westminster chimes

Our faithful chronicler, Doctor Caligari, notes that on this day, among many other notable events, a BBC sound-engineer ventured out onto a roof opposite the Houses of Parliament to sample the chimes of Big Ben in 1923, and since the following year when the Greenwich Time Signal (the pips) was developed to mark the precise start of the year both have been part of the global television service’s daily broadcasting.
Though not the first nor the only interruption to this routine, August of this year inspired some rather unexpected emotional attachment to the particular peal of the bell when a replacement sound was sought while the tower and the Palace of Westminster undergo some much needed repairs for the next several years. Ultimately, they could find no satisfactory substitute and a recording was settled on instead, never mind they’ll be nothing to toll midnight either. Be sure to visit the link up top to read more on today’s entry plus learn about how this day became the turning point for the new year and about different festive traditions that regale it.

all times are local or dateline: anywhere on earth

As we are preparing for the countdown that marks the changing of the year, it always makes me keenly aware of time-zones and the procession of midnights across the globe, living in Germany and with family and friends in the States and how are festivities start much earlier and our sometimes unenviable jump on the cycle of things with the hegemon of time.
Six or seven hours’ difference is a relatively small one, especially considering how a transatlantic flight can negate that lag depending on one’s direction of travel and shifting up toward the international dateline one arrives at zone, International Dateline West, where the displacement is greatest and a few islands with no permanent human presence are the last to carry over into the new year. Because there are no people on this remote archipelago in the Pacific half way between Hawaii and Australia, Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) does not determine its clocks and calendars but for nautical and navigation purposes, it is twelve hours behind. Both of the named places, Baker and Howland Islands (the latter known for being one of the refuelling stations that Amelia Earhart never made it to on her ambitious round-the-world flight) are United States Outlying Territories acquired under the Guano Islands Act and presently comprise one of the world’s largest wildlife reserves. Another naming convention for this place outside of time is the calendar conceit of Anywhere on Earth (AoE), which for archival and chronicling purposes not tied to a location a period has considered to have expired once any and every place. 31 December is considered a closed matter with its associated deadlines past once it’s midnight on Howland Island, and the convention was established not so long ago by the international Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) for balloting purposes, realising that that they could not privilege the local time and business hours of one member over any other voter.

mmxvii

january: Millions march across the globe in protest to the inauguration of Dear Leader, followed immediately by a federal hiring-freeze and a controversial travel ban. Artificial intelligence surpasses humans at the ancient game of Go. Sadly, we had to say goodbye to Mary Tyler Moore.  

february: North Korea invites international censure for testing a ballistic missile over the Sea of Japan and for the very public assassination of the country’s leader’s half-brother. Astronomers discover a solar system comprised of seven Earth-sized exoplanets in our Goldilocks zone.

march: Millions face the prospect of starvation in northern Africa. Elon Musk successfully recovers and reuses the booster stage of an orbital class rocket.  The United Kingdom invokes Article Fifty of the European Union Treaty, triggering its exit from the bloc.

april: US retaliatory action in Syria significantly damages the country’s relationship with Russia, then America drops the largest conventional bomb in Afghanistan. Coral bleaching threatens the world’s reefs. A passenger was violently removed from a commercial airliner prior to take-off, setting off a trend of customer abuse.  We had to bid farewell to comedian Don Rickles and actor Jonathan Demme.

may: A terrorist bombing at a concert in Manchester tragically killed twenty-two people and injured hundreds. A ransomware virus holds computer systems around the world hostage. French presidential elections put a stay on the spread of conservatism. Sadly, actor Roger Moore, musician Greg Allman and statesman Zbigniew Brzezinski passed away.

june: Amid resounding international criticism and pledges by others to redouble their commitment, the US withdraws from the Paris Climate Agreement. A dread inferno engulfed an apartment block in West London, killing seven-one and displacing hundreds.  Terror attacks perpetrated by the Cosplay Caliphate ravage Tehran. Former West- and reunified German chancellor Helmut Kohl passed away, as did actor Adam West.

july: North Korea continues to test more and more sophisticated, longer-range missiles. The Syrian city of Mosul is taken back from ISIL. Huge ice bergs break away from the Antarctic ice shelf. Researchers believe early human migrated out of Africa seventy thousand years sooner than previously thought. We bid farewell to actors Sam Shepard and Jeanne Moreau.

august: The detection of gravitational waves is becoming a common occurrence. North America experienced a total solar eclipse. Hurricane Harvey struck the Gulf Coast. The Burmese military carry out ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya people. The Eagles’ Glen Campbell passed away as did Dick Gregory and Jerry Lewis.

september: Russia expels hundreds of American diplomats over new sanctions. Hurricane Irma devastates the Caribbean and Puerto Rico, followed closely by Hurricane Maria. An earthquake strikes Mexico City. Actor Harry Dean Stanton, Monty Hall and playboy Hugh Hefner pass away.

october: A gunman opens fire on an audience gathered for a concert in Las Vegas, Nevada from high atop a casino resort hotel and killed fifty-eight and injured hundreds, surpassing last year’s deadliest shooting at an Orlando, Florida nightclub, failing again to make Americans more willing to discuss gun-control. The US withdraws in protest from UNESCO, with Israel following immediately after. Austria elects a far-right coalition.  Our Solar System gets an interstellar visitor.  German researchers discover that there has been a seventy-five percent drop in insect biomass over the past twenty-five years. Catalonia declares independence from Spain. Tom Petty dies.

november: A German newspaper publishes a tranche of documents leaked by an offshore law firm as an encore to the Panama Papers. A work attributed to Da Vinci fetches the highest price ever paid at an auction for a piece of fine art. Many brave women come forward and confront their sexual harassers.  Parliament will be given a final vote on the divorce deal before the UK leaves the EU. Actors David Cassidy and Jim Nabors pass away.

december: More wildfires ravage California. The Trump regime provocatively recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moves to eviscerate net neutrality and other consumer protections. Russia is barred from the Olympics due to its sanctioned, systemic doping practises.  Narrowly, Alabama elects a senator from Democratic party rather than a sexual predator, though there is still one in the White House. Entertainer Rose Marie and French rockstar Johnny Halliday pass away.

new year’s eve eve

H and I went to a village fete for the Winterval—actually to usher old the old year and make way for the new, granted a bit, ever so slightly early but I doubt that a community even could compete with the war-zone of firecrackers that typify New Year’s (Silvesternacht) revelry—around in and around the Kirchenburg (fortress church) complex which was illuminated with hundreds of candles and torches for the occasion.
One can find quite a few of these defensive structures in this area but this particular compound in Ostheim vor der Rhön constructed between 1400 and 1450 and outfitted to withstand a protracted siege and support a sizable amount of refugees is one of the largest and most elaborate in Germany.
After a few carols, mulled wine (Glühwein) and a word from the Burgermeister, a group of marksmen (well, members of the volunteer fire department) ascended the Waagglockenturm (originally a signal tower visible over a vast distance as a warning to the next settlement in case of attack) with hand-canons and fired off several incredibly loud volleys. We have shared glances of this place here and there before but soon we will treat you to the full, proper tour. 

10 – 10 till we break again

One of the latest book reviews from Hyperallergic introduces us to the unknown but rather familiar radio subculture of citizens’ bandwidth (CB) operators of 1970s and 80s UK.
Employing handles and coded toponyms that could be easily at home in the hobbyists’ current mode of communication, operators navigating the airwaves and sounding out fellow-enthusiasts wanted to remain anonymous—up to a certain extent since there was celebrity in these circles as in every endeavour, especially for the authorities—because while it was permissible to own such a radio receiver (subject to a licensing-fee, I imagine), it was against regulations to broadcast and considered piracy to do so.
Nonetheless, these networks of scofflaws persisted and sometimes arranged community gatherings so they could meet and mingle in person. To maintain aloofness from potential self-incrimination, attendees had calling-cards printed up to pass around with their handle and a bit about their broadcasting habits and haunts—eyeball cards or eyeballing the exchange was called to signify a face-to-face encounter. Be sure and check out the link above to learn more about these radio renegades and the profiles of the operators behind these aliases and the publication that is part of the new Four Corners Press Irregulars series.

genusvetenskap

Though slightly recanting an early statement that the Church of Sweden is to make God gender-neutral as sensationalism and ‘fake news’—oh what has that despicable dandiprat in the White House wrought—despite a significant shift in attitude and acceptance, another congregation in Västerås has definitely stirred some controversy and defends its decision to advertise for a Christmas mass (put out in the style of a birth announcement or a baby-shower) referring to Jesus with the pronoun “hen.” Though propelled into the fore of public discussion by being a marker indeterminacy and championed by people who do not identify themselves as gender-binary, the church is bringing up another important nuance in the language. Hen/he could also be used when the gender is unknown and the dean of the church is not questioning the identity of the historical figure but the fraught and friendly pronoun is also appropriate to use in circumstances where the gender of the person is irrelevant and it was in this sense the announcement was framed in the way it was. What do you think? Jesus’ sex or whether He is cisgender does not matter today especially, but that detail has been used chauvinistically to justify a long continuum of the patriarchal establishment to the detriment and continued inequality of women and in general those who don’t ascribe to convention.

祝你生日快乐

Accomplished self-trained pharmacist and educator from Ningbo and Nobel laureate for developing malaria treatments that have saved the lives of untold millions, Tu Youyou is celebrating her eighty-seventh birthday today. It can seem very confusing but I suppose it’s really quite a straightforward matter to wish her a happy one. Ms Tu relates that her given name comes from a verse in the Shih-ching (the Chinese book of classic poetry) that the deer bleat ‘youyou’ as they gaze on wild Artemisia (hao)—a type of sagebrush whose chemical derivative (artemisinin or qinghao su), Tu would come to discover, can be used as an anti-malarial drug.