powerhouse or conundrum

There is political and business consensus that the Energie-Wende, Germany’s planned transition away from nuclear dependency and towards more ecologically sustainable energy sources, will demand sacrifice and see a dearer cost placed on utilities, probably a truer reflection of the impact our accustomed lifestyles have on the environment. The recently passed bundle of regulations championing renewables, das Erneuerbare Energie Gesetz (EEG), is expected to propagate an increase in electricity costs of up to two fold in the coming year, which will of course having ripples through out the marketplace, and not ending with the average 50 € annual increase per household. That does not seem like too great of a price to pay but it may continue to climb by the same percent or higher in the following years, and does not take into account other fuels and knock-on prices.

Consumers are not bearing all the costs associated with the greening of the of the energy sector, but a significant contributing factor to the rate hikes households will see is the subsidizing of energy intensive industrial activities with reduced rates and tax exemptions. In some cases, the breaks have probably overreached their intent, places like golf courses beneficiaries of the same savings as factories, but however one feels about this reserved advantage to manufacturing, the lower rates help keep jobs and production in Germany and keep costs for finished goods competitive. Discounts for businesses means that the public have to pay higher rates to keep on track with targets, but should these cuts go away, there will be a certain threshold beyond which it is more economically sensible to relocate production and/or have domestic consumption and exports suffer by higher end-costs. Perhaps a two-tiered, public and corporate standard for carbon-swaps and emissions controls is not far behind, to ensure reforms are not damaging to important businesses.  Germany’s stewardship and aims are admirable, though in this economic environment, such behaviours do not seem to be courting many imitators, and while consumers aren’t exactly footing the entire bill for corporate influentials, but I do feel that a better equilibrium should be struck between commerce and ecology to keep all sides viable and not dishonour those ambitions by merely propping an artificial and hollow sense of affordability, competitiveness and real, overall progress on protecting the environment.

tabula rasa oder pen and ink

With her stylus and ink-pot at the ready, this lady from classical antiquity seems to enjoy drawerering quite a bit. I can’t decide, however, if she would be a graffiti artist herself. Nonetheless, what could go on this blank canvas seems like an open invitation to construct one’s own meme.

swimlanes

I wonder if a flowchart ever really simplified a human decision-making process, or whether such diagrams always instigated a little aversion and defeat at first glance, regardless of content. Such a tool may be fit for representing, in terms of a more natural language, the input/output of computer programming but I think the collection of conditions and operators presented is just another layer shrouding instinct or bias in many cases. Flow diagrams provide a framework for solving algorithms, which computers can become very good at, but are not exhaustive or predictive of every contingency and are probably best at making snarls, choke-points more apparent.

Humans, I believe, are more apt to respond to a proof or a concrete and universal rule, rather than a passably effective way to work something out. While we are not always afforded the luxury of hard and fast laws for guidance and improvisation is called upon, but I do not think that the absence of established rules calls for the creation of provisional systems that either beggar our worse judgment or second-guess real leadership and such a method is not a substitute for an authentic imperative or thorough reasoning.

Once a system or method gets complicated enough, and I believe such code sketched out in long hand would quickly become too complex for human navigators, it becomes fairly convincing.

The people who design such charts are also fairly keen on the credibility of their work-product, and it can become problematic when inventors get too proud over their schemes and throughput. It’s scary to think that such guidelines (the branching off of process charts is called a swimlane), which is the deft guesswork and approximation of machines and field manuals, might be held not to the same rigour and standards as something inviolate and accepted without question.

grammar of ornament

The online consortium of partner museums, Europeana, citing the original artefacts, gives one the means to curate his own special exhibits—like this astounding collection from Black County History in the English Midlands of the conscientious renderings of regional and historic patterns distilled by an astute Victorian observer named Owen Jones in a sampler called The Grammar of Ornament.

There are several colour plates of patchwork patterns typifying Turkish, Egyptian, Far Eastern and Mediterranean designs, as well as European work from different periods, all collected and projected through the lens of that era. Both the European site and its contributing resources are definitely worth a visit, and are sure to leave one inspired and searching for more.

halltree and hutch

We were passing through the town of Kelkheim, in the midst of the conurbations of Wiesbaden and Frankfurt/Main yet still buffered by farmland and with a detectable difference in character that is not always preserved in suburbia. I thought that this modernist water element in the market square was intriguing—water erupting out of and cascading down a verdigris chest of drawers.

It was not until later did I realize that this public fountain was a connect to the town’s living traditions of carpentry and furniture-making. For unbroken generations, I understand, the community’s talent was a nexus for the furniture business, bringing together quality materials, craftsmanship and shrewd entrepreneurship, having the foresight to equip a population on the transition from rural to city living with affordable furnishings, together. The characteristic pieces of the town’s workshops reflect the equally sensible and canny coming together that mark the era of industrialization, Gründerzeit, the Founding Epoch, that created the need for such a profusion in homes and homewares for workers and their families that flocked to the factories seeking work. The furniture is massive and monumental but with an elegance like the architecture of the time, functional and adorned with elements and embellishments of historic movements. The styles prefixed with “neo-,” like Neo-Gothic, Neo-Classic, Neo-Baroque were developed then. It is interesting to appreciate how trends and traditions contribute to one another.