Wednesday 26 December 2012
moveable type or three-penny opera
Though the idea of handling it at all made my fingers feel nubby and sebaceous, I was really astounded by how it’s aged, the feel of the leather binding and the wear of the pages that I didn’t know paper was capable of as I looked through the book’s chapters, dicovering, and at the family chronicle that lists dates for ancestors well before the publication and continues until the year 1998. This venerable institute for biblical scholarship greatly propagated publishing with refined printing (Stehsatz, block typesetting) techniques and sold some four million copies at a cost of just six Groschen a piece. This enterprise not only made the Bible and other books more affordable but also supported a neighbouring foundation, die Franckesche Stiftungen, which grew from an orphanage in Halle to an international social and educational network and the institute soon merged with the foundation.
Success led to the found- ations’ works being accorded a special status and freedom by the Prussian throne, almost like a city state with imperial immediacy and allowed operations to expand and charitable works to spread. In addition to establishing schools, libraries and nursing homes there and abroad, August Hermann Francke, the founder, also gave Europe one of the first public museums by putting his personal cabinet of curiosities (Wunderkammer) on display for the emendation of all visitors. We pass Halle (Saale) often and now I feel even more guilty about not taking the time to explore and see this wonder of organization and edification at work. What great present this is, and I am sure we will be visiting soon.
Tuesday 25 December 2012
1up or der glรผckspilz
I wonder how such an exclusive yet ubiquitous substance was translated to some universally hoped for but escapingly rare commodity as providence. It is strange what can develope in abject isolation. It’s no explanation, but the luckiness of the chimney sweep, who introduced industrial cancer and labour reform to the world besides, seem to operate under a similar logic—a reminder that one’s hearth and home had not burnt down, due to a poorly maintained fireplace, but still representing a kind of forbidden and untouchable skill, like for those who live in psychedelic houses.
catagories: ⚕️, ๐, ๐, ๐, ๐บ, ๐ง , food and drink, holidays and observances, labour, religion
Monday 24 December 2012
dancing merrily in the new, old-fashioned way
catagories: ๐ฑ, ๐ถ, holidays and observances, lifestyle, networking and blogging
Sunday 23 December 2012
super saturation or bit torrent
The outlying fields then become an expansive inland sea as there’s too much water to soak up and the town’s landscape is transformed by this shimmering, temporary reflecting pool and little torrents turn before spring begins, but it all seems to be coming to soon and too frequently. It is strange to see the tolerance for the tipping point, the range that buffered imbalance, grow more and more narrow. Improving environmental practices is always challenging because it is not just changed behaviours (good climate karma that may still not be enough to turn the tide) locally, though much evidence and hardship is a local matter—where ever local is, that makes change but rather globally, in attitude and deed, that can lessen negative effects and allow nature to heal.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ช️, environment
cliffhanger
A polarized, frightful and fear-mongering legislature, with an array of cadet tentacles and inventive pseudopodia (ฯฮตฯ ฮดฮฟฯฯฮดฮนฮฑ, false feet), is projecting away from any language of compromise, familiarly and characteristically stalling, a move taken from a playbook that could be transposed anywhere and for any episode, showdown that has passed recently and for the foreseeable future. Such inflexibility and laming division allows government to conveniently ignore the mandate of the people who they are supposed to represent and stoke other external pressures, like business and the markets, which always trump congressional indolence and force many hands. It is a vicious cycle of dismantling and up-building inverted, where the conventions razed or raised are the opposite of what’s in anyone’s long-term interest and more and more dulling with each passing deadline and limit.
catagories: America, economic policy
central equatoria or space-time coordinates
We mostly take for granted the fact that we live in charted territory and that almost any route imaginable has been scouted out, the path is well-worn and clearly marked, and that the starting point and destination have fixed addresses, precise under any number of conventions, by the postal system, government and satellite telemetry. The planet’s newest nation, South Sudan, however (and with its capital Juba situated in a district called Central Equatoria, one might be excused for thinking one ought to be able to pin point whereabouts precisely), possesses a paucity of cartographical information about itself, which is a disservice to the young country in terms of understanding demographics, infrastructure and its own resources and moving forward after years of strife.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐, ๐, ๐ก, ๐บ️, environment, transportation
Saturday 22 December 2012
selected traits
I have noticed an overarching theme in portrayals of the near future, usually of the dystopian or post-apocalyptic varieties, which include as a strange, albeit convenient, deus ex machina of a human sub-species with telekinetic or telepathic powers. Cinematically, to me, this seems as troublesome as the paradoxes of time travel, and it seems terribly unlikely that such a patently useful and fulfilling trait would evolve or a mutation pedigreed. I think man has little impetus to evolve, because environmental factors and disadvantageous qualities can and should be accommodated. It’s hard to say what humans would have tended towards, left to the brute elements, had empathy and industry not converged along with natural developed, and we probably would not have liked it—especially since evolution is not a matter of wish or sophistication but practicality and claws and fur and spider-sense, I think, would return long before the debut of psychic powers.
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ฌ, ๐ก, revolution