triage or medicopter 110

An engineering student in Delft has designed a prototype that puts unmanned aerial technology to beneficial use with an ambulance drone. His proposal and pitch is presented really well and this ingeniously simple rescue concept could have real life-saving impact and evolve in unforeseen directions—though it’s already clever enough to make me think it would be a wise investment to supplement emergency response teams with flying familiars. The drones could be dispatched or even summoned by a call to the hospital, zeroing in on the caller’s cellular coordinates, and deliver a defibrillator, respirator or other equipment to the trauma victim.
Video and audio capabilities could make for quicker assessments and provide instructions to good Samaritans already on the scene until paramedics could arrive. Maneuvering technology needs to be perfected before it could operate safely in an urban environment—where traffic snarls squander vital moments but such a system would also benefit patients in remote locations, like mountain tops and isolated after natural disasters—or even to places deemed too dangerous for immediate human outreach.

energie-wende oder junck bonds

Lately, the press regarding the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership treaty has mostly been lately either smug resignation to the inevitable or nebulous fears that come across a bit feeble and embarrassing for the agreement’s opposition.
Naked Capitalism, however, delivers an accessible and literate summary of the arguments and developments that are coinciding with Germany turning sour on the whole deal with America with its perceptions and understanding of what’s at stake matured and appropriately jaded. Aside from the mutual watering-down of environmental- and labour-regulations and other concerns, there is more over the clear potential for corruption with revolving-door commissars and “judges” to act as the court of last appeal in disputes between member states and businesses. It is this last point that is focusing Germany’s awareness—what with the German government already at the mercy of the trade courts and one foreign energy concern’s self-interests over the country’s resolution to wean itself away from nuclear power. Germany faces reparations for losses the company will incur due to this decision—and the company’s right to seek compensation for its investors is already enshrined in legislation that could override a stand taken by the state. Settlement was eventually reached without invoking arbitration—which is a very Byzantine process by design—but if the legal framework is unraveled and corporate bullying is made easier and pushed out of view, it is not hard to imagine that Germany’s energy-reform could have taken a very different trajectory.

die partei oder a modest proposal

I missed the winning campaign over the summer for a seat on the European Union parliament, but the German and Austrian editions of The Local present a comprehensive and funny retrospective of Martin Sonneborn’s first few months in office.  The sometimes poisonously controversal satirist and former editor of the Germany’s national lampoon magazine, Titantic—much like The Onion, and regular contributor the Der Spiegel’s humour column formed die Partei (the Party) as a joke back into 2004, and since then the comedian’s platform and the voting public eventual presented candidate Martin with a mandate. If nothing else, I am sure that the experience is providing material for years to come.

susie keane’s puppeteens

Via the fantastic Nag-on-the-Lake, reporting for The Guardian, the enquiring Jon Ronson writes how Tim Burton will direct a film about the lives and times of the artists (the true and the plagiarist) behind those insanely popular paintings of slightly forlorn, treacly waifish sad, big eyed children—usually pictured holding equally puppy-eyed familiars. The bio-pic—slated for release in December—was first conceived four years ago and looks to be a pretty fascinating story—with Margaret, the wife of the showman and fraud Walter Keane, getting no credit for her work, based off the marionettes that she designed to teach French to her daughter Susan.  The ruse went on for a decade and spanned the art capitals of Europe and with plenty of celebrity patronage.   We never had any of Keane’s art at home but I certainly do remember seeing some in passing growing up.  Who knew that there was more behind their creation? 

it happened on the way to the forum: off the reservation or roman gothic

H and I took advantage of a nice afternoon to take a stroll around our second-city of Wiesbaden. As we walked around the Kurpark, we thought about the Roman influence that is nearly forgotten jenseits the Rhine. Few obvious relics remain and though somewhat an idyll—like the trend, the conceit during Victorian times for English villages to Latinise their names, c.f., Weston-super-Mare rather than Weston-upon-the-Sea of Faulty Towers fame—this settlement did original appear on the map with the designation Aquis Mattiacis (Aquae Mattiacorum), by the Waters of the Mattiacæ, a branch tribe of the Germanic Chatti. The remote settlement, now known Spa-in-the-Meadows, within the defensible footprint of the larger fortifications of Mainz (Mogontiacum) just across the Rhein, did also gain renown for its thermal springs that were a source of pigment that Roman women, as was the fashion, could use to dye their hair red. These artfully arranged ruins are not Roman but remnants of the construction of the nearby opera house, and the interior of the casino is modeled with the grand opulence of a Roman bath house.
A true archeological leftover remains, however, in the form of the so-called Heidenmauer (ironically, the Heathens' Wall) which is the preserved part of a Roman-era aqueduct commissioned under the reign of Valens after he and his brother and co-emperor Valentinian finally some made gains on this frontier, the Limes Germanicus.
This headway in Germany by the Emperor of the West, however, was obscured by a more fateful entreaty and the way it was carried out on another distant fluvial border. A Gothic tribe pleaded with Rome to be allowed to ford the Danube in the Balkans and seek refuge from an even greater peril, the marauding Huns, which the Western Empire would not even survive to face. There was no Gothic invasion of Rome, but rather a horrible and snowballing misstep taken by abandoning established safeguards and protocols.
For centuries, Rome had been integrating barbarian refugees, transforming former enemies into citizens and soldiers, with carefully constructed plans for avoiding diaspora through redistribution, resettlement and conscription against common enemies—the Romans were also not above simply buying loyalty with bribes and pay-offs. But with attention vested in internal revolts and problems in the East, Rome bypassed the usual measures and empanelled the influx of Goths, primarily the Thervingii and the Greutungii under the leadership of Alavivus and Fritigern, to refugee camps with very austere conditions. The still-banded tribes reached the breaking point after chieftains were invited to a reconciliatory banquet and then held hostage and the starving people were offered grain in exchange for selling their offspring into slavery.
 A united Gothic people claimed the run of the Empire’s countryside but were unable to raid walled and fortified cities, lacking the resources and experience. The Eastern Emperor, Valens, finally had had enough of this nuisance, just at the gates, and took a stand on the fields of Adrianople (Edirne in Turkey). With superior fighting strength, however, the Gothic forces successfully routed the Romans, killing many key military figures and the Eastern Emperor himself and captured the city, which proved to be a gateway to controlling all of Thrace.

Peace proved even more costly to the Empire, with a settlement reached that essential established an autonomous Gothic kingdom within Roman territory. Though the Goths were temporarily pacified, external pressure set by this new precedent did not go unnoticed by all parties involved, a demoralized Rome, an emboldened bunch of barbarians—including the relatively tame and reliable Germanic tribes, and it did not take long for the Empire in the West to fracture into many such independent enclaves. The evidence left in Wiesbaden seems to invoke more tranquil times for Rome.

we are a culture, not a costume

As debates rage about the efficacy and ethics of quarantine for the sake of public and private health in this atmosphere of Fearbola, Atlas Obscura presents an interesting short history on the phenomena.
Not forgetting or diminishing the real and immediate suffering of individuals in the so called hot-zones and those without the luxury of protesting their confinement in abstract terms, this is turning out to be a potentially very frightening time of year, in keeping with the season—what with imaginations enervated with notions of zombies on the march and a weird kind of vampirism with a sanguine obsession over certain blood-types as a rescue-cure. The American military personnel helping to construct needed health care facilities will be isolated for at least three weeks in an army hospital in Vicenza—which is not far from the lagoon of Venice, whose islands (a few of them) had served as rather ghastly lazarettoes (way-stations common during times of plague for sailors to wait out the incubation time without endangering the local population, named after the parable of Lazarus) or cordon sanitaires in the not too distant past. What do you think about all this hysteria and working oneself into a frenzy?

minimalist phillumenist

Collectors’ Weekly curates a fantastic gallery of one phillumenist’s (a collector of matchbooks) passion for the minimal artwork featured on matchbooks from all around the world. The ephemeral often feature advertising for a specific night club, bar or hotel but there are also plenty of little evocative and endlessly efficient canvases touting vacation destinations, big events, local colour, safety awareness and public service. Browse through the exhibition and be sure to visit the collector’s private retrospective at the link.