solidarity or putting words into your mouth

Amid the backdrops of a book launch and the notable scope of the tax-avoidance affair of one of the major charm-offense. Cooperation tends to rule the days of crisis, but quickly becomes unraveled once a fix, however temporary, and parties repair to former, incompatible ways. Stimmt. But does this frank posture really suggest its sinister antithesis? Surrendering sovereignty and enslavement through predatory-lending are glosses neither said nor implied but that seems to be the take-away. What do you think? Are politics beholden to the past and the suspicion of double-speak exclusively or is there cause to default to what’s honest and bona-fided?
soccer league presidents (not to mention the entire thrust of re-election), Germany’s chancellor is presenting a rather stilted and baiting

taxi-dancing or stank

Maybe this is not such a novel idea elsewhere, but Germany hosted its first Pheromone Party over this weekend.

It’s curious how the husbandry and hopefulness of match-making, inured for quite some time to the facility of the internet, is returning to the scientific promise that number-crunching seemed to offer. The arena, I’m sure, is still governed by similar computations, like the nurseries of role-playing and the community, the up-keep of adventure-games, but the approach is taking on certain airs. Optimistic participants (mostly young males) slept in the same tee-shirts over several nights, then froze it in an especially designed freezer bags for later presentation. A few, featured potential pairs were pleased when their assessment of their mates’ scent correlated with their looks and personalities. I wonder what credence a certain smell that becomes familiar over time lends to longevity when put before the horse.

cultivar or arctic blast

The latest tipping of the apple-cart is coming in the form, with already untold reach, of a genetic masterwork in the form of an apple that does not brown when bitten into or sliced up, and incorporating the hardiest traits of all natural apple varieties, can fall quite far from the tree, suited to grow in any climate from the orchards of New England to California to the Russian Far-East.

Fast-food chains, school cafeteria and workplace canteens, not to mention grocery store aisles without much in the way of mandatory disclosure or labeling-requirements, have eagerly adopted these shiny, perfect fruits with an extended shelf-life, constituted in such a way as to avoid independent testing and vetting for safety. The apple’s base genetic material is not altered, its DNA, but rather messenger RNA, the component cleaved from DNA that communicates to the powerhouses of cells what proteins to produce and when, has been modified to turn off the browning function, which I suppose is like clotting to fruit. It sounds rather dangerous to switch something like that off. Arctic is the registered name for the engineered produce, I suppose because it stays white. I wonder what they’ll call the run-away “the royal disease.”

graffiato

Sadly, the artwork adorning the formerly longest remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall, at a location known as the East-Side Gallery is being dismantled and relocated to make room for luxury apartments along the Spree, despite massive protests and celebrity support. Seeing an exhibit posted to Atlas Obscura about the mysterious Minoan artefact, discovered in 1908, known as the Phaistos Disc, I saw some resemblance to this graffiti in Berlin. I wonder if the disc was the inspiration. Although its provenance is debated, some archeologists think that the disc of raised hieroglyphs may be an ancient press for making moveable type. Some statements are not, I think, meant to be moved.

# baker-zebra

Chess and its associated stratagems has pretty interesting etymological, if not instantly recognizable rather shallow and bursting through languages’ foundations, roots. The game, as it is known in English, comes from the French term eschequier, after the Latin name for a the table of a counting-house that bore a signature checked pattern, whose contrast may it easier not to miss a coin strayed from the pile.

Such parquet is reduplicated in the gracious marble lobbies of financial institutions and in officers of the Exchequer. A checkmate, of course, refers to a move that keeps the opponent’s king in check, helpless and few alternatives, and the German name of the game and term, Schach and Schachmatt, reveal more about the Persian origins—sheik, shah and such—for ruler or king paired with an even older association than matched or müde (tired, a Yiddish derived folk-etymology but not something without meaning) for the second part, maat, meaning bedded or retiring. For players physically separated from one another, the pound-sign became telegraph notation for a checkmate situation whose shorthand was an important precursor for code later developed, the hash-marks of programming language. Baker-Zebra, or rather Bravo-Zulu in modern parlance, is an old naval semaphore designation, arbitrary, but filed under B housekeeping and the last register to signify a job well-done.

poor-mouthing and paradigm-shift

The rather myopic policies adopted and expressed in various ways throughout the European Union threaten to reintroduce much longer-lasting consequences from internal and external pressures across the economic landscape. Once lauded as the most ambitious and effective ways to curb climate change and promote good stewardship for the environment, the cap-and-trade scheme and carbon-emission is failing and a united-front is reverting to nationalistic policies.

Allowances for polluting have become affordable to the point of investing in further innovation no longer makes good business-sense. Much of the decline is due, of course, to a slow-down in demand and production and the relationship is not without reciprocation but in the longer term, such splintering and attitudes represent a very big set-back in terms of solidarity. What do you think? Is reform something negotiable in the face of immediate perceptions—or is it something to sacrifice, to recalibrate? Environmental policy should not be driven solely by the dictates of the markets, but consumers also have a choice to make.

stirring the cauldron or strongly-worded letter

The a reporter on the International Desk of Der Spiegel spied a curiously counter-productive example of outreach on the public website of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Demonstrating the work that the FBI’s Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit does, the website depicts an image of hieroglyphs that make up a simple substitution cipher, which when cracked, gives instructions for preparing the toxin ricin—a protein of the castor bean (Rizinussamen, the German word does not hide its source very well either), which can be decoded without much bother. The example image is even captioned “Enciphered instructions for making ricin poison found in the notebook of a lone bomber in Virginia.” The methodology set forth is apparently basic but complete and an interested party could produce, with some easy kitchen-witchery, a deadly concoction.