Wednesday 13 May 2015

grooks or squaring the circle

During the Nazi occupation of Denmark poly-math turned resistance-fighter by the name of Piet Hein published thousands (a body of some seven-thousand in his lifetime) of short, aphoristic poems that really went above the heads of their oppressors but were immediately understood and spread virally by the Danish people. Hein called these concentrated verses grooks (gruks, which Hein maintained was purely a nonsense word but some suggest it is a portmanteau of laugh plus sigh) and one particularly poignant one illustrates the heartbreak of conquest, vacillating between indecision, flight or taking up arms:

Consolation Grook
Losing one glove
is certainly painful,
but nothing
compared to the pain,
of losing one, throwing away the other,
and finding the first one again.

There are multitudes to discover on every subject and I am sure that anyone could find one that resonates.

Problems
Problems worthy of attack
prove their worth
by hitting back.

Or for the melancholy Dane, finding resolve when least expecting it:

A Psychological Tip
Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,

and you're hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma,
you'll find, is simply by spinning a penny.
No -- not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you're passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you're hoping.

After the war, Hein continued to formulate grooks of course but also turned his attention to other word play in the form of language games and logic puzzles. Returning to his mathematical and engineering prowess, having mentally spared with Niels Bohr and other luminaries, Hein also devised an architectural compromise that embraced both the rectilinear and the round in the form of what’s called the superegg, which came to typify Scandinavian Mid-Century design and architecture.

Sunday 7 September 2014

overheard or something's rotten in the state of denmark

During the weekend's NATO summit in Wales, at least one member state publicly reserved her judgment, wanting to defer any driven decision-making so that better informed heads might prevail. It was the subject of much derision for the Czech government to demand further, independent investigation into the predominate characterisation about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
It may not be so straightforward as the media portrayal that's the confirmation of consuming fears and consummate heroism, the president demurred, citing self-surety of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction destruction proving not so incontrovertible in the end. Another representative went so far as to ridicule that the Czech Republic might want to consult its intelligence apparatchik, if it had one. I do not think the protest of the Czech government was lost on its audience, since the presiding secretary-general was eleven years ago, as the prime-minister of Denmark, a vocal supporter of Iraqi-Attacky II, exclaiming that there were WMDs—it's true. In all fairness, a lot of people were likewise duped and even more vehement about it.  Vikings are the progenitors of the people of Denmark, although the term never referred to a tribe or ethnogenesis but was rather the infinite form of a verb—vikรญng, to go on (overseas) expeditions. I certainly hope that such exchanges do not prevision the return of Cold War tensions and that NATO could be a power for good—however, it is rather an uncomfortable fact that had NATO not tried to push its envelop eastward and court Ukraine, Russia probably would not have responded apparently in-kind.

Sunday 11 May 2014

tardy-slip or enten/eller

In a very beautifully terse and compact analysis, Maria Popova writing for Brain Pickings weekly thoughtful digest looks at the nature of happiness and discontent through the focused lens of Sรธren Kierkegaard's fragment of life: Either/Or.

Bracketed by brilliantly illuminating quotations, it comes obvious how ones hour by hour orientation, frantic and fearful of savouring the present for fear that it comes at the expense of the future or set-backs to earlier times or nostalgic for escaping achievements, estranged from the truth that that future is in fact the same as that moment we are wrestling into something productive. The treatise rings even more relevant today and I think that this is a book I would like to revisit, since it is one that is meant to grow with you—though not literally and more akin to engagement, I took the philosopher's words on absence semantically as non-attendance and know I did not get as much out of it as I should've more distracted by the Don Juan level at the time. We may all feel that such a struggle is pedantic and we do not have the time to be lectured about such daily challenges, sore that there is not a quick-fix, some enchantment to reverse this rush—though not many of us would like the hunting-trophies of the great here-and-now, but to be busy or otherwise engaged is a choice and such lessons are definitely something that one ought to keep in his back-pocket.