Monday 31 October 2011

flik und flak or endless summer

Trying to triangulate times among Germany, the States and Russia has become a bit more complicated. In Germany and most of western Europe, day-light savings time ended early Sunday morning--a change that occurs a week prior to when America falls back. Russia, however, opted out of observing the time-change altogether this year, stating primarily seasonal-affective disorder and, I think, inviting debate on a custom of dwindling utility. The apparent motion of the Sun around the Earth throughout the year does a good job of shortening and lengthening the days without legislative intervention, and the fact that Daylight Savings Time (and Standard Time) was first proposed and championed in the Southern Hemisphere where the seasons are opposite ought not to be taken as strong testimony. So the time's off in the United States and Russia, from a German perspective, although that may not matter much, since its likely a public holiday--a chaotic collusion either today or tomorrow: the predominately Protestant Lรคnder (Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxon, Saxon-Anhalt, and Thuringia) celebrate Reformation Day (Reformationstag) when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg on Halloween, and the Catholic Lรคnder (Baden Wรผrttemberg, Bavaria, North Rhine Westphalia, Rhineland-Pfalz and Saarland) observe the following day All Saints (Allerheiligen). Hours and days certainly count and the few seconds devoted to ensure synchronization are certainly well-spent as well, not so much for the early, bleary sunrise but in the custom and reflecting on what others do.

Sunday 30 October 2011

pferd is the word

We have accumulated, I was noticing, after we hung the hunting scenes around the old Chinese lamp, quite a few things from the horsey-set. Beforehand, I saw that we had more than a few goats around the house. The ceramic Trojan horse was made either by my grandmother or her best friend (that has been debated) in an arts and crafts studio in Bad Tรถlz sometime in the late 1960s.
The American army base there (in one incarnation) where she was stationed had been converted into a shopping centre with Freibad (public spa) when I investigated a few years ago, and a lot of the trappings of an American military presence still seemed fresh. I bet the CIA outpost from Cold War times survived that round of closures.
  Speaking of another extensive collection, we spent nearly twenty minutes this morning setting back the all the clocks for European Standard Time.  The time change that hastens in the dawn and chases away the sun earlier and earlier in the afternoon happens a week prior to the to recalibration in the States.




Friday 28 October 2011

primogenitor

I thought that developments that significantly redress God and Country might be headline news and not just for the governors of the sixteen Commonwealth Realms (The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, CHOGM, which sounds an awfully lot like the Spacing Guild of Dune, The Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles, CHOAM) that share the British monarch as their head-of-state have together acceded to radically reform laws concerning Royal Succession at a summit in Australia. Deference to males is removed, so the eldest child, whether a boy or a girl, becomes the heir-apparent (absolute primogeniture), which seems like a very reasonable and forward-thinking thing to do to our modern minds but I believe, like the BBC reporting puts it, that our point-of-view masks the real comprehensive (three centuries of the past, present and future) perspective and impact it has. Perhaps equally as sweeping is the change that would allow the monarch and members of the royal family to marry Catholics--though as Supreme Head of the Church of England, the monarch himself is necessarily Anglican. It strikes me as impossible to get one's head around the lifting of this restriction without delving through all the revolts and revolutions of history. Had the Act of Settlement of 1701 never come into force, as the Daily Mail speculates, and all other things being the same (which is deliciously unlikely), then the UK's current ruler would have been Franz, Duke of Bavaria.  The Queen, looking forward to her Diamond Jubilee, suggested these reforms be entertained and has certainly added something more to her considerable legacy.

marco, polo

Through the lens of history and particular Weltanschauung that has kept relations between China and much of the Western world at an awkward age--not really maturing beyond mystique and fear and trade that seemed to erupt like spontaneous generation until the 1970s, this outreach of munificence--offers to buoy up the image and reputation of the euro and the EU--is difficult to put into context. I don't believe fears of quid pro quo and other obligations are entirely valid, because it is in China's best interest to sustain its biggest export market, and prior trade deals and wonky, uncomfortable balances of exchange or supersaturation of markets, cheap and laxer labour seemingly popped into existence from nothing, overnight, for America and took on threatening airs, which were probably unjustified. The EU is not under new-management and is a far sight less beholden, financially and politically, to Chinese vehicles of recapitalization than it would be to the sacrifice, the martyred attitude, of local big banks and their minders. Just as it only takes the gentlest of persuasions to set off one's latent xenophobia, as with questions of immigration and multiculturalism, stories of Chinese investors buying up vineyards in Bordeaux or copying Austrian villages on the sly I am sure are enflaming and raise suspicions.
Investment opportunities surely can be sour and toxic things, but Europeans, though they should never stop watching their governments, are not ransoming their principles on this nor compromising their voice in trade relations, jobs, the environment or human rights. Maybe Chinese intervention was not absolutely necessary and only leaves the EU with the bigger challenge of not letting a bailout enable more of the same sloppy behaviour, but it did not come unbidden and unwelcome. With so much of the world economy built on illusion and deception, and the utility of wealth diminished the more one has of it, money at rest, when it could go to a greater good, assuaging some baseless (instead of being in hock to those fears) is a positive development.

Wednesday 26 October 2011

das telefon sagt du

Germany is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the telephone, which predates Alexander Graham Bell's famous transmission, "Mister Watson, come here--I want to see you," by a full fifteen years with Johann Phillip Reis' cryptic and surreal message via switching, galvanic wire, "The horse does not eat cucumber salad," (Das Pferd frisst keinen Gurkensalat). Reis made up this phrase on the spot during his demonstration in Friedrichsdorf by Frankfurt am Main in 1861 to prove that his first call was real and not rehearsed. Reis' experiment of course was built on the work of others that came before and in turn, the idea was improved and realized as a two-way communication device by Bell. Reis' other pioneering work included an early prototype of what would become inline roller-skates and theoretical inquiries into the possibility photovoltaic cells.