Der Spiegel’s English-language stories section reports on an exhibition in Berlin about contemporary ghost-towns and the deliberate choices and accidents of history that are creating the phenomenon.
Sunday 27 May 2012
geisterstรคdte
torch song
Protests and boycotts are always of a selective nature. Parallel to the threats by some European countries to sit-out the Euro 2012 final matches to be held in the Ukraine over the host’s treatment of its former prime-minister (apparently having had selectively made an example out of her perceived violation of public-trust) and even propose the games be held in another venue, like Germany or Poland, holding the Eurovision Song Contest in Azerbaijan was not without controversy.
Saturday 26 May 2012
not to scale
Thursday 24 May 2012
bottle of red, bottle of white
We’re no connoisseurs just yet but with the heat of the summer descending on us and for want of something lighter and with a bit less of a wallop, but we are enjoying discovering white wine as well, instead of just the usual spectrum of reds. That white wine does not seem as strong is a bit counterintuitive to me and I suppose one must consider all the chemistry to appreciate the different notes.
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ฑ, ๐ฅ, environment, lifestyle
Wednesday 23 May 2012
chinese fire-drill
Cornered with prospects of more market bubbles (a dot-com bust redux of 1999 and 2008 after a less than stellar performance of a networking platform that’s only, but, not merely, the sum of its user-generated antics), aspersions are quick to be cast out, like so many throwing-stars and there are the usual targets, scapegoats.
catagories: America, economic policy, labour
Tuesday 22 May 2012
unkraut bleibt unkraut or a fist full of flowers
There is a German tongue-twister that goes, Blaukraut bleibt Blaukraut und Brautkleid bleibt Brautkleid—that is, red cabbage stays red cabbage and a wedding dress stays a wedding dress.
I don’t find it so much of a challenge to enunciate but believe it has philosophical value, especially as a tongue-twister which is not. Unkrรคuter are weeds (not herbs) and belongs to a funny class of German words with Unwetter (storms, bad weather), Unding (an anti-thing, something impossible or unbelievable), Unart (not disciplined, a bad habit), Unverstandnis (a misunderstanding) and Unwort (a contrived nonce word). After getting some flowers for the balcony, quite by accident and not even in view of the home improvement/garden store where we found the geraniums, I spied this advertisement for a much decorated and controversial brand of weed-killer. Germany has roundly rejected the other toxic vertical monopolies of this agribusiness concern, at least publically, pressuring their genetically modified foodstuffs into exile and not subscribing to the patented plantation-style farming programme (a modular scheme where gardeners and farmers are obligated to buy all the precisely formulated extras—from seeds to fertilizer to insecticides), and I don’t know anyone here who would go to the time and expense of forgoing getting one’s hands dirty and doing a little gardening and maybe even tolerating the spare weed. I was happy to see that this billboard’s location was not an affront, and was relegated to an alley by a casino and a discount store, like an advertisement for cigarettes.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ฑ, environment, lifestyle