synchronoptica
one year ago: DJ Earworm’s annual (with synchronoptica), The Glass Menagerie (1944) plus assorted links worth revisiting
seven years ago: a banger to time for New Year’s
eight years ago: a charging stretch of road, outer space vodka plus 2016 in review
nine years ago: 3D printing as a cottage industry, Quentin Crisp shares their favourite gangster films, Jesus in Japan, lions and lionesses plus Aleister Crowley’s manor
eleven years ago: Second Christmas plus a tuxedo vest
Though US president-elect Trump’s stupid antics are already too much to keep up with, they become too hard to ignore once the enter the territory of diplomatic crises and quashing internationally agreed upon norms of behaviour. A bundle of such instances can be traced to a recent assertion that America can and should reclaim the Panama Canal because of perceived unfair transit fees applied to US flagged vessels
Though no White Christmas down in the valley, we took the dog for a frolic through the snow up on the highlands near of the Schwarzes Moor along the Lange Rhรถn (previously), an extensive basalt plateau about eight hundred metres in elevation.
On this day in 1974, ten years after the violent murder of resident Kitty Genovese outside the same apartment building in the Kew Gardens neighbourhood of Queens for which no one intervened or called 
the police in what was dubbed the bystander effect and was cited as a textbook case for decades—partially due to this second tragic death—until upon reevaluation it was revealed that the number of witnesses and their actions had been respectively over- and under-reported, fashion model (her profession was later retracted in articles but no correction was given) Sandra Zahler was beaten to death. Upon questioning by detectives a day and a half later once the bludgeoned body was discovered found that neighbours had heard screams and indications of a struggle but no witnesses—many of whom were present in 1964—came forward, either citing the holiday or expecting others to have heard the commotion and alerted authorities. Eventually the building’s elevator operator corroborated police suspicions for Zahler’s estranged boyfriend.
synchronoptica
one year ago: Godwin’s Law (with synchronoptica), a visit to a basalt factory plus The Sting (1973)
seven years ago: more holiday greetings
ten years ago: another Yule Log
eleven years ago: endangered specie
twelve years ago: luck-bringers
Known as the Bohemian Sousa for his vast body of works including marches, polkas and waltzes, we are introduced to the military bandmaster, conductor and composer Julius Ernest Wilhelm Fuฤรญk outside of 
Czech ceremonial and patriotic music via his opus sixty-eight, written in October 1897 whilst stationed in Sarajevo for the Austro-Hungarian Army, originally titled “Grande Marche Chromatique,” in reference to the climbing and descending scales used throughout, but retitled based on his personal interest in the Roman Empire and impressed by a particular scene in Quo Vadis? to Vjezd gladiรกtorลฏ (Entrance of the Gladiators). Adapted for piano and later for woodwind orchestra, the air renamed to “Thunder and Blazes,” became up tempo synonymous by the turn of the century with circuses and anticipated the procession of clowns. Despite this well-established and enduring association (see also, see above), the popular piece was used accompany the arrival and departure of SS commandants in Nazi concentration camps.
Autodidact in applied physics and prolific inventor, Baron Manfred von Ardenne, after presenting to the 
public his concept of Fernsehen a year and a half earlier, achieved his first wholly electronic transmission of television pictures, using a cathode ray tube (see more) for both transmission and reception, on this day in 1933. Following trial runs on broadcasters, Ardenne’s technological advance progressed quickly with the private station of Paul Nipkow culminating with the live airing of the 1936 Berlin Games. Having also conducted pioneering experiments in the fields of radar, radio, isotope separation and inventing the scanning electron microscope, Ardenne’s research facilities in Berlin-Lichtenfelde were put a protective order by Soviet occupying forces in April 1945 and Ardenne and his colleagues were reassigned to laboratories in Abkhazia to work on the atomic bomb project (see also)—like the Russian version of Operation Paperclip. Realising that participation in such a plan would jeopardise his eventual repatriation to East Germany, Ardenne convinced authorities to focus on uranium enrichment rather than weaponising the programme, slowly development until the Americans bombed Japan and an extensive espionage network determined that it was more than theoretical possible. Once Ardenne returned to the DDR and assumed an advisory role in the government, he applied his study and resources to medical diagnostics, inventing an early form MRI scanner and radiotherapies to treat cancer.
synchronoptica
one year ago: Christmas Greetings (with synchronoptica), Aida (1871) plus more accidental Renaissance art
seven years ago: Sleighrunner, Trump’s challenge coin plus more Season’s Greetings
eight years ago: A Human Document, internet court plus a collection of Yule Logs
nine years ago: more Yule Logs
ten years ago: a visit from Father Frost
eleven years ago: 2013 wrapped plus a holiday reckoning
Language Log featured recently a duo of Christmas confections from Italy and Germany and while the latter in the Stollen might have a more robust etymology, derivative of the verb stellen—to put—and from 
the Ancient Greek ฯฯฮฎฮปฮท, stฤlฤ, to support, as in the beams constructed in a mine shaft to prevent a tunnel from collapsing (see also here and here), it is the former in the mildly sweet and far less dense (fluffy as compared to the Stollen’s consistency of a neutron star) the panettone that has a more intriguing composition as a augmentation of a diminutive, big little bread. Fettuccine is the reverse formation in little big slice, and there’s a single-serving variant called a panettoncini, a diminutive of the augmentative of the diminutive. More at the links above.
