asymmetry or vim and vigour

Prognosticating on economic health is an activity that seems to lose its galloping gait, that or just descend into grizzled old prospector-junkyard-survivalist, when one is on the inside, looking out with some elements and on the outside, looking in with others. Having ones wage denominated in dollars (like commodities such as oil and gold) and working for a grasping tentacle, pseudopod, and living in an European framework, I see a lot of income lost in translation to euro from the weakened dollar.

There is also the sublimation of value from creeping inflation, food and fuel becoming dearer. These are shared realities, the deleveraged US market adverse to German exports and those things not made but managed by Americans and rise in costs that is spurred on by a supply deficit or disincentive to meet demand due to that same eroding dollar, but still hard to trace. Without assigning blame, just cause, this situation is the more difficult to understand, though the perspective gained is valuable, and demands that one be aware of macroeconomics and the diplomacy of money.

The other side of the picture, looking back on America and not its reflection or projection, is seemingly more transparent--though criticism is a cheap currency too. Maybe the assessment and attributions are unfair but the USA, crestfallen, is limning a caricature of itself and beneficent hegemony: lousy with bed-bugs, danger-prone, disparate, profligate, bankrupt, boorish, brutish, and maybe even yet not enough esteemed to pull others in its wake.  Gainsaying and guesswork are not so much fun when negotiating between these separate gauges of wellbeing.

lolly-pop guild or double-dog-dare

I wonder if tornados were in the science of the Land of Oz thought of as wormholes--not primative and primeval but a gateway as sophisticated and as exotic as a blackhole with transdimensional engineering. Such a romance of the twister or really even meteorological interest in their precise cause has not really seemed to have transpired. Having grown up a little in that so called "Tornado Alley" (which is a great huge swath of land--growing wider it seems, and not one lane reserved for tournaments at the Bowl-a-Rama, like the name suggests).
 It is rather a painful and frightening reality that one becomes weirdly numb to, and as I see that the storm system is making headlines and talk in Germany, it seems impossible to relate to someone who has not experienced it firsthand, the inchoate weather forecast, the sirens, facing it bravely--daring it almost--from one's front porch. The loss and destruction currently are unimaginable, and now I worry and believe that we have entere an age--and not just palavered by connectivity and profiteering, where all these tragedies are in long-form, when the affects of each catastrophe and disruption are understood and recorded, analyzed by those same palaverers, economically, risk-adverse and records ever to be broken. It is maybe also an age where such disasters are not uncommon and factored in, like sitting on the front porch and daring the winds.

chiaroscuro

There ought to be an international Make a Diorama day--or week, as well.  Holidays where one does not necessarily exchange cards or the pillage of some retail expedition would be excellent excuses to be creative, experiment, or just play. 

logos, gnomon and iconoclasts

 

Sometimes the calendar really gallops and juggling holidays and upcoming vacation and planning to optimize the time, and maybe what one needs for time management is a clever logo or symbol. Today marks another United Nations holiday in the annual cycle, World Graphic Design Day, on the anniversary of the founding of Icograda whose mission is to give a voice for all "visual communicators," professionals in the arts, marketing, education and general short-hand. I was thinking about a nice sun-dial icon with springtime elements, the shadow-casting gnomon whirling around--but I don't really have the talent for that without it turning into a mismatched, clip-art collage. Design is never something that should be taken for granted, but the bit about setting aside a day for it is a bit obtuse, like celebrating our three spatial dimensions. Breadth. If an organization can move signage and the like from the generic to the enriched and creative, however, that is a positive move, something that splinters originality and vision.

Logos can help solidify a commercial identity, like this Serrano-region ham consortium pork-chop "S" that I saw at breakfast. In general, however, I think icons and graphic arts are better vehicles for expressing processes, especially persuasive when rethinking the mundane, like this impressive series of workspace propaganda posters from Steve Thomas.

This day would be an excellent time to try one's hand at composition, message and short-hand with a poster or drawing--and even if it turns out to be a clip-art collage, imitating style and device helps build talent.

poll tax or right-of-return

Thanks to the vigilance of BoingBoing, since the machinery of bureaucracy usually does not garner much attention and was only noticed due to a mandated window for public commentary (on the particulars but not the process) that has since closed, maybe the US government, intoning another refrain of its swan song, will not be able to raise the stakes on what its people will tolerate not without some dissent. First of all, who knew there was this forum for soft-suffrage, being able to offer one's opinion, for what it's worth on American policy--for maybe gauging outrage and deciding how to bury reporting on the changes? I suppose public-opinion would be an excellent inverse-marketing tool. In essence, the passport application process will become an impossibly difficult task, with a revised questionnaire that mines deeply into the applicant's past and genealogy.

For now, the arduous task is supposedly reserved for those who cannot produce an official copy of their birth certificate (giving this new gradient of bureaucracy a strange twist with one faction calling the current presidency illegitimate and questioning his citizenship), but I am sure there will be some seepage of red ink and maybe all applicants will be expected to submit all these answers--which are more in depth than the battery of questions one must answer (if not correctly then at least consistently) for a security clearance. Moreover, delving that deeply into one's past and familial relations create assumptions and affinities before individuals have the chance to decide for themselves--not to mention. That sort of concentration of personal data--extended enough so as to form anyone's complete biography, connected to a machine-readable, RFID document also seems rather ill-advised.  I am not certain what ought to be read into breadth of questions and answers but controlling movement (as America has already pioneered in the name of air-security) has at least what the propaganda would have us believe about liberties of underclass in Soviet times and with Soviet objectives. Making it more difficult to obtain a passport leave more stranded on Exceptional Island, and discourage the cultural exchange, travel, commerce and exploration that all should have the opportunity to experience.

handschuhe

Over the weekend, I found a pair of these new sporty foot mittens on sale and decided that I would try them on for size. 

I wanted to get them in any case, but I did feel rather obligated to get them after plastering them onto my bare dirty feet with other customers watching.  They do seem rather amphibious and are very light and probably very good over a lot of terrain--or possibly for skittering up a tree.  Socks are not an option but they are comfortable, and nearly like being barefoot (though probably not a significant departure from the latter--I did think, however, that I would be in trouble for tracking my dirty feet in the houses and then I remembered I was wearing these shoes) since the toes are articulated--except for the wanky smallest ones, making one either looked evolved or like a cartoon character.  One does not feel entirely the grain and texture of the surface, although the I suppose toes and parts of the feet that are usually sheltered and isolated are sensitive and a little sheepish to the experience--almost at first like walking in shoes with holes in them, feeling the contours of the street and ground.  These, I think, will be good for outdoor adventures.

möbiusband

For Easter Sunday, H and I took a leisurely stroll up the Fockeberg in South Leipzig.  This hill with winding trails up to the summit, which affords a picture postcard views of the city at the top, is actually a bit of manmade landscaping, a Schuttberg or a Trümmerberg that was built up out of the rubble from WWII.  H told me there was also a downhill race, with all types of vehicles with four wheels allowed--just so long as they are powered by gravity.

The vistas were a nice way to take in the sweep of the place, that we had visited many times before but had not really seen from this map-maker's perspective, with the whole of the skyline visible. 

This park would have also been a perfect spot for an Easter egg hunt.  Earlier, and not in the same part of town, I noticed that we passed a street called Möbiusstraße--which amused me immensely.  While climbing the hill, I was still wondering how that might work and what it would be like to live on that street.

tag des bieres

Today also marks another historical anniversary that has shaped the way beer is brewed and enjoyed for centuries: from Ingolstadt in the year 1516, Bavarian Duke William IV instituted the “Bavarian Purity Law”—the Reinheitsgebot (EN/DE) to standardize beer product and introduce price controls that would mitigate the spikes in demand for wheat and barley. With some puritanical influences building off of Emperor Barbarossa’s earlier call for an industry standard, the variety of beers and beer brewing processes and alternate ingredients which often produced much more intoxicating brews were by law curtailed and relegated to monasteries and registered brewers, and not experimental moonshiners. Setting down this standard has of course influenced the way beer is made not just in Germany but also where ever German brewers set up shop or lent their expertise to help get a company started, like in America or even the old German colonial city of Tsingtao, China. It is something to think about next time you are enjoying a refreshing beverage.  Prost!