fronleichnam

Though this moveable feast of Corpus Christi is not technically a national holiday observed in every German state, on this ecumenical jubilee year (DE/EN) that marks the five hundredth anniversary of Martin Luther’s posting the ninety-five theses on the door of the royal chapel of Wittenburg, all Germans are accorded all the observances. Bavaria (where we live) has the most liberal public holiday schedule with thirteen, minus Reformation day, and other states granting fewer ranging from nine to twelve (like Hessen, where I work). Affording all holidays to everyone is a symbolic way to counter sectarianism as a few observances are markedly celebrated or disdained to the envy of neighbours clearly along historical Catholic or Evangelical majority territories.

ford at the fair

There are a lot of interesting angles to pursue in this latest ploy for attention from Tedium but what really resonated with us was the mention of the partnership between industrialist Henry Ford and botanist and inventor George Washington Carver to create a “soybean” car—or rather an automobile with a hemp-based body.  Like the factors that led to the production of the plastic Trabant in East Germany, war time austerity and steel and fuel rationing prompted this collaborative effort in 1941.
Designed to also operate on hemp oil, there is some unsettled contentions about the success and abandonment of this bioplastics vehicle. Only one prototype was built and displayed to the public at the Dearborn assembly-line and later at the Michigan State Fair and was subsequently destroyed—along with the exact combination of crops used—and newspaper accounts vary as to the reception. Despite significant investment, safety demonstrations, patent-filings and acres and acres of soy and marijuana, the end of World War II and surplus steel seemed to mothball the idea for the more ecologically-friendly mode of transportation but the initial decision to walk back the first model the remains a bit of mystery.  Tales abound how the petroleum industry conspires to quash innovation that would not be in their self-interest, and perhaps the soy car was one of the earliest casualties and one wonders what trajectory things might have taken otherwise. 

chemin de fer

Messy Nessy Chic captivates our attention with her latest scouting expedition returning with this incredible, extant railway hotel constructed in the 1920s called the Belvédère du Rayon Vert of the French town Cerbère close to the border with Spain.
The art deco gem that once boasted a breath-taking cinema, dining halls and a roof-top tennis court closed down in 1983 but can happily still be engaged on a weekly-basis for those willing to rough it self-catering or toured for an afternoon. Check out the source link above to peruse a gallery of photographs and for more details, including the telephone number to arrange a visit since—in the spirit of being a time-capsule, there’s no website to deliberate over.

blottentot

Informed by the creative dotage of poet Justinus Kerner when he spilt ink in his notebook and was inspired to versify on the intriguing smudges, Hermann Rorschach as a young child was fascinated with this technique and earned the nickname “Klecks”—German for inkblot.
The chain of development of klecksography from poetry to psychological tool to study the subconscious did enjoy an intermediate phase as an international popular pastime, we learn from Atlas Obscura, just a few years after the publication of Kerner’s book of poems with a pamphlet instructing people how to create shadow-pictures or gobolinks for festive occasions and use the resulting image (tellingly, taken as monstrous mostly) as a writing-prompt. Similar to a test in word association or talking therapy but with a visual media, a patient’s interpretation of the stains is a way to access involuntary imagination and probe impulses not yet manifest came about in 1921 when Rorschach was studying Sigmund Freud’s theories on dream symbolism and was reminded of his childhood hobby.

ethernet

Via the intrepid adventurers at Atlas Obscura, we learn that researchers at the University of Zurich have created the largest and most complex virtual universe with the Piz Daint super computer (named after an alpine peak).
The simulation, this meta-cosmos is to be used in conjunction with the Euclid space probe mission, launching in 2020, to scour the skies for signs of dark matter and dark energy. Astrophysicists hope that virtual models seeded with informed guesses as to the composition and arrangement might help them plot out the satellite’s course to maximise the chances of detecting the illusive substance (sort of like using augmented reality as a heuristic tool), which is thought to be the chief component of the Universe and far more prevalent (but weakly interacting) than the matter that we are accustomed to working with.

blind fAIth or rapture-ready

Writing for Æon magazine, contributor Beth Singler of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion explores the alignment problem, which like the zeroth law of Asimov begs what if any morals and norms ought to be imposed on artificial intelligence.
Despite how the technocracy might deride religion and insist that it’s a hindrance to peace and progress (like some interpreting the parable of Eden as justification for abusing the Earth), the optimism, the zealotry, the fire and brimstone and even the language that discussions of the technological and economic singularity are couched in ring very similar to that of the clerics that many try to hold at a distance. What do you think? A synthetic theology and subsequent hope of deliverance and reprieve resulting from an ultra-intelligent machine might be more like contemplating the mind of God than we are ready to admit.

let them eat cake

Via NPR’s The Salt, we learn of a New York City self-taught baker turned social-media vigilante named Kat Thek who has founded a boutique agency called Troll Cakes, where one can not only commission a particularly tone-deaf or mean-spirited comment or critique to be committed to cake-form but the bakery will go one step further on behalf of their customers who were perhaps the target of harassment and do some detective work to determine the identity of the troll and send the cake to them.  The bakery also offers White House specials to give Dear Leader an opportunity to eat his own words—particularly those that have not aged well.

#c0ffee is the colour

The other day, I was wondering what my mobile phone number might spell out—recalling when catchy eight hundred numbers were hot-properties—and being disappointed that there was no encoded, memorable message to be teased out of that string of numbers.
Even when aided by an “algorithm” that surely sells the contact information to marketers of those foolish enough to offer it up, there was nothing to be found. Undaunted and in a similar vein, Waxy brings us a project that parsed an English lexicon to determine what words might be translated into valid hexadecimal, web colours—those marked with a number sign on a cascading style sheet (CSS). Turning letter o’s into zeroes and ones into i’s and s’s to fives, etc. our vocabulary palette is much expanded but even dialling back the interpretation to a stricter setting still returns quite a spectrum. As the hues are defined as either three or six letters in length and the base-16 system only goes up to number F, covefe is unfortunately out of bounds.