Sunday, February 23, 2014

Orange to Red




It’s nasty out there today.  Gotta say it.  You can see it in the headlights when you drive the car before the dawn.  The smog swirls in front of the beams.  A while back I wrote about the moon being full.  Who knows if its even out there on the morning like this.  I looked and our friends in the city government have finally raised the alert level to orange.  Hmm.  It needs to be wretched for three days straight before they go all the way to red.  Then they pull half the cars off the road, cancel schools . . .

One can understand officials preference to tamp things down at all cost.  Once you agree that things are hazardous you acknowledge that your hair is on fire.  And as Niney the Observer once commented:  “there is no more water, to out the fire.”  I was just over in Shandong.  There are ninety seven million people next door.  You can stop all traffic and all heating and all construction in Beijing for a month.  Will it really matter?   If neighboring provinces proceed with the industrial revolution. 

If this were a representative democracy, this would be the fucking election issue.  This would be a throw-the-bums out moment.  There is no such valve here.  So once you admit you have a hazardous, life-threatening problem, that you can’t really do much about in the short term, you essentially concede that you are impotent.  That’s not part of the Party’s platform.  My wife confirms that the Chinese web, weixin, etc., are all alight with talk about this.  I’m on the Beijing Municipal site and I don’t see anything that draws attention, loud and clear, to a code orange hazard. 



To get my mind off, I’ll turn to what I was going to write about, which is a fascinating article from the University of Bedforshire, which a friend shared with me.  A professor there appears to have finally cracked the heretofore undecipherable Voynich Manuscript, which has befuddled scholars since its discovery by a Polish book dealer 102 years ago.  Derided as a hoax, leveraged by gaming companies and Hollywood, this 莫名其妙[1] was verified as a true medieval document but described by some as “academic suicide” to try to decode.  Professor Stephen Bax however, used techniques of isolating identifiable renderings, such as stars or plants to derive consistency.

“I hit on the idea of identifying proper names in the text, following historic approaches which successfully deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs and other mystery scripts, and I then used those names to work out part of the script,” explained Professor Bax, “

Sounds like the full effort will still take quite some time and he has invited other scholars to join him in the work, that is, thanks to him, no longer suicidal.  But it will be interesting to finally learn if there are any real insights six hundred years on from medieval pharmacopeia, or if perhaps there were other items being conveyed, as well.  I told my older daughter about it as we were driving through dirty aquarium this morning.  She asked what they finally figured out it was about.  I told her it was apparently and early Chinese menu.

I was on about Blue Mitchell yesterday and I’m not anywhere near through the trove of stuff I’ve found of his, there on Rdio.  Trying to listen now but, to compound the clogged air the internet is abysmally slow today, as well.  I’m not sure what’s up.   Perhaps the data packets are also winded. 



This morning at the gym . . . yes, I still went, I had on a tune from an absolutely fabulous disc called “African Scream Contest” which doesn’t do this sampler of Benin funk from the early seventies justice.  Yes, gents are often yelling, in James Brown-like intensity but the selections are each, exquisite.  The tune “Ou C’est Lui Ou C’est Moi” which I think translates to something like “Is it him or is it me?”  Vincent Ahehehinnou also the lead singer of the incomparable: Orchestre Poly-rythmo de Cotonou is credited with the tune, which is by no means the apex of the disc.  I tried to listen closely to what it was about this Vodun “sound” that is so infectious as I did my stair master thing.  This may just be the tightest of the tight for West African rhythmic architecture.  Marveling while the bongo and the trap set, a cowbell and the cowry shell netted gourd, just lock it down for ten minutes.  Everyone fused in unison throughout.  The Nigerian funk I love from over the boarder the same time seems almost loose, in comparison.  http://www.wnur.org/interview-with-vincent-ahehehinnou-of- 

One day, I’m gonna head to Cotonou and check it out for myself.  Something must remain, of the distinction of this time.  What might be easier this summer is to head to New Haven and Yale University and have look at the Voynich Manuscript.  Will let you know tomorrow, if we’ve slipped over into an official code-red. 











[1] mòmíngqímiào:  unfathomable mystery (idiom); subtle and ineffable / unable to make head or tail of it / boring (e.g. movie)

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