ravelin or navi knows best

Although I really appreciate GPS (a navigational system) for never saying, “Why do you want to go there?” though turning really bossy and panicky if one strays from the direct route and sometimes betraying a twisted sense of humour, maybe sometimes the question should be asked. On the way back from one of the few errands that I need to drive to accomplish, I decided to find out what Fort Biehler exactly was. I had spied this turret from the Autobahn every time I passed that way but it turned out it was not part of the fort at all, but a much older watchtower (Warte) of the village of Erbenheim, the landmark built in 1497. It difficult to find the right angle and distance to take a picture of the tower, which had little contrast against the overcast skies but some thoughtful person put a miniature model in his garden, though the actual tower was facing just beyond.
The fort, I found out after a long walk through the neighbourhood and the forest was an inaccessible ruin, cordoned off behind a security fence in a training groud used by the German and America military for exercises and there was not much to see of the foundations itself.
Completed in the last decades of the 1800s, Fort Biehler was part of a massive ensemble of defensive constructs known as Fortress Mainz, this area being where the Palatinate's possessions slipped south of the Rhein and into Hessian holdings, named in honour of the chief of the Prussian corps of engineers and architect, General Hans Alexis von Biehler, who designed many such structures, including the citadel at Spandau and was nearly as prolific as his French rival, Marquis de Vauban, whom we've chased around during our travels as well.
In accordance with the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, Fortress Mainz was defanged and the fort was used to garrison French forces before eventually being cannibalised for building material in the 1930s. With sweeping views of Wiesbaden and Mainz from this area, it was easy to imagine the vantage such a fortification had and I'm glad that GPS devices are not overly opinionated or timid about exploring.

of mice and men or hoodoo economics

Though it is hard to say how well the experiment's participants were shielded from the fact that they were subject to research, since knowing that one is taking part in a psychological or behavioural study makes people act in strange ways, trying to prove their cleverness or uniqueness—the observer-expectancy effect, sort of like a clinical Stockholm Syndrome, the Frankfurter Rundschau (via the English daily the local) features the work of a sociological battery of test conducted in Bamberg, raising the stakes, to illustrate how a competitive environment can quickly undermine our convictions and values.

It's really horrible to contemplate that human participants were willing to speculate and bargain, a race to the bottom, with the certain death of lab rats (though I am sure no animals were harmed in the name of that particular study and maybe as the opportunists were thinking too), but selling out one's morals, rather than being abetted by an embarrassment of choices and conscientious alternatives, goes unaided and even further compromised by the prospect of a bargain, since even with an extreme example (reductio ad Hitlerum, seriously) we are failing to recognise that our consumer decisions are easily overturned and the consequences of those choices become marginalised, buying known or strongly suspected goods produced under objectionable conditions or taking the more expedient route when we ought to know better. What do you think? The unbraided market and government policies are strong influences but not moral imperatives. Is the chance to make a deal indicative of sellers' remorse and moral bankruptcy?

heel, toe or a shoe-horn, the kind with teeth

Every time there is a strong gust of wind, the astroturf on my balcony of my little apartment flies up at the edges and forms bubbles across the surface. When the winds calms down, I try to flatten it out and readjust it against the edges, which is difficult to do since portions of where it was pasted to the concrete still hold fast and there's no where to step where the carpet shouldn't be—and I am not going to attempt bracing myself up since I am not on the ground floor and should not try any dangerous acrobatics. I decided I needed a weight to hold the edges and a planter or anything heavy would have sufficed, but I got it in my head that I should have one of those “anchors” I always see at flea markets.
I always thought that they looked kind of cool but I could not imagine until now what they might be good for, besides stubbing one's toes on. I did not spy any for a couple of weeks, and even asked and told H about my idea—“You know, those little anchors.” No one knew what I was talking about, especially something that one can always find. I found one, but it turns out it's not an anchor at all, but I suppose could be modified for that purpose, but rather a cobblers' tool, like a little anvil for forming and beating a shoe into shape. It always works for the purposes of holding down indoor-outdoor carpeting.

prism break or needle in a haystack

Little Brother with the GCHQ (Government Communi- cations Headquarters) and fibre-optics wire-tapping programme is certainly nothing to scoff at and possibly out-does its America cousin in terms of brute invasiveness and bookkeeping, with a platform called Tempora. These examples are surely not the lone, or even principle players, in the global vying for data collection and probably one could assume that any armament exporting countries have built the same infrastructure, pawning off excess capacity and physical liabilities to importing nations as red herrings, though flawed maybe in confusing data with intelligence but petit-sophisticates in realising dominance and prosecuting wars in a tidy and more profit-saving way.
Surely Germany has a Stasi-Rebooted programme in the fight, which probably explains the dispro- portionately mild accusations and demands for explanation levied against the Americans—for fear of looking like hypocrites for having the same aspirations and no country is trusting and completely innocent. The internet is always adapting and a few steps ahead of the surveyors and here are a few professional tips and upgrades that you can use to stave off (or at least watch) the nosiness and eavesdropping—that is, if you can believe this resource is not a front thrown together to get people to load software on their communication devices to make prying them open even easier.