listening post or king under the mountain

There has been much discussion of late of the special relations that Germany shares with the United States but it is really difficult to envision the historic scope in abstract, encouraging words. Here is a map overlay with the addresses of US military installations in the country, starting with outposts and commands captured immediately following the surrender of Nazi Germany (the superimposition, excavation also reveals a lot about where those former facilities were) and evolving over the course of the intervening decades. All these coordinates were taken from public sources and some are already on the map—thank you very much, but I am sure that more than a few missteps and red herrings have been tossed in to determine who might be angling for this information.

View Outreach in a larger map

A favourite Cold War admission by the Soviets was owning that they knew all about maneuvers and where munitions were hidden by the Americans not through sophisticated spying but by simply monitoring subtle changes in the water—from a safe distance downstream, since soldiers in the field and remote locations were not wont to relieve themselves at the latrine. The sampling was quite telling. Though most sites have been abandoned and returned to the German government since decades, there was quite a concerted and concentrated effort that went on for years, driven by different factors, from the nightmares of battle and hubris, to reconstruction and containment, to ideological brinksmanship and polarisation and on to homesteading and inertia.

From a distance, it looks like it one could hardly turn around in West Germany without encountering an army base, but it is interesting to zoom in and see what occupies (or doesn't) that land now, an exploration of places both famous and obscure, and speculate about what activities might have been going on very near you in years past.

shofar, shogood

Rosh Hashanah garnered a bit of publicity by a friendly and surprising missive, but although the name of the holiday means “head of the year” it is not exactly like New Year's Eve on the Jewish calendar.

Instead Rosh Hashanah is the anniversary of the creation of the the first man and first woman (Adam and Lilith, the first and more liberated mate) and marks a time for solemnity and self-reflection. Three ledgers are updated this day, one for the good, one for the wicked and one for those somewhere in between. In fact there are four distinct beginnings commemorated on the Jewish calendar, the first day of the first month that marks the beginning of time (1. Tishei) to count the passage of years, the agricultural new year for planting (15. Shevat), a new year for the counting of months and reckoning when festivals fall (1. Nisan)—like the Moveable Feast of Easter, and a new year for figuring tithing obligations for livestock (1. Elud). It's not a simple matter and certainly not just your typical revelry—learning about the culture is quite interesting and nuanced in unexpected way, however certain traditions have been translated into the Christian calendar, like eating black-eyed peas for good luck and the conventional German New Year's greeting of “gute Rutsch!” a successful sliding, transition into the new year, originated from the Yiddish for a good Rosh.

cipher or three-letter-initalism

I used to pride myself on being able to recognize a good deal of the county-coded car licensing-system of Germany.
I got pretty good at telling who was a long way from home and it was an engrossing meals to learn about different communities when a unfamiliar plate passed by, but I think now I am falling behind. As of mid-July, however, the competent authorities of Frankonia and other localities have released, re-introduced the naming convention of 1973 when smaller jurisdictions were annexed into their surrounding counties. The decision has proved wildly popular as a chance for expression, personalization and local patriotism and slowly the new license plates are appearing on the road. As the trend is sure to take on, it's chaos, I think, and I have a lot more to learn. H told me that the new, nostalgic abbreviations often were used in the classifieds for properties and he never knew what MET or KÖN or GEO meant.

yaarg! or a darkly-adapted eye

Although losing an eye was certainly an occupational hazard (I can only imagine terrible incidents with splinters), the stereotypical pirate did not, it seems, wear an eye-patch only to cover up a handicap nor to look like a veteran.

The accessory is only associated with the rogues of the sea-going profession but seems to have a scientifically confirmed practical use in preserving night-vision. Constantly rushing below and above deck takes time for vision to acclimate, especially when entering into the dazzling sun and preserving one eye accustomed to the darkness and switching sides allowed the pirate captain not to be completely blinded in the transition.  What other costume items do you think might need disabusing?

wahlkampf

German partisan politics prides itself on being about platforms and delicately negotiated partnerships and not about personalities, though in practice this is not always the case. A huge campaign poster of the incumbent, not espousing any slogan in particular, other than with the status quo, the country is in good hands with a signature pose.
The opposition is crying foul, saying that such a display, and usually such big billboards are only allowed by election monitors under very specific conditions, is reducing the governing coalition into a cult of personality, veering dangerously close to American-style politics and polarization. And of course, there is some free-publicity thrown into the mix, what with the necklace (Kette) in black, red and gold that Angela Merkel wore during the only televised debate with her chief rival catching notice and being bestowed with the strange kind of personhood of a social-networking presence—sort of like a sausage, pin or match-stick from one of the Brothers' Grimm lesser-known fairy tales. What do you think? Does charisma necessarily dilute stance? In the States, no one would bat an eye at this sort of showmanship and instead try to outdo the competition. I like the straightforward promises of one candidate, a local hopeful—opportunity, education and Beer, repeated ad infinitum on lamp posts.

netiquette or sos, sms

Bob Canada's Blog-World makes an excellent commentary on the prescience of Star Trek. In a few panels, the author shows how even in the retro-future of 1991, the series predicted that for some people virtual Facetime becomes more of a priority than actual face-time—not discounting all the other wildly hopeful and innovative developments that Star Trek has envisioned. Have you experienced the same treatment, understudied, or are you, etiquette-wise, guilty of being a Romulan yourself?

pinocchio or bukimi no tani

BBC Future unpacks (inactive link) an idea taken as a given with mixed results, ranging from gut-instincts, testimonials and test-groups to research studies that makes the parabolic projection of the the so-called “uncanny valley” a phrase first coined in robotics some forty years ago by a Japanese inventor who used the term in an essay more elusive.
As the imitation approaches closer and closer to the original, there is a proportional feeling of unease that ends in aversion—or that's what experience teaches at least and there is a general belief it is something vainglorious to romance the mirror. I think too I should feel pretty disturbed if I cannot distinguish a human from a replicant, an avatar or a zombie, and would reject aping perfection out-of-hand. More often, I think, I have mistook a living operator for something computerized. The article is definitely worth the read and I find it interesting that the topic is introduced via a project to build a humanoid robot to assist children diagnosed with autism to better read facial expressions and non-verbal communication. I wonder if that says more about how we perceive humanness and otherness than the cosmetics of an android.