Via Nag on the Lake, we not only learn the etymology of the term scofflaw but also how a bar in Paris—a country that’s demonstrated its sensibility previously for not experimenting with government imposed prohibition on alcoholic beverages—took advantage of the ensuing hoopla and stumbled onto buzz-marketing.
A Boston banker and staunch Prohibitionist named Delcevare King, seeing that the experiment was a failing one with the otherwise law abiding flagrantly flouting the law (the constitutional amendment was in force from 1920 until 1933 when it was repealed by a second amendment) and criminal gangs forming to create a lucrative black market, sought to find the perfect derogatory term to shame the misguided into compliance. To that end, King sponsored a contest soliciting the best epithet and enticed over twenty-five thousand entrants with a prize in the form of two hundred dollars-worth of gold—an inconceivable ransom for a wordsmith in 1923 and it made the papers worldwide. King’s efforts to “stab awake the public conscience of law enforcement” choose—over boozeshevik, boozocrat and many others, the neologism scofflaw but was himself made a rather international laughing stock for publicly harbouring such puritanical condemnation. Seizing the opportunity, Harry’s New York bar (an American extract from 1911, shipped to the City of Light) patronised by the expatriate community named a cocktail after the new term. A recipe and review of the Scofflaw can be found at the link above, a clever project linking letters and liquor through history.
Monday 21 August 2017
snowflakes
Sunday 16 April 2017
spirit of the law
In response to new legislation that stipulates that bars and similar establishments in India must be separated from highways by no less than half a kilometre, one existing pub has successfully skirted the law by compacting that space and time into a series of barrier mazes—like those set up for queuing at airports and amusement parks. As the purpose of the law is not necessarily to limit access and egress but to prevent patrons from stumbling into to traffic—which seems like a long way to stumble, local authorities let the innovative solution stand.
catagories: ⚖️, ๐, ๐ป, ๐งฎ, architecture
Tuesday 21 March 2017
7x7
teardrop trailer: veteran and prisoner-of-war designs for a camper-caravan realised after eight decades
what wizardry is this: BLDGBlog contemplates spells against autonomy
it’s dangerous to go alone – take this: Zelda fan automates his home controlled by playing the ocarina
no wine before its time: Moldova declares wine to be a food, a status that beer has enjoyed in Germany for centuries
don’t be jimmy: Colorado mass-transit just adopted an awful, crass mascot as an negative example for passengers, very unlike NYC’s good-mannered feline
ronald the grump: Sesame Street characters respond to news that they are being defunded
inter-city express: passenger train passes through residential apartment block in Chongqing
Tuesday 14 March 2017
5x5
crate & barrel: a glimpse inside the outfitteries that design and deliver prefabricated Irish Pubs around the world, via Boing Boing
la gioconda: researchers, including a relative of the Bishop of Bling, in Germany conclude Mona Lisa’s smile means she happy
inception: more recursive, panoramic landscapes from Aydฤฑn Bรผyรผktaล, via Kottke
pacific rim: demonstration of robots controlled by the hemispheres of two separate volunteers’ brains
ligature: a clever type face that reacts intuitively to the characters that precede and follow
Wednesday 1 March 2017
7x7
cabin-brew: brewery formulates a beer that’s optimised for enjoyment whilst flying
dynamo: the Earth core and magnetic field is powered by the crystallization of silicon dioxide
faster empire, strike, strike: a clever fan made a modern trailer for Star Wars Episode V
the night Chicago died: the story of how angry white men tried to destroy disco
lift every voice and sing: the lost, forgotten artwork of Augusta Savage
wiphala: the strikingly colourful mansions of La Paz
momofuku: a visit to the Cup Noodles museum in Japan
Saturday 19 November 2016
tรธmmermรฆnd
Amsterdam can proudly boast the world’s first hangover recovery bar—that requires patrons fail a breathalyser test to get inside, as Dangerous Minds informs.
Once granted entry, to separate those nursing a bad night out from those who’d simply like a bit of quiet pampering—though I can’t imagine that they are that strict and one has to make an absolute wreck of themselves to go inside, patrons are triaged and put into comfy beds—the whole arrangement conceived by an enterprising mattress salesman, to rehydrate and sleep it off and later enjoy some traditional and proven remedies—including an oxygen bar. I am glad that we didn’t require such services during our recent visit—although it would have been nice to be brought a nice, late breakfast in bed.
Friday 19 August 2016
5x5
hop’n gator: interesting trivia about Gatorade and beer and their short-lived unholy merger
enter the dragon: the philosophical notebooks of Bruce Lee
lullaby: parent finches signal to the unhatched broods about global warming
unwaxed: maybe there are benefits to flossing after all, if our simian friends are so keen to do it
history, ink: an interesting look at the last surviving tattoo parlour in Jerusalem that original catered to medieval pilgrims to the Holy Land
Saturday 16 April 2016
that glaswegian, tall chavvy fighting idiot of old
Via the always excellent Nag on the Lake, we learn about the recent surfacing of a list of personae non-grata from the legendary venue, the Half Moon pub of the Herne Hill district in London, which was closed due to flooding in 2013 but has yet to be reopened.
This guide of unwelcome, potentially troublesome patrons is perfectly British, pretty abusive and gangsterish too but pretty amusing all the same and I am glad someone bothered to share, reminding me of that burgeoning practise of asking customers names so they can inform you when your order is ready—one which I hope does not catch on since I rather like us being called the Englishmen or the doctors. There’s no Sodding McSodface on this list and most would require no further explanation, but Deaf Adam earned his lifelong ban for mistaking Coldplay for the Rolling Stones on the jukebox.
Monday 4 January 2016
tonic and toil
Archaeologists and ethnographers trying to reconstruct the inaccessible past (though there are plenty of cultural references to curse and toil—like in the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden) have questioned why humanity moved from a hunter-gatherer society to agriculture and division of labour and have puzzled over this apparently rash decision, as a sustenance way of life is far less taxing and obligates far less of an individual’s free-time to earn one’s daily bread, as it were.
Giving into such incursions—alienation from labour that’s unfolded down intractable paths as civilisation, does seem to be quite a harsh punishment and we’re given to wonder for what award. Such advance is certainly not something to be taken for granted in the march of progress—other models are possible and farming and herding can be as capricious as scrounging for nuts and berries and game. One does not see other primates rushing towards cultivation—and not just despoiled wheat and grapes, and deferring one’s harvest to some unknown date. Some think, however, that the compulsion and motivation, perhaps the toxic knowledge, lie in fermentation. Humans would have never entered into such a social-contract without the accidental discovery of beer and wine (succour, according to other traditions)—or however one might name the libation. This does seem like a rather thunderous, not to invoke later protestations after that support structure was already well-established, revelation that can’t be unseen like the knowledge of Good and Evil, Drunk and Sober, and demarcating that free time sacrificed. That’s a little bit of magic, with primacy over bread, manna and other crops, that could elevate one from dull cares for a little while at least, even if that comes at a very high cost with equally high returns.
catagories: ๐ป, ๐, food and drink, labour, lifestyle
Saturday 29 August 2015
5x5
camouflage: beautiful landscapes with human figures painted in
vitrification: a demonstration of 3-dimensional printing with molten glass
elementary: twelve occasions where Star Trek and Sherlock Holmes crossed-over
not from concentrate: a fascinating look at the Prohibition era wine-brick that saved the vineyards, via Nag on the Lake
Wednesday 13 May 2015
five-by-five
bio-pic: beautifully haunting animation style of pioneer Lotte Reiniger
zener cards: minimalist deck by Joe Doucet
tee-total: the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development wants Germany to curb its drinking-habit
tiger beat: social media giant promotes snap articles to journalism industry desparate to maintain young readership
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ป, ๐, networking and blogging, Star Wars
Monday 9 March 2015
five-by-five
paper-doll: McCalls Pattern Behavior adds dialogue to the models posing for sewing block patterns
siesta: researchers found that coffee-naps are more effective than either respite, stimulus alone
you see with your hands: being endangered and against the law to touch, selfies with the very gregarious quokkas of western Australia take off
on the wagon: a look at England’s last remaining temperance bar, herbal tonic emporium
Saturday 6 September 2014
temperance league
Saturday 3 August 2013
checkout-lane
I stopped at an outdoor cafรฉ under the shade of umbrellas and plane trees while walking through town the other day. I didn't mind sitting with a refreshing breeze wafting through the square while I waited for my order to be taken. After some few minutes, the waitress, who was very friendly but seemed a bit anxious and distracted—not exactly inattentive but rather occupied with sending text-messages on her Handy, it appeared, the waitress finally brought me a beer. Returning seconds later, like an after-thought that one usually experiences after hanging the phone, she asked if I didn't mind paying right away.
Sunday 7 July 2013
if these walls could talk or windows to the soul
In probably the boldest and most shameless assault against the consuming public since—the last, a German marketing firm has announced its ability and plans to deliver, for a willing sponsor, advertisements to a captive audience through cranial conduction.
The company proposes that clients' messages be distributed on public transport, shaken into the passenger's skull when inadvertently or purposefully leaning against the windows of a bus or a subway or any chosen surface. It's a lot worse than regular commercial breaks spammy pop-unders while navigating websites, and if anything people who take mass-transit ought to be rewarded for not contributing to congestion, not submitted to focus-groups involuntarily. I am sure these beamed messages could be tailored to particular passengers and it is scary hoone's head.
w quickly this might escalate. Chatty, shuddering coffee mugs or singing beer and wine glasses? Such skeletal transmissions are not new but relatively novel things, but perhaps the means to speak with disembodied voices should not be first surrendered to marketers and demographers, who would always like to get into
Saturday 18 May 2013
brototyp or bakers’ dozen
In Germany, there are over six-hundred distinct varieties of bread and some additional twelve-hundred permutations of baking besides. Not including beer-brews, which Germany might be more renowned for and enjoy actually a legal status that classifies and protects them as a liquid bread, these hundreds of different recipes and preparations are governed, unsurprisingly and meticulously, by a system of standards that codify traditional variations on a theme.
Saturday 26 January 2013
rebus
The borough of old London town have some quite fanciful street names, with some equally fanciful but probably incorrect folk-etymologies.
Schweinfurt, whose deep harbour presents an impossible challenge for swine to ford the Main river but rather came from an old Gothic designation Suinuurde, meaning the exact opposite, something akin to quicksand. The names of the British guesthouses likely naming is direct and intentional, relating to symbols adopted by venerable guilds that set up shop in these areas. It was more interesting to be disabused and learn that the Worshipful Company of Cutlers used as their logo an elephant (carrying a howdah on its back, a fancy carriage for the raj of India, named for its resemblance to the chess piece) for its ivory tusks, used for fashioning knife handles. Goats and compasses probably should be taken literally and could refer to a variety of trades, from people who actually cobbled shoes from goat skin to the enclave of Rheinish barrel-makers (coopers), whose craft was hallmarked by mathematical precision (a drafting compass) and a chevron (^) that stands for a fret, frieze or frontier for crossing obstacles reliably, much like a sure-footed goat, which has the same Latinate root.
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.
Monday 24 September 2012
wies’n or the price of eggs in china
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ป, ๐, Bavaria, economic policy, holidays and observances