bird-watching

Over the past two weeks from our balcony, H and I have been noticing some strange ornothological behaviour. Nearly over the downspout for the rain gutter of our roof, a few little birds have not been feathering a nest but rather, it appears, tending a small garden plot.
The greenery that’s been planted there hasn’t withered away in the sun and looks to be growing. I would not make the leap yet that the sparrows are practising the rudiments of agriculture—although it is pretty clever if they have to foresight (just like not building a nest in a rain gutter) to think that the plants might flower and attract bees or other insects or at the very least act as a sieve or dam to capture bugs that are washed off the roof in the rain. We’ll have to keep an eye on these two and make sure they don’t take over the neighbourhood.

tenterhooks or looming large

In a brilliant gloss for Æon magazine, writer Virginia Postrel presents an an excellent exposition on how textiles and fashions parallel and drive technological advancement.
The broadest example lies in trade, captured famously along the Silk Road, the trade route that saw not only the exchange of cloth but of also knowledge and ideas between the Orient and Occident worlds, and the later shipping empires.
Research into natural pigments and dyeing techniques led to greater understanding the discipline of chemistry. The printing-presses of clothmakers (to imprint patterns) inspired Johannes Gutenberg to establish the publishing industry in the West. It was factories that housed the great power-looms and the flying-shuttle that drove the Industrial Revolution and gave manufacturing countries a distinct advantage, leading to a huge population explosive, lasting environmental impact, colonialism, labour-issues and societal upheaval from those who puzzled over what mass-production meant. The punch-cards that were the basis of programming these steam-powered jabberwockies to produce increasing intricate designs that led to the development of computers. Contemporaneously, cheap and disposable clothing represents the debate on exploitation, out-sourcing and off-shoring—plus our notions of consumption in general. Even if the shirt on one’s back is not yet a Wearable, it is still heir to all the excellence and dread of human achievement, and that is truly something to think about.

reflex arc or virality

It has been demonstrated perennially that yawning is contagious, even across different species.

Studies have also shown that reflective yawning is a good gage for empathy—imitating someone, even unconsciously like crossing one’s legs in the same way or being synchronised in stride or even the more embarrassing slip or copying someone’s diction (where another might believe that he or she are being mocked instead), betrays interest—and yawns are more likely to spread around if there is some spared affinity. Recently someone has even shown that broods of parakeets pass around this reflex in a highly ritualised, choreographed manner. Further, there are theories that yawning helps to coordinate cycles of sleep and wakefulness among close associates (a zeitgeber) and might even be akin to wolfs howling together. Alternatively (but not exclusively), the ability to yawn, and mirror this behaviour, that allowed humans to expand their intellect, being a mechanism to cool overheated brains, aside from fatigue or boredom. There is no definitive consensus on either its social or physiological function, however. Although yawning itself is hardly a memorable act and I’d venture to say that I yawn in isolation when no one else is around, I can’t that’s not a false proposition and I wonder if there wasn’t one primal yawn that’s been passed around, jumping species, ever since.

daytrip: dreieich

After work yesterday, I took a trip to the nearby village of Dreieich. I had the chief aim of strolling a bit in the countryside and locating the elusive Stangen- pyramide, an outdoor installation of hundreds of graduated wood cylinders that supposedly nicely frame the Frankfurt skyline in the distance—failing that however (though long-wandering through the wheat fields and I will return this time with precise GPS coordinates), I thought to look in town, feeling a bit sorry for the place since I assumed that no one ever visited a place community that’s right off the airport.

I think I might have been mistaken and was pleasantly surprised to find a half-timbered (Fachweck) jewel of a town centre, dominated by the ruins of a fortress. Dreieich has much older Roman roots but the medieval resettlement of the area was owing to a royal hunting-grounds (Wildbann) tended there. Many of the bedroom communities outside of Frankfurt and along the Main originated in the same way—this whole area between Frankfurt and Aschaffenburg having once been a continuous wood, and is reflected in the town’s name and crest—three oaks. Burg Hayn was the stronghold for the bailiff of this estate and a sort of warehouse and armoury.
Dreieich claims to have been Emperor Charlemagne’s favourite stalk and the general layout of the fortification and village that grew up around it were copied throughout the region. Walking through the walled town was also quite nice, with much of the old character preserved, and the residents seem quite house-proud—one could even purchase the town’s half-timbered ensemble in miniature from a shop. I did seem as if it did get its fair share of visitors, bucking my assumptions, and I will return myself to locate that pyramid.

5x5

nothing up my sleeve: wonderful, strange curation of items found inside album covers

dragnet: one brilliant young inventor’s ambition to clean up the oceans to be tested in Japan

space-time coordinates: as a homage to Back to the Future II, one company hopes to make inside-out jeans a thing in time for 21 October 2015

playscaping: repurposed shoe factory and airplanes create a fantastic urban playground in St. Louis

solid-state: nice super-cut of analogue consoles in sci-fi movies