Monday, 26 March 2018

ideation

In order to help the public visualise the mental health crisis being silently, uncomfortably weathered in the UK with suicide being the chief cause of mortality among males (three-quarters of suicide are carried out by men) under forty-five, a broadcaster has lent the roof of its headquarters tower to make a harrowing and arresting statement. Each of these eight-four figures—the number chosen as it represents on average the number of suicides in the UK per week, and each figure is based on an individual whom we have lost to suicide and tells his story.

cracking and packing

The term for establishing a political advantage for a partisan group by manipulating the boundary delimitations of electoral precincts known as gerrymandering saw its minting originally on this day in 1812 with a political cartoon by engraver and illustrator Elkanah Tisdale run in the newspaper Boston Gazette.
The caricature of a map of the districts of South Essex of the state of Massachusetts threated by a monster, a legendary salamander of medieval bestiaries—rendering what’s known as a persuasive map—was prompted by Governor Elbridge Gerry’s decision to redraw the area’s balloting zones to tilt favour towards the controlling senatorial party, the Democratic-Republicans. The portmanteau entered common-parlance by 1848 and occasionally other political bosses earn the suffix –mander for forwarding similar agendas. Incidentally, the Federalists, who advocated for a stronger central government, won the election and Gerry and his cronies were unseated though Essex county remained under Democratic-Republican control.

Sunday, 25 March 2018

eine richtig gute laune der natur

Though perhaps not a global brand (but that status probably works to the advantage of the drink’s image and reputation), the soft-drink Bionade is certainly popular in Germany and across Europe and rather famously rebuffed efforts by one of the world’s major cola licenser’s to buy the rights to bottle it and it was first formulated and is still produced today just around the corner in Ostheim vor der Rhรถn.
Back in 1995, worried about the solvency of the family brewery and anticipation a trend of healthier living, the Braumeister sought to diversify by offering a non-alcoholic beverage that adhered to the German purity regulations that govern how beer is brewed and produced an organic, fermented drink which after a battery of experiments yields a bit of glucose rather than alcohol and flavoured with a secret recipe of fruit and herbal essences. Culturally, thanks in part successful marketing campaigns and product-loyalty by an identified demographic, the drink has earned the earned the clichรฉ of Bionade-Biedermeier—sort of like Champagne-Socialist or Bourgeois-Bohemian but a gentler rebuke. Bionade comes in several varieties including Holunder (Elderberry—said to boost immune-response), Lychee, Orange-Ginger, Black Currants, Quince with Herbs and Strong.

would you mind coming with me, piglet, in case they turn out to be hostile animals

Minted in the realm scientific methodology, the literary allusion to the Woozle effect—that is, appeal to authority or evidence reinforced by frequent citation—was first used to criticise confirmation bias in research and long-term studies three decades after A. A. Milne first portrayed Winne-the-Pooh and Piglet embarking off into a snowy Hundred Acre Wood to track down the elusive Woozle. The down believe that they are bearing down on the mysterious creature, until as Christopher Robin points out to them, they are going around in circles and tracing their own footprints.
Woozle hunting or the Woozle effect occurs when a thesis or argument is premised upon an earlier reference that itself lacks scientific rigor or unverified claims and whose non-facts become the basis of urban-myth or custom. Examples of this phenomenon might be the prohibition of not wearing white shoes after Labor Day—which was just a snobbish joke that became culturally ingrained or the avoidance to leads to clumsy syntax by citing misplaced grammatical rules about not splitting infinitives (to boldly go where no man has gone before) or ending a sentence with a preposition (this is the sort of tedious nonsense up with which I will not put)—both rules made for Latin and not English since they were each grammatically impossible to do and in the case of the latter, English absolutely excels sensibly at what can be called prepositional stranding. Of course, there can also be more serious and stubborn examples of the Woozle effect in public discourse.

Saturday, 24 March 2018