LA looks or the mamas and the papas

Here are two very different montages, one via Boing Boing and Buzzfeed with a collection of photographs that capture the icons and style of America during the 1990s--of course not exhaustively. What else can you think of that ought to be included in that time-capsule? The video guide to the new Windows 95 hosted by the cast of Friends is priceless, I think, as well as the grade school portrait day with the disco-laser backdrop--there's a picture of me like that. The next series of slides cover quite a different and maybe more authentic time, and from a more intimate, untractable angle is featured on Der Spiegel (which needs no translation) with a series of photographs from the archives of Life magazine of the legends of classic rock posing casually with their parents. Seeing the younger luminaries, like Grace Slick and Eric Clapton, amid 1970s refinement and with their proud folks is worth checking out as well.

♥s fear

Though I am not sure I agree with the entire premise and ultimate (end-state) projections of the article, I do find myself passing judgment on the inarticulate feeling of unease that one takes a way from the continuing German Wirtschaftswunder. The feeling is not quite menacing but more than just smug and competent, and like Alternet writer Marshall Auerback suggests, I do wonder if the Germans, sometimes criticized for championing austerity elsewhere have not already been institutionalized at home, instigating a race-to-the-bottom (Abwärts-Wettlauf) in terms of treatment for workers.
 This is a thoughtful article and raises many valid points, like a lot of Alternet's coverage. Just like Greece, as a member of the eurozone, Germany cannot devalue its currency in order to wedge a competitive advantage but it can tweak the wages and benefits of its workforce. The series of labour reforms from the Hartz Commission (DE/EN), the working-poor currently protected by Hartz IV, I don't think are meant to squeeze the poorest of society and I think only give tacit allowance to business-models that might led to underemployment or a generational schism between older workers steady on to retirement and younger workers not shoring up a pension. One could envision such portents, however, following the lead of labour conditions in the States, with receding prospects for retirement and clinging to jobs barring many younger applicants. The manufacturing component, however, I think is elided in order to draw these analogies, though the potential for inculcating a certain culture and attitude should certainly be guarded against.

it was a teenage wedding and the old folks wished them well

The prime minister of France has officially struck the designation Mademoiselle from state documents because of chauvinistic overtones and the connotation that begged a woman's status as either available or otherwise taken. Mademoiselle is the equivalent of Fräulein (also designating an unmarried spinster and eliminated in the 1970s) or Senorita or the arguably more neutral English Miss. The archaic male equivalent of Damoiseau or Gentilhomme, signifying squire or (confirmed) bachelor, went out of style with the overthrow of the monarchy. Although it does sound classier to me than Madame or Ma'am, if the distinction rang as sexist and entirely not honourific to some, then it ought to be phased out of government and commercial usage. I do, however, wonder about the mechanism behind this decision: with institutions like L'Académie française charged with maintaining the purity of the language and keep it living by various tactics, like assigning a gender to landmarks and monuments outside of the francophone sphere or even to geographical features on alien planets and discouraging the use of invasive English terminology. I wonder what their stance was on this government initiative, supported by many advocates for gender-equality, and is a government ever held ransom by its official language.

one potato, two potato

According to reporting by New Scientist (via the resplendent BLDG Blog), electrical engineers in the Netherlands are field testing the potential of various grasses and marshy plants for suitability as a passive electrical grid.

I wonder what might come from this sort of harvest, should the landscape and fallow-fields be conduced to generate electricity. I am not sure how exactly the translation from vital energy resounds as electricity, and I believe that this is something different from the pedigree of harbours and dams and the unexpected consequences of manicuring nature. Modern science has not really managed to harness or capture much of the potential that streams around human enterprises (and given that we are sheltered from some of the violence by those same untamed forced, it does beg the question how much we should be trying to bend our environment to our will on top of making a general mess of things)--after all, nothing is a solar power house like any given vegetation. Maybe conventional ideas about power are too restricted by the greedy threshold of efficiency, what's worthwhile to disinter, and instead of allowing the business of power and movement to develop in grooves and ruts, like other engines of society, and the tendency has kind of been to yank it forward, expecting more from less, precision or at least endurance without craftsmanship or innovation. Though the technical aspect may not yield the most efficient results, it is not as if inventors are inspired by nature's own perpetual motion machines, and care should be taken that this or similar experiments do not go the way of bio-fuels, green-washed and stunted, one should not be afraid to tinker and maybe not dig so deeply, only because that's what worked before.