Since sharing my crooked smileand knowing that others have scrolled past it, I have become more aware of what I can do to improve my dental state—or at least feel better about it whether any measurable change happens. Let me preface what might turn out to be a cautionary tale with medical professionals are much better suited to dispense sound advice than any non-sequitir blog sought out or found at random on the internet and one should seek consultation before trying to stave anything off with home-remedies that could become a serious and costly problem. With due warning, I took to heart my aggressive tooth-brushing habits and wondered if my gums weren’t receding. I was not exactly sure, since as with the dulling of the enamel, it’s a gradual process to look long-in-the-tooth. Aside from smoking and genetic-predisposition, however, brushing too hard is the top culprit for gum damage.
Saturday 27 October 2012
รถlkur oder open sesame
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ฑ, environment, food and drink, lifestyle
Friday 26 October 2012
gestalt
catagories: America, economic policy, foreign policy, graphic design
Thursday 25 October 2012
bunnicula, count duckula
Lore and superstition regarding vampirism, even preceding the imaginations of the writers they’ve inspired, sanction standard horror and a well-developed, though flexible, codex of rules governing the undead, but can also be keenly abstract in their beliefs.
Folklore of some populations in the Balkans, but surely anchored to a place, a patch of land as much as a particular people, created the overall apparition of the traditional vampire but also held the nightmare that inanimate objects, left out in the pall of the full moon, could become vampires. Certain fruits and vegetables were especially prone to being turned, especially melons, squashes and pumpkins still on the vine during this witching phase of the Moon. It is not clear if the vampire produce took on a changed appearance—nor caused much of a bother, other than rolling about and maybe lurching and bumping into things, but they were no longer fit to eat and needed to be ritually destroyed. The notion that gourds could harbour a malevolent, though paralyzed, force is pretty spooky, and there have been some creative and slightly goofy modern retellings. The idea of possession, a curse settling into a plant also made me think of that troupe of evangelizing vegetables from that children’s Christian television show. The practice of making a jack-o’-lantern out of a pumpkin comes from a completely separate string of traditions and folklore from the British Isles—originally, probably from a hollowed out turnip with the practical objective of making a torch whose flame was protected from the winds.
Wednesday 24 October 2012
consider yourself part of the furniture
Before living in Germany, I had never heard the word Stammtisch, although the phenomenon and culture of a table for regulars, a salon-society, and a designated meeting point, a reserved spot, for networking and politicking, like the word, had been long since an established fixture of many societies. That term sounded very formal, like holding court, and maybe that made me seek out a less down-to-earth translation or equivalent. It comes under other names, too, of course, including the cracker-barrel or Coffee-Klatch, which surely has German origins too, and all the different words with differing connotations of hierarchical sophistication. Cafes, guesthouses, inns (Gaststรคtte) and pubs usually distinguished the gathering point for their regulars with a special ceremonial ashtray or a table flag (Wimpel). Mostly the get-together has been sublimated in the form of a virtual presence, but in some places the tradition continues unbroken.
ingot audit or treu ounce
While the merest suggestion that all the gold reserves in Fort Knox might not be fully accounted for is dismissed as the anarchistic and rambling speculations of a Sanka drinking mountain woman, the same question posed by the German Schatzkammer, the competent authority for auditing such things as the nation’s some 3 400 tonnes of gold, seems to have drawn some serious, if not careful and apologetic attention.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐บ๐ธ, economic policy
Tuesday 23 October 2012
for you, vor ort, vorbei
While I believe these events were unrelated, it is of note that the push to institute a quota scheme for women in top management in German businesses came on the wake of the collapse of a drug store chain (Drogerie-Kette)that served as a pedestrian anchor in many neighbourhoods and smaller communities. The loss of this retailer not only means that residences need to go further for staples but the chain was also an important local employer in these host communities.
German public radio aired profiles of the so-called Schlecker-Frauen (mostly women worked there) and how they are managing after suddenly finding themselves unemployed, and it was an interesting portrayal of rippling insolvency that has not been the norm for German companies, just evaporating and leaving vacant units with no successor. Triangulating between these two matters, there was also a study sponsored by the Finance Ministry recently, perhaps to inject support for the arguments in favour of introducing quotas, that clearly showed that companies with female management and influence go under less often than their masculine counterparts. The research cited the more balanced and cautious leadership traits that women decision-makers tend to exhibit more than men, organic and holistic approaches that incorporate multiple elements into business factors and not an unwavering focus on returns. Under-represented as they are in the largest concerns (which the quota law is hoping to remedy), the Ministry does own that a risk-averse approach (riskioscheu Vorgehen) and may be attributed to the fact that women managers tend to mind smaller businesses in general and thus have less cash and resources to take gambles with. Conservative practices, however, are not the antithesis to striking a balance between personal and work life, no matter how a wager is underwritten. I am not such of the makeup of the decision-makers for the chain gone bankrupt but I wonder if it would have fared better, more discriminate expansion and focus on its original purpose, if management was a better reflection of its employees.
Sunday 21 October 2012
prince of prussia
Over the weekend, taking advantage of the Indian Summer conditions and the full- spectrum of colours and hues, we had a chance to visit the town of Sigmaringen, situated between the city of Stuttgart and Lake Constance. The dominating palace was impressive of course in its own right and well worth the visit down to the finest details. Usually, despite a wealth of exceptions, I do not think of such a place as lording over a living community—present and mushrooming from the landscape, to keep the subjects in check. Exquisitely curated by the equally extant dynasty of the hereditary princes, the location has been through the ages an exclave of Prussian rule and a city-state as well as the headquarters of the Vichy government of France during the closing months of World War II, when Allied forces pushed collaborators into exile.