dewey decimal or oracular vernacular

Before the advent and propagation of the internet and search machines, the inquiring public relied on certain institutions and librarians in particular for answers.

I do hope that there still are such venerable human experts—at least, the trained and the willing that are still there to field inquiries and riddled with such questions, like Mental-Floss shares a cache recently uncovered in the New York public library system. It seems that librarians jotted down the questions they found either humourous or very challenging, and I would wager that there are similar repositories to be found in libraries the world around. I remember well when librarians were mysterious oracles and when browsing the stacks lent a way of formulating a question that had been asked, in some form, before. Seeing these notes is certainly an interesting juxtaposition to allowing predictive software finish one’s sentence, where is, what is, how do I...

spatial fossils

The ever brilliant BLDGBlog revisits the field-trip they got to take two summers ago to the secretive compound that manages the constellation of satellites that form the global positioning system for military and civilian applications.

Surely being treated to such a tour could inspire many tangential musings on place and time and the technological triangulation behind translating this vast array with many moving parts into something reliable and useful. The visitors, however, choose not to reflect on the navigation aspect but rather how GPS coordinates are being used more and more in large-scale architectural projects and how the errors in mapping—precision that’s only off by millimetres but still nonetheless present and preserved—are being set in stone, fossilised as it were in big building programmes. Such cosmological footprints are found in the unburied strata of the Earth and, as in the reflection, evidence of solar flares and sunspots in the growth rings of trees. The philosophy is not lost on the team that runs GPS neither, realising that this fifty-thousand kilometre wide array could also be used a massive detection field for the aberrations of space-time due to encounters with gravitational waves or dark matter. Every sub-system on Earth that accesses and makes decisions based off of this satellite telemetry is a part of this experiment and exotic, cosmic discontinuities may be leaving subtle footfalls everywhere.

like a picture print from currier and ives

As the fourth Advent comes rolling in, here are a few scenes from Christmas markets in Wiesbaden, Leipzig and Erfurt to celebrate the season. PfRC wishes you all good cheer, be kind to one another, and thanks for visiting.

social committee

I had seen this playful casting-call, cat-walk circulating featured in Vanichi Magazine bz photographer and artist Viktorija Pashuta on the internet for several days but figured it was something swanky enough to go viral and then dank all on its own. In fact, the male line up dressed as social networking sites struck me as an extension of the so-called Gamergate controversy about misogyny in video games until BoingBoing revealed the full pageant with women posing as internet browsers.
I wholeheartedly agree that Firefox and Instagram ought to be dapper and dressed to the nines, but I think the other looks and personalities are spot-on as well. What do you think? Are these human mascots posh enough to capture what is characteristic about your favourite media tools?

phylogenetic or langue et parole

Via the ever-engrossing Mental Floss comes an beautifully illustrated diagram that charts the development and relationships of Old World languages by Minna Sundberg. A graphic artist Ana a story-teller by trade, Sundberg also applies her craft to linguistic and other academic interests. The style of her art, this tree in particular, and curiosity remind me a bit of JRR Tolkien. Check out more of Sundberg’s work at the link to her blog.

normative or strangers with candy

Via the ever-excellent Kottke, here comes an fascinating anthropological and cultural safari on different styles of child-rearing from around the world, curated by blogger Joanna Goddard. In a series of installments, which while not exhaustively representative of the whole spectrum from Tiger to Helicopter found in any society, presents vignettes that are certainly not biased or western-centric that give pretty interesting insights to the attitudes and approach to parenting.
Some of my favourites include Sleep Camps in Australia, the practise of accepting treats from people on the street in Chile—which seems endearing, the way mothers and fathers in India will engage in reasoned dialectic discussions with their children, rather than stopping at No! or Because I said, and the lack of bedtimes in Turkey. Be sure to read the country profiles in full on A Cup of Jo.

crystal habit and structure or read this next

H shared with me an interesting vignette on the German cache for using cash, which is bucking the trend of much of the rest of the world as coin and paper money is exchanged for virtual currency. The article delved into historical and psychological reasons that cash is still king—including bouts of hyperinflation, abrupt transitions to new monetary vehicles, etc., and proved a fascinating primer for the comparative and insightful round-up topical items that Quartz features in really lucid language. You ought to check it out for yourself.

this day in pfrc history

One year ago: Bavarians are going to the polls on the opening day of Oktoberfest. Some perennial events always take place in pairs.

Two years ago: H and I share a round-up of Frankonian churches. Conservative estimates place the property value of the land that the Church owns in Germany at around two hundred thirty billion euro.

Three years ago: Germany is undergoing a brain-drain, with recruiting and keeping talented individuals. Immigration policy reforms are geared towards attracting professionals but there are many challenges in the practical execution of these plans.

Four years ago: a reporter embarks on an odyssey to the autonomous Mount Athos to gain some insight in the culture that helped contribute to the Greek financial crisis.

netzpolitik oder policy womp

The German government is releasing a new and comprehensive strategy aimed to make legislation and governance into a framework sufficient to keep pace with connectivity and interconnectedness.
As this commentator writing for Spiegel characterises the agenda (auf Deutsch) a bit like the impossible Christmas wish-list of a precocious child—or the goals, as-stated, of a civic-minded beauty-pageant contestant, what with calls and promises of a high-speed internet connection for all Germans, better protection of intellectual-property, enhanced security for potential vulnerable infrastructure (power-grids and other utilities), support for start-up ventures, smart-homes, smart-roads, etc.

All these ideas are excellent, but I believe a little naïve—not that bold dreaming is something we ought to be timid about—as the law and budget as it stands and it is imagined is inadequate to address all these possibilities, fulfillments and disappointments. There is some language in the programme, speaking of let-downs, however, that seems long overdue and a mandate that can and ought to be met. There is a more timely reporting requirement for breaches that compromise users’ information, plus a sort of minimum liability insurance for companies who would presume to handle such volumes of data so they might not leave the gate unhitched and bigger penalties if they do. This is not creating an information cartel of just a few big corporations that have and hold the dossiers of everyone, but rather—I think—a disincentive for morbid curiosity and records never to be retired and destroyed.

everything zen

Free to download, there is an engaging application meant, rather than provide another distraction, to sharpen one's focus and induce relaxation—perhaps mindfulness, through zen exercises in the form of bio-feedback. I think that this is something worth a try. ॐ

creative-commons or infinite monkeys typing

Wikipedia is rebuffing the take-down requests of a nature photographer, who after leaving his camera disguised in the jungle to capture images of macaques of Indonesia discovered that the monkey had discovered the hidden device and took hundreds of selfies.
Since the images have gone viral, the photographer hoped to earn something in the form of royalties or at least recognition and became rather irked when the images became part of Wikipedia's open collection. Demands that the pictures be removed and relegated to the nature photographer were rejected by the public encyclopedia, reasoning that the monkeys were the authors of the collection and it would be their decision if the material remained in the public-domain or not. US statute, which Wikipedia cites and most editors agree with, states that non-human authors have no automatic expectation of attribution and so such material defaults to be released to public-domain. What do you think of this legal battle, this copy-fight? The photographer did go through a lot of trouble and expensive to set up this photo-booth but maybe the macaque also knew what he was creating.

idem or a mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido

I can remember driving around the countryside in the mid-nineties, long before the days of content-on-demand and in a region whose FM stations did not match my tastes in music exactly with a lot of Country-Western and white-people Gospel, and discovering the wilds of AM radio, who devoted swaths of the programming-day to conservative then liberal tirades—sometimes confusing liberal with libertine.
I found it formative to be exposed to all sorts of alternative points of view—that sometimes retreated to conspiracy-mongering. Everything was open to dissent, however, and like a canon of nostalgic music to draw on, I wondered really what it means nowadays to have entertainment on demand for material that one has not been exposed to before—since we are getting worse, I think, at being very original or anything but derivative. Regardless of how dogmatic or admitting of disagreement these shows really were, I do remember how they characterised the opposition, especially avid followers of one figure in particular—as Ditto Heads. That seemed particularly fitting, and though of course the phenomena still exists, that term has fallen out of favour—because, perhaps, that's what the Medium (another term those shows used for the monolithic main-stream) has become, a media-echo of re-blogging and without much endurance to keep up a rally and when there's only flitting narcissism and everything true becomes a nice back-drop to frame it in.

native address system or context-clues

I had heard the term native advertising and its appeal by integrating itself—maybe a reinvention of the guerrilla-technique of piggy-backing, but I don't suppose I could articulated what it was. Mashables presented this handy infographic—framed in more traditional banner advertisements, of course—which presents the analytics fairly well.

Selective, relevant and cryptic market- eers—but nothing novel or innovative particularly, I think, mine for indications that audiences are less prone to ignore and behaviour that affirms tolerable intrusions, studying habits that lead to something beyond a selection of bundled products similar to the last on-line search or shopping-safari that one trekked but rather towards an understanding of baiting trust with something (at least glancingly) ingratiating. What do you think? I always feel scammed, and because of it twice shy, when I see something proclaiming that I might also like, only to find out its some sponsored promotion. I can understand ones spending habits being with the bailiwick of demographers but not the lag-time itself between curiosity, usually by a masquerade or appealing to vanities and phobias, and distrust and aversion, which seems pretty desperate and clawing and quite a lot of effort, no matter how infinitely small that labour can be divided and re-used, for something that remains pretty transparent and likely to be disregarded.

hearth and home or town and country

The ever- excellent Bibliodyssey features a review of the 1682 Georgica Curiosa, an encyclopedia of sorts in three volumes that aims to exhaustively educate heirs (the landed gentry) in the art of estate management. The illustrated edition has many practical and responsible tips for promoting community health, sustainable and expert husbandry and agriculture. The work, hailing from a retirement in Regensburg, also extolling dignity for the working-class, began as a pastoral poem and expanded from there.

kettling or policeman's ball

The Russian Times is covering an international law enforcement convention in Philadelphia, where one of the distrurbing trends emerging is increase partnership between social-media utilities and police departments with the express and open-ended goal of hindering the right to assembly through the ability to censor content and upstarts deemed to be of a criminal or at least of a (potentially) peace-disrupting nature. While such collaborative efforts could reduce the ability for organised criminal syndicates to use the internet as a platform, like cyber highwaymen whose threat is greatly conflated and peddlers of hate that use these forums, this sort of alliance, already taking place in fits and starts, would do more to quell protests and promote the status quo, ignorance and misinformation. Of course, it does not stop with stopping rallies but I suppose such selectivity would necessarily extend to any unflattering portrayal or revelation regarding the giants of industry, in terms of health, safety and equity. Patently, it would become more and more difficult for organisers to mobilise support for movements and to distribute information that has not received the stamp-of-approval from the competent-authorities.

kofferraum or bring a towel

I stumbled over a delightful blog by the name of Ask the Past, full of practical albeit subject to ridicule advice from old publications. Trying to harriedly take stock of what I might need for our weekend-getaway and allay it most efficiently, the following recommendations from an Italian peripatetic from 1480 gave me some solice and direction:

"[A traveller] should carry with him two bags: one very full of patience, the other containing two hundred Venetian ducats, or at least one hundred and fifty... furthermore, he should provision himself with good Lombard cheese, sausages, tongue, and other cured meats of every sort; white biscuits, some cakes of sugar, and various confections, but not a great quantity because they spoil quickly. Above all he should take plenty of fruit syrup, because that is what keeps a man alive in extreme heat; and also ginger syrup to settle his stomach if it is upset by too much vomiting."

Though we need not worry about the goons at airport security confiscating liquids or foodstuff or undeclared monetary instruments, it is nice to know that patience, over-packed, is an inalienable prescription for any journey. The site is definitely worth the visit and further exploration on topics of all sorts.

kevin bacon number or seven-league boots

Though it is a challenge to find a non-moribund version that complements the original science project—and it's sad to think how precariously curated some brilliant things were handled just a few scant years ago, aping at this strange sort of premature immortality only to be displaced and neglected, looking back from an age just a few years later with the threat that most mundane and uninteresting things will ever be forgot—a clever student basically downloaded the growing database of Wikipedia and developed a route to allow users to enter queries on two desperate and random topics through his server and find the distance (the Kevin Bacon number, the connections, steps it takes to bridge both items) between them in the Wikipedia universe. Six Degrees of Wikipedia, it was called and was introduced in 2007, although it appears there has been no one to maintain the programme. Surely still educational and serendipitous, one sees latter day incarnations as a game with a certain frame work, which I think makes the search more of a trivial pursuit. Research, triangulation and abstraction, however, cannot be replaced by any amount of brute force or compendious collection, nor a sense of anticipation or urgency that spoils the surprise.
I wonder how the project's inventor thinks about browsers and engines, without stint or bias, almost without fail direct questions that have no resale value toward their Wikipedia articles. Since the first speech broadcast to those within ear-shot, the speed of communications has been dangerously out-stripping the speed of comprehension. One writer for Der Spiegel's Eines Tages lost-and-found bureau, invites readers on a monthly adventure with a daisy-chain of nodes and relays from the universal encyclopedia to bring together two topics in seven, possibly specious but always interesting, steps. The latest installment (liediglich nur auf Deustch) by Danny Kringiel links the history and development of rail-transport in Japan with the current state of affairs and exposure with the spying apparatuses of the United States. I am sure such a thesis accepts tangents as well.

your free trial of the internet (inter alia) has expired

After the allure of free congress and enough free samples of everything imaginable, on-line culture is being slowly given a new paradigm that buries much of what the public has become addicted to, casually and without turning back, behind water-marks, clearing-houses, functionality splintered into thousands of idiosyncratic applications, paywalls, subscriptions and compartmentalized by various services that compete rather than communicate with one another, as Buzzfeed's Charlie Warzel presents in a brillant essay on this shift in attitudes and accessibility.

Of course, this pushers' modus operandi developed gradually, and having crossed the threshold of this gateway long ago (which the internet was never intended to be but no more and no less than a resource bridging connections among people and ideas), and the engineers maintaining the network, as well as the general public are not really noticing the drabness descending. It's probably beyond the scope of the article and smacks of tinny and misplaced nostalgia or neo-luddism (Luddismus, angst vor dem Neuland), but the trend seems like a metaphor for a lot of other movements and disclaimers draining the wholesomeness and fun out of things, displaced with approximations of safety, convenience and community, like the surveillance state and its litany of justifications or the empowered lobbies that peddle free samples of genetically-modified food and pharmaand general re-packaging and sponsorship that makes it hard to anything without submitting to some inscrutable authority. What do you think? If it is truly something that people are willing to accept, is this drift tolerated in the on-line world necessarily spilling over into everything else?

everybody comes to rick's or don't tread on me

I am reminded of the exchange from Casablanca between the the conscientious bureaucrat and the croupier:

“I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here,” at which point he his given his take, “Your winnings, sir,” to which the inspector replies, “Oh—thank you very much.”

Russian intelligence agency seeks out vintage typewriters to stay off the net 

United Stasi of America

Legal Eagles

German leadership justifies eavesdropping measures

lexical extraction

Always worth the daily gander for its compilations and master-sessions, Mental Floss, has an illustrated list of graffiti art terminology for different genre, techniques and media for street art. Though the terms are unconventional and probably not standardised and adopted by all artists, that such categories exist shows respect and maturity for such works.