castellan or look that up in your funk & wagnall's

After work I ascended to the northern most neighbourhood of the city, past the clinics and houses in the hills to seek out the ruins of the Sonnenburg. This fortress was named after the constable of the castle (ein Burgmann), a low-ranking noble title charged with the defense of the immediate surroundings in the early thirteenth century but the place was given successively greater recognition by kings and pretenders throughout the Middle Ages up to the Thirty Years' War that saw its downfall.
 It was a bit of a challenge to find, obscured by terraced homes and not on the high-ground but in a valley, and I had to inquire. “Excuse me but is there a castle-ruin nearby?” The eponymous community is also known as the place where Konrad Duden retired. Duden was an influential lexicographer of the German language, authoritative and the industry-standard like the Oxford English Dictionary or Noah Webster.

pro se or soi-disant

Shaking my head with a touch of disbelief over the way a German political party portrayed itself, I was totally unprepared for the stultifying display of ignorance and insensitivity that a senior delegation of legislators made, while on a fairy-tale princess reception in Cairo, as the New York Times reports.

Their message of solidarity, invoking 9/11 and a chorus of singing eagles was too revolting to stomach, and surely left a country already in flames and under martial law insulted, regardless of what political persuasion or whether considered rebels or patriots, and confused. “Stand strong, Egypt,” they said, promising to vouchsafe the some billion dollars in military aid the US gives Egypt annually. “Stand firm.” Not that this empty praise and grandstanding is not disgusting enough on its own, given that Congress is preparing to vote yea or nay on authority to attack another country in the region, or only give its tacit approval and thus relinquish any semblance of checks-and-balances with its authority to raise armies, make it all the more terrible. The unfortunate timing of the decision also has everything to do with the typical bailiwick of the legislature, having gone on recess and only affording themselves just a few days to tackle old and new business, including formulating a military operating budget and that has happened every year since 9/11.

befürworten

In between the late movie and the late-late movie the other night, there was an extended campaign advertisement, replete with officious warning what message that the viewer was about to be subjected to, despite which I thought was a fake, a spoof even afterwards, for the the Bayern Partei, the sometimes secessionist and euro-skeptic party that proclaims to represent Bavarian independence and champions a more libertarian stance.

I do not want to assume too much about their platform, which I was not really able to focus on through the distracting way their message was staged, since after all they proclaimed to be speaking for all of Bavarian and suggesting policies to curtail immigration do not necessarily bespeak intolerance and xenophobia, but what was presented, which I thought was a joke, was not conducive to understanding and dialogue. In as much as the party-faithful might have preconceived notions about Unionist politicians and outsiders, their little video was absolutely full of dread stereotypes about this region of Germany. In every scene, depicting forced political conversions, people dressed in traditional garb, Lederhosen and Dirndl, were gathered around fest-banquettes and drinking beer. The only substantial take-away was that the Bayern Partei was still upset about the no-smoking laws (das Nichtsraucherschutzgesetz) enacted back in 2009 and which removed loop-holes in 2010 and were dissatisfied with the governance and representation of the EU. Televised campaigning is a rare and regulated thing, however, the next day in the Altstadt of Bad Karma, our fair city, there was a festival which was unabashedly a chance for pressing the flesh and meeting the electorate. Local candidates from the major parties were present and some of the fringe, opposite groups. I could not find the Bayern Partei, though, to ask if that ad was legitimate.

special k

The brilliant Miss Cellania, writing for Neat-o-Rama, has a excellent essay worth revisiting on weights and standards and an homage for the caretakers of the physical embodiment, the thing-in-itself, of the kilogramme, Le Grand K, kept under lock and key in hermetic conditions in a facility outside of Paris.
While other measurements, like the Metre, which used to be represented by a metal rod, a yardstick to measure all other metres against kept in the same laboratory beside it's other Metric Pals (I rather like the notion that there are platonic forms of such abstract things, however), have been redefined in such a way based off of universal constants that makes artefacts unnecessary, weight, being subject to a lot of different factors like mass being distinct from weigh, altitude, the churnings at the centre of the Earth that affect local gravity and the fact that Le Grand K is tugging back ever so slightly against the City of Paris that keeps him solidly on the table top, I suppose, proves resistant to being described in terms of natural constants that could be calibrated anywhere, with the right instruments. Of course, for everyday use, approximations are good enough, even if a few grams or grains off—but for some purposes, like mixing up the medicine, discrepancies over a whole cargo-ship full of goods, or for the calculations that rely on weight as a function of energy, preciseness and consistency is paramount.

invasive species

The BBC presents an article about the veracity of a supposed effort on the part of the Americans to cripple East Germany agriculturally. Having heard similar rumours before, I had believed that these little red and black, Aztec-patterned bugs, called the Zimtwanze (Corizus hyoscyami) were weaponised versions of the related box-elder bugs that we had in Oklahoma but to propagate that story was false as the bugs are native to Europe and Asia and don't seem to do much harm, just appearing in hordes every once and a while and getting stepped on.

The return of the pest, the Colorado Potato Beetle, however, in the 1950s, timed with daily relief flights over East German territory by American cargo to the enclave of West Berlin, proved for some farmers and Warsaw Pact politicians too great of a coincidence. A heated assault dispatched children to the fields after school to collect as much of the menace that they could manage and blame was squarely placed of capitalist conspirators, hoping to starve East Germany into submission. While the bugs threatened to cause a famine regardless of where they came from, there are two points of view—and it's hard to say what's an apologist's argument and what's reality. I expect a lot of situations are like this, and propaganda can be persuasive—especially for the victors. The article points out that the beetles had already been accidentally introduced in the 1800s, destroying a large part of the potato harvest. These destructive ambassadors had been subdued in the meantime, but it follows that the Colorado Potato Beetle could have made a come back after the war, with pesticide production limited and many farmers unavailable to dedicate time to pest-control, all on its own and without being dropped from the bomb-bays of passing flights. On the other hand, there was talk during the war of initiating the same biological warfare on both sides, whose actual execution was supposedly halted due to fears they would be unable to effectively contain what plagues that they unleashed.

pantheon

On the coat tails of the announcement from the International Olympic Committee which will award the next Games' venue to one of a few cities bidding for contention, a public policy professor from the University of Maryland offers a modest proposal that makes infinite sense and may bring back some of the spirit of sportsmanship and of a world coming together to the event.
Although nations are eager to showcase their prowess and hospitality as hosts, the population of the select cities are realising diminishing benefits if not outright aversion. Recent Olympiads saw whatever profits and friendship that might have been gained quickly and overwhelming eclipsed by costs for security and infrastructure improvements, stadium building and accommodations, concessions—not to mention pre-award posturing, that ran into untold billions. The public were left with the burden and circuses that won't be used again. Some say it was the price of the 2004 Games in Athens that finally exposed the Greek economy's faltering state. In response to these enormous expenditures passed off from one metropolis to another like a torch no one really wants to bear, the university professor suggests that a permanent venue instead be established, under a United Nations mandate, for the Games.

The ideal location would be a Greek Island, administered like a city-state and equipped with all the modern facilities to host training and the sporting events in perpetuity, as well as lodging for athletes and spectators. Such a change would make the sponsors work for contracts and acceptance, instead of the other way around where commercialisation comes dangerously close to fixing the match. It would be a big initial investment but I think one that could pay off in the long run. I have always found it exciting to see a new part of the world featured every few years as the hosts for the Summer and Winter Games, but I suppose any place has more efficient means of promoting itself and reaching a larger (or the just the right) audience, especially when the burden and hassle become too much.

listening post or king under the mountain

There has been much discussion of late of the special relations that Germany shares with the United States but it is really difficult to envision the historic scope in abstract, encouraging words. Here is a map overlay with the addresses of US military installations in the country, starting with outposts and commands captured immediately following the surrender of Nazi Germany (the superimposition, excavation also reveals a lot about where those former facilities were) and evolving over the course of the intervening decades. All these coordinates were taken from public sources and some are already on the map—thank you very much, but I am sure that more than a few missteps and red herrings have been tossed in to determine who might be angling for this information.

View Outreach in a larger map

A favourite Cold War admission by the Soviets was owning that they knew all about maneuvers and where munitions were hidden by the Americans not through sophisticated spying but by simply monitoring subtle changes in the water—from a safe distance downstream, since soldiers in the field and remote locations were not wont to relieve themselves at the latrine. The sampling was quite telling. Though most sites have been abandoned and returned to the German government since decades, there was quite a concerted and concentrated effort that went on for years, driven by different factors, from the nightmares of battle and hubris, to reconstruction and containment, to ideological brinksmanship and polarisation and on to homesteading and inertia.

From a distance, it looks like it one could hardly turn around in West Germany without encountering an army base, but it is interesting to zoom in and see what occupies (or doesn't) that land now, an exploration of places both famous and obscure, and speculate about what activities might have been going on very near you in years past.

shofar, shogood

Rosh Hashanah garnered a bit of publicity by a friendly and surprising missive, but although the name of the holiday means “head of the year” it is not exactly like New Year's Eve on the Jewish calendar.

Instead Rosh Hashanah is the anniversary of the creation of the the first man and first woman (Adam and Lilith, the first and more liberated mate) and marks a time for solemnity and self-reflection. Three ledgers are updated this day, one for the good, one for the wicked and one for those somewhere in between. In fact there are four distinct beginnings commemorated on the Jewish calendar, the first day of the first month that marks the beginning of time (1. Tishei) to count the passage of years, the agricultural new year for planting (15. Shevat), a new year for the counting of months and reckoning when festivals fall (1. Nisan)—like the Moveable Feast of Easter, and a new year for figuring tithing obligations for livestock (1. Elud). It's not a simple matter and certainly not just your typical revelry—learning about the culture is quite interesting and nuanced in unexpected way, however certain traditions have been translated into the Christian calendar, like eating black-eyed peas for good luck and the conventional German New Year's greeting of “gute Rutsch!” a successful sliding, transition into the new year, originated from the Yiddish for a good Rosh.