sunday drive: stangenpyramide oder strawberry fields forever

As promised, I took a little detour to try to find for a second time the monument called the Stangen- pyramide (the pillar or rod pyramid) outside of Dreieich that marks the vista of the Frankfurt am Main skyline from the foothills of the Taunus. It turns out that the site was well-known at the outer edge of a golf course and I had just had bad directions and was being quite well patronised this fine day because of a stand nearby selling strawberries where one could pick them himself.
This symmetrical gradient of four hundred fifty-six columns on the high ground in the middle of the fields but with forested lands visible in the distance beyond the cultivation (the manicured golf-course included) is meant to make people reflect on that forest of skyscrapers ahead and the tangle of antennas and RADAR station that is a satellite installation the airport behind. Although my pictures didn’t do it justice (the towers of the metropolis just visible there above the tree-line), walking down the path that separates the two mirror-hemispheres does offer a pretty spectacular view from this promontory.

bird-watching

Over the past two weeks from our balcony, H and I have been noticing some strange ornothological behaviour. Nearly over the downspout for the rain gutter of our roof, a few little birds have not been feathering a nest but rather, it appears, tending a small garden plot.
The greenery that’s been planted there hasn’t withered away in the sun and looks to be growing. I would not make the leap yet that the sparrows are practising the rudiments of agriculture—although it is pretty clever if they have to foresight (just like not building a nest in a rain gutter) to think that the plants might flower and attract bees or other insects or at the very least act as a sieve or dam to capture bugs that are washed off the roof in the rain. We’ll have to keep an eye on these two and make sure they don’t take over the neighbourhood.

tenterhooks or looming large

In a brilliant gloss for Æon magazine, writer Virginia Postrel presents an an excellent exposition on how textiles and fashions parallel and drive technological advancement.
The broadest example lies in trade, captured famously along the Silk Road, the trade route that saw not only the exchange of cloth but of also knowledge and ideas between the Orient and Occident worlds, and the later shipping empires.
Research into natural pigments and dyeing techniques led to greater understanding the discipline of chemistry. The printing-presses of clothmakers (to imprint patterns) inspired Johannes Gutenberg to establish the publishing industry in the West. It was factories that housed the great power-looms and the flying-shuttle that drove the Industrial Revolution and gave manufacturing countries a distinct advantage, leading to a huge population explosive, lasting environmental impact, colonialism, labour-issues and societal upheaval from those who puzzled over what mass-production meant. The punch-cards that were the basis of programming these steam-powered jabberwockies to produce increasing intricate designs that led to the development of computers. Contemporaneously, cheap and disposable clothing represents the debate on exploitation, out-sourcing and off-shoring—plus our notions of consumption in general. Even if the shirt on one’s back is not yet a Wearable, it is still heir to all the excellence and dread of human achievement, and that is truly something to think about.

reflex arc or virality

It has been demonstrated perennially that yawning is contagious, even across different species.

Studies have also shown that reflective yawning is a good gage for empathy—imitating someone, even unconsciously like crossing one’s legs in the same way or being synchronised in stride or even the more embarrassing slip or copying someone’s diction (where another might believe that he or she are being mocked instead), betrays interest—and yawns are more likely to spread around if there is some spared affinity. Recently someone has even shown that broods of parakeets pass around this reflex in a highly ritualised, choreographed manner. Further, there are theories that yawning helps to coordinate cycles of sleep and wakefulness among close associates (a zeitgeber) and might even be akin to wolfs howling together. Alternatively (but not exclusively), the ability to yawn, and mirror this behaviour, that allowed humans to expand their intellect, being a mechanism to cool overheated brains, aside from fatigue or boredom. There is no definitive consensus on either its social or physiological function, however. Although yawning itself is hardly a memorable act and I’d venture to say that I yawn in isolation when no one else is around, I can’t that’s not a false proposition and I wonder if there wasn’t one primal yawn that’s been passed around, jumping species, ever since.