Wednesday 30 May 2012
bootstrap or birthright
halcyon or build your vocabulary
Cataflam
interjection.
Something the early Jerry Lewis used to bleat out in his movies. "Oy, Mr. Lady, please stop with the hitting and the hurting and the cataflam!"
It's funny because I don't know what any of these medicines are. What alternative definitions would you come up with for the products in your life?
catagories: health and medicine, language, networking and blogging
pyrrhic victory or yes, we have no bleeding turnips
“Another such victory and I am undone.”
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, ๐ฌ๐ท, ๐ฎ๐ช, ๐ฎ๐ธ, economic policy, foreign policy, philosophy
Tuesday 29 May 2012
faux chรขteau
freude oder schadenfreude
Monday 28 May 2012
papercraft
catagories: psychology
Sunday 27 May 2012
geisterstรคdte
Der Spiegel’s English-language stories section reports on an exhibition in Berlin about contemporary ghost-towns and the deliberate choices and accidents of history that are creating the phenomenon.
torch song
Protests and boycotts are always of a selective nature. Parallel to the threats by some European countries to sit-out the Euro 2012 final matches to be held in the Ukraine over the host’s treatment of its former prime-minister (apparently having had selectively made an example out of her perceived violation of public-trust) and even propose the games be held in another venue, like Germany or Poland, holding the Eurovision Song Contest in Azerbaijan was not without controversy.
Saturday 26 May 2012
not to scale
Thursday 24 May 2012
bottle of red, bottle of white
We’re no connoisseurs just yet but with the heat of the summer descending on us and for want of something lighter and with a bit less of a wallop, but we are enjoying discovering white wine as well, instead of just the usual spectrum of reds. That white wine does not seem as strong is a bit counterintuitive to me and I suppose one must consider all the chemistry to appreciate the different notes.
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ฑ, ๐ฅ, environment, lifestyle
Wednesday 23 May 2012
chinese fire-drill
Cornered with prospects of more market bubbles (a dot-com bust redux of 1999 and 2008 after a less than stellar performance of a networking platform that’s only, but, not merely, the sum of its user-generated antics), aspersions are quick to be cast out, like so many throwing-stars and there are the usual targets, scapegoats.
catagories: America, economic policy, labour
Tuesday 22 May 2012
unkraut bleibt unkraut or a fist full of flowers
There is a German tongue-twister that goes, Blaukraut bleibt Blaukraut und Brautkleid bleibt Brautkleid—that is, red cabbage stays red cabbage and a wedding dress stays a wedding dress.
I don’t find it so much of a challenge to enunciate but believe it has philosophical value, especially as a tongue-twister which is not. Unkrรคuter are weeds (not herbs) and belongs to a funny class of German words with Unwetter (storms, bad weather), Unding (an anti-thing, something impossible or unbelievable), Unart (not disciplined, a bad habit), Unverstandnis (a misunderstanding) and Unwort (a contrived nonce word). After getting some flowers for the balcony, quite by accident and not even in view of the home improvement/garden store where we found the geraniums, I spied this advertisement for a much decorated and controversial brand of weed-killer. Germany has roundly rejected the other toxic vertical monopolies of this agribusiness concern, at least publically, pressuring their genetically modified foodstuffs into exile and not subscribing to the patented plantation-style farming programme (a modular scheme where gardeners and farmers are obligated to buy all the precisely formulated extras—from seeds to fertilizer to insecticides), and I don’t know anyone here who would go to the time and expense of forgoing getting one’s hands dirty and doing a little gardening and maybe even tolerating the spare weed. I was happy to see that this billboard’s location was not an affront, and was relegated to an alley by a casino and a discount store, like an advertisement for cigarettes.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ฑ, environment, lifestyle
svegliarsi
Monday 21 May 2012
sock puppet or propagaะda
catagories: America, foreign policy, language, psychology
canary in a coal mine
It is not as if we have all collectively woken up in some bizarro-universe that’s suddenly, jarringly ruled by the friction, influence and speed of money, not the viscosity or ingenuity of wealth.
Sunday 20 May 2012
six degrees, sechs grad
Researchers at the University of Heidelberg extrapolating from the native nosiness of plug-ins and sharing short-cuts have mapped out a shadow network of a-social students, predicting connections with a fair degree of accuracy. A match rate of forty percent, as the New Scientist article reports, may not sound so revealing but I am sure it can be a little disconcertingly prying and people are shunted as terrorists and put on no-fly lists for more tenuous and specious reasons, never mind the targeted advertising.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐, ๐ฅธ, networking and blogging
clair-obscur
The portals in the galleries and arcades were fitted out with these sleek red wooden shutters and doors (looking especially modern scaling the high, heavy wall of windows), and it seemed that this setting would make a very nice and authentic venue for banquet or for a party.
Saturday 19 May 2012
ozymandias or call for submissions
I suppose that the nature of public art and installations has changed significantly, given the volume lent to the voice of praise and criticism and that the failure or success of icons—landmarks, anchors, can be instantly and broadly adjudicated.
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐ง , foreign policy, philosophy
Friday 18 May 2012
jubilee or augean stables
Setting a bad example is sometimes just a pedantic argument. Negative encouragement, I think, is probably not worse than market-contagion.
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, ๐ฌ๐ท, economic policy
Thursday 17 May 2012
serfdom or golden thread
catagories: America, economic policy, foreign policy, labour, lifestyle, networking and blogging
type case or alphabet city
Wednesday 16 May 2012
kitchenware revolution
catagories: ⚖️, ๐ฎ๐ธ, revolution
Tuesday 15 May 2012
farmageddon, pharmageddon
Just because there is the gloomy, heavy drapery of bankers’ crises and the pummeling occasion of planters’ style democracy obscuring the next assault that’s waiting in the wings, we would be faithfully remiss to lose sight of what could come. Bread—or cake—is of course the honey-pot, the next investment opportunity aggressively peddled, of bread and circuses, and I believe it is not so kooky or implausible to imagine that the present chaos is apt disguise for a handful of companies that are merging farms and pharmaceuticals to make local governments fold and adopt measures that have become prevalent elsewhere.
catagories: food and drink, health and medicine
golden parachute
catagories: economic policy, Europe, labour
Sunday 13 May 2012
dramaturgy
There has been an awful back-draft lashing European politics and markets, sparked by the exercise of public prerogatives that seemingly did not follow the right plan.
Nothing was ventured, as a result, about the structural differences, maintaining a plurality in both super-states but one noticeably without mechanisms for intervention. The US Federal government is not telling the States, like Texas, that do not levy an individual income tax on its residents to do so or accuse some localities of providing too many incentives. Maybe, however, it will come to that and we still maybe unwilling to learn from one another, since economic problems can always be masked behind a glossier faรงade of potential for profit and assigning blame is easier than accepting change. A crisis is always driven by under-estimates (willful or unintentional) that cannot hope to keep enthusiasm in check.
bottle of wine, fruit of the vine
catagories: food and drink
Thursday 10 May 2012
idle hands and the devil's workshop
portal or long night of the museum
catagories: ๐, libraries and museums, Saxony
Wednesday 9 May 2012
a town called bad karma or unicorn chaser
Reflecting on Victory in Europe Day, the instruments of surrender signed and witnessed late in the night of the 8th of May and hence Victory Day in Russia and Eastern Europe due to the time difference, and the commemoration of the formation of the predecessor to the European Union that followed barely a scant decade later, is a bit diminished for being subjected to the current filters of disloyalty and disunion.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ซ๐ท, ๐ฌ๐ท, ๐, economic policy
chirality
catagories: transportation, travel
Tuesday 8 May 2012
beeswax
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ฑ, ๐, environment
kฮฑฯฮฑฮฝฮฑฮปฯฯฮนฯฮผฯฯ or conspicuous consumption
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, ๐ฌ๐ท, ๐ฎ๐ช, ๐ฎ๐ธ, ๐ฎ๐น, economic policy, graphic design, labour