snow patrol

Just when we thought the taunting series of reprieves and relieving afternoons of sunny weather signaled the onset of Spring, it started snowing again. It seemed more transfiguring, however, this time after the hopeful breaks in the weather, thinking each blast was one final assertion from a very stubborn and gloomy Winter, a vow to return despite our best efforts to throw Nature out of balance. This last snow-ball fight may be an indication that we are instead taunting the Seasons and more unseasonableness is on order.
This strange ribbon effect traced along the metal flag poles looks like the icing of thaw and a place where the snowflakes can stick. It was not the hoisting strings, like I first thought but I guess the trail of a drip.  I was braving the uncertain weather in search of a flea-market, just on the edge between what’s comfortably reached on foot (though not in this slush) and what might justify the bother of driving (in this slush).
Quite a few others agreed that it was worth dragging out their belongings for this social-hour, under a covered parking-lot. I found a few treasures, including this heavy and solid copper watering can with a narrow spout for the delicate jobs, and this teak glasses rest fashioned like a nose and mouth. I think it’s Danish.

cracker-jack

I’ve always thought that candies, like colas (and more adult beverages too), attain this strange sort of nostalgic immortality and despite insolvency, changing tastes, and increasing competition seem to remain on-offer, even if in a subdued, bottom-shelf sort of way.

Dots, Tab, Shasta, the medleys of grab-bag treats with half-forgotten names can be had with a little intentional departure from the latest fads and reminiscing. I guess I don’t have any such cravings myself but I appreciate the traditions and cult status surely. There were two news items in the past few days that caused me to wonder about our treat icons, mascots, really, apart from whatever chemical concoction is the delivery vehicle. Due to regulation that prohibited the inclusion of “non-nutritive” items within food (and I guessed it was a more recent restriction to protect young children from swallowing their prize inadvertently), German Kinder Überraschung chocolate eggs were considered contraband in the US.

Disa- ppointingly, the product, which side-steps the arcane proscription by designing the eggs to be split apart and isolating the prize inside with a protective membrane so no one could choke on it by accident, is not from the same makers and surely won’t have that Dyson’s Shell made with the same quality. The fact that the American producers include “Choco” as part of their name makes me fear that the quotation marks are deserved. I do wonder what nutritive content might be encased in chocolate, but nonetheless, the carapace is important. The other story concerned the reanimation of the Twinkie planned by Hostess’ successor company. While it is surely hard to keep an incorruptible, indestructible snack off the shelves, I wonder if for even the most avid fans whether this is a positive development, since some experiments in should maybe be allowed to expire gracefully.

castings

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.

schuldenbremse

While the slow but inevitable train-wreck of the US economy lurches past more and more whistle-stops with the strange sort of glee of acceptance, and the parliamentarians of the EU’s financial agenda, happy to be upstaged by their American cousins, reflect on how to mitigate national austerities fairly amongst its dues-paying members, Germany has with some quiet deliberation and luxury of discipline has achieved—projected at least, a terrain of a balanced budget. This comes some two years ahead of schedule after the 2009 passage, incorporation into the Basic Law (Gründgesetz) of a structurally reined in fiscal plan. Germany would have been closer to its goal but will maintain its pledge to the European emergency bail-out fund. Debt-holdings are still relatively high but so too conditions that allow a diversified portfolio, which seems kind of naïve or smug like a narrative from a text-book recently made irrelevant. Such an accomplishment is anomalous but definitely not something outmoded.

qwertz or lölly, lölly, lölly 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 ö. “I bet it’s just because you figured how to do that with your word-processor.”

Well, yes— technology barely had a foothold back then, and I thought at the time that all instances of oe, in German words, had to be because the type-setter either was not able or did not know how to create an umlaut. In English, they are still a rare enough occurrence to elide over quick, but I detest restoring to rendering really common German words as fuer or ueber or oeffen. It’s just not aesthetically pleasing—or seeing my address displayed to me on some websites with a bunch of garbled characters, like it’s a cuss, because the platform can’t handle a few exotic diereses. If your keyboard does not have the right keys for it, one can in Windows use the following short-cuts, depressing ALT plus:

Ä = 0196      ä=0228
Ë = 0203      ë=0235
Ï = 0207       ï=0239
Ö = 0214     ö=0246
Ü=0220       ü=0252
Ÿ=0178       ÿ=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 Sprachraüme, 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

There has been quite a preponderance of discarded television sets throughout the city recently, just left on the curb-side, which does not quite seem in keeping with German laws governing electronic trash, so I thought that there was some kind of cathode-ray drive. Such a call, however, did not seem forthcoming, as I noticed that the tv’s were not disappeared right away, but lain and were re-shuffled for weeks.
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.

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 Π, the fixed ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.

Pi—pronounced pee and not pie by the Greeks, and corresponds to the 14th day of March and then the Pi moment comes (in military time) at some instant in the afternoon, an exact, though endless, star-date. Pi Day coincidentally also marks the birthday of Albert Einstein. In case you miss it—or don’t care for the switching between the month-day-hours conventions, there’s a second chance later in the summer, though not to be confused, known as Pi Approximation Day, 22nd July, in deference to the improper fraction sometimes used to represent the ratio. The seventh of October ought to be designated as World Ocean Day. It would be strange if we counted, based our number system, not just on the commutable properties of maths but also with landmarks of constants—one, natural logarithm, pi, etc. Could we have found the numbers of physics and nature without having first devised the means to number things for our own convenience?