There is an entire pool at Flickr dedicated to artistic and interesting manhole covers. Neat-o-rama curated a little preview. Japan seems to have some of the more unique and elaborate examples and there is a lot to discover from all over the world, but I am ever excited to go on an urban safari through a new German community and collect more local symbols and crests.
Thursday 14 March 2013
Wednesday 13 March 2013
schuldenbremse
catagories: ๐จ๐ญ, ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, economic policy
Tuesday 12 March 2013
qwertz or lรถlly, lรถlly, lรถlly get your umlauts here
I recall being quite red-faced in college when a professor, exasperated, asked why on earth I would spell Goethe’s name with an รถ. “I bet it’s just because you figured how to do that with your word-processor.”
ร = 0196 รค=0228
ร = 0203 รซ=0235
ร = 0207 รฏ=0239
ร = 0214 รถ=0246
ร=0220 รผ=0252
ลธ=0178 รฟ=0255
On an Apple platform, it’s a bit more intuitive, just taking the Option key—or on a touch pad, just depressing the letter for a bit longer. For script, it’s the letter (Capitalized or lower-case) and uml(aut) preceded by an ampersand.
There is, however, the potential for minor irritation with spacing and kerning, even in the Sprachraรผme, including Turkish, that use such accent marks. One particular Autobahn sign, which I pass on my way home, employees this funny, glaring non-standard g in order to accommodate Umlauten above and below. One would think that Germans could improve on this layout. Sometimes one finds stylized typefaces that minimize these effects without detracting from the sound or meaning imparted with vertical or embedded dots. If there’s ever celebrities or world-leaders with a lot of umlauts to their names, some clever person should make such a standard alphabet for newsprint and make it freely available. If I am able to figure it out, I will surely share.
curb-side service or scavenger-hunt
Some enterprising professionals, I thought, might be able to harvest the components and scrap a significant profit, I thought, but then wondered if such expansive and Turing-complete progenitors, less pressured by a drive for miniaturization were themselves rife for prospecting and reclamation. I’m not sure if this is the case, or whether industry is truly prepared for its onion-skin of obsolescence and yet could suffer any takers. Not everyone could safely harvest the metallurgic legacy that appears in the trash, nor should they try. Vertical living affords an important level of anonymity, as well, and maybe more ought to be done to incentivize an unpopular breed of backwardness.
catagories: environment
Monday 11 March 2013
the life of pi
At some elusive yet definitive point on Thursday afternoon, for some blurred fraction of a second, just before school is dismissed, time will be aligned with ฮ , the fixed ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ท, ๐, ๐งฎ, holidays and observances
Sunday 10 March 2013
surf and turf or pyroplastic treats
Our neighbours most always holiday in the Canary Islands and bring us little souvenirs (Mitbringseln). Knowing not very much about Tenerife, one of the main islands, I was sort of guilty of dismissing it as a destination that did not require an excess of creativity, especially in succession, and maybe a sort of rugged and isolated place—those sort of resorts duplicated inland and within easy reach with the peaks and lakes that one can see just outside of the window at home but won’t venture out to see even in the best weather but will brave reliably wechselhaft oceanic conditions and go out to see the grey just because one is on vacation. We’ll do that as well, so I am not judging my neighbours’ sense of adventure or taste.
The latest gift, however, of Los Piedras del Teide (Teide Stones) encouraged me to investigate. Despite the volcanic peak on the cover, it took me some research to realize that that the chocolate covered almonds were supposed to represent the pyroplastic blasts of this still active volcanic peak. It turns out that this projection is the third highest volcano on earth and dominates a land rich in outstanding natural beauty and a unique aboriginal culture, the Guanches, who revered this landmark like the Greeks their Mt. Olympus. Pico Teide was considered the pillar that held up the heavens, after its people saw the loss of one of their patron gods of light and magic was captured by their devil, Guayota, represented, in the main, by a black dog, from which the archipelago gets its name, and held captive here. They appealed to the ruler of the gods for intervention, Achamรกn, who obliged by fixing their cosmos to this rock, trapping the devil underneath. In modern times, the molten and other-worldly landscape has been used extensively as proving-grounds for scientists preparing for Martian exploration. It is pretty keen when one can learn something from a souvenir and bring a place into the foreground.
pope trope
The special chimney has been hoisted above the terra-cotta roof of the Sistine Chapel, the deliberation floor for some 115 cardinals, to proclaim to a watching-world their consensus or failure.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ฎ๐น, ✝️, foreign policy
Saturday 9 March 2013
paved with good intentions
From potemkin humanitarian gestures that were detached from reality and insult to the basic needs of a war-torn population, stark disregard or ignorance of the counter-balances of power being sloppily removed, to squandered opportunities for promoting real concord—not to mention all the death and destruction in vain and demonizing a culture and religion to the whole of the Western civilization, van Buren tries to illustrate how the best intentions rang hollow, if not naรฏvely so.
One can argue that simple swagger and hectoring cannot account for all the misadventures and when things stop making sense, one ought to follow the money. That is an important consideration and I am sure there’s more than a kernel of greed behind a lot of the US overtures for freedom and democracy, but I do not believe it was ever the objective (well-meaning or not, which I tend to think on the levels that made the decisions) to fold the punished and enfeebled hand of the US out of the round of chaos they created. The entanglement—probably with roots reaching back several decades, is too big to bow out of gracefully and I am afraid that the withdrawal will be painfully stubborn for all involved.
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, foreign policy, Middle East, religion, revolution