Wednesday 30 January 2013
lexical or i will not buy this record, it is scratched
catagories: language
type o-negative or captain caveman
Quite a bit of fad diets and spindled advice come and go, and while the best home-spun recommendation usually run don’t skimp on food and know one’s constitution, some candidates, I think, remain enticing and sensible, and without disparaging the strength of motivation and paying attention to one’s body, one’s habits, earn more credit than is due. It’s no Jedi mind-trick to present any comer with an array of caveats where one is bound to find enthusiasm, either for or against. Validation and challenge to one’s palette or approach is equally fixing and offer the same such bait for consideration.
Seeking out a healthy mix of second-opinions can raise a lot of incompatible ideas and contradicting advice. Reinforcement with chiding is a situation that one is more accustomed to than even pure success of failure, regardless of the estimation. Some dispensaries are more effective than others, and if not loyalists, franchises like eating for one’s rH factor, like one’s great grandparents, or like a Neanderthal have garnered much interest, which is a quality as compelling as any visceral emotion—just so with homeopathy and training to become a confirmed optimist. To have a kernel of truth, a bit of solace is a hook, enough and enduring when there’s a bald hint of reaffirming rightness and knowing one’s misguidance was common enough to merit correction. Maybe the new packaging has more to do with processes than any inherent weakness, without condemning the bulk and body of the industry to willing prospecting, maybe the explosion of allergies and sensitivities is more attributable to lifestyle and shortcuts in production. It is immature cheese that has the highest lactose content, and maybe the vogue of intolerance is more because of how it’s cut, even in polite company, than any new epidemic or any revelatory remediation.
Monday 28 January 2013
trance or quantum-leap
The science desk of BBC has a fascinating article that opens up the disciplined world of knowable physical phenomena to the confounding confines of quantum mechanics, which normally escape experience and expectation in tiny, evanescent spaces, through the aspirations of Nature, a force which works within an established framework, surely, but is known and distinguished by its ingenuity, regardless of what invisible hand might guide it.
Sunday 27 January 2013
gumshoe
Despite its ubiquity, I never bothered to find out what meaning there was behind it, since unnoticed symbolism governs all such establishments and I was content in guessing the common emblem was the Star of David or some time-out-of-mind male-female duality cipher, which carry enough hidden meaning and glosses of interpretation already. It turn out, however, that there is a quite but not necessarily separate legacy to this design. The society of Pythagoras associated the sign with hospitality since antiquity—imparting protection for travelers. Germanic lore understood the symbol as the footprint of a circumspect swan, stepping ahead and back again and would insure guests a good night’s sleep, warding away sprites and nixies that stir nightmares for those away from hearth and home. They called it the Drudenfuฮฒ, resembling the footfall of its nemesis, and it kept noisome spirits from crossing the threshold by encouraging them to turn right around.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ช๐บ, ๐ฌ๐ท, ๐, food and drink
Saturday 26 January 2013
rebus
The borough of old London town have some quite fanciful street names, with some equally fanciful but probably incorrect folk-etymologies.
Schweinfurt, whose deep harbour presents an impossible challenge for swine to ford the Main river but rather came from an old Gothic designation Suinuurde, meaning the exact opposite, something akin to quicksand. The names of the British guesthouses likely naming is direct and intentional, relating to symbols adopted by venerable guilds that set up shop in these areas. It was more interesting to be disabused and learn that the Worshipful Company of Cutlers used as their logo an elephant (carrying a howdah on its back, a fancy carriage for the raj of India, named for its resemblance to the chess piece) for its ivory tusks, used for fashioning knife handles. Goats and compasses probably should be taken literally and could refer to a variety of trades, from people who actually cobbled shoes from goat skin to the enclave of Rheinish barrel-makers (coopers), whose craft was hallmarked by mathematical precision (a drafting compass) and a chevron (^) that stands for a fret, frieze or frontier for crossing obstacles reliably, much like a sure-footed goat, which has the same Latinate root.
Friday 25 January 2013
autostrada
Since their inception, there have been standards enshrined in the culture of highways, Autobahnen with the intent of breaking up monotony without sparing on utility. There are mandates for gentle curves in order to keep drivers alert, in contrast to straightaway, required in some places to allow for emergency airplane landings.
Sometimes such subtler persuasions are overshadowed by constant construction works, same-otherwise by a few vistas of spectacular scenery and roads hugging the contours of the landscape. There are still, however, quite a number of long numbing stretches of road, especially for the express route through flat lands. Although not common in America or Germany, there are score of techniques tried in France, Denmark and the Netherlands to with art streaming along the margins, posts a-pace with the traffic that change like flip-book animation, rather abstract and Jungian and light installations. Some really creative things have been done, but now such Dutch civil engineers are applying their artistry to creating smart-roads, beginning with a stretch of highway by Eindhoven.
catagories: America, Europe, technology and innovation, transportation, travel
Thursday 24 January 2013
fig leaf or bootsy collins
This day marks the anniversary of the assassination of the Roman emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus by a cohort commander and a group of dissatisfied members of the royal guard. The emperor was is more commonly known as Caligula, a nickname earned in his childhood while accompanying his father on field marches, scurrying to keep pace with the adults in his little boots. I am sure that was only earned posthumously. His removal from power makes the first known occasion in the history of the Empire that an emperor was removed from office by a grand collusion of the military and the Senate, and not the usual intrigue over succession by their own relatives.