Wednesday 31 October 2012
a new hope
plus รงa change
Declarations by a few historians regarding their declaration of the Wikipedia project to be nearly complete proved quite provoking to many dedicated editors and chroniclers, but this pronouncement—certainly not of demise and redundancy but quite the opposite in terms of utility and comprehensiveness—does pose an interesting point of departure for the open encyclopedia.
Wikipedia, despite what the critics and academics say and inherent imperfections, is a storehouse of human knowledge in all disciplines as well as a virtual gloss of that which only exists in human imagination, describing in great detail fantastic universes that would make our small, contradictory and poorly understood one envious for attention.
Historians argue that there only is so much that one can distill in the form of an article before passing out of the bounds of the project—Wikipedia is not meant to reflect the whole of its platform, the internet, and has standards of notoriety, endurance and significance as well as a duty to scholarship, and with over four million articles in English and over a million auf Deutsch (stubs excepted) one begins to tax his creativity and resources looking for something fresh to write about.
Of course, Wikipedia is expanding through translation into other languages and complimenting translated outlines, sister-projects and speciality portals, as well as encapsulating current events in an archival fashion, but, aside from the high quantity of topics covered, it seems that this assertion of approaching conclusion is based on the lack of emendations and counter-edits of established and heady historical articles and many other broad subjects.
While no one is saying that fewer changes equates to a lack of engagement or new authors going away having found that everything’s already been written, I don’t think it signifies anything more (nor less) than a level of maturity in style and presentation and execution that was crafted and molded by the forum itself, and curiosity, whether with or without a vehicle for immediate expansion or expression, and the sense of discovery and re-discovery are inexhaustible and will probably never become moribund or again seek out the protection of the slant of the victorious and influential.
gazetteer or atmospheric transients
catagories: ๐ฎ๐น, ๐ฏ๐ต, ๐, ๐ช️, environment, networking and blogging
tragbares
A comprehensive study commissioned by Greenpeace Germany of sports- and outdoor wear articles has determined that virtually all coats, jackets and clothing treated to be weather-proof retain those harmful chemicals.
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ฉ๐ช, environment
Monday 29 October 2012
we won't be pwn'd again
Via the ever splendiferous watchers at Boing Boing, Electronic Frontier Foundation reports on what struck me as a new tact on the part of the entertainment industry and intellectual property chieftains but is just I suppose the latest assault in the bullying-desperate attempts to alienate ownership, entrepreneurship and fair-use. Essentially, an international textbook publishing house has placed an injunction against a student from selling his used learning materials, because, they argue, the content was manufactured, compiled overseas and therefore not subject to the legal principle of first sale, a doctrine that makes venues like eBay and flea-markets and charitable giving possible because one is selling one’s ownership of the thing and not the copyrighted content of it. The US Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments, for what seems like a sophisticated and possibly pervasive loophole, since there’s little that is created without non-domestic contributions, and is expected to strike the publisher’s case down as clawing.
catagories: ๐ฅธ, economic policy, foreign policy, networking and blogging
Sunday 28 October 2012
in season: butternut-salmon lasagna
For this dish to serve 3 to 4, one will need:
- A medium casserole dish
- A large Butternut squash, enough to get 1½ pounds from (600 – 750 grams), minus the skin and seeds (a slender squash, as compared to a dumpy one with wider squash hips tends to have less seeds)
- A bit of butter, flour (about 4 tablespoons each) and salt and pepper and fresh dill (chopped) and nutmeg (Muskat) for seasoning
- 1 cup (250 ml) of cream
- 2 cups (500 ml) of vegetable stock or bullion
- A 9 oz (250 g) package of smoked salmon (fresh or from the refrigerated section)
- About 7 oz (200 g) of grated cheese (gouda or mozzarella)
- A 4 oz (about 100 g) package of lasagna pasta
- A large onion
Begin by shelling the squash and removing the seeds, and then slice the squash into small cubes and set aside.
Pre-heat the oven to 400° F (200°C). Peel and dice up the onion, frying it in a large pan until glassy in some butter over medium heat. Add a few pinches of flour to the pan (about a tablespoon in all) then pour in the broth and the cream, reducing the heat, and add the graded cheese, seasonings and garnish with the bundle of dill. Mix and leave on low heat for around five minutes. Take the uncooked lasagna noodles and arrange in layers in a casserole dish (grease with a bit of butter) apportioning slices of the salmon, squash and a dousing of the sauce, three layers deep. Pour the remaining sauce over the top, spinkling a bit more cheese over it, and allow to bake for about 45 minutes. Enjoy with a fine Moscato white wine.
Saturday 27 October 2012
in sextus novembris
Reflecting on the upcoming and rather secularized celebrations of Guy Fawkes Night,
commemorating the foiled Gunpowder Plot of the Fifth of November where the
triggerman Guy Fawkes is burned in effigy, it is curious how in some four
centuries of historical memory documenting revelry, sentiment and celebration,
we witness perhaps the process of transposition and myth-making. The many hypotheses regarding Christianity
supplanting pagan feasts with their own holidays in order to ease the
tradition, like All Saints’ Day and Halloween for Nordic and Celtic Samhain or
Christmas for Roman Saturnalia, cannot be tested and accounts are only implicit
and worked backwards.
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ง, holidays and observances, language, revolution
รถlkur oder open sesame
Since sharing my crooked smileand knowing that others have scrolled past it, I have become more aware of what I can do to improve my dental state—or at least feel better about it whether any measurable change happens. Let me preface what might turn out to be a cautionary tale with medical professionals are much better suited to dispense sound advice than any non-sequitir blog sought out or found at random on the internet and one should seek consultation before trying to stave anything off with home-remedies that could become a serious and costly problem. With due warning, I took to heart my aggressive tooth-brushing habits and wondered if my gums weren’t receding. I was not exactly sure, since as with the dulling of the enamel, it’s a gradual process to look long-in-the-tooth. Aside from smoking and genetic-predisposition, however, brushing too hard is the top culprit for gum damage.
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ฑ, environment, food and drink, lifestyle
Friday 26 October 2012
gestalt
catagories: America, economic policy, foreign policy, graphic design
Thursday 25 October 2012
bunnicula, count duckula
Lore and superstition regarding vampirism, even preceding the imaginations of the writers they’ve inspired, sanction standard horror and a well-developed, though flexible, codex of rules governing the undead, but can also be keenly abstract in their beliefs.
Folklore of some populations in the Balkans, but surely anchored to a place, a patch of land as much as a particular people, created the overall apparition of the traditional vampire but also held the nightmare that inanimate objects, left out in the pall of the full moon, could become vampires. Certain fruits and vegetables were especially prone to being turned, especially melons, squashes and pumpkins still on the vine during this witching phase of the Moon. It is not clear if the vampire produce took on a changed appearance—nor caused much of a bother, other than rolling about and maybe lurching and bumping into things, but they were no longer fit to eat and needed to be ritually destroyed. The notion that gourds could harbour a malevolent, though paralyzed, force is pretty spooky, and there have been some creative and slightly goofy modern retellings. The idea of possession, a curse settling into a plant also made me think of that troupe of evangelizing vegetables from that children’s Christian television show. The practice of making a jack-o’-lantern out of a pumpkin comes from a completely separate string of traditions and folklore from the British Isles—originally, probably from a hollowed out turnip with the practical objective of making a torch whose flame was protected from the winds.
Wednesday 24 October 2012
consider yourself part of the furniture
Before living in Germany, I had never heard the word Stammtisch, although the phenomenon and culture of a table for regulars, a salon-society, and a designated meeting point, a reserved spot, for networking and politicking, like the word, had been long since an established fixture of many societies. That term sounded very formal, like holding court, and maybe that made me seek out a less down-to-earth translation or equivalent. It comes under other names, too, of course, including the cracker-barrel or Coffee-Klatch, which surely has German origins too, and all the different words with differing connotations of hierarchical sophistication. Cafes, guesthouses, inns (Gaststรคtte) and pubs usually distinguished the gathering point for their regulars with a special ceremonial ashtray or a table flag (Wimpel). Mostly the get-together has been sublimated in the form of a virtual presence, but in some places the tradition continues unbroken.
ingot audit or treu ounce
While the merest suggestion that all the gold reserves in Fort Knox might not be fully accounted for is dismissed as the anarchistic and rambling speculations of a Sanka drinking mountain woman, the same question posed by the German Schatzkammer, the competent authority for auditing such things as the nation’s some 3 400 tonnes of gold, seems to have drawn some serious, if not careful and apologetic attention.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐บ๐ธ, economic policy
Tuesday 23 October 2012
for you, vor ort, vorbei
While I believe these events were unrelated, it is of note that the push to institute a quota scheme for women in top management in German businesses came on the wake of the collapse of a drug store chain (Drogerie-Kette)that served as a pedestrian anchor in many neighbourhoods and smaller communities. The loss of this retailer not only means that residences need to go further for staples but the chain was also an important local employer in these host communities.
German public radio aired profiles of the so-called Schlecker-Frauen (mostly women worked there) and how they are managing after suddenly finding themselves unemployed, and it was an interesting portrayal of rippling insolvency that has not been the norm for German companies, just evaporating and leaving vacant units with no successor. Triangulating between these two matters, there was also a study sponsored by the Finance Ministry recently, perhaps to inject support for the arguments in favour of introducing quotas, that clearly showed that companies with female management and influence go under less often than their masculine counterparts. The research cited the more balanced and cautious leadership traits that women decision-makers tend to exhibit more than men, organic and holistic approaches that incorporate multiple elements into business factors and not an unwavering focus on returns. Under-represented as they are in the largest concerns (which the quota law is hoping to remedy), the Ministry does own that a risk-averse approach (riskioscheu Vorgehen) and may be attributed to the fact that women managers tend to mind smaller businesses in general and thus have less cash and resources to take gambles with. Conservative practices, however, are not the antithesis to striking a balance between personal and work life, no matter how a wager is underwritten. I am not such of the makeup of the decision-makers for the chain gone bankrupt but I wonder if it would have fared better, more discriminate expansion and focus on its original purpose, if management was a better reflection of its employees.
Sunday 21 October 2012
prince of prussia
Over the weekend, taking advantage of the Indian Summer conditions and the full- spectrum of colours and hues, we had a chance to visit the town of Sigmaringen, situated between the city of Stuttgart and Lake Constance. The dominating palace was impressive of course in its own right and well worth the visit down to the finest details. Usually, despite a wealth of exceptions, I do not think of such a place as lording over a living community—present and mushrooming from the landscape, to keep the subjects in check. Exquisitely curated by the equally extant dynasty of the hereditary princes, the location has been through the ages an exclave of Prussian rule and a city-state as well as the headquarters of the Vichy government of France during the closing months of World War II, when Allied forces pushed collaborators into exile.
Friday 19 October 2012
rigel seven or B-612
telefunken
I suppose I am preoccupied with this choice and alternatives because the room came fully and rather lovingly furnished, excluding the television and phone/internet, so those are in my house- keeping domain. Of course, I’ll be bringing a few familiar objects to keep me company (and it is nice and practical not to have to outfit and equip a second apartment and then end up with duplicate items, like we have before) and I’ll get to come home every weekend. Limiting one’s decorating palette to the impersonal glow of entertainment is not depressing or an unfavourable arrangement, but rather, I think, makes returning home and planning a new one all the more dear and exciting.
catagories: ๐บ, lifestyle, networking and blogging
native mark-up language or cadence and marshalling
catagories: ๐, graphic design, language, technology and innovation
Thursday 18 October 2012
time in a bottle or pluperfect and future-tense
Bottles of wine are a bit like little secondary time-capsules, necessarily so as part of the manufacturing process, hermetically sealed and stored up, sometimes for years and years—although it’s a misconception that all wines improve with age and many times will sour or become corked. This unintentional archive, however, does resemble some of the criticisms of time-capsules in general, those walled into cornerstones or buried under pyramids and parking lots, of being unreliable narrators (unzuverlรคssiges Erzรคhler).
catagories: environment, food and drink, lifestyle, technology and innovation
stranger danger
catagories: ๐ฅธ, networking and blogging
a series of tubes or recursive doodle
catagories: ๐ซ๐ท, ๐, ๐ก, networking and blogging
Wednesday 17 October 2012
รผberdimensionales
It becomes strange what one doesn’t give a second glance after a bit of indoctrination. There is not exactly an aggressive giant chair advertising offensive making this too commonplace to notice, but one does find such structures fairly regularly in the parking lots of bigger cities—at least in southern Germany—sort of, I suppose, like Bob’s Big Boy but these examples are I think much more arresting, eye-catching landmarks, even if they’re just for marketing too.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, architecture
lend-lease
Tuesday 16 October 2012
botany bay
catagories: ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, ๐, ๐ฅธ, holidays and observances, networking and blogging
Monday 15 October 2012
mortising or between spaces, no one can hear you kern
Perhaps I am a bit behind the curb in noticing but I haven’t visited the auction site in a few weeks and mostly prefer my old fall-back local flea-markets—not that I only visit like a desperate madman on his way to a Secret-Santa holiday office party and we do regularly find some incredible pieces there—but I am really displeased with the choice the eBay made with its new typeface.
catagories: antiques, graphic design
balkanization
catagories: ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, ๐, foreign policy, religion, revolution
Sunday 14 October 2012
household atomics
Although it is a matter for debate and speculation through the rather myopic lens of the Cold War and the policy of deterrence what the grounding motivations for the speech and the project were, US president Eisenhower’s 1953 address to the United Nations’ General Assembly on “Atoms for Peace” was a bold and defining departure.
This message, most likely worded to bring the antiseptic of daylight, more transparency and less secrecy that characterized how research and maintenance of stockpiles was conducted prior, to that “bucket of sunshine,” as Khrushchev called the bomb, aimed to promulgate nuclear power for peaceful purposes—energy, medical research, etc., and to assuage public fear that such destruction would not be visited on the Earth again, with the irreconcilable horrors of Japan still very raw and tensions escalating between the two superpowers. No longer state secrets because of this move for peaceful proliferation, the US knew better that state of players on the periphery and developing and nascent powers, with newly-acquired know-how under special tutelage, were able to develop generators, reactors and laboratories.
Until recently, this openness has helped mean that the founding members of the nuclear club have kept their munitions but very few have applied for membership, perhaps content with pursuing their own goals in regard to transitional power supplies and perhaps with the assurance that, in a pinch, they too could weaponize their stocks. Some argue that the underlying stratagem was to persuade NATO allies to shift their focus to developing and maintaining a nuclear arsenal, rather than more costly traditional armaments and standing armies and regard the policy of sharing technologies as having gravely backfired. I believe, rather, that this approach figuratively built in fail-safes and backdoors that was a greater instrument of restraint than mutually assured destruction. The genie cannot be put back in the bottle but well-crafted diplomacy and confidence seem much more enduring than dictates and fighting wars by proxy.
catagories: ⚕️, ⚛️, ๐ฏ๐ต, ๐ท๐บ, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, foreign policy, philosophy
Saturday 13 October 2012
verรฐlaun, iad duais, the prize, o prรฉmio, el premio, el premi, ar priz, le prix, de prijs, den prรคis, der prisen, premija, den prisen, i priset, palkinto, auhind, der preis, il premio, prรฆmium, il premju, lu premiu, w nagroda, a dรญj, cena, รงmimi, premiul, ฯฮฑ ฮฒฯฮฑฮฒฮตฮฏฮฑ, ะฟััะผัั
It is a great honour to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, along with 502 million fellow Europeans, and I believe in the congratulatory and admonishing spirit of the committee’s unanimous decision. Individuals surely take on the burden and potential of promoting harmony, too, and there are worthy and magnanimous individuals out there working in the public and struggling in the shadows to those ends, but awards en masse, neither slights for the other nominees nor anodyne and over-cautious, are not without precedent, like when the prize was given to Doctors without Borders (Mรฉdecins sans Frontiรจrs, รrzte ohne Grenzen) or Great Britain conferring the George Cross collectively to the people of Malta for gallantry during World War II.
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, foreign policy, language
Friday 12 October 2012
logograph or measuring box and hollyhocks
I don’t pretend to know anything about the subject, the distinct traditions of the Japanese ideas of heraldry and vexology are quite something to survey. Here is a collection of family crests, akin to coats-of-arms, which fall into geometric categories, like variations on hawks’ feathers, oaks, measuring boxes, plums, peonies, cranes, etc. Mouse over the image for a description. One can see that a few of these arms have found their way into the blazoning of the Western corporate world, used as logos by a certain banking enterprise, political party brands and monograms, a hardware manufacturer, and a few other as yet undiscovered ones. I like to think that the necessarily large and diverse marketing department that spearheaded these advertizing campaigns had some insight into their inspirations and there’s some allegory and symbolism behind the decisions. I’d like to think so anyway, although I often run up against a curiosity barrier when the matter of things gets too dense.
t9 or sui generis
Although not quite in contention as laureate material for its sometimes frustrating poetry, the chain of developments—from Pennsylvania 6-5000 to telephony for the hearing impaired to text-messaging—that led to predictive text, T9 technology, I think, deserves acknowledgement.
At first, I didn’t care to have my lines stepped on or my sentences completed when tapping out a little telegram, plus the fact that nimbleness of digits come with practice on any keyboard, but once I got more accustomed to the interface and being able to switch languages, I started to enjoy it, even appreciate it. Another interesting aspect is the strange word puzzles, poems by substitution that come out of the sequence of numbers, at first as broad suggestions and then narrowed down, like from gone, hone, home, hoof, goof, hood, to good. This transforming vocabulary do not quite make anagrams (Anagramme) but have a similar feel and I think the hidden relationships of neighbouring words that pop up are surprising and probably reveals something about the spacing and arrangement of the alphabet and the dimensions of language, as both disambiguations adapt.
catagories: language, technology and innovation
Thursday 11 October 2012
powerhouse or conundrum
There is political and business consensus that the Energie-Wende, Germany’s planned transition away from nuclear dependency and towards more ecologically sustainable energy sources, will demand sacrifice and see a dearer cost placed on utilities, probably a truer reflection of the impact our accustomed lifestyles have on the environment. The recently passed bundle of regulations championing renewables, das Erneuerbare Energie Gesetz (EEG), is expected to propagate an increase in electricity costs of up to two fold in the coming year, which will of course having ripples through out the marketplace, and not ending with the average 50 € annual increase per household. That does not seem like too great of a price to pay but it may continue to climb by the same percent or higher in the following years, and does not take into account other fuels and knock-on prices.
catagories: ⚛️, ๐ฉ๐ช, environment, labour, transportation
Wednesday 10 October 2012
tabula rasa oder pen and ink
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ท, ๐, networking and blogging
swimlanes
catagories: America, graphic design, language, philosophy, technology and innovation
grammar of ornament
There are several colour plates of patchwork patterns typifying Turkish, Egyptian, Far Eastern and Mediterranean designs, as well as European work from different periods, all collected and projected through the lens of that era. Both the European site and its contributing resources are definitely worth a visit, and are sure to leave one inspired and searching for more.
Tuesday 9 October 2012
halltree and hutch
station house rock oder kalendarblatt
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐, holidays and observances
Monday 8 October 2012
gianni cakes or crespelle alla fiorentina
We have made this delicious meal, which is by turns, either like crepes or quesadillas, a few times but did not bother to document it before. It is more labour intensive but very tasty and worth the effort and concentration. This is the only dish of detail I know that conspicuously calls for a hard and a soft cheese.
To make approximately 5 generous-sized crespelle, one will need:
- 300+ grams (11 ounces) of frozen spinach
- 200+ (7 ounces) grams of Ricotta cheese
- 6+ tablespoons of freshly grated Parmesan cheese
- 4 large eggs
- Salt, pepper, fresh Muscat (grated)
- 500 ml (2 cups) of milk
- 150 grams (1¼ cup) of flour
- Cooking oil and extra butter to fry the crespelle and line the casserole dish
- 250 ml (to make about one cup) of vegetable stock or bouillon for the Bรฉchamel sauce
Begin making the spinach and ricotta filling by ensuring the spinach is thawed and malleable. Combine this with the ricotta, 2 eggs, 3 tablespoons of the Parmesan and seasonings to taste. Mix until thoroughly blended and no longer lumpy.
Next, prepare the batter and one’s work space for the crespelle. Melt about 50 grams (2 ounces) of the butter in a pan. Meanwhile, combine the other two eggs, about half of the milk, some cooking oil, a pinch of salt and about 100 grams (2/3 cup) of flour into a large mixing bowl and beat with a whisk. Adding a ladle’s worth of batter to the pan on medium heat, make the crepes, frying them about two minutes on each side, and allow the stack to sit for a few minutes to cool.
In the meantime, one can prepared the Bรฉchamel sauce, first melting the remaining butter in a small pot and adding the rest (about 50 grams, about half a cup) of flour to it. Once melted, pour the mixture of flour and butter into the frying pan used for the crespelle. Slowly introduce the remaining milk and stock to the pan and stir gently on low heat, seasoning with the muscat, salt and pepper to taste.
Watch it to make sure the milk is not scalded. Scoop about four table spoons of the spinach filling onto each crepe and roll loosely and place in a greased casserole dish. Pour the Bรฉchamel sauce over the crespelle and top with the remaining three tablespoons of Parmesan. Bake the casserole in an oven preheated to 175°C (350°F) for approximately 30 minutes. Then serve and enjoy with a light Riesling.
catagories: ๐ฎ๐น, food and drink