I understand the method and the modulo behind leap years, although it seems a rather inelegant solution just to tack on an extra day to poor, over-burdened February.
Wednesday 29 February 2012
intercalary or lieblings
catagories: ✝️, ๐งฎ, holidays and observances
Monday 27 February 2012
meet and seat or strangers on a train
A European airline has a new pilot program for its passengers, which invites solitary fliers to pick their seatmates based on their social- and business-networking profiles for long-haul flights.
catagories: networking and blogging, psychology, transportation, travel
Sunday 26 February 2012
long winter’s nap
BBC's news magazine is drawing on a body of evidence, anecdotal, historic and scientific, which strongly suggests that convention wisdom regarding sleep may be a very modern contrivance and something unnatural and possibly something that we are not ideally suited for. Rather than sequestering oneself for a solid, uninterrupted and sacrosanct period of eight hours, which does seem like an awfully lofty and impractical demand, mankind through most of its history had distinct periods of sleeping and waking during the night, a segmented sleep.
catagories: health and medicine, lifestyle, psychology
Saturday 25 February 2012
the queen’s english
LA looks or the mamas and the papas
Thursday 23 February 2012
♥s fear
Though I am not sure I agree with the entire premise and ultimate (end-state) projections of the article, I do find myself passing judgment on the inarticulate feeling of unease that one takes a way from the continuing German Wirtschaftswunder. The feeling is not quite menacing but more than just smug and competent, and like Alternet writer Marshall Auerback suggests, I do wonder if the Germans, sometimes criticized for championing austerity elsewhere have not already been institutionalized at home, instigating a race-to-the-bottom (Abwรคrts-Wettlauf) in terms of treatment for workers.
This is a thoughtful article and raises many valid points, like a lot of Alternet's coverage. Just like Greece, as a member of the eurozone, Germany cannot devalue its currency in order to wedge a competitive advantage but it can tweak the wages and benefits of its workforce. The series of labour reforms from the Hartz Commission (DE/EN), the working-poor currently protected by Hartz IV, I don't think are meant to squeeze the poorest of society and I think only give tacit allowance to business-models that might led to underemployment or a generational schism between older workers steady on to retirement and younger workers not shoring up a pension. One could envision such portents, however, following the lead of labour conditions in the States, with receding prospects for retirement and clinging to jobs barring many younger applicants. The manufacturing component, however, I think is elided in order to draw these analogies, though the potential for inculcating a certain culture and attitude should certainly be guarded against.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, economic policy, foreign policy, labour
it was a teenage wedding and the old folks wished them well
Wednesday 22 February 2012
one potato, two potato
According to reporting by New Scientist (via the resplendent BLDG Blog), electrical engineers in the Netherlands are field testing the potential of various grasses and marshy plants for suitability as a passive electrical grid.
catagories: environment, technology and innovation, transportation
Tuesday 21 February 2012
cult armoury
Browsing through the fantastic archives at Gallery 1988, who not only act as curators and collectors but also sell such brilliant prints, I came across this poster design by Tim Doyle that features the choice weaponry of mostly 1980s cult classic films. I recognized Bobo the mechanical owl from Clash of the Titians, the Information Disc from TRON, the throwing star from Krull, the Thunder Cats' sword, but there's a lot more esoteric details embedded here, like the head of Johnny Number Five from Short-Circuit or the Holy Hand-Grenade of Antioch from Monty Python and the Holy Grail or the Grail notebook of Doctor Jones (Senior) from the Indiana Jones’ saga. How many can you name? The original posting has a legend identifying all these artifacts.
Wรคhrend ich die fantastische Achive von Gallery 1988, Konservatoren, Sammler und Verkรคufer, durchsuchen, entdeckte ich dieses Plakat vom Tim Doyle. Es ist ein Rรผstkammer des Kultklassiers von 1980s. Auf den ersten Blick zu erkennen sind Bobo der uhrwerk Eule von Kampf der Titanen, TRONs Profil-Discus, das Shuriken von Krull und das Schwert von ThunderCats. Doch es gibt auch abseitige Waffen, wie der Kopf von Nummer Funf lebt! oder die Handgranate von die Ritter der Kokosnuร oder Doktor Jones (der รltere) Gral-Heftchen. Wieviel konnen Sie benennen? Eine Zeichenerklรคrung ist unter dem Link ober erhรคltlich.
Monday 20 February 2012
ghoul or she blinded me with science
Saturday 18 February 2012
hellau
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, holidays and observances
Friday 17 February 2012
deus ex machina or exit, stage-left
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, ๐ฌ๐ท, economic policy, foreign policy, labour, revolution
Wednesday 15 February 2012
komplott or ockham’s razor
Perhaps there's a balance to be found between the two accounts, and one certainly better adheres to the principles of Ockham's Razor, that the laws of parsimony and simplicity rather than elaborate plots and multiple, complex factors are generally right and sufficient. Maybe bald job-security might be enough to sew discontent with some princes of the Church, but I hope not all motives are pure politics. In one version, globalist factions are moving to establish a novus ordo seclorum through the organs of the emergent European Union, the new-fangled internet and a defanged and secularized Church Universal, and the besieged Pope works for an eminent and orderly collapse of the Soviet Empire within the framework of the Fรกtima Correspondence (DE/EN). In the other version, the Church has not satisfactorily addressed dissention among the ranks and its endemic cultural failings and whose stance and creed is under attack, as in the former, by climate-change apologists who would rather see populations curbed and save critical raw materials for their own gain, as identified in another series of leaks. One Pope faces a test in a sphinx-like China who has given no indication impending change, but I think that few without the caliber of the intelligence network of the Vatican could foresee the events of 1989 and 1990 and 1991. Not a political animal and not interested in allowing the Church to be an influence on statecraft, the Pope's vicarage leave some apparently wanting and ambitious. Let us hope that life does not imitate art in every detail.
catagories: ๐ฎ๐น, ✝️, foreign policy, revolution
the hunting of the snark or the barrister’s dream and the banker’s fate
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, economic policy
Tuesday 14 February 2012
pedigree pelecanus
versรถhnen u. abkindern
According to the Passauer Neue Presse (DE), there is a small faction in the CSU (the Christian Socialist Union) proposing to shore up the financial landscape of health- and nursing care insurance, facing an aging and dwindling population in Germany, by levying a special income tax against the childless (Kinderlose).
Monday 13 February 2012
it’s only a paper moon
Sunday 12 February 2012
songbird
catagories: ๐ถ
tag or bridges and islands
catagories: graphic design, language
Friday 10 February 2012
erherberrechts oder
catagories: ⚖️, ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ช๐บ, ๐ฅธ, networking and blogging, revolution
Thursday 9 February 2012
man-at-arms
catagories: ๐บ
Wednesday 8 February 2012
equipoise
After twenty years of effort and attempts, Russian researches have managed to bore through some four-hundred thousand years of ice to tap the surface of the immense subglacial lake Vostok (DE/EN). The body of water, rivaling the Great Lakes of North America or Lake Baikal in volume exists in liquid form, despite the below freezing conditions due to the enormous pressures exerted by a four thousand meter thick sheet of ice over it. One of some one hundred forty known reservoirs under the Antarctic ice, the lake originally existed only as a hypothesis, until its discovery as a ground scanning radar anomaly--much in the same way ancient geomancers postulated the existence of a southern continent to balance the globe. Such exploration is estimated by some to represent some of the last undiscovered geological finds on Earth, but considering how adventurers and prospectors have never penetrated beyond the surface, nor sounded much beyond the crests of waves, I think that this could usher in a whole new golden age of exploration.
catagories: ๐, ๐ญ, environment
Tuesday 7 February 2012
taxman or special drawing rights
There is a wealth of advice, some professional and modular, suitable for tailoring, and some common-sense that demands one dispatch with mistake-prone sentimentalities and panic, regarding managing one's personal finances and home-economics. There also seems to be, however, a terminal severing of connections pervading otherwise good tips. The utility of money (and that's all it is, a utility, like electricity and water and heat--essential and essentially takes care of itself) diminishes with an embarrassment of riches, as the cost (and perhaps the worth, as well) of things approaches zero. On the other hand, juggling sacrifices makes one unable to plan and budget and look inward to the narrow horizon of those same sentimentalities and panic. There is a disconnect on both ends of the spectrum, which just exacerbates the situation all around and perpetuates gentrification.
catagories: economic policy, lifestyle
dexterity or hand-jive
Yesterday on the news, I learned about a project and an exhibition that is coming to an end that illustrated the nuanced relationship among humans and machines through one purpose-built scribe. For several months, a robotic-arm from a research laboratory in Karlsruhe has been reproducing the Luther Bible in an early Renaissance hand on a very long, continuous scroll of parchment. Visitors to the exhibition were able to watch the robot in action, and this is not the first time that the research company has offered man-machine engagements meant to spur the imagination and blur preconceptions about interaction, including several parties hosted by robotic disc-jockeys.
Monday 6 February 2012
sexagennial or diamond jubilee
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐ฎ๐ฒ, holidays and observances, lifestyle
Sunday 5 February 2012
docking bay 94 or suitable for framing
catagories: graphic design, Star Wars
Saturday 4 February 2012
what time is it, ma?
catagories: antiques, networking and blogging
retracta and rokovania
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, ๐ฅธ, foreign policy, graphic design, networking and blogging
Friday 3 February 2012
dibba, dubai, abu dhabi
Tensions mounting over the flow of traffic through that potential choke-point of the Strait of Hormuz come from a wide array of trajectories, with a lot of significance and history not only in tow but also projecting, deferring antagonism into some imagined and virtual future. The arts, cultures, diplomacies, histories and scholarship of the people of Persia, as it is for a lot of other peoples of the region, have been saddled with a great unplumbed and sad ignorance on the part of many outsiders and reckon their story only begins with twilight colonialism and the framework of shoves and tugs of foreign policy.
catagories: foreign policy, revolution, technology and innovation, transportation
Thursday 2 February 2012
rumour-mill
Although the deportment, the way they choose to carry themselves, of senior military leadership, under all flags, I think, does not excuse or explain all the murky prospecting that has been carried out in the name of democracy, provocation and business-interests, I do think that that deportment, however, does play into how leadership handles morale, uncertainty and rumour management.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, foreign policy, lifestyle
Wednesday 1 February 2012
prognosticate, procrastinate
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, holidays and observances, lifestyle, travel