miles gloriosus

We learn from Oxford Words blog the etymology of the word chauvinism can be sourced to an apocryphal French soldier in La Grand Armée of Napoleon called Nicolas Chauvin of Rochefort. The eponym of the legendary character was used to lampoon the exploits and loyalty of the Bonapartists who upheld their general as a leader even in defeat and disgrace—expanding from a term that narrowly was associated with nationalistic fervour to a broader bias towards othering and boastfulness.

5x5

betamax xmas: we get reintroduced to a nostalgic, internet classic—via Waxy

optician sans: a sleek free font from ANTI Hamar and Fábio Duarte Martins

i heard you on the wireless back in ‘sixty-two: a whole universe of pre-MTV music videos

première arabesque: guitarist Kyle Schaefer arranges and performs Claude Debussy’s early masterpiece in progressive rock style

modernistmas: an updated gallery (previously) of Brutalist and Post Modernism gingerbread houses for the holidays 

weihnachtsmärkte

Doing some Christmas shopping, I managed to complete the circuit through the capitals of Wiesbaden and Mainz, inspecting the high streets and markets and seasonal decorations besides. Conceding a bit of magic that one experiences at night with all the lights, it was nice to walk through the squares without so much of the crush from the crowd and take in the Nativity Scenes (Krippe) and Christmas carousels (Weihnachtspyramide), especially liking how the seat of the Second German Broadcaster (ZDF oder Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen) incorporated one its mascots, the Mainzelmännchen that signal station identification, into the decoration.

I also took the chance to re-visit St Stephan zu Mainz, a Baroque church heavily damaged during the aerial bombing of the city during World War II but rebuilt in the early 1970 and showcasing stained glass windows designed by artist Marc Chagall in the nave and quires. A tour led by a deacon invited us to bask and mediate in the uniquely cobalt light.

I then visited the monumental Christuskirche, a Renaissance-revival building that was also severely damaged during the war—whose high dome is visible from the other side of the Rhein.

Back in Wiesbaden, I walked through the Christmas market held in the square in front of the Rathaus and around the red brick Marktkirche and later went to see how the Kurhaus had decorated for Christmas and its upcoming balls and fêtes and found this stunning poinsettia tree in the casino’s foyer.

the lost squandron

Among many other momentous events that occurred on this day, as our faithful chronicler Doctor Caligari reports, five US Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers took off for a three-hour training exercise from an air base in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1945 (designated as Flight 19) with a compliment of fourteen airmen and the crew of thirteen of a Martin patrol bomber Mariner dispatched to search for the missing squadron after radio contact was suddenly lost and all disappeared without a trace.
This incident and geographically related ones led an Associated Press correspondent Edward Van Winkle Jones to speculate in the Miami Herald five years afterwards how in the modern, push-button era such mysteries and disappearances could abide—setting off a chain of embellishments that led to the concepts of the deadly Bermuda Triangle and the Limbo of the Lost, with supernatural and extraterrestrial overtones. In an article appearing in the occult, pulp fiction verging to softcore magazine Argosy (meaning a large class of merchant ship from the thalassocracies of Venice or Ragusa) in 1964, Vincent Gaddis defined the esoteric vertices as San Juan, Puerto Rico, Miami and the island of Bermuda. The triangle corresponds with one of the most heavily plied shipping lanes in the world and the frequency of vanishings can be attributed to the amount of air and sea traffic converging from all points.

geosophy

We tip our hat to highly discerning Things magazine for introducing us to the cartographic empire of educator and spatial narrator Daniel Huffman, the insightful talent behind some of the more visually stunning maps in circulation. For instance, you might have encountered lately these precision, exacting typewritten charts, unique business card ideas, commercial commissions and award winning maps for alternate histories. The title refers to the study of the world as people imagine and conceive it and the relation of dogma to environment. Much more to explore at the links above.

i’m afraid i can’t do that dave

Though matters have yet to escalate to HAL 9000 levels, Quartz reports that the first interaction between the International Space Station’s robot crew member (previously) and its human astronauts came off a little socially awkward with first impressions ranging from frosty to slightly menacing. I’m confident that relations will improve and civility will prevail but one does have to take a bit of exception to the fact that man and machine got off to this sort of start on day one of the mission.

pelagic zone

Not having grown up with the characters, it’s a little outside of my particular shibboleth but I think we can all nonetheless appreciate the artistry and world-building that went into one of the longest running animated series in history and can definitely share in the sentiment of this tribute from Dangerous Minds on the recent passing of Stephen Hillenburg.
Before becoming a cartoon artist, Hillenburg taught marine biology and set a cast of characters in The Intertidal Zone as an educational comic to better reach his students. These classroom mascots would eventually move to Bikini Bottoms but Hillenburg honed his drawing talents on other projects in the interim. Watch Hillenburg’s first short at the link above.