Friday 3 May 2019

sun day

Though not as enduring as the other observance conceived and coordinated by Denis Hayes, Earth Day in 1970, this day in 1978 was proclaimed as Sun Day by US president Jimmy Carter, with international events staged around the world to advocate and promote solar power and prompt conversations about alternative sources of energy. If only we had sustained that level of enthusiasm, just imagine how much better our planet could be. We ought to revitalise this holiday and help us get back on the right trajectory.

Thursday 2 May 2019

die theorie des klanges

The ever brilliant Present /&/ Correct has unearthed a trove of cymatic diagrams (from the Greek for wave and hence the study of sound propagating through media or across a membrane) recorded by musician and acoustic pioneer Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni (*1756 - †1827, previously) produced by examining the way granular materials responded to different sonic influences on vibrating plates. The resulting nodal patterns are collectively referred to as Chladni figures and his battery of research led directly to the conception of a musical instrument called a verrillion (Glasspiel) comprised of beer glasses tuned by volume of liquid and struck with mallets—inspiring a visiting Benjamin Franklin, besotted with the somber character of the sounds produced as ideal for sacred music to create his own glass harmonium.

night geese


๐Ÿ‘

Although the German origin “ohne Korrektur”—without correction—is as probably as much of a folk etymology as “Old Kinderhook,” Martin van Buren running for re-election on something snappier than his foreign-sounding name and the term “okay” probably a borrowing from Choctaw, Occitan or Bantu, we did like it as a segue into learning about another term that has metaphorically come to have similar connotations: astrein. Initially a term in the lumber industry, it means “free of knotholes” and the ideal planks for construction and furniture manufacturer would be sourced from parts of the trunk uninterrupted by branches (รคste) which leave a hole or a hard bit of unworkable wood. More in common-parlance in the 1980s “Astrein!” came to be synonym for very fine and good.

anecdoche and รฉnouement

Via Open Culture, we are keyed into a revamped and updated mixed-media adaptation of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a project by John Koenig that crafts neologisms that are just barely removed from our accepted emotional vocabularies (see also) to tease out a relatable feeling and response that we all recognise but could not heretofore name.
Though many of the terms seem at first glance negative and diminishing, they are also an opportunity for reflection and empathy—especially at times when our sympathies and charity might be over-taxed, “sonder” (from the German adjective for special and the French verb to probe) becomes a grounding way to reframe one’s outlook, defined as the sudden shock that each passerby is living an internal and external life as vivid and complex as one’s own. Vermรถdalen is the humbling experience that while possibly our discoveries aren’t unique and pioneering, there’s something to be said about homage and imitation, and questioning authenticity. The title terms respectively (from anecdote with a little syncedoche and dรฉnouement) refer to a situation where everyone is talking, sharing but no one is really listening and the feeling experienced once arrived, the realisation that the present cannot inform the past. Much more to explore including a series of short filmed vignettes at the link up top.

dead reckoning

On this day in 1969, the luxury ocean liner the Queen Elizabeth 2, in service until 2008 and since last year, a floating hotel in Dubai, began her maiden voyage from the shipyards in Southhampton to New York, and was the first private, commercial vessel to avail itself of the US Navy’s Global Positioning System constellation of artificial satellites, heralding the end of navigation by compass and sextant. Coincidentally, also on this day in 2000, Bill Clinton made accurate and detailed GPS telemetry available to the public for any venture. 

Wednesday 1 May 2019

users are losers

Commissioned by the US National Crime Prevention Council as a mascot to raise public awareness on personal safety and security in 1979 and named the following July in a nation-wide contest, McGruff the Crime Dog has waged a on balance a helpful outreach campaign. Though best remembered for his message to prevent kidnapping and taking common-sense precautions to deny crime the chance to occur in the fist place, McGruff was also enlisted to discourage bullying and as on this 1986 gem of an album below, the use of drugs.

macroalgae

Instead of the usual plastic cups or bottles of water offered to parched runners, for this past London Marathon participants were handed out some thirty thousand gulps of a sports drink encapsulated (previously) in a seaweed-based edible container. Among the newest wonder material, designers and the industry are just beginning to appreciate the potential of seaweed as a sustainable bio-plastic which, incorporated dietarily, can also combat the bio-genesis of methane.