gold doubloons and pieces of eight

Kottke shares an interesting project to help pull up its boot-straps about the developing phenomenon of alternative currency. Using Bit-Coin as a point of departure, the documentary in the making aims to not just demonstrate how any one with a computer can create a tiny bank in full faith and with credit but also to question what the public deign as fiat and therefore trustworthy and exchangeable.

What is it that makes a government mint any more or less legitimate than any other up-and-comers? It is a funny thing that these producers are soliciting donations in order to finish their project and would probably prefer actually recognised money over a trillion PfRC lira. What do you think? Are imagined curries as good as the real thing so long as one believes in them? Would you want the security that your investments, wealth are redeemable in at least food and shelter?

émigré

The Local (Germany's English daily) has a provocative op-ed piece reflecting on the distinction among the German terms Ausländer, Zuwanderer, Einwanderer and the self-styled ex-patriate and the connotations the words carry.

The adopted designation of expat, in general, is usually reserved for communities of professionals, sojourners under contract and with a housing-allowance, retirees or self-exiles (like the French equivalent) from lands less exotic and swarthy in German eyes. Moreover, ex-patriate conjures up romantic ideas of the Lost Generation and cafe-culture in Paris, Berlin and on the Italian riviera—whereas the words for foreigner and immigrant, while not necessarily with mean intent or like the politically-correct classification of mit Immigrationhintergrund that seems to suggest the opposite of good-will, are selectively applied to unwilling refugees and to guest-workers, who generally take on unskilled jobs. There are the same nuances in English, of course, and many loaded ways to not talk about xenophobia. I usually consider myself having gone native—or as a legal alien. What do you think, and how carefully do you choose your words?

humdrum

Maria Popova from Brain-Pickings has crafted another brilliant and consciousness-expanding on the formative and soulful importance of boredom. This is simple boredom being addressed here, restlessness and not ennui, world-weariness, which Oscar Wilde quipped as the one unforgivable sin.
The essay examines the nature of being bored through the lens of various writers and disciplines, showing how it is disdained as childish thing, something to be beaten back post-haste with one’s full quiver of distractions and shiny-objects and something that one ought to out-grow as soon as possible. Not a disheveling feeling that necessarily matures into quiet meditation or offers more than a vague sense of irritation of not knowing precisely what one wants, expects or can look forward to, boredom is nonetheless developmentally critical and something that ought to be cultivated—and not repelled, especially in children though that irritability that comes of unsure footing can quickly escalate. Boredom is essentially attention untethered, and when indulged, it allows care and courtesy to bob along until it can leash itself to something new and novel—in new and novel ways. The full article is an inspired and rewarding read, and makes one pause to think about how quickly one reaches for any number of pacifiers when made to queue-up.

ad confluentes

We had the chance recently to visit the city of Koblenz, where the Moselle joins the Rhein, and survey the colossal monument to Prussian Emperor Wilhelm I, designed by the architect Bruno Schmitz who collaborated with other artists to build other gigantic monuments in the area, from high above on the cliff-top campus of Festung Ehrenbreitstein (Fort Honoured-Broad-Stone). This ruler wanted more than cooperation, strategic partnerships and petty tyrants but unity among the peoples of Germany.
Wilhelm never realised this goal during his reign and more democratic institutions were responsible for that, as for the Weimar Republic that followed soon afterwards, but the monument was erected originally to commemorate the decisive Battle of Sedan. Successive governments then used the monument as a call for unity.
It was the figure that is evoked in the patriotic song Die Wacht am Rhein and during the 1980s, an image of the sculpture was used in West Germany as a rallying point for unity, with the iconic symbol of the Deutsches Eck being the standard sign-off signal for television stations at the end of the broadcasting day (before the advent of 24 hour, continuous programming) shown, from this vantage point with the national anthem. Herman Melville, along with other contemporary writers, makes mention of the fortress above in Moby Dick, “this pulpit, I see, is a self-containing stronghold—a lofty Ehrenbreitstein,” and the massive installation is a venue for exhibits on art and history.
Though the fort was never taken in battle, the statue below was heavily damaged in 1945, less than fifty years after its dedication, by an American bomb-run and the French administration of the Trizone forwarded a proposal to demolish the giant completely and put a peace memorial in its place. Those plans were never realised and the decision to restore and rededicate the monumental statue at the head-waters was announced in 1990, just after Reunification.