domesday or decimate

Many municipalities across Germany, but particularly in the smaller Länder, are poised to challenge the findings of the national census conducted back in 2011 but the results of the number-crunching have not been previewed until recently. Despite very cautious calculations and withholding of demographics until outcomes were relatively certain—not revealed for two years, the canvasing has provoked dispute, as federal funding is proportional to population and many places are seeing their accustomed support cut, maintaining that the sampling method was biased and did not retrieve an accurate picture of their population. There is no talk of gerrymandering in the complaint, and while I am far from having full-faith in the demographic process, I do wonder what standards elicited both the results and the follow-on dissent.

angel investors

Just days after the Pope condemned the “cult of money” and materialism before the masses on Copacabana beach and urged greater charity and above all a re-prioritisation of what counts, Archbishop Welby of the Anglican faith has posed a similar challenge to the predatory pay-loan business in the United Kingdom and around the world, whose loan-sharking has become the first and last opportunity for many the poor who fall behind on their bills. Welby goes the industry one better, throwing down the gauntlet in this article from Der Spiegel International and directly compete against these pawn-brokers with opening credit-unions after a fashion, a each of their branches—parishes to give the public more of a choice and better terms and conditions and without the usual or expect stint. It is difficult sometimes to separate church and treasure, but I think these open declarations of competition could prove significant and realise a surplus of good.

thread, riser and nosing

The World Geography has an amazing collection of breath-taking staircases from around the world.  The images really presented an embarrassment of choices, the likes of which I never imagined existed or would be primed to race up and down. It was hard to pick just one image: find out more about this Moses Bridge Stairs in the Netherlands, the Stage of Dreams in Japan, the stepwell in Jaipur India and the pedestrian rollercoaster, the Tiger and Turtle in Duisburg, Germany at the link.  Be sure to check out the website for more galleries devoted to outstanding themes.

sunday drive: flohmarkt

On way way back to begin the workweek, just one turn away from my apartment, I was redirected by signs for a massive monthly flea market. Passing through the parking area, I saw that the Omani Sultanate's diplomatic mission to Germany could not resist a good sale either. Perhaps they had some tschotskies to unload. I was first exposed to this distinctive license plate a few weeks ago on seeing a fancy fleet of sedans stop on a side-street in my neighbourhood while walking to the local grocery store, and curious, discovered what the null meant on car tags. I sprinted up and down the endless aisles and found just one piece that caught my eye—a little silver-plate bowl that is proving somewhat of a mystery.

It is marked REP. NEOVEDA 20 and bears the insignia of a face in a halo of rays. I could only determine that it was a German manufacturer of the 1930s and 1940s and the twenty referred to a low silver-content in the plate. As the sellers were already starting to pack up their wares, I had a bonus in the deal of wooden Moco weather station (I am not sure if the barometer and hygrometer still work but I liked the type-face) and a generic restaurant coffee service.

abc's and 123's

Slate has an excerpt from Daniel Tammet's new book on thinking in numbers, in which the author experiences the cultural nuance, chiefly while visiting Iceland, where amounts are treated as something qualitative as well as quantitative and not something separate and abstract.
For the numbers one through five, there are different forms for years, sheep (it reminds me of the shepherd’s rhyme and special number system for counting sheep and stitches for knitting—Yan Tan Tethera, and probably also useful for sending someone off to slumber-land), people, naming trains and highways and houses—reflecting declination and something categorical that has no equivalent English despite the occasional encounter with twain, deuce, score and murder of crows, a gaggle of geese, etc. The fourth sheep is called something like “Sheep Number Four,” as if it were a city-bus—preserving a sense of cardinal bias, something not strictly ordinal, since four follows three only by the reckoning of the counter, unlike the passage of time. Bigger numbers are not elaborated in the same kind of way. I would like to read this book and find out how ways of counting influence the cognitive process and possible assumptions made about the significance upon encountering the unusual.