englischer garten or alpengeist

The revelation that Chinese designers and architects were covertly taking measurements of the exemplary Austrian village of Hallstatt to recreate it as a pure tourist attraction in Guangdong province, to the much to the chagrin of many surprised residents, has been circulating for a while. I thought it was just amusing at first, thinking of the earlier, imperfect Chinese copies of a German town, a typical English village from the Cotswolds and even a Disney-esque fun park that came out a bit scruffy looking--or all the sometimes tacky and bordering on cultural stereotype installations put up in Western theme parks, casinos and in restaurants. A whole village, faithfully reproduced or like Bizarro World, however, is a bit unsettling--especially the shells of churches. Maybe imitation is a finer form of flattery and this attention will be good for tourism on both sides of the world, but I think having one's homeland cloned is karmic retribution for entertaining the sale of its mountain peaks. Though such a locale would have been prime real estate for a mad scientist's secret lair or a diabolical organization's headquarters, I don't think the buyer of such vanity property would have had that.

Es ist eine erstaunliche Enthüllung, dass chinesischer Ingenieure haben die vollkommen österreichischen Hallstatt gemessen und analysiert zwecks das Dorf in Guangdong Provinz als Tourismusbetrieb wieder herzustellen. Das ist ältere News aber viele Bewohner sind erschüttert. Das kommt mir komisch vor--gegenüber die dort (früheren) chinesische Nachbauten von anderen europäischen Städten und sogar von Disney Land oder die Abendlands Version von Kulturbegriffe wie im Spielbanken, Erlebnisparks und Restaurants. Das Kopieren eines kompletten Dorfes--originalgetreu oder unvollkommen) ist jedoch mehr störend. Was bedeutet es nun, wenn gibt eine Nachgebildung von eine Kirche? Vielleicht wird diese Nachahmung für den Tourismus an beiden Seiten der Welt gut sein--aber denke ich, dass die Klonierung von Heimat ist Karmagesetz gegen den versuchte Verkauf des ihre Berggipfel ausgeben. Allerdings wäre an einem solchen Ort es optimal, bei geheime Hauptquartier für verrückter Wissenschaftler aufzubauen. Ich denke nicht, dass der schließliche Käufer--oder Österreich--zustimmen würde.

agent 99 or jumping to conclusions

I suppose that this piece of news is highly speculative, since otherwise the secret agents would not be doing a very good job of guarding their tricks of the trade, but I thought it was interesting to hear how seeding search-engine criteria (auto-complete, auto de fey, or whatever suggestions or recommendations are called) could be a method for passing coded messages among spies. It is sort of like those numbers stations on short-wave radio, whose poetic, sibylline utterances were never quite explained—nor totally went silent. I get annoyed sometimes the way search engines try to finish my sentences, although many times Computer knows already what I am going to ask. It would be opportune, I think, to tailor some obscure domain, like the affiliates of major internet players in Tuvalu or Nauru, and skew what those residents, from a marketing point of view, are looking for. Maybe also a translating-service could be coaxed in the same way. At least espionage may be able to exploit the more pedestrian or bizarre buzz on the internet.
Diese Nachrichten scheinen hoch spekulativ, aber ich fand es interessant dennoch: Spione hat andere Betriebs-geheimnesse, aber unter diesen gibt automatische Vervollständigung vielleicht als Verfahren zur Kommunikation. Ähnlich würden das auch die Zahlensender bei Kurzwellenfunknetzen. Die poetisches Prophezeiungen wurden auch nie erklärt, und noch da sind. Es stört mich ein bisschen wenn Suchmaschinen zu vollenden Sie meine Sätze versucht, aber manchmal Computer ist richtig. Das Ändern eines undurchsichtigen Suchdienstes konnte günstig sein: wie exotische Filialen mit exotischer Suchanfragen. Vielleicht konnte derselbe für Übersetzen-Dienstleistungen auch getan warden. Immerhin kann Spionage den normalen und fremden Verkehr im Internet ausnutzen.

voyage voyage

Just about a month out from our next grand adventure, I realize the that more and more planning is going into our vacations.  I do not know exactly how I feel about that, but I also realize that it is not the planning, hand-wringing and failure to keep to schedule that one remembers.  That's forgettable, though the trips are not, and maybe they all started out that way--at least.  I know we've been spontaneous and it is not as if planning accounts for every contingency and relieves one of the ability to be adaptable or shun surprise and discovery--quite the opposite, and I know it's just selective-memory to think of past holidays as seemless and random as traveling in the TARDIS or Count Duckula's castle.  There's a bit of day-dreaming to a plan as well, and that process together is what takes charge when one finally does hit the road.

what's up, tigerlily?

I thought the whole composition with the flowers and one of our recent acquisitions, this Art Deco era marble mantle clock with impeccable French movement, looked rather nice.  The chimes, in synchronicity with the all the dozens of other bells, do not toll the hour with the same dulcet sounds, rather like the tweeting of the pair of birds above, and makes a nice counterpoint.