the play’s the thing (12. 988)

As our faithful chronicler reminds on this day in 1966, the Star Trek:TOS episode “The Conscience of the King” (S1:E13) was originally aired with the USS Enterprise diverted three light years off course to ostensibly investigate a synthetic food source developed by Captain Kirk’s childhood friend Dr Thomas Leighton on Planet Q as a novel way to remedy dire shortages on Cygnia Minor. Both among the survivors of Kodos the Executioner, former governor of the Earth colony of Tarsus IV—who ordered the execution of half the settlers during a famine to prevent more starvation with the ensuing resistance precipitating an all out massacre, just days before a relief ship arrived—it is revealed that Leighton’s deception was a coded ruse to lure Kirk to confirm or deny his suspicions that an actor of a touring Shakespearian troupe might actually be the revolutionary provincial leader, Kirk and Leighton among the handful of survivors ever to see Kodos in person. Though convinced that Kodos was killed during the uprising, Kirk’s curiosity is piqued and returns to the surface to attend a cocktail hour held at the Leighton estate, hoping to encounter the supposed fugitive and in the meantime courts the actor’s daughter, the suspect not in attendance, excused as her father does not socialise. Strolling the desert grounds, they come across the murdered body of Leighton and Kirk contrives to strand the company on the planet. Spock conducts independent research and learns that the other eyewitnesses of the elusive governor have died in mysterious circumstances when in proximity to the acting company. More evidence is gathered and the Enterprise offers to ferry the players to their next venue, whilst the ship’s theatre club is rehearsing Hamlet, which the guest stars join, performing the play-within-the-play. Despite the non-fatal poisoning of another crew member who also survived the killings, tampering with Kirk’s phaser and the actor’s apologies in defence of the actions of the colony’s leader, Kirk remains hesitant to forward his accusations until his daughter reveals that she has been executing witnesses, unbidden, to help her father escape his past and whilst attempting to shoot Kirk, phasers her father, having jumped in the beam’s path, and like Ophelia with the accidental death of Laertes, descends into madness, attended by Dr McCoy. The episode also marked the last appearance of Grace Lee Whitney as yeoman Rand until brought back for the movies in that role, giving a dirty look to Kodos’ daughter, a fellow blonde and herself released so Kirk could pursue other love interests, and this show plus “Day of the Dove” (S3:E11), responding to another distress call that pits the Enterprise a pitched battle with a Klington Bird of Prey gave Simpson’s producer Matt Groening the characters of Kodos and Kang.

department of the interior (12. 987)

Having encountered some of these brilliant and iconic Depression Era posters sponsored by FDR’s Works Projects Administration, we appreciated learning about the landscape architect and graphic designer behind the strategic and unified tourism campaign to promote US national and state parks, Dorothy Waugh, through an exhibit of seventeen of her placards—particularly at such a fraught time for these preserves, understaffed, subject to revisionist histories, corporate encroachment and surge-pricing. Due to the scope and scale of her work for the Civilian Conservation Corps’ infrastructure projects for the parks system, Waugh went from being the sole artist to hiring and supervising a team of draughtsmen and also produced easy to follow diagrams and designs, most workers unable to interpret blueprints and formal specifications, for the construction picnic areas and campsite conveniences as well as other basic structures. Much more from Print magazine at the link above.

kalle anka & c:o (12. 986)

Mental Floss brings us reporting on another imported holiday tradition (same procedure as every year) in the annual ritual on the afternoon of Christmas Day in that liminal time-slot after dinner and before super after the excitement of the gifts are baked in with over a third of the households in Sweden sitting down on the sofa to engage in a bit of nostalgia by watching the broadcast of a 1958 made-for-tv Disney anthology clip show called From All of Us to All of You, hosted by Jiminy Cricket, known locally as “Kalle Anka och has vänner önskar God Jul”—despite Donald Duck being only one character out of a cast of many. First aired on the Sweden channel SVT1 in 1960, it has grown into a yuletide custom more or less without change or commercial interruption for over six decades.  The entire programme can be found here.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Unwort of the Year (with synchronopticæ), King William College’s Winter Break quiz plus the narrative murals of a luxurious Roman villa

fourteen years ago: memes of the year 

fifteen years ago: carbon chauvinism  

sixteen years ago: a visit to Colditz 

nth degree (12. 985)

Large amounts notoriously difficult to wrap one’s head around as it is (see previously here and here) and language attempting to sidestep contemplation of the practicably infinite, we enjoyed this gloss by linguistic anthropologist Stephen Chrisomalis of Wayne State University’s catalogue by first known publication of words used for indefinite hyperbolic numerals in English—placeholder names also called non-numerical vague quantifiers. The oldest examples dating from the mid-nineteenth century is umpty or umpteenth—used to describe an exponential difference and originally taken from a vocalisation of the dash in Morse code—dit and iddy were the dots. Zillion and its snow clones are first attested in print at the turn of the century.

sounds about white (12. 984)

In contrast to last year’s officer holder, Pantone’s Colour of the Year (see previously—it’s truly not an annual tradition to keep a close eye on, though in this case, it’s not just the lower the stakes, the stronger the conviction) of Cloud Dancer seems a rather bland, neutral choice at first blush and a reversal of its previous pick of “Mocha Mousse” (someone said 2025: poop 2026: toilet paper) but then an interesting one given the political climate in the US specifically and has instead courted controversy, given the election of Trump to a second term, accidental Nazi salutes, immediate assaults on programmes working towards diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility both in the federal government and then followed by private industry, revisionist histories including erasure of Black contributions and America’s past of slavery, enabling racial-profiling and unleashing armies of immigration officers on cities to terrorise people whom appear to have non-caucasian heritage, freezing immigration while offering refugee status to Afrikaners and the courts again set to hear the administration’s argument in favour of overturning birthright citizenship, just focusing on the solely racist actions. It seems the trend institute was not just throwing in the proverbial towel—though we contend that they well could have just been calling it in with the selection and exalted copy sounding suspiciously machine-generated.

synchronoptica

one year ago: America’s first electric vehicle (with synchronopticæ), celebrating a century of Dick van Dyke, St Ambrose, the fallout of AI replacing hyperlinks plus Scrooge’s tombstone

fourteen years ago: US state department announces it will no longer tolerate homophobia plus an end-of-the-year-figure-with-wings

fifteen years ago: disingenuous transparency 

sixteen years ago: COP 15 plus cable conglomerate to acquire NBC

trans erasure (12. 983)

More despicable and insulting than the childish substitution of the official portrait of Joe Biden with a crude picture of an auto-pen, in the gallery of past leaders of the US Health and Human Services department—a cabinet-level agency of the executive branch focused on public health—the former assistant secretary and surgeon general of the preventative medical corps, Admiral Rachel Levine, appointed by Biden, has been dead-named with an altered caption under her picture—to, according to Alabama urologist and current director, to ensure that the HHS both internally and externally reflect a gold standard of science guided by biological realities.

dūstscēawung (12. 982)

A tenth century Old English term, the word carries the rather poetic meaning of contemplation of dust, the latter half of the compound evolving into the Middle English escauvinghe, shewing—in the sense of presentation or to examine or inspect, which comes down in the modern word of scavenge via scavage—that is a toll placed on imported goods, similar to a tariff. Whilst dustsceawung can connote a sorrowful occupation and a sort of nihilistic thanatopsis , it also, through its lexical lineage, refers to being caught up in minutiae but also the brighter and more reverential acknowledgement that such omnipresent motes (“suspended in a sunbeam”—crumbled empire but also stardust) once were and can be other things, a daydream of transience and the future.

9x9 (12. 981)

on average there are only 0.061 haunted locations per square mile in the uk: ghost mapper 

forty winks: an appreciation of sleep and everyday aesthetics  

married to the sea: CEO of US military contractor Palantir argues case for making war crimes constitutionally allowable  

grunts and thwops: cetologist share their first chat with a humpbacked whale named Twain—see previously 

the dangerous christmas of red riding hood: a 1965 revisionist fairytale from the Wolf’s perspective, starring Liza Minnelli  

ar 4294: giant sunspot cluster on par with the concentration that sparked the Carrington event pointed directly at Earth—via Damn Interesting  

mixtape: a growing repository of found cassettes from around the world with content and provenance—via Web Curios   

enhanced vetting: Trump’s state department directed to deny visas for fact-checkers and content-moderators in defence of free-speech absolutism  

mycology mapped: an engrossing explainer of the fungi kingdom and its place in the ecosystem 

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: Ze Frank on molluscs (with synchronopticæ), a digital advent calendar plus gift ideas for the holiday office party

thirteen years ago: a gaslit whistle-blower 

fourteen years ago: Eurozone credit downgrades 

fifteen years ago: net neutrality and IMF priorities 

seventeen years ago: Christmas decorations