hgp

Formally launched in 1990 with sequencing, mostly sponsored by governmental research grants taking place in over twenty university laboratories in the UK, Germany, China, Japan, France, the US and Spain the massive, global collaboration to map the genes of human DNA from a structural and functional stance was declared complete with 99% sequenced of a composite sample to an accuracy rate of 99.99% on this day in 2003. Published in May of the following year, the approximately three million base pairs of any individual can now be mapped and analysed within a matter of minutes.

i like the cut of your jib, sailor

Via the always outstanding Miss Cellania, we are directed to a revue of four centuries—allowance for temporal anomalies—of Starfleet uniforms and Star Trek fashions that have been integral to the franchise and all its iterations since inception, eliciting strong opinions and favourites among the seasons’ wardrobe and livery. The pictured crew member wearing a skant is pretty forward looking for the 2350 of 1987.

capsule house k

Though familiar with his iconic Nakagin capsule hotel in Tokyo, which was also happily conserved and revitalised, until learning about efforts to save Kisho Kurokawa’s (黒川 紀章) retreat in the woods of Karuizawa completed in 1974 we had not appreciated the philosophy behind the movement called Metabolism (新陳代謝, shinchintaisha—a literal translation of the biological process of a more poetic concept of the exchange of energy between the interior and exterior world) that attempts to harmonize skyscrapers and other monumental architecture and civil engineering with organic growth, embracing the principles of sustainability, human-clustering, modularity, mobility and transience. Learn more at the links above.

mindbender

Responsible to a greater or lesser degree for the Grateful Dead, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the Unibomber and continuing for at least the next two decades albeit (reportedly) at a diminished scale, Project MKUltra was launched by the US Central Intelligence Agency through its Office of Scientific Intelligence in coordination with the army’s biological warfare laboratories on this day in 1953. Though some experiments and motivations are documented and verified, huge tranches of files documenting the programme by the CIA director in 1973 (in the midst of Watergate) making independent corroboration difficult to impossible as embarrassing and incriminating for the government to have sanctioned tests without informed-consent on unwitting subjects. Born out of paranoia experienced after acclaimed as a world power to loose monopolies on nuclear armaments and cultural hegemony, many put credence in this efforts at brainwashing, memory manipulation and behaviour control through hypnosis, hallucinogenic drugs, trained assassins, addiction and remote-controlled implants, though others including spymaster and programme director Sidney Gottlieb dismissed and disavowed the project’s methodologies as ineffective and only useful to redirect public scrutiny away from the agency’s actual goals of advancing, enhancing interrogation techniques through classic means of intimation and torture and conversely creating field operators better able to resist such ways of extracting information.

anticipation

Via Boing Boing, we are transported to the Clinton Street Theatre of Portland Oregon, which has been hosting weekly Rocky Horror Picture Show (previously) midnight watch parties for decades, and upheld this tradition through the pandemic and playing to an empty house with sights focused on gradual, safe resumption of the screenings and reviving the kindred community of misfits and happy mutants.

questions time

Potentially traumatising for very young audience members and no doubt a bit of disappointment for others who were excited to see Westminster transformed into a colossal marauding alligator (actually based on a particular crocodilian gargoyle on the House of Commons) attacking the UK—like those older sitcoms that began with an animated sequence that got me excited to watch a cartoon and always feeling a bit left down when it was just The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis—On the Record was a British political programme that aired on BBC One from 1988 through 2002. As news music (see also) and mascots go, it’s a pretty good one. Hosed Jonathan Dibleby, John Humphrys and Sheena McDonald, the show was culled during a review of the BBC’s political output and perceived bias.

decca dl-8225

While not the first recorded release in the genre nor the first commercially successful one, Bill Haley & His Comets’ rendition of the song “Rock Around the Clock” recorded at the studios of the Knights of Pythias Temple in Manhattan on this day in 1954 is generally considered to be the singular number most responsible for introducing the world to the musical style. Co-written by Maxamus “Max” C. Freedman and James “Jimmy DeKnight” Edward Myers of Philadelphia and released on the B-side of the album “Thirteen Women (and Only One Man) in Town” the following month, it was not an instant, run-away success and only became a phenomenon with the debut of the film Blackboard Jungle (March 1955) when it featured under the opening credits.

regimental colours

Whereas the claim that Union Jack properly only refers to the naval ensign flown at sea is vexillologically vexing and likely a historical misunderstanding (or pedantic overreach), in an attempt to make my blog more bedecked with the Union Flag than it already is and therefore a more definitive and trustworthy source of information we recall that on this day in 1606 it was decreed for maritime purposes the nations of England and Scotland would use a joint flag symbolising the regal and personal union under James VI/I (see previously) upon inheriting the two crowns plus the Irish throne. The Cross of Saint Andrew countercharged with the Cross of Saint Patrick, overall the Cross of Saint George, heraldically speaking, was officially adopted with the Act of Union of 1800 that merged came into effect the first day of the next year—merging Great Britain with the Irish kingdom. Even before the Republic of Ireland won independence, the saltire of Saint Patrick was not embraced as representative of the island or its patron and associated with the personal coat of arms of the FitzGerald-FitzMaurice family dynasty.