you'll get no potato juice or coffee perpetuum

Over the weekend, we were treated to another demonstration of my parents' very clever vintage balance siphon coffee maker, which I have decided violates the laws of thermodynamics. It's quite a brilliant and entertaining performance, like an ornate fountain or Glockenspiel to toll the hour: a spirit lamp heats up water in the metal chamber and once it reaches a critical temperature, siphons through and infuses the coffee grounds in the glass carafe (bell jar).

Voided of water, the metal piston rises and extinguishes the fire, and as it's cooled, the pressure imbalance forces the brewed coffee back into the canister. It is a heuristic perpetual motion machine, a challenge to find the right grade of ground, right ratio of water to coffee, and the coffee tastes very pure. The whole process is engrossing, having never seen such a configuration or knew a kitchen contraption to operate on such principles, and very steam-punk--much more heroic than the usual delivery method.

nom de guerre or incite-a-riot

Some European politicians are making well-intentioned calls, with the massacre in Norway and street riots in England fresh on the public conscious, that networking sites and commentary refuse made-up names or (pseudo) anonymous contributions in order to prevent circulation of hate-speech or organizing chaos. Some instigators have always cowered behind anonymity when disseminating destructive suggestion to avoid catching any of the blame when things end badly, and though most faceless pontiffs only go so far, speech and expression are protected, for one, to keep tyranny in check. The paradigms of the Arab Spring do not owe their existence solely to tweets and spasms but the democracy movement certainly would have managed a different pace without networking tools and the privacy that the internet can afford. Mobilization of thuggery, as characterized by some, is a frightening thing but internet crowd-sourcing and crowd-control has not completely managed to transform the population into lemmings.

Those motivated for a cause can discern between leadership and cowardly advocates. Meanwhile, this Orwellian crack-down has already come to pass, autonomously--without discussion or policy-debate, locally enacted without a higher-mandate, which is illustrative of the mindset of some people, over the weekend on the platforms of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system in and around San Francisco, California. In response to the killing of two passengers by BART officers--which is another disturbing insight into the mindset of some, when a bus driver is licensed to kill--supposedly a protest rally had been organized. Though the planned rally did not take place, wireless services were disabled to prevent further, real-time coordination by the unruly mob. These broad powers to take a group or individuals offline because they might incite a riot is disturbing. No one wants authority figures to decide what is seemly and warranted--and I suspect that most listened when their mothers admonished, "if all your friends jumped off a bridge..."--but it certainly seems even more dangerous to let a protest escalate into a violent confrontation with multiple bystanders with no way to call for help.

for the rain it raineth every day

Again this year, we have not seen much of a summer over large swaths of Germany. I feel especially sorry for children and their families as school summer holidays come to an end and people grow rabid about getting out from under this cloud--August is inflexible and not everyone can afford to escape to clearer climes, though weather is sometimes too big to get away from. With the incessant drip and spatter, I was thinking about precipitation and I wonder if before deforestation, farming and urban-sprawl, when there were more trees, was there also less water in circulation. Catastrophic floods have complex origins, as does the climate, but I wonder if the weather wasn't fairer with more of the stuff driving the weather sequestered in living things.

Von sommerlichen Wetter schlecht angenommen wurden auch dieses Jahr wieder über weiter teil Deutschlands. Vor allem bedauere ich es, dass Kindern und ihren Familien haben kein Sommerschulferien: Urlaubskalendar sind jedoch starr, und nicht jeder kann es sich leisten, andere Länder zu bereisen. Während dieser Regentage frage ich mich, wie die Niederschlagsmuster veränderte hat: ehemals habe man (vor Entwaldung, Landwirtschaft und Zersiedelung) weniger Regen und Schnee aufgrund weniger Wasser im Umlauf. Der Klimawandel und die Naturkatastrophe hat komplexen Ursachen, aber frage ich mich, ob es hatte schönes Wetter wenn mehr Wetterkraftstoff im Holz gebundene war.

mimicry

Ambitious counterfeiters (flatterers, really I suppose) have moved beyond mere knock-off goods, Austrian villages and amusement parks and have managed to emulate entire retail franchises. Authorities have closed down no less than 22 fake Apple retail outlets in the country (EN/DE) that were made to appear to be the genuine article. A few months back, there were reports that someone had managed to create an entire unsanctioned furniture store, based off the Swedish model.

presque vu or deppenapostroph

 While visiting the País d'Òc recently, we saw nothing of the native language of the region, and there was a conspicuous absence of anything other than French. We discussed how statutes mandate all signage and advertisements should be exclusively in the official language and without creeping impurities, portmanteaux (mot-valises, Kofferworter) and English nonce words. I also found it interesting that publicity laws have been interpreted in France to also impose a ban, in print and television, on inviting customers to friend, like or follow their business or organization on specific, named social networking sites: one may advise clients to look them up on the internet or promote their own website but to be more exact unfairly endorses one (garbled and probably multi-lingually threatening) service over others.

These signs are not shifting between German and English and the onus is not on the local businesses to wonder how their names might sound to an inter-national audience, but I suspect that the French would probably be even less unapologetic about what others might snicker about.

minced oath or london bridge

Although maybe the Cycle of Democracy is not genuinely attributable to Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee--Scottish writer, historian, lawyer, and educator of the late 18th century, and rather to an editor from the Daily Oklahoman newspaper, Elmer T. Peterson in 1951--the statement still contains some truth: "Two centuries ago, a somewhat obscure Scotsman named Tytler made this profound observation: 'A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.'"

Or rather, from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back into bondage. Alexis de Toqueville, who planted the seeds of the idea of American exception, even echoed himself that America's growing population would be better managed by a monarch and that democracy could only be so elastic. I wonder where the world might be in this cycle, with hysterics over the market and unrest and estrangement in the streets--on the rise or fall? Hysteria, detached and writhing like a Water-Wiggle, could be used to justify cuts to social services, just as pointing to rioters, destroying what infrastructure and opportunities for employment might remain in their neighbourhoods, might either be an expression of frustration or more justification to dismantle social-safety nets. Greed is nothing to aspire to, but neither is playing into the characterization of an angry and an idle mob nor the complacency of leaders and role-models. What's the face of it elsewhere, and might this happen anywhere?

series of tubes

These concrete drainage tubes converted into individual hotel rooms are certainly more comfy and less treacherous than the pipes that the Mario Brothers have to navigate. This installation in a city park in Bottrop certainly has the same arcade-feel, and booked-solid, operates on a small environmental footprint principle under a pay-as-you-wish scheme. This would be a fun twist on camping with a bit more space (2 meters in diameter and 2.6 meters long) and a few more amenities.

Diese Beton-kanalrohre wurde als Hotel Zimmern eingerichtet, und sie sind gewiss weitaus bequemer und weniger gefährlich als die Abenteuer des Super Mario. Die Anlage stehen im Park im Bottrop mit dem ähnlichen Videospiel-Stimmung ausgebucht ist. Das Park Hotel funktioniert nach dem geringstem Umwelteinfluss-Prinzip und sind Pay as You Wish. Nächtigen im Inneren des Rohr ist Camping mit einem industriell Twist.

built this city on rock-and-roll

Some clever software engineers several months back produced a faithful three-dimensional model, extruded with a homemade 3-D printer, of the Coliseum in Rome from an aggregate of holiday snap-shots found on a photo-sharing site from all sides and all angles. The computer processed and analyzed all this data autonomously, and I thought about this feat during our recent trip to Dresden. This tidy and automated routine can no way compare, however, to the rebuilding of the city's landmark Frauenkirche essentially from collective memories. Although putting the church back together again was not completed until 2006, it was symbolic and important for many as a gesture of reconciliation for divided Germany, like the peaceful rallies, Montagsdemonstrationen, at the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig.

The church was not actually hit by a bomb, experts surmise, but rather imploded during the ensuing firestorm that heated the porous sandstone building material to a temperature of 1000 degrees Celsius. Only the darker stones on the Frauenkirche are original, puzzled together from a pile of rubble that sat in place in the square for some six decades--the lighter-coloured material is new restoration.

Making whole all the baroque indulgences of Dresden, the Semper Opera House included, was a labour of love, remembering and piecing back together.  We passed by a memorial (Communist-style sculpture) to the Trümmerfrauen, teams that dug through the debris of war, salvaging what could be saved and unriddling remnants of a city that's once again glorious. I thought that this one had built this city on rock-and-roll.