this day in PfRC history

I have managed, sometimes more prolific than others, to keep this blog up and running for more than five years now. It began as a travelogue and some of the earliest entries are pretty embarrassing and disjointed (meant to be my own private mySpace sphere, I guess)--and that's certainly not to say that I've matured or picked a theme or that the latest entries are not embarrassing in their own time or from some future perspective.

Looking back at the chronicles: one year ago today: Good Saint Nick with a short biography about the life and legend of the saint and his patronages.


Two years ago today: the Other Shoe recounting internet censorship efforts through fairy-tale idylls.

Five years ago today: in former communist East Germany, the Government works for You with Thanksgiving dinner at the army mess-hall and experiences, impressions from my first trip to Leipzig.

les cigales or call for submissions

For the past two years, a mysterious and tantalizing puzzle has been intriguing internet users and the next installment of the scavenger-hunt is expected to appear within a few weeks. A computer analyst from Sweden stumbled upon an irresistible invitation from an organisation calling itself Cicada 3301. The call to find the others and to R.S.V.P. (regrets only) by teasing the hidden message out of the invite.
The clues led across a daisy-chain of increasingly challenging riddles, requiring novel and creative minds to resolve. Interest quickly spread with thousands participating and Cicada 3301 responded in kind with more and more esoteric subjects (involving obscure poetry, alchemy, rare music and even detours into the physical world) and rabbit-holes—that has brought many of the new initiates to the uncharted territories of the world-wide web, called the Darknet, that are not normally accessible to the public via search engines, the massive mantle under the surface of unindexed data that's multitudes bigger by volume that the visible internet world. Despite the great scrutiny and speculation of the hive-mind, no one has fully solved the puzzle or identified who is behind Cicada 3301. What do you think? Could it really be a recruitment tool, a push to gather the world's prodigies like in This Island Earth or The Last Starfighter? Could it be an experimental sandbox for the world's colluding intelligence networks to cull the best and brightest among cryptographers or to arrest their development? Is it just a game? Or worse, is it some publicity stunt that will lead up to the announcement of some new crap cyborg gadget? I personally think it might be a sentient internet's attempt at reaching out to its creators. Watch for the next clue to appear on 4. January 2014.

flüchtling

There was a very poignant and unexpected collection of memories narrated over the radio in commemoration of the upcoming seventy-fifth anniversary of the rescue mission Kindertransport, organsied by British Jewish and Quaker leadership in the days following die Kristallnacht (the Night of the Broken Glass) until the outbreak of World War II.

Some ten thousand children in Nazi Germany and in occupied lands were placed with foster families in England, Scotland and Wales. The first trains departed Germany to arrive in Harwich on 1. December 1938. The war orphaned many of these saved children but bonds were strong with their adoptive families. Though the story of this exodus is retold from time to time through the lens of historical drama and has been the subject of theatre and movies and fate of these refugees is not unknown or forgotten, involving many famous personalities, it does seem that the dread decision to split families apart, parents hoping to find sanctuary that many times was not a temporary arrangement, and the acts of kindness maybe have been so well attended. The remembrance is especially pointed with the current climate on immigration and welling refugee crises. Just a few from a multitude of stories, the radio montage was mostly recounted through the experiences of Sir David Attenborough, whose family, a headmaster at a boys' school in Leicester responded to the urgent call for volunteers to take in displaced children.

One day, not long after the project started, Attenborough's mother brought home two young girls that became they boys' foster-sisters. An avid fossil- and rock-hound from an early age, it was piece of amber (Bernstein) from the beaches of the Baltic (Ostsee) filled with preserved prehistoric insects. This frozen terrarium, microcosm, was a source of fascination and inspired the nature documentary The Amber Time Machine decades later and included one of the first rigourous scientific attempts to extract ancient DNA. There was also the powerful story of Kurt Beckhardt, the son WWI Luftwaffe ace aviator, Felix Beckhardt, from Wiesbaden whose achievements were later discounted by the Nazis and supplanted by more palatable heroes because of his Jewish heritage. As his father's record and activities became more of a nuisance, the young Beckhardt was sent to England while his parents were held at Buchenwald. His parents eventually escaped and fled to Portugal—the family reunited years later but very much shaped by these separate odysseys.

the man with the midas touch, a spider's touch

I tend to keep the news in German on the t.v. On in the background and usually I can play-along at home with divided attention but there has been a lot of talk and debate recently over tax reform and much mention of the Goldfinger Steuermodell—“Goldfinger nichts mit James Bond zu tun.” The German tax code is something impenetrable, I image even for a native, so I decided to investigate: Goldfingern, as a gerund, refers to the practise of taking advantage of a certain tax-shelter, a loophole (indeed named after the Bond villain Auric Goldfinger), which the Bundestag is moving to close.
Essentially businesses and individuals with the means buy enormous amounts of gold (or some other asset that's going to increase in value and easily convertible) through an agent, a front-company, in some other country and declare the purchase a loss in order to zero out their tax liability. Given the geometric progression on the increase of the price of the commodity, they stand to make a profit whenever they choose to sell—the next day or next year. Under existing treaties that aim to mitigate double-taxation, avoiding having to pay taxes to one's country of allegiance and to where the profit was made, money made from such transactions are not subject to tax. The agreements state that the rate will be adjusted to reflect the profits but as those engaging in this practise are already in the top bracket, there is no additional tax collected. It does not only happen in Germany, of course, and uncounted billions are estimated to be lost. When one hears about giant corporations paying nothing into the tax-coffers despite record profits, goldfingern is one of the tricks they employ—and it is not that they have particularly clever or ruthless tax-preparers.

cinematic titanic or play MSTIE for me

The name PfRC is a nod to the series Mystery Science Theater 3000—the 1998 episode lampooning the 1958 Jack Arnold feature, The Space Children. Just ahead of the abduction—encounter, the children gleefully announce the discovery of an ominous cave—to which one of the Bots quip, “It will be perfect for our delicious Roquefort cheese.” MST3K premiered 25 years ago on Thanksgiving Day on a UHF broadcast station in the Minneapolis area. Mental Floss has more on the show's history, legacy and some trivia. The Mads are calling.

till by turning, we come around 'right

Writing for the ever surprising and peripatetic Neatorama, Miss Cellania turns our attention to the avatars of Thankgivings past. Of course, originally, the feast was a communal celebration—an aspect that continues to the orphaned. I have enjoyed quite a few good and grateful meals in the company of strangers in the mess-hall. With gentrification, however, it became a chance for being seen and ostentation, by dining among peers in the swankest, most exclusive restaurants. I like the idea of community though the idea of privilege over noblisse-oblige and flaunting of ones means not so much. Thanksgiving dinner retreated to a private affair, prepared at home and an inviting rather than insular affair, with the signals from the economic downturn that followed this gilded age.

sternschnuppen

The Christmas season is a bit on the advance but is generally, neatly bookmarked by Advent. I notice that some stores slowly introduce seasonal items—chocolates and such, earlier and earlier but refrain from decking out the rest of the festoonery until some else, usually sponsored by the community, dares and then all the shops go really all-out, pharmacies, kiosks, hotel and restaurants very house-proud of their show-window displays.

I'm a little bit embarrassed by my little string of coloured lights laid along the window sill that I don't think are even visible from the outside, whereas I can see little twinkling displays across the street. My apartment building, however, is completely blacked-out—to the last flat and I think I'd be insensitive to do otherwise. I had the chance to visit the “Shooting Star” market of the city in the early afternoon. It had a nice atmosphere, but I found I was missing the crowd and bustle and not knowing what ornaments and crafts that one is missing before being compelled to move along—plus the illumination, which was meek under the overcast skies. I was having fun but decided to visit another Schaufenster, show-window, in the city museum's new exhibition, Germany for Anfänger—Deutschland for Beginners. A few galleries illustrated German identities and cultures, I sort of a tongue-in-cheek, self-critical manner, in twenty-six letters, no umlauts.
It addressed stereotypes and what's true about German mannerisms, D for Dialects—which are a source of pride through also of ridicule, or B for Brauchtum—customs, which can be tacky, tawdry traditions as well, and so on with a lot of deference to the Grundgesetz (the Basic, Constitutional Law) interspersed. Importantly, there was also Y (Upsilon) for Yabancı işçi (guest-workers in English and Ausländische Arbeitskräfte auf Deutsch) for integration, change and the Multikulti. Significantly, the etiquette for each letter was rendered in German, English and Turkish. My favourite display was O für Ordnung—order, with a collection of officious-looking stamps and traffic-signs and a lengthy narrative about rules for patches of gardens, children at play to include taxation of the rain-water that runs off ones roof, met both with disdain and comfort.

auslese

Der Spiegel's international desk has a interesting feature on attempts in the Rheingau and surrounding regions to preserve traditional viniculture with robotic aid. Engineers at the University of Geisenheim have developed a rover-prototype that can scale the steep hills at times approaching a right-angle.

For decades, many vintners have chosen to retire their harvest to flat land as the geometry of steeper slopes has proven unprofitable and presents a risk to life and limb. Hillsides are preferable because the grapes here tend to be exposed to more sun and enjoy better drainage, thus preventing rot on the vine. Along the Rhein, however, I know that there are growers who perennially open up grape picking to volunteers of the public and feast them after a hard day's work. With some modification to the rows of vines yet minimal supervision, the robots can accomplish routine tasks like watering and pruning and have even produced their own vintage, taste-tested by vineyards in doubt. Reception is positive and apparently the units are on pre-order, but there's no word if they will be assigned additional duties.