Monday 17 January 2022

from inca to excel

Via ร†on, we quite enjoyed this introduction to the system of knotted fibres called khipu (see also) as an accounting and record-keeping tool of the Wari peoples and spread across the Andean region some fourteen-hundred years ago. Decoded by specially-trained khipukamayuqs, these mobile ledgers were periodically recalled to court authorities to lodge tax-compliance, census numbers, commerce, genealogy and inheritance—and with only a small proportion of museum-holdings deciphered, some holdout the possibility that these data-points were a means to encode the fulness of language.

die sternjรคgerin

Born this day in the City of Gdaล„sk in 1647 (†1693), Elisabeth Catherina Hevelius (nรฉe Koopmann) is considered to be one of the first women astronomers and significantly contributed to observational knowledge of the skies, publishing Prodromus astronomiรฆ in 1690, a catalogue of over fifteen hundred stars. Sharing the same professional passion as her husband, Johannes Hevelius (Jan Heweliusz), the two—both from a wealthy merchant background, moved around the various cities of the Hanseatic League before returning Danzig and constructing a complex of buildings which was at the time among the best observatories in the world (Stellรฆburgum—Star Castle) and garnered quite an international reputation with extensive joint research on sunspots and selenography (charting the features of the lunar surface) and hosting visiting dignitaries and scientists like Edmond Halley—greatly impressed by the couple’s calculations that articulated how comets orbit the Sun in parabolic paths.

thank you for being a friend

With a television career that spanned nearly all of the history of the medium, both in front of and behind the camera as the first woman to produce a sitcom, advocate and actor Betty Marion White, born this day in Oak Park, Illinois in 1922, left us just a few weeks shy of her one-hundredth birthday. Appearing first on radio programmes in the late 1930s, White’s work in the industry covered a remarkable ten decades.

iron triangle

In a farewell address to the people of the United States of America, on this day in 1961, outgoing US president Dwight D Eisenhower (see previously) issued a stark warning about the detriment that vested interest between military contractors, corporations and their lobbyists and the Legislative and the Executive could have for public policy. Admonishing the people that that they must not fail to comprehend the “grave implications” of recursive network and rotating-door politics, Eisenhower went on: “Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved—so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military-Industrial Complex… Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

ayn of green gables

On a property tour of the suburbs of Chicago, McMansion Hell (previously) explores the turrets, cornices and entryways that are, couched as architectural elements, the gross signifiers of ostentatious wealth. It’s as if the local Home Owners Association are spurring on a competition to see which monstrosity can project the most power. More at the links above and be sure to subscribe so as not to miss an update.

Sunday 16 January 2022

on-looker

Via Web Curios, we quite enjoyed this scenic if not a bit haunting selection of vintage postcards collected by Flickr artist Swellmap in an album of people staring off into the distance. The subject always has their backs to the camera and usual wear red, like some unfortunate Star Trek ensign about to meet their fate and forward the plot.

so, jetzt reicht’s aber, frรคulein

Though since 1951 in East Germany, women could use the designation “Frau,” missus without applying for permission from the state, this is—proof of marriage, acknowledging that the classification of entire female sex in terms of its declared relationship to a man and while the fact that martial status was a private matter for males but a salutation of public interest for woman was highly problematic and inegalitarian, it was not until this day in 1972 in West Germany that the term Frรคulein (the predicate a relatively new one, introduced in 1869 whereas in previous eras it was a binary Herr or Mann/Frau) was stricken from official use by the Ministry of the Interior under the Hans-Dietrich Genscher and ought to be avoided (along with comparable honourifics in other languages, like Miss and Mademoiselle) as a sexist and demeaning distinction.

6x6

teed-off: the worse examples of gerrymandered voting precincts in the US portrayed as formidable mini-golf hazards—via Print Magazine  

blursday afternoon is never ending: time reforms for 2022 

toponymy: Wordle (previously) place-names editions—see also 

la pista automobilistica: Nag on the Lake gives us the chance to revisit the incredible Fiat factory in Turin with rooftop test-track  

crying is for plain women—pretty women go shopping: season one Golden Girls are younger than the cast of the Sex in the City reboot and other essential reading  

undercounted: email traffic reveals how Trump interfered with US census to ensure polities with large immigrant populations didn’t gain clout