cпутник-1

Spanning from 1 July 1957 to 31 December 1958, the International Year Geophysical Year was a global science project called to thaw some of the frostiest periods of the Cold War that severely curtailed information exchange between the East and West and presented a grave threat to facing problems that affected the planet, no matter what one’s political leanings were.
Among the accomplishments of the scientific venture was the Antarctic Treaty, preserving the continent for peaceful and cooperative research and international data clearing houses where all researchers could freely share meteorological and seismological reports and promote its ongoing collection. The IGY also sparked some competition that could be characterised as more serious than merely friendly with both the Soviet Union and the US pledging to construct artificial satellites and beginning the Space Race. Originally designated as Object D, the satellite was to carry an array of scientific instruments to measure cosmic radiation and solar winds—which were eventually launched as Sputnik-3, but due to the complexity and anxiety that the Americans might indeed be the first to launch, researchers simplified the scope of the mission to radio transmission.
On 4 October 1957, the rocket carrying Sputnik-1 launched from the Tyuratam range in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (presently the Baikonur Cosmodrome) and orbited the Earth once every ninety-six minutes for three weeks, its highly polished surface visible to keen observers and continually broadcasting a “beep-beep-beep” that could be intercepted by any amateur radio operator when it came in range. After its batteries ran out in those first weeks, it remained aloft for another two months before burning up on re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere, having completed fourteen hundred-forty circuits around the Earth and travelling a distance of over seventy million kilometres. The Americans eventually launched the Explorer I satellite on 31 January 1958 but not before the USSR launched Sputnik-2 just under a month after the start of their first mission, this time with a living passenger.

inching towards october

Taking a cue from a challenge that artist John Vernon Lord set for himself in 2016 to create a miniature illustration every day of the calendar year that fit in a little, standard square, we’re doing the same for this month—maybe longer. Just for fun, but it’s also a good daily practise to keep up with other things—like keeping one’s diary and other routines and resolutions—that we tend to let slip away. Here are our first four. How would you finish out the week?

moscow mueller

None of these Trump cocktails from McSweeney’s contributors Wendy Aarons and Mariana Olenko seem for anyone but your sturdiest of drinkers and may not be so effective for drowning one’s sorrows but the menu (both instalments) is certainly worth checking out. We especially liked The Harvey Wallbuilder: vodka, orange juice and Galliano l’Autentico, garnished with an IOU from Mexico—though now we’ve graduated to Impeachment & Cream.

shibuya-kei

Via Open Culture, we are treated to the musical stylings of Mariya Takeuchi through the algorithm-driven revival of her 1985 pop hit, Plastic Love. Though this one reflective number on the nature of foibles and superficiality which typifies the sub-genre of City Pop (シティーポップ) might be the engine introducing Ms Takeuchi to a new generation of listeners, she has a musical career that stretches from the late seventies to the present with some twelve studio albums and many compilations, covers and singles, including “Now,” given English lyrics and recorded by The Carpenters.

tag der deutschen einheit

To meditate a bit on Reunification Day, I went to the next village over, Hermannsfeld (previously), the first settlement just across the former border and visited the preserved ruin of a patrol tower (Grenzturm—elsewhere) and peace Cross (Weltfriedenskreuz—the inset lettering reads “may peace reign”) erected a top the Dachsberg.
Though surely not unsafe but surprisingly accessible, I was discouraged—owning to the fact that was by myself—from exploring too deep into the sublevel and it the tower itself, there was a chronology of World War II and DDR-Zeit and one could go up higher in the tower but again—out of caution, I didn’t think I could manage the heavy hatch and balance myself on the stairs, so I just peeked inside.
The Day of German Unity (Tag der Deutschen Einheit—not really the commemoration of der Deutsche Wiedervereinigung, though sometimes used interchangeably especially as a political signal like referring to the former East collectively as die neue Bundesländer, as goal had been realised previously) marks the formal accession to the terms of agreement in 1990.
Alternatives for the holiday were considered including the fall of the Berlin Wall in November of the previous year, but as that momentous event coincided with the German Fateful Day, marking a host of dreadful and pivotal happenings, this other administrative occasion was selected instead.

tarpaulin

It was a decade ago on this day that US President George HW Bush signed into law the Emergency Economic Stabilisation Act of 2008 with the provision for the rescue scheme of purchasing toxic assets and making distressed financial institutions flush with cash called the Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP), as proposed by then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
The plan to bailout the banks and dull any painful consequences from their avarice had not curried much public favour nor did the covert and discretionary manner in the administration of the aide instil confidence that we all wouldn’t be trotte down the same path again. Though we can source the sentiment at least back to the speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr with “socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor,” the passage of the law did inspire a few choice turns of phrases and meditations on how paradoxically the aim of capitalism is to escape its bonds and the observation that the intervention allows corporations to “privatize profits and to socialise losses.”