There is an unhealthy public sentiment, I think, fueled by a few firebrands that is resulting in a wholesale rejection of experimentation and ambition. In Germany in 1932 there was a wild proposal for a peaceful, broader union for a disjointed continent reeling from the horrors of the Great War that captivated the public in ways that no national party or platform could, unfortunately humanist and engineer Herman Sรถrgel's grandiose plans were overcome by other events. Perhaps public distrust of demagogues would have served the world better in some instances.
Sรถrgel's movement was based on the prescient warning that governments must keep pace with technological developments or else risk becoming merely an instrument or a nuisance for innovators. The most significant change that the native of Regensburg on the Danube had experienced personally was that the sluices and dams along German waterways had successfully harnessed the rivers for commercial use and looking toward the example of the nautical empire of Venice and other port cities, Sรถrgel proposed no less than damming the Mediterranean at the Strait of Gibraltar to the Dardanelles in the Black Sea in order to reclaim fertile and productive lands (Neuland) from the Mediterranean basin and selectively flood the Sahara Desert, making the African continent more self-supporting, in his view, and undoing geology and reuniting the land-masses as Atlantropa plus getting a surplus of hydro-electric power in the bargain. I am not sure if this project was feasible, but he went as far as deploying a security detail to Gibraltar to stave off attempts of sabotage by jealous Anglo-Saxons should the building ever get underway. Projects like the Aswan High Dam and enormous wind parks or even the monumental engineering effort to save Venice itself from flooding were perhaps less lofty but probably also neither assailable without Sรถrgel's vision. The project failed and the regime that came into power prevented his further work, although the engineer contributed a great deal to the electrification of Germany and expanding the network of river traffic. There is an institute dedicated to his study and publications in Bad Homburg, not so far away, that I plan to visit.
Sunday 7 July 2013
gondwanaland or atlantropa
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ก, environment, transportation, Wikipedia
ellis island
catagories: ๐ฎ๐น, ๐, revolution
if these walls could talk or windows to the soul
In probably the boldest and most shameless assault against the consuming public since—the last, a German marketing firm has announced its ability and plans to deliver, for a willing sponsor, advertisements to a captive audience through cranial conduction.
The company proposes that clients' messages be distributed on public transport, shaken into the passenger's skull when inadvertently or purposefully leaning against the windows of a bus or a subway or any chosen surface. It's a lot worse than regular commercial breaks spammy pop-unders while navigating websites, and if anything people who take mass-transit ought to be rewarded for not contributing to congestion, not submitted to focus-groups involuntarily. I am sure these beamed messages could be tailored to particular passengers and it is scary hoone's head.
w quickly this might escalate. Chatty, shuddering coffee mugs or singing beer and wine glasses? Such skeletal transmissions are not new but relatively novel things, but perhaps the means to speak with disembodied voices should not be first surrendered to marketers and demographers, who would always like to get into
Saturday 6 July 2013
siss-boom-bah or vital spark
The alchemist with the ability to make a spectacle was regarded by his audience, it seems, in the early Renaissance, not as an entertainer or magician but rather as an educator who was able to make laboratory-style demonstrations of astral phenomena—lightening, comets—the moon, the stars and the sun, rather than mastering some strange new wonder of chemistry. Conjuring up the power of Nature through through carefully prepared potions became at that time also a literal understanding for the figurative, but not so inaccurate, investigation into the animating principle of life, believing that reawakening a fire from basically organic sources was evidence for the the vital spark, not the body electric (as I am sure electricity was looked at philosophically, theologically before being put to mundane use), but rather one that coursed and burnt with the stuff of skyrockets and sparklers.
Friday 5 July 2013
tween
verily a new hope
Some clever wordsmiths have re-adapted the quintessential Space Opera as if it were penned by the Bard himself. This is fun and something you can try at home and leagues better than adding zombies or vampires to the classics and declaring it original or a genre. Pride and Predator or Baby Got Back Gilbert and Sullivan style were absolute genius, however. What ideas for mixes and mashes do you have?
franking privilege or going postal
In order to steam open the envelop, a request need only be forwarded to the Post itself for approval and such a closed system of judge and juror has set precedence for prying into electronic correspondence as well. Being subject to tracing and inspection of course helps uncover networks after the fact and hopefully going forward, like any good detective work—scams, illicit trade and sympathies but such insatiate methods really only help build dossiers, accurate or otherwise, rather than keeping anyone safe and secure.
catagories: ๐ฅธ