An English professor is soliciting from her students new slang terms and the daily contributions are showing language’s innovation rather than its corruption or languor. They’re mostly pet-words but immediately intelligible and some even gaining currency.
Tuesday 30 April 2013
full-stop or conjunction-junction what’s your function?
sympathetic resonance or the drink-whisperer
Monday 29 April 2013
sjรถrnustrรญรฐ: nรฝ von
Here is a picture of the mayor of Reykjavik, Jรณn Gnarr Kristinsson—an actor, bassist and comedian besides, casting his ballot. It’s his business of course whom he voted for, but I’ll wager as a free-agent himself and founder of the Best Party (Besti flokkurinn) whose platform promised listening more to women and old people since those groups tend to be marginalised, he’s not in lock-step with the old guard.
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, ๐ฎ๐ธ, revolution, Star Wars
Sunday 28 April 2013
vom bamberg bis zum grabfeldgau
There is a saying that there can be no nation without an anthem (keine Nationen ohne Hymne), and while poet and novelist and Auslander, hailing from Karlsruhe in the Duchy of Hessen and by Rhine, Joseph Viktor von Scheffel intended no overtones of political secessionism or dangerous patriotism when he composed the lyrical anthem of the Franconia region (das Frankenlied). I think it was pure exultation and inspiration that he found while on retreat for the summer in 1859, in the midst of a march-writing craze, as a guest of Cloister Banz and explored Little Switzerland (die frรคnkische Schweiz), which the people later adopted as a regional symbol. Apparently, school children learn the song, rife with references to Franconia’s cities, landmarks and lore, and there’s even the robust refrain “Valeri, Valera.”
Valer-rah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Much of the matter of the lyrics touch on what von Scheffel could take in from his terrace, the peaks each with their own myths, the remainders of Celts, Mongols, the French and the Americans that also passed through. The words are wonderful and genuine, and who wouldn’t just visiting want to break into song with praise for this area. There is a priceless element of pomp to it too, which I suppose resides in all anthems and similar state-songs, like Rule Britannia! (von Scheffel also composed that summer rhymes about dinosaurs when a scientist who was also in residence showed him his fossil discoveries), which I won’t identify, not wanting (nor willing) to take away from this enduring double-rainbow moment and enduring pride.
wahrzeichnen oder main-kinzig-kreis
There are few, however, as recursive as the one indicating that at the next exit, one can find the medieval Altstadt of the town of Steinheim by Hanau—seeing the same ensemble of towers and turrets from the road just behind the sign itself. I stopped to for a quick walk around the place with a nice selection of half-timbered buildings. The castle and tower were built towards the end of the 1300s by the Lords of Eppstein to oversee trade and importantly taxation of traffic along the river Main where it joins the river Kinzig.
Later used as a residence by the Archbishop of Mainz when travelling through the region and as a head-quarters of the occupying Swedish army during the Thirty Years War. Steinheim is also the gateway of the renown Hessen Apple-Wine Route (hessischen Apfelweinstraฮฒe)—which I have yet to sample.
tomate or catsup/ketchup
Friends at my forgotten favourite, the Laughing Squid, showcases a very interesting trend in hair-styles (Friseur) from Osaka. This whole website features an off-beat cavalcade of neat finds worthy of exploration, besides, in culture and the arts. I do wonder, however, if this particular hair-do shows some vintage roots, inspired by this Crosse & Blackwell’s advertisement for tomato sauce.
catagories: ๐ฏ๐ต, networking and blogging
core values or everything counts in large amounts
There was an interesting pairing of news items this week under the category of very hot and extremely dense. Geophysics researchers concluded that the temperatures at the centre of the Earth are greater than those on the surface of the sun, and subjecting samples of iron to this higher threshold, learned more about how the internal churnings of liquid and crystal iron might regulate the Earth’s magnetic field. Previously scientists had discovered a curious property of these extreme conditions down in the underground, where molten iron took on new characteristics, insulating or conducting electro-magnetism, but without also undergoing the expected structural changes—think the phenomenon of super-conductivity attained when some materials are super-cooled but without being obliged to rearrange their configuration.
With more accurate soundings, we have a better understanding of the transition zones that may hide within uniformity as we burrow deeper to an inner realm that is re-frozen somehow.
The other milestone comes from an enormous international effort, that had its origins in the glasnost of the mid-eighties, when the Soviet Union offered to share its secret technology called the tokamak—think containment field, a magnet to suspend the plasma components of the fusion reaction since no physical substance could handle such heat—and proposed international cooperation on a project to find peaceful uses for nuclear fusion. Decades later, with construction plans finalised in 2007, the programme ITER, Latin for “the way forward” but a backronym of the original French designation for the facility that had the dreaded “thermo-nuclรฉaire” as part of its name, the research is moving at a good clip with the fist plasma injections to take place in six years or so. Allowing the plasma to be heated basically without an upward limit will eventually coax over-excited atoms into fusing, producing a surplus of energy to capture in the process. The fuel in the case of fusion, proven feasible by many university reactors throughout the world (there’s even one in Greifswald on the Baltic Sea and a veritable Fusion Valley in the area in south France that hosts the ITER labs—who knew? Maybe in the not too distant future, if this demonstration project is successful, generators will be miniaturised for domestic-use, like Mister Fusion from Back to the Future II), is hydrogen with the by-product helium, but could happen with any element up to the iron, making up the nucleus of our planet and revealing unexpected lines of force. I wonder when the studies will coincide.
Saturday 27 April 2013
stauseen
From Der Spiegel’s International Desk comes a report about how run-away melting of glaciers is transforming the alpine landscape of Switzerland with catchments of hundreds of new bodies of that come into being as marauding lakes—not something creeping at a glacial pace. It’s rather difficult to deny the sudden appearance of a quite large pond where there was not one before but the region is negotiating the change, beyond trying to just cope to the threats of flooding (having already bored emergency drains in a land noted for its geological infrastructure), whose lakes are proving very popular with vacationers and can be harnessed as sources of hydro-electric power. I imagine, however, that it is little comfort to see enduring and iconic inundated and feel helpless to do much about it.
catagories: ๐จ๐ญ, ๐ช️, environment
Friday 26 April 2013
dye-pot or diy
Not only do the factories damage the ecology, it stands to reason that the output is not such a healthful thing to immerse ourselves in, coating the walls and every surface. Material science will need to revert but not in an atavistic way. With natural bases like beeswax or vegetable oils and dyes derived from plants, Fischer’s laboratories are conducting research and experimentation to bring non-petroleum paints and finishes more on par with the industry-standard. They are doing a brisk business as well, with a line of alternative, natural paints, available in larger hardware stores and boutique shops at comparable prices, which count as some of their strongest, closeted patrons employees of the chemical concerns who know what goes into their products.
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ฑ, ๐ก, environment
Thursday 25 April 2013
hunter-gatherer
Supermarkets are from a design perspective, which belies a lot of marketing and psychological cues and pandering that goes unseen, are a veritable vision quest of encouragement and reinforcement. Having some the tricks of the trade revealed and realizing that there is little departure from the established layout—although I am one to generally be overwhelmed and bewildered by an over-abundant selection—makes me think of those theories that ethnologists sometimes apply to mysterious ruins, suggesting that worn trails and monolithic configurations were ritual paths to entitlement and re-birth. That’s quite possible but we can’t access the intentions of the ancients, and it’s strange that we know grocers big and small have planned their sites not as a larder or granary but as sort of cake-walk, an anti-obstacle-course.
catagories: ๐ง , food and drink
Wednesday 24 April 2013
secessionist or moderne
Often when walking into to town, I pass by the stately shadows thrown by the Lutherkirche of Wiesbaden, but I had not seen the inside until the other day. Other times that I thought about visiting, there seemed to be a gaggle of people there or choir practice and I didn’t want to disturb.
I suppose that these were the mega-churches of the day, with nothing derogatory intended, but also provided parishioners with a unique entertainment experience. In addition to the tradition of the Bach choir I overheard practicing, there are two celebrated and dueling organs, one at the front and one at the back, to produce a wall of sound. I’ll have to snoop around the other three architectural ensembles of the programme’s commissions.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ต๐ฑ, antiques, architecture, Hessen
Tuesday 23 April 2013
pyrrhic victory or the hundred years’ war
Though characterized and distilled mostly as the proprietary authority for businesses to demand applicants, supplicants and current employees surrender their social-network profile upon request, which while good for garnering glancing concern and attentions, is sadly short-lived and is not engaging public dialogue in CISPA is again positioned for passage in the US Congress, despite conflating opposition.
Just as there are champions for keeping us over-safe, we have our tireless advocates, but the issue and the real, long-term stakes remain something that is easily placated or dismissed.
eroding privacy. Victorious skirmishes, sometimes ceded over inflated (at least, in the here-and-now) fears, overshadow—by design, I think, the larger struggle, since these assaults are becoming perennial continuing-resolutions politically.
catagories: ๐ฅธ, ๐ง , America, networking and blogging
Monday 22 April 2013
solidarity or putting words into your mouth
soccer league presidents (not to mention the entire thrust of re-election), Germany’s chancellor is presenting a rather stilted and baiting
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ช๐บ, economic policy
Sunday 21 April 2013
taxi-dancing or stank
Maybe this is not such a novel idea elsewhere, but Germany hosted its first Pheromone Party over this weekend.
cultivar or arctic blast
The latest tipping of the apple-cart is coming in the form, with already untold reach, of a genetic masterwork in the form of an apple that does not brown when bitten into or sliced up, and incorporating the hardiest traits of all natural apple varieties, can fall quite far from the tree, suited to grow in any climate from the orchards of New England to California to the Russian Far-East.
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ฑ, ๐งฌ, environment, food and drink
Saturday 20 April 2013
graffiato
# baker-zebra
Chess and its associated stratagems has pretty interesting etymological, if not instantly recognizable rather shallow and bursting through languages’ foundations, roots. The game, as it is known in English, comes from the French term eschequier, after the Latin name for a the table of a counting-house that bore a signature checked pattern, whose contrast may it easier not to miss a coin strayed from the pile.
Thursday 18 April 2013
poor-mouthing and paradigm-shift
The rather myopic policies adopted and expressed in various ways throughout the European Union threaten to reintroduce much longer-lasting consequences from internal and external pressures across the economic landscape. Once lauded as the most ambitious and effective ways to curb climate change and promote good stewardship for the environment, the cap-and-trade scheme and carbon-emission is failing and a united-front is reverting to nationalistic policies.
stirring the cauldron or strongly-worded letter
The a reporter on the International Desk of Der Spiegel spied a curiously counter-productive example of outreach on the public website of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Wednesday 17 April 2013
smart suzy-sunset and i are on the case
Demonstrating that hindsight is sometimes the sharpest lens, the Washington Post has a curious article about an Iranian factory with strangely potemkin qualities in a town called Dinslaken in the Ruhrgebiet, an industrial area near Essen.
Tuesday 16 April 2013
real and present oder perspektiv
One major news service, incidental to the reporting on the Boston Marathon finish-line bomb attacks, raised an interesting, if not back-handed, sociological question by entertaining one report’s questions concerning the whether the event and terrible carnage were staged as a false-flag operation.
honey-comb hideout continued or pesticides versus pollinators
Correspondence leaked to Corporate Europe Observatory suggests the furious extent of the lobbying campaign on the part of at least two major chemical and pharmacological concerns against a proposed ban of substances that may be responsible for the widespread decline in the bee population.
catagories: ⚕️, ๐, ๐ฑ, ๐, ๐ฆ, environment, food and drink
p.s.a. or ribbon-awareness month
catagories: ⚕️, holidays and observances
Monday 15 April 2013
broadside, broadsheet
While diplomatic niceties, the biting of tongues continue mostly unabated, and the esteem is unfortunately mutual, relations between Germany and Russia have grown increasingly frosty (EN/DE), as reported by Der Spiegel. The introspection is worth visiting, for more than the nonce, because the tenor is distinct from the usual protests and criticisms that the balance of Europe holds for the Teutonic nation and is unlike the dangerously divorced indifference that those governments geographically further away (although I suppose that America is geographically closer) have adopted. It’s these postures and acts that typify expectations and strain relations.
Germany has expressed, reservedly, on several occasions displeasure with Russia’s political and social standings, while trying to preserve whatever civilities are possible under such strain. What do you think? What currency do old prejudice and distrust carry and what sort of relevance is exercised through elevated and formalized disbelief? I do not think the whole matter is solely locked-up in the personalities of leadership and by-gone proclivities treated like broader stereotypes, but such considerations are hardly irrelevant. Is it the same sort of secure distain that comforts the further West for the near-east?
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ท๐บ, ๐, foreign policy
Saturday 13 April 2013
durch die kurzen hessen und durch die langen hessen
For my weekend commutes, I had found a convenient place to stop midway between home and work to tank-up, which also usually boasts a bonus flea-market on Sunday afternoons.
Each town, in exchange for policing their section for the sake of public safety and deterring highway men, was able to exact a toll on travelers, and I thought the way that the churches and the venerable homes that framed the narrow thoroughfare could excite imaginings of ancient merchants making their ways from one extreme of Europe to another. Inspecting the secular buildings, which were all sided with these distinctive and meticulous wooden shingles, I also learned that the armies tended to beat the path of least resistance along these roads too—as the Autobahnen and national highways tend to mirror them as well.
A defeated Napoleon and some of his entourage encamped at a hostel on the main street, I learned, in flight from Leipzig in 1813. It was ironic, I thought, that the armies marched through this same spot once on the way to battle as part of the domain of the bishopric of Fulda, and even though not victorious effected major reorganization and break-up of ancient holdings, retreated (while it was at Waterloo where Napoleon did surrender) through the same spot as what was soon to become part of the Grand Duchy of Hessen and by Rhein. I am never eager to go back to work but there is a lot of interesting things to discover and learn along the way.
who moved my cheese?
This preposterous suggestion, dismissed, made me think of this scholarly interview from Der Spiegel’s International desk examining the rise of anti-German sentiment across Europe over the euro and re-packaged austerity. It is a difficult and probing question, but I think, from these latest rounds of renegotiation, the public protests are a reflection in part at least of frustration that little flexibility—the structural might that Germany appears to have and seems to influence the body politic, that’s not accorded to the people equitably. Unfortunately, more credit does not equal a measure of determined reform, despite similarly deferred wishes for greater alignment.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ช๐บ, ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐ฌ๐ท, ๐ฎ๐ช, ๐ง, economic policy, foreign policy, labour
Wednesday 10 April 2013
first instance or operation hummingbird
There is an embarrassment of expert and thorough articles on every subject to be found in the annals and Neulichkeit of Wikipedia, so much sometimes the depth is taken for granted, even if it is repaired to a source of first- and last-resort.
Tuesday 9 April 2013
tanks for the memories
I am usually not a follower of such reporting, but in this present environment of transitions and retreat, the milestone of the last couple dozen or so Abrams battle tanks, after 69 years, are en route back to America seems important. As the Cold War sublimated into bigger tensions, some six thousand were stationed in Germany alone. Repatriating the last few combat vehicles does represent a significant change in posture. I wonder if the removal of these relics, bulwarks is a political signal, overdue, or a change in strategy to reflect newer tactics and a technological high-ground that’s a pretty smug assumption. Such fleets should not stay front and forward and this is not the last hallmark of partnership and outreach, but neither should all customs of cooperation be seen pared back.
Monday 8 April 2013
hertzian photography
BLDGBLOG shares and expands on an interesting proposal by the London Economist that suggests that the extant array of antennae and satellite dishes and other shadow-casting receivers and transmitters could be used as a passive, supplemental radar to track aircraft and light up the run-way.
Such auroral imaging is like earlier snap-shots focused by WiFi signals or radio-telescopes, augmenting and translating what is visible to the human-eye. The discussion makes me think of another development, which although less of a technical challenge for the pilots, is nonetheless representative of a bigger technical divide: a number of systems, on a common platform, are coming into place to alleviate a very democratic and local problem, that of finding a parking-space. Some very creative and clever solutions are on offer, but I am wary over another common and unaccommodating layer of haves and have-nots, not redressed by leveraging the conditions that created it.
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐ก, transportation
by hades’ handbag
Of all the gifts—pandora—of the gods of mythology, all the humanizing deifications, it strikes me as strange that the only “professional” endowment that has not be stricken from common-parlance is a plutocrat—though, unlike for the aristocracy, probably not a badge proudly proclaimed.
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ท, ๐, economic policy, labour
Sunday 7 April 2013
moog or ham-and-eggs, hammond organs
The other day, I ventured to a flea-market advertized beyond the former border dividing East and West Germany, which turned out to be more like a party held at a abandoned aircraft hangar crammed full of personal Ostalogie, random items from DDR times.
It was neat to wonder around aisles of piles, but after hearing a radio retrospective of East Germany’s part not only in electronic music, like Kraftwerk who were early-adopters, but in electronic instruments, as well, I wish I had been paying more attention. It turns out that the electronic keyboard, the organ with the basso-nova beat, had its origins (building on some earlier, native discoveries) in the factories of the VEB Klingenthaler Harmonikawerke, by Plauen, in 1972 as the VERMONA, the ET-6. Of course, these factories made other iconic and traditional instruments, like Weltmeister accordions, juke-boxes, and pianos, but the VERMONA and later incarnations really spiked a revolution in sound and how music was made. I am sure there was such an innovative electric organ warehoused there, and although I don’t believe we have the immediate talent to contribute to the retro-legacy musically, I would like to be able to tickle the ivories that oversaw so much change.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ถ, ๐ก, lifestyle, revolution
happy camper
Preparing for vacation season, H was looking where we might take the Silver Lady this summer.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐️, lifestyle, transportation, travel
hari kuyo or last honours
Via the emporium of curiosities, Oddity Central, I learnt that the Japanese reserve the last day of the Lunar New Year’s celebration with a sweetly touching ceremony that’s a final tattoo for lives of long and dedicated service for pins and other such small and disposable things.
catagories: ๐ฏ๐ต, holidays and observances, philosophy, religion
Saturday 6 April 2013
smarch und mapril
I like how the trappings of Easter, unlike with other holidays, are compelled to be taken down and stowed away for next year—or replaced by the commercial creep and anticipation of the next batch of observances around the corner, right away. I guess that’s partially owing to the fact that the customs associated with Easter, partially, are a mixed-metaphor, with all notions of promise, renewal and rebirth celebrated and borrowing from one another, and something to be savoured.
Most decorations are such eggs hanging from willow switches or displayed on a village well, but I also appreciated this last interpretation, which seems a custom in itself, exchanging the Christmas lights for plastic edges on these sculpted hedges. It feels like a weird, inverted interlude, barreling towards Winter rather than Summer. I hope keeping these charms on exhibit do us a better turn.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ✝️, ๐, ๐ฑ, environment, food and drink, foreign policy, holidays and observances
Friday 5 April 2013
diorama or microcosmos
Bremen Public Radio features a collection of photographs from local artist Nikolai Keller posing tee-tiny people in the greatly magnified details of everyday surroundings. The article (the link does not seem to work) includes a video segment documenting his technique and patience with these model train scale figures and a link to the gallery of the artist.