hey mister talleyrand or church and state

An obscure and archaic concordat (the name for a treaty drawn up between an ecclesiastic and secular state) between the Kingdom of Bavaria (and its successor, Freistaat Bayern) and the Holy See was quietly renewed at the beginning of the year, pledging public funds for the up-keep of churches, parochial schools and the salaries of bishops, who were in a sense displaced. Prior to the French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic Wars, the kingdoms of Germany, within the Holy and Roman Empire of the Germans, were quite unlike their neighbouring domains, never united and made up of a patchwork of territories with all manner of varying privileges, rights, freedoms, and thrall, with many city states answerable to no one but the emperor and with powerful and influential networks.
A parallel clerical hierarchy was its own second state wielding a different influence but also with their own wealth and land-holdings. On-going political pressure from the government of France, culminating in revolution and conquering marches, for unity and orderliness—plus a princeling’s ransom that saved some toy kingdoms from being annexed, resulted in alliances forming in Prussia and land-grabs on the part of defeated and diminished states that prompted them towards mediatisation, secularization of church property.
Bavaria alone acquired some 14 000 square kilometers of land (after having loss some 10 000 sq km in the wars), plus the attending population and revenues from bishoprics, monasteries, abbeys, and convents (in addition to a few autonomous enclaves, principalities and locales with imperial immediacy). The decision to absorb church lands was one of the last of the Empire, but the Vatican brokered a deal with Bavaria in 1817 provides that the government maintains former church property, which is still in effect.

The some eleven million euro annually that Bayern spends is quite a bargain, though some tax-payers might object, for all the gains, and the renewal of agreement did not change this year in kind—only pooling funds for distribution, so that the leaders of individual diocese are not on state payroll. While churches and institutions are cared for (other Europe countries have also negotiated their own care-taker agreements with the Holy See with differing provisions), still it makes for some awkward and immemorial bureaucracy where holy sites fall under the sometimes (yet) competing jurisdictions of government, religion and the league of historical and cultural preservation.

the latrix or virtual reality

I missed this study and rather fanciful proposal from astrophysicists at the University of Bonn, which Wired magazine makes eloquently accessible with plenty of science-fiction and philosophical allusions, stating that essentially by observing the paucity, the tiniest corners, of the Universe that humans are able to simulate (it is an escapingly small environ that can be recreated in the laboratory but because the dimensions—but apparently not the focus—are so limited, we can see there is an underlying quantum lattice-work that does not admit to superimposition, sort of like the antiquated idea of electron-shells) and the upper-limits of how energetic something can be, one begins to find the edges—like dots of pointillism that arrange themselves to form a full picture or the mechanics behind a carnival ride.

Suspending disbelief for a moment, these barriers suggest a self-contained experiment with fixed parameters, elusive but not beyond the eventual acuity of the persistent and morbidly curious. Perhaps this is a clue, peeking behind the curtain, but (and I am sure popular speculation goes far beyond the claims and competency of the research) but it also may be a phenomena programmed into our scientific methods and props. Not too long ago, I can recall, sort of an enthusiastic worry that eventually the advancing capacity of digital imagery with exponential mega-pixels could eventual out-map the real world, pictures containing more “information” than their subjects. I wonder how this will play out.

grand coalition or what say you, alcibiades?

Peer Steinbrück, former finance minister to his current rival and Social Democratic Party (SPD) pick for this year’s election for the chancellery, made just be pontificating with a political sound-bite but insists the German government must afford the Greek government the chance to repair its economy and not be made to wither under draconian cost-cutting measures whose long-term effects will surely be the opposite from what’s intended or hoped for. Germany would certainly not abide by such conditions, and should not bully and bait others. Greece’s predicament has not gone away and the full reality of the situation, I think, only comes creepingly in the light—not just in terms of disclosure, which is I think the wrong focus, but also by repercussions to morale and opportunity. Many times, I’ve argued that the tragedy is a manufactured one with no bearing on the people and the country but given how it is quietly escalating and enduring off everyone’s radar, maybe I should revise no bearing to no judgment. Campaigning or not, let’s hope cooler heads prevail and thoughts are not only spared for the convenience of the government.

orange

Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands recently announced that she would be abdicating this Spring, in favour of her son and successor.
Unfortunately, there are no such plans for Prince Charles of the United Kingdom. I do really admire Elizabeth II and certainly would not be eager to see her relinquish the throne, I do also sympathize with the prince, who’s got one of the most awkward posts in the world, as heir-apparent, since a promotion is only possible should someone pass away, as Charles himself has conceded many times. The celebratory mood in the Netherlands did not fail to permeate into Wiesbaden, which has an intimate connection with the royal family that I failed to register until this occasion. The line of Nassau hails from here, specifically with the palace in Biebrich as their primary residence. Vestiges of these connections abound, great and small, in endowments, architecture and institutions throughout the city (especially in the way they differentiate their portion of the national public banking system), with storied histories that defy the overlooking and wonder, but still sometimes it takes an out-of-the-ordinary event (and special guests) to excite heritage and legacy.

bridey murphy or mesmerize

Accidentally, I discovered a pamphlet—a book, really, but there was such a paucity of substance as to make modern de-sophisticates a little dismissive, on the subject of self-hypnosis from the early 1960s.
At times the tone of the discipline took on this familiar, yet unheard for these disciplines for me, which seemed to have been something akin to a huge craze, apologetic, open and self-effacing tone of gimmicky schemes, modern touts for exercise equipment and miracle diets. Still curious, I read on, knowing that such disdain was exactly what the bulk of the argument warned about: people are simply more accustomed to failure than success and suggestible to a fault, and stressed the safety of auto-hypnosis, dispelling apparently equally stern warnings against enthusiastic self-treatment. Like all forms of meditation, and prayer even, these techniques seem far from the pseudo-science of quack tonics or séance sessions, and at worse a placebo, and though discipline and patience is never an appealing delivery system, and likely a sort of psychic flexibility that can work in surprising ways—unexpected too since one’s own faulty beliefs are trying to remedy themselves.
Personally, I am not a stranger to the passing yet memorable thrill that’s called self-help and though I can’t always keep up some mantras, no matter how good and sensible the advice, I was convinced when despite my concentration on apparent vanities, even with unrealistic expectations but allowable since they were daily companions for quite some time, bigger and more defining anxieties instead surfaced and allowed themselves, I felt, to be redressed. That was pretty keen. In the end, I suppose, I wonder why such a fad was a fad and then was forgot and what sort of turf battle occurred to end this study’s popularity.

manager of mirth or as you like it

The Bard, William Shakespeare, had such a circumspect command of English grammar (and other languages besides) as to be able to depart significantly from convention and intersperse his plays with what is regarded now as natural and essential parts of speech but created or rather committed to paper transformations of verbs in to noun counterparts and vice-versa and coined the antithesis for many words. The action to manage was in common parlance but not so a manager; there was hearten but no dishearten, the same for inaudible—not to mention inventive and intuitive words for the nonce, like swagger and belongings. One convention Shakespeare was unable to buck, however, was the Elizabethan proscription again having women on the stage and all roles were played by male actors. Often in the stage directions, one can find the abbreviation, “Dr.A.G.,” dressed as a girl, in other words, when these characters were cued. It was not until the latter half of the nineteenth century that the term drag (and the counterpart for a cross-dressing female, drab—dressed as a boy) appeared again in print, but maybe the idea can be traced by to the playwright as well.

1993 or janet reno, meter-maid

There was recently an afternoon happy-hour poll on Mental Floss that invited readers to participate in a rather nebulous exercise, which really turned into some provocative and poignant searching for me.
 The question posed asked what people were doing twenty years ago on that particular day, and though that date registered nothing particularly memorable, like the days the Kennedys were shot, the moon-landing or 9/11, I do have a few resources, like diaries than reach back nearly that far and watching the daily addendum to the Tagesschau (the nightly national news report) that broadcasts (sometimes with extensive warning labels) the installment from two decades ago. In the early part of 1993, William Jefferson Clinton was inaugurated as president of the United States, poet and statesman Václav Havel became the president of the young Czech Republic, it was the dread beginning of nostalgic adaptations first with the Beverly Hillbillies and The Fugitive, there was the first World Trade Center bombings occurred, the cable channel Comedy Central premiered (I really, really wish-a I’d never heard of Amy Fisher—Mohammed Salameh, Mohammed salaam, I was only the driver, I didn’t build that bomb) , and the now redundant bureau of the US ATF (alcohol, tobacco and firearms) began a fifty-one day stand-off at the Branch-Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, Iraqi authorities refuse NATO weapons-inspectors access, fractures began to appear in Yugoslavia, the Red Army Faction was still active in a united Germany, the trials of the Rodney King beatings began, and Stephen Hawking published A Brief History of Time.
Later in the year, there was a lot more.  I couldn’t say definitively how a certain day reverberated for me personally, but the notion of taking time to review one’s life from the perspective of two decades or just two years on (everyone probably has their modern history well-documented though all time is full) is something powerful and perhaps an archive that should be sought out.

the bronx is up and the battery’s down

To celebrate the centennial of New York City’s Grand Central Station, which at the commission of the Vanderbilt family, first opened its doors at midnight tonight (or possibly, one minute of, so as to not technically fall on the next day), The Daily Beast presents an interesting collection of one hundred facts, which makes for a great scavenger hunt of trivia, no matter how far one is away from this gorgeous and storied terminus.