valance or tinley bar

Food Beast presents this brilliant and systematic presentation of classic cocktails arranged in Periodic Table form by designer Mayra Artes.

Click on the image to enlarge but be sure to visit the gourmand blog, as well. The columns are arranged by family of liquors and in descending order of alcohol content—thus chemical reactivity. I like how the Gin Group is located where one would find the Noble Gasses and the listing of the Rare-Earth elements. Here's a toast to the science of taxology. I think a perfect project for an expert cheesemonger (l'artisan fromager) would be to adapt families of cheeses to this format.

forked-tongue or double-helix

Researchers at the University of Washington have announced that the genetic coding, deciphered on an elementary level first in the 1960s, of DNA contains a second cryptic language that governs the activation and deactivation of genes in addition to the instructions for expressing proteins.

The hidden directions indicate that by its vocabulary DNA may be responsible for what's understood as aging and disease, more so than time and decay. Perhaps such a dual function should not come as something unexpected, though unplumbed, necessarily, but it does, I believe, really demonstrate the folly of genetically modified foodstuffs in learning that there is something proactive as well as reactive to body chemistry. We are certainly not programmed for sabotage or self-destruction, I think, our bodies are rather, fortunately smarter than ourselves. Do you think such a palimpsest of language is prone to misinterpretation, since the coding of chemistry and biology might not be as straightforward or verbose as our systems of constructed communications and sub-routines?

zugzwang

The Society for the German Language announced from Wiesbaden its selection for word of the year, a portmanteu GroKo for Große Koalition (Grand Coalition) for its characterisation of the political environment of post-election Germany—a surprising departure from the status quo and for the making of unlikely partnerships though the vote and the aftermath is fairly young and does not seem too influential in the grand scheme of things.

It beat out other candidates like Big-Data and Big Brother, referencing the spying and surveillance scandals, a descriptor for the Bishop of Bling for his extravagance and the new papacy's reforms, the idea of charging foreigners a toll for using the Autobahn (Ausländermaut), or Generation Sandsack for the increased and frequent flooding plaguing the country. The choice may prove prescient, however, as past title-holders have included candidates such as the novel term Bundeskanzlerin—federal chancellor-ess, to honour the first time the office was so inflected, in 2005 and enduring to the present, or Besserwessi, capturing the attitude of a newly-reunited nation with perceived and implied notions that westward-leading values and orientation were inherently better than those of reintegrated neighbours. To some extent the brunt of this thinking has shifted further east—mostly, but is still quite persistent in its application. What do you think? Could GroKo come to signify something like a marriage-of-convenience, a house-of-cards, or a pyrrhic victory in the future?

snowclone

Mental Floss shares a pretty keen list of winter-weather weather phenomena, not only for the stages of frost and snow— hoarfrost (Reif) and hard rime and thunder- snow—but also for optical effects created by nippy air, like a gloriole—from the term for a halo, an ice rainbow. The word snowclone (not a snow-cyclone) has come to mean some hackneyed phrase, a widely-employed saying, like aqua is the new black this season, a template, referring originally to widely-accepted—though probably linguistically incorrect, believe that the Eskimaux have dozens upon dozens words for snow and therefore... English has a plenitude of different and highly specific words for the weather and state of water, as well.