in cold blood

First appearing as a four-part serial in The New Yorker first in its September 1965 issue, the gruesome quadruple murders of a farm family, the Clutters of Holcomb in the state of Kansas, on which Truman Capote’s sensationally popular and genre defining true-crime novel, occurred on this day in 1959, when two recently paroled ex-convicts from the penitentiary travelled across the state to the small farmstead on a jailhouse tip that the head of the household kept a vault of cash on the premises to pay the day labourers they employed (some being drifters finding their footing after being released from prison). Capote compiled press coverage and conducted many interviews of the investigators, members of the community and court (his friend and Kansas native, author Harper Lee helped research and ingratiate Capote) and prompted national discussion on mental health, incarceration and the death penalty, seen as a challenge to traditional thinking on the nature of the premeditated and criminal culpability referred to as the M’Naghten rules, a series of protocols—instructions to the jury dated to 1840s Britain formulated in react to the acquittal of an individual due to insanity over. M’Naghten had in fact killed a man but was only motivated to do so under the delusion that his victim was the Prime Minister and once disabused of his misconception was quite paralysed with guilt for having taken an innocent life.

8x8

ginger-reveal party: photographer Kieran Dodds has spent years capturing images from red heads all over the world  

nacelle: a handy camper turned a surplus jet engine into a deluxe caravan trailer 

thursday afternoon: the video paintings of Brian Eno—see previously 

lawn and order: perhaps Spain ought to get out of the art restoration business and other items of note from Hyperallergic’s weekly digest 

we’ll let the supreme courtyard marriot decide the outcome of the vote: apropos the entry above, more roundups and rundowns from the week from Super Punch  

julia’s name is going to be julia gulia: a team of volunteer correspondents answer missives left to Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers  

matita: a treasury of vintage Italian pencils 

macroscopic: a pairing of recent posts from the always excellent Nag on the Lake celebrate capturing images of the tiny at extremely close range

all this trouble over a fat little man in a red suit

As our faithful chronicler informs, the sci-fi comedy (self-descriped as “yuletide science fiction fantasy” and hoped to find a niche for a perceived market gap) by Nicholas Webster and Paul L. Jacobson, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians—universally panned though significantly debuting the figure of Mrs Claus a full three weeks before appearing on the Rankin and Bass (previously) television special Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, premiered in cinemas on this day in 1964. It was to receive the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 treatment on 21 December 1991—shortly after MST3K was syndicated by the Comedy Central cable network and thus solidifying its enduring popularity aside from making the movie a cult classic. A young Pia Zadora has her film debut as Girmar—the Martian Girl.

palæomixology

The ever adventurous team of explorers at Atlas Obscura bring us the story of a university palæontologist celebrating his first published paper—on archaeopteryx feathers—was taken to commemorate his accomplishment with a signature cocktail for the occasion, sharing the recipe and toasting remotely with his friends and colleagues over a video conference call. Afterwards the hobby bartender was inspired to create more drinks honouring other prehistoric icons including Lucy and a ginkgo mimosa. What other dinosaur and dinosaur-adjacent cocktails might you mix up? Much more to discover at the link up top. Here’s a slightly modified version of the namesake drink of the Urvorgel (see previously) with appropriately German ingredients.

• Two full shot-glasses (a shooter glass—three ounces) worth of black-berry or black currant (Schwarze Johannisbeere) soda or syrup 
• One shot Jägermeister 
• One shot lime juice 
• One shot of Stone Fruit (Pfirsich oder ähnliches) syrup 
• One dash of activated charcoal plus 3 dashes of bitters 

Mix all the ingredients in a couple (a broader, shallow stemmed flute) glass, saving the charcoal for last and garnish with a black feather—the colour of the plumage (the cocktail by the same name is however brandy, Cointreau, vermouth plus bitters) being one of the conclusions drawn from the paper.

g20

Held on this weekend in 2008 in host capital Washington, DC at the urging of EU and Australian leadership to expand the coordinated response and recovery for the 2008 financial crisis, the summit, inviting for the first time the twenty most powerful world economies to meet again a month after the G7 had convened at the same venue, achieved its stated goal to reform global financial institutions and articulate areas of contention as well as cooperation.

Framed as a Bretton Woods II—the system of monetary management created in the aftermath of World War II but seen as increasingly ineffective as signatories withdrew, it seemed like a hopeful and promising development with all parties agreeing on the causes and appointing a diverse troika of economies as a steering committee (South Korea, Brazil and the UK), it remains to be seen if world markets are more robust and adaptable for the measures instituted.

this is 2 emma toc

The call sign enunciated as above in the spelling alphabet of the day followed by “Writtle testing, Writtle testing,” was announced regularly starting on 14 February in 1922 by presenter and station manager Captain P. P. Eckerseley from a transmission tower near the Marconi laboratory outside of Chelmsford in Essex, marking the launch of the first British radio broadcaster, the first commercial station with entertainment programming. Its immediate popularity led to the establishment of its sister station—repairing from the exurbs into central London (Marconi House) as 2LO—which on 14 November 1922 became the BBC with Arthur Burrows (Uncle Arthur on the wireless) presenting news bulletins (see also). The original 2MT did not join (though its legacy lives on) the network and folding in January of 1923.

vp

Whilst in no way diminishing all the firsts portrayed here, we learn that Ms Harris is not the first to be the second highest officer of the executive of the US government of bi-racial, non-European heritage thanks to Miss Cellania (whom we congratulate as a new regular contributing happy mutant for Boing Boing). If one goes to the column at the bottom occupied by Dick Cheney then moves up three rows (past Gerald Ford and Harry Truman), one lands on the square with the gentleman to have this distinction, attorney and senator from Kansas, the Honourable Charles Curtis (*1860 – †1936). Serving in the administration of Herbert Hoover at a time before the position was a running-mate and holding very antithetical views to his president’s platform, their ticket consisted of the winner of the highest number of party electors and the individual coming in second-place. Curtis was affiliated with the Kaw Nation—having three-eights Native American blood (what a tedious and litigious way to celebrate one’s ancestry) but Curtis was deservedly disowned by contemporary and future members of his tribe and the rest of the indigenous population for his legislative agenda and political career that was instrumental in dismantling the sovereignty and self-governance, transforming communal, shared land into allotments for individual households and selling the unclaimed surplus to settlers. Furthermore, Curtis championed assimilation and the practise of sending Native American youth to boarding schools to add to cultural erosion and replacement. The vice-presidency being then a sine cure appointment, Curtis was prevented from doing further damage after 1928, the duo loosing during the next election in the midst of the Great Depression to FDR and John Nance Garner. From this dark chapter, we can look toward the future—the Kaw people and other nations reorganised and have regained a measure of political autonomy since the late 1950s and through the subsequent decade.

jz

Born this day in 1699, Johann Zach (†1773, also called by the Czech equivalent Jan) was a versatile Bohemian composer, violinist and organist who helped bridge musical traditions from the old Baroque style to the emerging Classical one, punctuated with counterpoint (the clavier vs the orchestra) and the so called style galant, and importantly incorporated Italian influences with folk music from his native land—though his eccentricities and difficult personality made it hard for him to secure employment or keep a positon for long. Despite this reputation and temperament, Zach did hold the office of Kapellmeister for the court of the Prince-Elector and Archbishop of Mainz for over a decade which were among his most productive years, including the performance below of his Stabat mater (a hymn to Mary, setting to music the first line—the incipit—from the Council of Trent’s liturgical sequence, Stabat mater dolorósa—the sorrowful mother was standing).