chiaroscuro or all light is mute amid the gloom

Corporate Europe Observatory releases a quite in-depth investigation on some of the peripheral consequences of the on-going TTIP negotiations, which I dare say is compounded with the perception and reality of dragnet snooping by America that included business espionage, in the codification of trade-secrecy.
The proposed trans-Atlantic jurisdiction would afford confidential practises the same degree of protection as another juicy legal-fiction, intellectual-property, and obscure dealing even more with the onerous cloak of mystery, impenetrable for the mere consuming public, reporters, and politicians without a lobby. Arguments keep reverting (circling for excuses) to the supposed language of TTIP, which is also played close and not disseminated except as glosses, as justification for creating a unified front against this self-affirming threat. The scope of this special-interest apparatus is truly alarming with some three thousand letter-box offices are encamped in Brussels, roosting at the European Union’s corridors of power to ensure that their message is duly pardoned, sanctioned and muted.

five-by-five

bio-pic: beautifully haunting animation style of pioneer Lotte Reiniger

phew-phew: supercut of the Foley artist sounds of Star Wars, including some effects that didn’t make the cut

zener cards: minimalist deck by Joe Doucet

tee-total: the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development wants Germany to curb its drinking-habit

tiger beat: social media giant promotes snap articles to journalism industry desparate to maintain young readership

grooks or squaring the circle

During the Nazi occupation of Denmark poly-math turned resistance-fighter by the name of Piet Hein published thousands (a body of some seven-thousand in his lifetime) of short, aphoristic poems that really went above the heads of their oppressors but were immediately understood and spread virally by the Danish people. Hein called these concentrated verses grooks (gruks, which Hein maintained was purely a nonsense word but some suggest it is a portmanteau of laugh plus sigh) and one particularly poignant one illustrates the heartbreak of conquest, vacillating between indecision, flight or taking up arms:

Consolation Grook

Losing one glove

is certainly painful,

but nothing

compared to the pain,

of losing one, throwing away the other,

and finding the first one again.

There are multitudes to discover on every subject and I am sure that anyone could find one that resonates.

Problems

Problems worthy of attack

prove their worth

by hitting back.

Or for the melancholy Dane, finding resolve when least expecting it:

A Psychological Tip

Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,

and you're hampered by not having any,

the best way to solve the dilemma,

you'll find, is simply by spinning a penny.

No -- not so that chance shall decide the affair

while you're passively standing there moping;

but the moment the penny is up in the air,

you suddenly know what you're hoping.

After the war, Hein continued to formulate grooks of course but also turned his attention to other word play in the form of language games and logic puzzles. Returning to his mathematical and engineering prowess, having mentally spared with Niels Bohr and other luminaries, Hein also devised an architectural compromise that embraced both the rectilinear and the round in the form of what’s called the superegg, which came to typify Scandinavian Mid-Century design and architecture.

lifecycle replacement or persistence of memory

The whole time I was enjoying Doug Dorst’s frame novel S, I did not realise that the subtitle, The Ship of Theseus, was itself a reference to a rather famous philosophical model.

Paradoxically, the ship of the legendary founder of Athens was maintained in a seaworthy state for generations after his death, according to a pledge to honour his memory, but with time and tide, rotten planks had to be replaced at regular intervals. Eventually, none of the original material would have remained, begging the question, posed by many quizzical minds, is the Ship of Theseus still the same ship if 99%, 90%, 50%, 5% or none of the parts were original and all had been replaced. Some argue yes and some no. Now understanding this allusion, the connection becomes quite apparent to the story. Though debatably, one cannot step into the same stream twice, Heraclitus believed that persistence, through the element, medium of time, projects identity outward, even if all the component parts—our bodies included, are continuously eroding and being replaced. What do you think? Is that rescued and refurbished jalopy the same classic car? Is it still Lenin who’s visited in his mausoleum, or now, as he lies in state, even more reliably and fixedly the man?

five-by-five

one ring to bind them: wonderfully geeky and romantic science-fiction inspired jewellery

swim-lanes: a vintage timeline of human history

dollies: beautiful lace patterns created out of newspaper collages

[edit]: audio landscape of revisions, additions to Wikipedia

ampelmännchen: in the run up to EuroVision, Vienna installs same sex couple cross-walk lights

der natur auf der spur oder welcome to the monkey-house

Over the weekend, H and I had the chance to take a safari through the storied and thoroughly progressive zoological gardens of Leipzig, about time too as we have been coming to the city regularly for year now.
Founded for the indemnifying of the public in 1878, the menagerie has expanded immensely in the last couple of decades as has the zoo’s mission for conservation and education.

Within the vastness of the traditional range (though there is nothing mundane about the innovative enclosures) that recreates the habitat of the happy captives as best as possible, there is an indoors core called Gondwanaland that captured the primordial supercontinent in a hot-house environment host to an amazing botanical, hanging garden home to free-range monkeys and birds and dozens of aquaria, madials and terrariums that represent the sort of evolutionary survivors, malingerers that might have populated the pre-tectonic world.
There was also expertly and exotically landscaped lagoons of flamingos, an expansive serengeti, a temple for elephants and many other installations (including ones featuring biomes closer to home) with amenities and little intrusion from those who come to gawk.
The zoo was no amusement park ride, nor side-show attraction but rather a powerful, interactive lesson in diversity and amazing adaptability of life that really confronts one with the vulnerability of our quirkiest, most-specialised cousins.
One of the most popular daily soap operas in Germany profiles resident animals and their caretakers and is broadcast from here every afternoon.  The whole day was hardly long enough for a proper visit and hope to come back soon to learn more.

sunday-drive: bel étage oder free-parking

Taking advantage of the fine weather, on my way back to my workweek apartment, I took a slight detour and saw a bit more of Hanau. Taking refuge at the first open and non-challenging parking space, which turned out—happily—very out of the way and had me trudging from one end of the city to the other and back again, I found myself across from the Frankfurter Tor and admired a collection of ancient headstones that were preserved in the front lawn of the municipal justice building.
The original cemetery grounds had been claimed by the Industrial Revolution when the city saw exponential growth but had had a life-span from the early 1600s to 1840, and it was curious that my next destination (I’d done a little research but didn’t exactly have an itinerary) was a modern graveyard built atop an even more ancient site: the foundations of a Roman bath whose schema illustrated how hot-water was harnessed and circulated—a feature of the plumbing of antiquity that the occident took a long time to rediscover. Coming to where the river Kinzig empties into the Main, I toured the grounds of splendid summer residence of the House of Hanau in the district of Kesselstadt.
The corps de logis is done in a Renaissance revival style and overlooks a huge, undulating garden.
Returning to my car afterwards, I realised that I had parked (rather inadvertently) just on the western perimeter of Hanau’s Altstadt—or what remained after the bombing during WWII, and took a look around the Marktplatz as well. Before one of the few restored structures, the “new” Rathaus, is a fine sculpture celebrating two of the city’s native sons, the Brothers Grimm—although a lot of other places claim this famous pair as well. Most of the rest of the city was laid out in a practical manner, utilitarian, with space allocated for housing and building new in the rubble, as opposed to curating what was lost.
I always feel keenly self-conscious when confronted with an urban environment whose past has been levelled and washed away and wonder if the juxtaposition of a few showcases (as opposed to the sentiment of an entirely restored look and feel) is enough to jar the memory and whether history can be encapsulated in any sort of ensemble. I wonder what the Grimms would have made of such enchanted remnants. I am glad that I had the long stroll and gallery of impressions to think on.