natron valley

Never mind the hiring underlaps at the Centres for Disease Control and the frittering away of institutional knowledge that means America is woefully ill-equipped to face the next virulent outbreak—meaning that the nation becomes a vector for the rest of the world, or the heartlessness of stripping health-coverage from those most in need of it, routine surgeries and treatments are being postponed because of a rather baffling shortage of medical grade sodium bicarbonate (baking soda).  Used in a number of treatments, health care providers are getting desperate and suspect that the scarcity—which has occurred periodically—is the unfortunate collusion of factors chief among them being there’s little incentive in making this basic ingredient—unlike the proprietary drugs that rake in huge, exploitative profits. Perhaps some substitute is about to be brought to market that performs the same function at eight thousand times the cost. Most other governments would intervene before things get to point where healthcare is at the mercy of a few powerful cartels.

kegelbahn

Via Boing Boing, our attention is turned to marvel at the photographic eye of Robert Goetzfried as he explores the patterns and retro architecture that frame bowling alleys—lanes for Kegeln to be more precise, that one finds in bars, restaurants, sports club houses and guest houses in Germany. With the rules of the game having been codified by none other than reformer Martin Luther, it’s probably apt to characterise devotion to the game, especially in rural Bavaria where most of the images were captured, as a religious one.  Ogle the photographer’s whole gallery at the links up top.

swap meet

Hyperallergic contributor Mark Dery pens a thoughtful essay lamenting eBay’s transformation to a model more akin to other on-line retailers who specialise in plying wares similar to ones that a given shopper has already expressed an interest in from its origins as an on-line flea market (Flöhmarkt, les puces), souk, arcade or yard sale.
Rather than trying cater to consumers by gainsaying what they might like, eBay encouraged critical meandering, the bailiwick of the committed flâneur. The dissonance and the disconnect are essential for experiencing serendipity, the non sequitur, and are patently more character building than having everything that one is interested in or concerned for served to them in tidy package. Ghost malls are a bellwether and a parallel casualty to marketing but in their homogenising brought about their own demise. Old eBay was the emporium that facilitated the exchange of items befitting a Wünderkammer like bizarre taxidermy specimens, celebrity detritus or the simulacra of Jesus and Mary in food items and was a source of associated folklore for some of these transaction, but the new eBay hardly has any auctions any more with the trend towards the bourgeoisie smug and no place for the weirder categories.

seoullo 7017

A Dutch architectural group (previously here and here) has recently completed a project undertaken in Seoul that’s given the city an elevated, tree-lined walkway above the street traffic. A disused highway overpass that stretches more than a kilometre across the metropolis and was slated for demolition but civil engineers envisioned other plans, similar to New York City’s High Line.