visitenkarte

A talented graphic-artist had a vision for a very minimalistic, classy business card (discovered and re-imagined at Boing Boing), which highlights one’s essential modes of contact and communication, like parsing parts of speech or a particularly long German word, with one’s email address.

This is a very basic and clever way to convey a lot. Mine is sort of a fantasy card, since I don’t have my own domain-name—yet, though I am happy with my little niche in the web and those exclusive addresses are probably just like vanity plates, nor am I particularly social or electronically gregarious, I suppose. How would you design a simple and effective calling-card?

 

kwisatz haderach or struldbrugg

Science maven Maggie Koerth-Baker, a few weeks ago, filed some very clever observations on longevity and the need for people to riddle out a formula or pattern for long, healthy lives--prefacing the dispatch with something to the effect, if a supercentenarian, whilst chain-smoking, eating chocolate, not exercizing, drinking red wine and turnip juice, jumped off a bridge from Okinawa to Andorra--would you do it too... No habit or diet is shared for those who reach extreme old age, though science is trying to fit it to a certain paradigm, but neither is it purely locked up in genetic predisposition.

I think maybe the common-quality lies in attitude, though I am sure it is still the exception or the exceptional that makes the rule. Petty anxieties telescoped beyond their power for harm or for good are surely counter-productive. The Big Think, also a few weeks ago, featured a good lecture, Fear is the Mind Killer (an homage to Frank Herbert's Dune-cycle), about this subject, which I thought triangulated well with prevailing healthy attitudes and stride. The lecture addresses the subtler names for different degrees of fear found in Hebrew. It's true how we give it a name and independent existence with our internal-dialogues, mental-vocalization, like "I'm afraid I'll be late," "I'm afraid I won't make a good impression," "What if I get sick," "What if the money runs out." These little-deaths always resolve themselves, but one does tend to weigh them as clear and imminent dangers. It is no mean feat to stop worrying and maybe a little bit naïve dismiss or ignore what's burgeoning, but at least, with the acknowledgement of these little killers, one might also pause to not only name it but also to assess (to mantra-tize it) the damage it could do.

boxcar

After being guided to see such a neat rendition of Anonymous, retribution disguised behind a Guy Fawkes' revolutionary mask, that we had to navigate in the dark the canals of the city to find this again sprayed on a bridge pylon,

I thought that that was surely a sign, an omen that there was to be an imminent and spectacular dispensation of righteous reckoning with promised economic and political consequences for not sharing secrets.

That jolt has not yet materialized and some sore politicking may lead to more delays and hierarchical disputes, but I did think it was a good time to share this image round-up of street art.

These first three were part of a group found in the underpass by the canal dams of Bamberg.

The next was in a small satellite train-station near Leipzig, decorated throughout.

The last grey one is an older picture, from 2005, found in a pedestrian tunnel in Luxembourg.

legendary creatures or there be dragons here

I was reading about the discovery of a new dinosaur fossil that will take its scientific nomenclature from the legends of tormenting dragons that primative finds possibly inspired in the first place. The mythological beast, the Cyclopes, was also probably inspired by discoveries of the skulls of mammoths by ancient Europeans who did not know how to interpret an elephant relative’s remains. I was reminded of my own find while climbing the arid sands of the Great Wandering Dune of Pyla. I thought it was the bleached skull of a little dragon, but upon discovering more, I later realized it was probably the vertebrae of some real animal instead. I still like my little dragon skull, and behind it there is a white holey stone called an Adder stone (oder ein Hühnergott), a rock worn down by time and tide, and which was a talisman or charm for ancient people. 

I always kind of felt sorry for the dragon that Saint George slew. One sees the saint vanquishing the beast depicted quite a lot on the arms of villages, counties and countries (so one gets the opportunity to reflect on such things all the time), but I think that this popular mascot was just a bully. The dragon was probably a gentle and misunderstood beast, maybe a scapegoat--and the last of its kind. Though I am sure a lot of national heralds were displeased to find their patron delisted, I thought it was kind of appropriate that Pope John Paul II, however respecting traditions, desanctified St. George for being as mythical as the monster he killed.