the bronx is up and the battery’s down

To celebrate the centennial of New York City’s Grand Central Station, which at the commission of the Vanderbilt family, first opened its doors at midnight tonight (or possibly, one minute of, so as to not technically fall on the next day), The Daily Beast presents an interesting collection of one hundred facts, which makes for a great scavenger hunt of trivia, no matter how far one is away from this gorgeous and storied terminus.

number-crunching or currently trending

As the capital city of the state of Hessen, Wiesbaden is host to a number of important offices of governmental affairs internally but also is home to a national institution, which one hears cited continuously on all topics, das Statistisches Bundesamt (the Federal Statistics Office of Germany)—also known by its short-form, Destatis.  It’s funny to be in the neighbourhood with such a voice of authority, not quite like living next door to the Encyclopedia Britannica but instead like knowing where the Harper’s Index is compiled or where the random fact factory is and where the sibilants try to triangulate all this data and bridge disparate trends.

All bureaus in all governments are mandated to report out and analyze micro- and macro-demographics, sometimes with different competency and the spin of omission, but I believe this independent institution that pries open raw figures from all sources, maintaining a one of a kind research library amongst the headquarters and field offices in Berlin and Bonn, and conducts its own surveys (Umfragen) and censuses (Volkszählungen) from inflation, immigration, birth-rate, crime, employment to include delving into people’s attitudes and sentiments and venturing into the qualitative, rather than quantitative, arenas, like happiness and overall satisfaction, by studying the meta-mines of information that factor into civics for public benefit.

f.o.i.l. or quadratic erratic

From beyond the land of Mathmagic, there is a lively debate about the identity—and indeed the complexity of the infamous equation and set of approaches that dealt a coup de grâce to the stock markets and exchanges, which ticker-taped out of Wall Street. Rather than a formula that takes an inscrutable and evil-genius to comprehend, however, one source, which is not alone in its disappointing accusations, offers proof that a much simpler but overlooked preparatory lesson caused that down-fall. Many sources were satisfied with putting the blame on early, emergent and exotic sets of equations that governed derivatives and other seductive pyramid schemes and championed by most all subsequent publications. I felt the dazzle of these novel formulas were to blame as well, but it is generally the case that it is easier to obscure one’s own motives, greed and misapprehension behind a knotty math problem than admitting to not doing one’s homework, despite the culture.

punxsutawney

With the augurers turning their attention to omens of Ground Hog Day soon, I’m reminded of a weird tale, vintage sci-fi pulp by Frederik Pohl called the Tunnel under the World. That featured a day, however, whose repeating was a questionable occurrence.

toute votre base sont nous appartiennent

French illustrator Sebastien Feraut (with the nom de plume Niark1) has a wealth of artwork to explore, and I particularly like this adventure landscape mapping out twenty things that were recently brought to us by the internet. Can you pick them all out?