überholt

Provisionally, the German High Court has ruled that a popular American online service—which to my understanding essentially provides match-making for a much older craft to ply, hitchhiking.
Formerly, a prospective rider could enter his our her itinerary, be it across town or to the airport terminal, and take up the offer, most like, of the lowest or timeliest bidder. It is a bit like car-pool, only made more complicated among absolute strangers that might be perhaps going the same way and impossibly click-happy. Although the protest of the taxi-drivers, who saw their market-nook knocked away, was an important aspect, the justices' decision ultimately took into account the matter of public-safety. As dangerous as hitchhiking is reputed to be, this new scheme could be even more risky, with the winning coach, rickshaw or carriage not necessarily having adequate training or insurance for all liabilities. Although an earlier ruling against services that helped connect people with a spare bedroom or couch with budget-travelers came about over similar concerns—with the spectre of a housing shortage looming in the background but appearing as a favour to traditional hoteliers, a certain anti-entrepreneurial agenda can come across, particularly with a little spin. Of course, bulletin-boards, thumbs and other old-fashioned methods buck legislation. What do you think? Insurance-coverage for Germans is a serious and not slap-dash thing and maybe such models—the hitching-up—are not culturally ready.

hot lips

 There is the bloom of a flowering shrub in South America called the Psychotria elata, which bears an uncanny likeness to a pair of human lips. It has the vulgar name of hookers' lips but that does not detract from its popularity—the rare plant poached for Valentine's greetings. Maybe it is a case of partial pareidolia, since the effect only lasts a short time and the mature flower begins to look rather like a pair of diseased lips that no one would want to kiss—and possibly hence the name—but the effect seems too convincing to be just accidental. I wonder what evolutionary forces could have pedigreed the appearance. There is no lore to the plant that I could locate, other than Amazonian tribes using it for medicinal purposes (earaches, etc.) and no mythology of some forlorn lover transformed out of pity by a sympathetic god or cursed out of spite, humbled spirit of the forest or even vegetable intrigues—the other flowers casting this one out to be forever a curiosity to humans or a sly deal with those man-eaters to lure people deeper into the jungle.
I suppose it probably appears as something else entirely and more straightforward in the eyes of pollinators and predators. Still, I appreciate how well our houseplants have us trained to cater to their needs and wonder if there's not some higher dimension to this selected trait—an evolutionary goal to be cultivated in a hot-house and tended by environmentalists, exchanged as a symbol of affection or blogged about. Naricissus would have liked like the last two especially.

it happened on the way to the fourm: römerkastell saalburg

Though from the perspective where we last left our Romans—growing somewhat more jaded and less idealistic buffeted by power and wealth from all sides—we are jumping ahead, as it would be another two centuries before, but it was interesting to take a detour through the foothills of the Taunus and visit this restored Roman garrison on the Limes after having indulged a series of history lessons. Rome had just had their first encounter with a tribe of the Teutons on the frontier of the Rhôn river during the latter years of the Republic but it would be some time still before they had constructed a fortified border to hold the barbarians at bay. Before launching campaigns in Tunisia, Greece and Turkey (and these lands called Germania seem even more distant), it really strikes me how those consequential but small and nearly petty skirmishes with other Latin tribes were in such close proximity—that Rome was no regional power but a local stronghold like a dozen others, which may have never merited more than a footnote of history.

After victories abroad when Rome was denying social unrest the attention it demanded, a civil war erupted over the stinting of full citizenship for the neighbouring tribes that had been aligned with Rome since its inceptions. Although they fought side-by-side, the Latins were still essentially foreigners and had no means to influence the Senate and policy. Opposition in the Senate feared that rebellious factions could pose a threat to their power with a new constituency of supporters—though the truth was that the Latins were not keen on any Roman politician but wanted their own representation.
Before people from places up and down the peninsula were granted citizenship, there was an awkward civil war—called the Social War, where the Latins formed their own government, based off the Roman model, and begrudging Rome the assistance it needed and called themselves the Italic Republic. Archeologists discovered the ruins and artefacts in this spot, just outside of Frankfurt, in the mid-1800s and under the commission of Emperor Wilhelm II rebuilt the installation from 1900 to 1914 to educate the public to this known yet undiscovered heritage of this area. I was impressed with the stalls and rustic kitchens, which really were rustic kitchens, in the modern sense—with the archeological finds to back it up.

it happened on the way to the forum: oh weal, oh woe or sacer esto

 The matter of wealth disparity was the gravest threat to a Rome who had managed to quell all external threats, but the need for reform went virtually unnoticed by the Senate, who were each preoccupied with enlarging their estate own for fear that their colleague across the aisle might be able to eventually absorb the others holdings.

After another casting off of traditional laws regarding the sacrosanctity of the person of the tribune (the office made the holder untouchable—sacer esto, let him be accursed, for interfering with the business of the State) during the perennial gridlock over social legislation, the dissenting party, vetoing ever law brought before him, was merely instead removed by an angry mob loyal to the status quo for the sake of political expediency, rather than observing checks and balances that had been in place for centuries, patient but now having become too trying.  Laws were codified that made ostentation and extravagant displays of wealth a crime as well as new restrictions on how much land one man was allowed to accumulate.

There were ways, however, to skirt these new regulations with shifting fashion and the limitless expanses of the frontier colonies. These problems did not pass unrecognised by all, though, with many moralising figures arising in politics, like Cato the Elder, who warned of this new decadence—and even in the far-away kingdom of Pergamon in Asia-Minor. Nominally under the rule of first the Persians, then the Greeks and now the Romans, the last in a dynasty of philosopher-kings, without an heir of his own, decided to bequeath the lands and wealth of Pergamon to the people of Rome, in order to avoid further civil-strife there. The Senate interrupted the king's last testament differently and were not about to throw open the doors of the treasury (for fear of run-away inflation for price- and power-parity) to the rabble. This under-appreciated magnanimous act did not sit well with the people of Pergamon either.