mmm mmm mmm mmm or tip of the tongue

As part of its weekly digest of innovative and new ideas, the excellent blog Brain Pickings features an interesting review of a new work from Clive Thompson about how technology are collaborating in positive ways to augment how we remember, learn and triangulate novel and familiar concepts. The book, “Smarter than You Think: How Technology is Changing our Minds for the Better,” smartly covers a lot of emergent and age-old praises and cautions and is by no means swerving to avoid the counter-argument or discussion, neither a retreat into apologies for new standards of etiquette and work-ethics nor a luddite bemoaning short attention-spans and information overload, but rather presents an extended thesis that certain aspects of on-line resources can prove to be transcending, proving one knows how these tools function.

Knowing how to use the Google seems rather basic, and a chore made progressively easier with each software update, and while being an accomplished mechanic is not prerequisite for being licensed to drive, most probably could better articulate the input and output of a car than the gullible crash test dummies we are for herd-mentalities and the whims of the tool-makers. One intriguing idea that the review puts forward is the tip-of-the-tongue syndrome—certainly not a new phenomena itself, strangely modernized by the internet, which allows one to reverse-engineer any escaping memory. Connecting the dots, however as the author cites, is only good as the dots one collects. The internet and its dynamic interface is certainly more than just a scatter-shot consultant but can be rather a constellation-maker.

is there in truth no beauty?

Artist Juan Ortiz gives the original Star Trek series the brilliant treatment of re-imaging each of the the eighty episodes in classic movie-poster-form. At the link, one can purchase the collection and browse images. Though the title of individual shows might escape even the greatest and most-studied of fans, all are rife with iconic images that certainly take well to one of the pulp but defining art forms of contemporary (retro) times. Though maybe not all episodes of nostalgic television could be re-imagined as such, do you have memorable viewing experiences, either first- or second-hand that ought to be committed to this very portrayal, like your neighbours joining your parents to watch the finale of M*A*S*H*, Tatort or The Outer Limits?

laissez-faire is everywhere

There were several stories in circulation this week, echoing from many corners of the world and many times without deference to this being the fifth anniversary of the collapse of the too-big-to-fail financial house whose downfall placed economics internationally in chaos, that proclaimed real and shadow markets to be fully recovered and no longer in danger of relapse.

Maybe some early optimists took the occasion to express a brighter outlook and the mimics missed the crux of the context and rather not let ancient history complicate an apparent slow-news day or revive unpleasant memories and fueled with the hopes of returning to simpler and more trusting times—an economic nostalgia when the labour situation in Greece had nothing to do with the price of eggs and banks were an insulating factor true to their word that tomorrow could only be bigger and better. Indeed, some the language was reminiscent of the patriotic overtures to just go shopping in the aftermath of the September 11 Attacks to restore the world economy. Never mind about confidences shaken and disintegrated, the disclosure of inflationary and unethical practices, the stark shift away from social good and board and bed lost and increasingly aggressive circling-of-wagons by the banking aristocracy and their court, their sophists—journalism being a big part of that estate, to keep the game going. Dwelling on the negative and preaching doom and gloom is only helpful as a reminder and urging precaution—not that pathological adventurers need inspiration, but I do wonder sometimes who sponsors such spin and de-programming.

suffrage

The citizens of Bavaria will go and cast their votes for state elections on this Sunday, and I discovered, after appreciating the collusion of events, like the anticipation of the beginning of Oktoberfest, which celebrates into October starting on next Saturday, that state governments do have some discretion in setting the dates for election day—no sooner than 59 weeks before and no later than 62 weeks after the last cycle of four years hence.
And though there was license to place balloting the morning after the bacchanalia, officials put it strategically a week prior to federal elections. There is not the same kind of flexibility in campaigning in the United States, whose moment of decision, by law, falls on the day after the first Monday in November—due to the agrarian nature of the early US and notwithstanding the provisos of early- and absentee-voting. That German federal elections (and neighbouring Hessen's state elections also) come maybe while nursing a hang-over is quite another matter and maybe too by design. Coincidences of the calendar are certainly not always politically advantageous but does make one wonder when it came to the legal convention—like US presidential elections being always (except in the rare case of a year equally divisible by 400) on leap-years or during years of a summer Olympiad—locust plagues, perhaps, in addition to whatever sideshows can be introduced. I wonder if such precedents were considered.

austausch, b-gosh

Long had European Union Commissioner for Internal Affairs Malmström held her tongue over the on-going revelations of the breadth and depth of indiscriminate intelligence gathering on the part of the US—not, I think, out of a lack of concern or zeal but rather to not bait controversy prematurely, but digesting the reported reach of the spying, suggested that the lack of transparency could lead to the EU's withdrawal from the SWIFTBanking Treaty with the United States.

The agreement provides that the signatories hand over certain financial transactions to America, in the name of combating tax-evasion and money-laundering and rooting out all imaginable evils. Malmström, after learning how the SWIFT clearing-house for international bank transfers is apparently already subject to eavesdropping, she questions why they are now asking permission. Her statements have galvanised the parliament in Strasbourg and several factions have agreed to join together with demands that all cards be laid on the table, including back-door practices. Quitting the treaty would be a significant affront US-EU relations and mark the first time that a bilateral data-sharing (Austausch) arrangement was challenged—a few of which the Swedish commissioner herself helped orchestrate.

apiculture or re-colonisation

I fear that worldwide, bees—domestic and wild—are far from being completely out of the woods when it comes to any number of natural and artificial ravages, it seemed like the bees returned this summer in Germany, at least, with a vengeance.
Any number of factors could have been decimating their numbers, which drive worker-bees from their hives and thus the support system collapses—ranging from cellular phone masts, parasites, pesticides, genetically modified crops to mono-culturing, and I wonder what factors shifted here to very nearly make sitting outside intolerable. Or maybe those are just all the prodigal bees that disappeared from their home-hives on the return. Of course, I'll suffer a curious bee droning too close and investigating my food and drink but at times it was enough to move the table-setting indoors. It was worse and more immediate than ants marching on a picnic, and I wonder if the stabilisation of the population will once again make bees the object of irreverence, instead of dire concern, like with the portrayals of killer bees in B-movies and angsty media.

subject-verb agreement or pluralia tantum

Mental Floss has a provoking list to puzzle of nouns that exist in the English language only in their plural form, like scissors, eye-glasses, amenities, britches, riches and remains. There is a complimentary phenomenon called singulare tantum, which are called the uncountable nouns, like information or comparing the last two previous examples—wealth and dust.

The formation occurs in other languages but the set of vocabulary is not the same, such as Eltern (German for parents and never used to refer to just the mother or father without complication) or Ferien (holidays and never singular, even when referring to a specific one or time of the year) or the Dutch hersenen (for brains, but unlike the German Gehirn, is meaningless without the -en). Ciseaux (scissors), lunettes (glasses), ténèbres (tenets, beliefs) are similar in English and French, and some words are flexible. Though it is interesting to try to figure out the logic and influence and imagine grammar another way, it sounds however very contrived to speak of a pant, when not breathless, or of a glass when referring to peripherals.

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.