form and function

Designer and artist Katerina Kamprani has reimagined a whole gallery of familiar everyday items but with a twist on their usefulness. The Uncomfortable collection has tableware, containers and other practical accessories that really make one think about grip, stability and other tactile qualities that we've grown accustomed to.
These objects still fulfill their purpose, and retain their semiotic niche, but would be awkward to handle. It's sort of like computer icons of envelopes, pad-locks, chains, paint-cans, rubbish bins or key fobs—whose function is transparent but whose avatars are only masks.  Wouldn't you appreciate the standard form of a fork or drinking glass after trying to handle one of these pieces?

tadasana or yoga-on-ice

A correspondent from the local's Swiss edition gives an intriguing and inspiring review of a fusion activity taking place on the slopes that tower above the Engadine.

A veteran instructor of yoga and skiing brings her two skills together to deliver to the guests of the resort at St. Moritz a certain mindfulness and meditation when it comes to engaging in that seasonal sport that many visitors, however experienced, try to cram into one get-away weekend per year and maybe tend to be a bit reckless and rushed to get their money's worth. In addition to imparting techniques that can build on awareness and improve maneuvers (as mental and physical preparation—not that one assumes the tadasana, the mountain pose, while on a run), the pause and circumspection can also train hectic holiday-makers to take it slower and adjust their focus to savouring quality over quantity.

cifrão or surreal times

In response and in anticipation to a marked upswing in the trend, a group in Brazil has minted a form of alternative protest currency, called the Surreal—opposed to the real (reais), the fiat tender of the country, Der Spiegel reports (auf Deutsch).

Residents of Rio de Janeiro and the vicinity, having witnessed how big events have become a liability for host cities in recent years with kettling security and robber-baronage that hardly benefits the local economy, leaves environmental, and foremost precipitates a price-gouging that the group finds unacceptable, are expressing their displeasure with the watermark of Salvador Dali over their home-town venue, entertaining the Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft (the FIFA—Fédération Internationale de Football, otherwise soccer—World Cup) this summer and the Olympiad in 2016. Given the country's affection for sport, to stage such a rally, not against the well-deserved honour but the back-handedness of it, I believe says a lot.

shouts and murmurs or no. 2 pencil

The New Yorker has an excellent little extract regarding the Stanford Achievement Test proctors' effort to make the standardized college entrance exam more relevant to students, to assess the skills they need to develop in this brave new world.
Many questions are tailored to the internet environment. I can recall when the SAT was a bastion of stellar vocabulary and recognised rigour but maybe that demonstrates a certain immaturity.  I am not sure how in earnest the analysis is and suspect it's humourous, one question posed quotes a short passage from Jane Austin (already suspect) and asks how to best entitle a post with this content to draw in the most traffic.

i-spy or chivalric code

The various US government agencies that pose as very magnanimous monarchs, eager to dub subjects—and not just creatures of the court but also mercenaries, with the titles of Sir Top of Secret or Lady Confidential now has an expansive plan to walk back (bad link) their veritable jubilee, as quite a few notorious individuals holding a security clearance have proved to be less than loyal—at least in the estimation of the secret-sharers. I remember once watching an actual knighting ceremony, and as is the wont of tradition the band began playing the tune from Monty Python's Flying Circus (John Philip Sousa's Liberty Bell march, which is also performed on the occasion of US presidential inaugurations).
I suppose the panel of judges for beauty contests and OPM (the Office of Personnel Management, which actually bestows these honours) have about the same mentality. Ambitious or not, the uniformed services and associated civilian counterparts, from whom many careers are built as their networks, platforms and jargon require interpreters, aims to monitor every move of their title-holders—at least, every move on the internet, easily retrieved but also easily faked and only want the computer says. Having seemingly forgot that this sort of surveillance is already not only possible but also carried out, the spooks, trustees and petty tyrants are concerned about their privacy, but more to the point they also have concerns for the integrity of the actual secret business that they are doing, also subject to a continuum of voyeurs.

chicken kyiv oder rollsplitt

While the US and the EU are at odds as to the better means of sanctioning Russia's encouraging the Crimea to assent to annexation, there seems to be precious little traction from outside pressures. Obviously this invitation was well choreographed and premeditated, and whether the aggressions are opportune, taking advantage of an uprising off-set, or merely staged and coinciding with the world's focus on the Winter Games (or a negotiation of both) is unclear.
 A balmy winter in western Europe that could have better weathered the valves being shut off for delivery of natural gas from Russia or America's announcement to scale back the army and military presence in Europe, deemed stable and no longer interbellum and relics of the long, Cold War being cannibalised for adventures further east. It's a bit of a reach but I wonder if this was not some sort of double-bluff, a head-fake, to bolster new Europe's alignment with the West, and legitimize America's missile shield in Poland and mission-creep elsewhere.

This sort of psychological battle for hearts and minds seems like a very real possibility, given Russia's counter-wooing of satellites like Moldova, with an offensive to expose the hollow promises of joining Europe, demonstrating that economic integration is other than rosy, including Russian-influenced embargoes on Moldovan wine exports. In exchange, the nations, which in turn harbour break-away republics with limited recognition like Transnistria or Georgia's South Ossetia in 2008, are portrayed as presented with false taunts and alternative life-styles. Regardless of circumstance or politicking, citizens reserve the rights to secede, devolve or resist, but this sort of partitioning is a bit scary on both sides, interest reserved—whether or not one is just spinning diplomatic wheels.

daytrip: maintauberfranken

Taking advantage of the spring weather, we took a short rumble down a portion of the Romantic Road (die Romantische Straße), the route of fairy tale castles, palaces and fotresses that criss-cross the borders of Bayern and Baden-Württemberg in the western reaches of Franconia to Upper-Bavaria.  Towards the end of our trip, we passed through the village of Creglingen on the Tauber river, nicely rendered in this landscape by the artist Carl Grossberg in 1926. We did not photograph this particular vista because of the afternoon sun, but I was really captured by the artist's modern, cartoonish style.
Afterwards, I researched a bit further, got a lesson in art-history and found more of Grossberg's works and discovered that the collection epitomizes the German New Objectivity movement (Neue Sachlichkeit, new matter-of-factness) that aimed to capture the practicality of form and function associated with civic involvement and political engagement of Germany's inter-war Weimar Republic and an off-shoot of the Bauhaus movement.
As opposed to Futurism or Expressionism, this impartial attitude emulated the perceived values of America's infatuation with work and progress and represented an inward-turning towards institutions and public life, and Grossberg did in fact produce many interesting schematics depicting industry.  I do, however, really enjoy his imaginative way of inserting sloths and monkeys into office-settings for effect and comment.

tehdit

In an apparent about-face to the regime's earlier courtship of technology and telecommunications and in response to opposition politicians that have hijacked the internet as a platform for lies and libel, at least—according to the incumbents, the government of Turkey is looking to curtail freedom of expression on-line when the integrity of the public and republic is at stake, including the whole-sale blocking of certain popular sites.
The European Union is joining a chorus of Turkish protesters in revolt, however this individual-mandate, which Turkey wants to install as a way for policing the internet and dousing out sparks before the lead to righteous conflagrations, blocking the activity of certain persons or a link before they can blossom or metastasize—though blatant censorship is little different from roving arbiters and trolls that have door-stops within governments to get their way and can be scarier yet than calling twitterpation a “menace (tehdit) to society.” These laws are ostensibly meant for protection of individual privacy and dignity, adding a bit of amnesia to the internet which never forgets—which seems on the contrary like something quite positive and reasonable, since going back to the idea of an individual-mandate, great freedom also carries with it great responsibility—especially when evangelizing, but the potential for abuse is always there, as those most eager to do the judging usually have no business doing so.