relegated to waiting on queue at the supermarket checkout and it was just parsed in guilty glances?), were already taken and it’s also not as if academia could outright bemoan the prevailing belief that Millenials Ruin Everything.
Even though a “political awakening” is cited with young people engaged and voting en masse for Labour, we wonder if it’s not code somehow for negative quavering—hyper-sensitivity, safe-spaces, censorship from unexpected places, trigger-terminology and the accretion of accommodation and entitlement. The runners-up were focused on similar ideas and the board took longer than usual in announcing their picks.  If it were indeed unironic, I would find that even more disturbing. What do you think? Is this the OED’s way of trolling? If there is a coming of age to be reckoned with, it does not seem like there’s to be a peaceful transition of power from one generation to the next, just as our own éminence grises struggle to retain their hold.