Quisquilia: Lib. nov.

Berta Zeisler¹ (2 February 1900 – 1 December 2010) was a German² supercentenarian. She was born in Metz (German Empire, now France), married in Stettin (German Empire, now Poland) and lived in Wachenheim an der Weinstraße.

¹: Source: Wikipedia.
Additionally, a short biographic note can be found here (on page 11), an image of her here.
²: As with all things pertaining to Elsaß-Lothringen (pardon, Alsace-Lorraine), the French seemingly feel an urge of Francization or Gallicization also of Mrs Zeisler, as evidenced here. Our outre-Rhin neighbours’ prowess in rewriting history never ceases to amaze me.

Newspapers

1. New York Times: http://global.nytimes.com/
2. New York Post: http://www.nypost.com/
3. Daily News: http://www.nydailynews.com/
4. Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/

1. While the prestigious New York Times is without doubt the epitome of quality journalism both in print and online publishing, world-renowned for setting standards in news coverage and balanced, though opinionated editorials, and famous for both its extensive network of offices and social contacts and highly-regarded investigative journalism, all of which features which won the paper more than 100 Pulitzer Prizes in its long history, it proves at best its worth as a reference point for national and international news rather than local pieces. Top-notch are the features on NYC arts, culture, architecture and fashion, though.

2. A cursory, daily reading of the New York Post will on the one hand reinforce the impression of Brooklyn and the Bronx as epicentres of crime within the city limits and further highlight the trappings of the paper’s lurid, often voyeuristic tabloid style - never mind the plethora of frequently disgusting, xenophobic comments by its readership, mirroring the Post’s political leanings and outright bias to the right. It will, however, on the other hand give you worthwhile insight into the actual manifestation of society and life in New York City and the often abrasive interaction of this city’s diverse and multicultural communities with one another, i.e. “real life”.

3. The Daily News is another yellow-press daily in New York City; unlike the Post it focusses less on sensational crime stories and more on reports on New York society. There is not really any need to invest time in reading it for a visitor to New York, unless one happens to harbour an interest in the Upper East Side socialites and charity events anyways. Gossip, entertainment and sports reports are its trademarks, plus classified ads if you still cling to the print media for such. (Craigslist and Backpage are vibrant, and better, online alternatives for such, though, and for free.)

4. The most widely circulated newspaper in the United States, the Wall Street Journal covers primarily economic and political topics, both on an international and national level. For business and financial news, it is the first choice in the city; one needs to be aware, however, of a noticeable conservative bias and growing influence by Murdoch’s News Corporation (which owns the Journal’s publisher Dow Jones & Company) on its pronounced political and economic viewpoints - despite claims of editorial independence. For the New York vacationer who wishes to keep himself up-to-date on world affairs, in general, the Times seems the preferable pick du jour.

Fake Newspapers

1. The Onion: http://www.theonion.com/

1. You will probably pick up a free copy of “America’s finest news source”, originating from Madison, Wisconsin, on a Thursday night on the streets of SoHo or in the Villages, somewhere below the 14th St, and then have some pleasant fun with the Onion’s cleverly disguised news features on mundane issues and current affairs alike. Their playful, sometimes boisterous take on things makes life in the city so much more bearable and merry, and there’s nothing bad about a weekly chuckle with laughter at fineprint satire and news parodies which put tabloids like the Post to shame.

Journals

1. New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/
2. New York Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/

1-2. Both of these journals feature distinguished articles on culture, literature and current affairs, and both exhibit a striking characteristic of fostering national and international intellectual discourse in the English speaking world. Neither of these journals will provide a visitor to New York with readily available trip advice, yet both will prove an entertaining and stimulating read at night, in the library or, if need be, on a sunny day at Central Park, luring fellow salon intellectuals to your company or knocking off a heated debate. A postmodernist novel, however, by Don DeLillo or Paul Auster, signals equal versatility in dealing with modernity without the pretentious attitude and nonchalant disdain for shallow societal mores. If not for a Columbia sophomore, a smile may get you more hits and chats. Rather study the highbrow narrative at home!

1. Hopstop: http://www.hopstop.com/
2. Seamless: http://www.seamless.com/
3. Airbnb: http://www.airbnb.com/

1. NYC is huge, and despite an extensive 24/7 public transit system ranking among the most advanced in the world (and the oldest, too), connecting the tri-state metropolitan area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, it easily proves overwhelming when you start planning your trips beyond the immediate surroundings. The most reliable and simple way to navigate the city is Hopstop, always up-to-date, at day, at night, including real-time information on the service status of all lines, i.e. delays, service changes and cancellations. In addition, it provides alternative routes, schedules and transfers, and helps its users step by step, with maps and itineraries, for the traveller planning or checking his trips ahead of time. Less user-friendly proves MTA’s info page, and Google Maps is great for its street view feature, but useless for mapping out your routes.

2. Ordering food is tempting after a long day on tour or at work in the office, particularly given the negligent state of many Manhattan kitchenettes, which, often lacking basic utensils such as cooking knives and boards, turn food preparation much more into a challenge and ordeal than daily routine or artisan hobby. With Seamless, hundreds of restaurants, take-aways and other food joints in the immediate neighbourhood are at hand by instant online ordering, without the hassle of busy lines and phone miscommunication - and no awkward discussions about the amount of tipping, due to advance payment by credit card via Seamless’ system. Providing reviews and recommendations, photos, menus and detailed descriptions of the dishes, this site makes choosing (and bookmarking) your favourites and culinary hotspots awfully simple. And re-ordering even more tempting.

3. The NYC market for vacational rentals is stock full of schemes and scams, which renders any search for an (short-term) apartment from outside New York a vabanque, i.e. a risky enterprise, which in turn can get you to find yourself in front of an empty lot upon arrival instead of the shiny, newly refurbished flat you chose for your stay. Fraud is rampant, and Google’s search results unfortunately push some of the most shady and frivolous offers to the top. Airbnb’s design as a social community, enhancing (or corrupting, depending on your point of view) the concept of couchsurfing by facilitating rentals among strangers and friends, is a huge step forward. Reviews for hosts and guests, a secure payment system holding transactions for 24 hours to prevent rip-offs, and verification features for profiles and apartments are among the mechanisms put in place, to make you feel better about choosing a place to stay and venturing into the unknown.

(i) The Great Deluge hits New York yet again. I need to keep in mind, that sunshine usually graces the early hours only, hence morning needs to be put to good use.

(ii) Cactus pear seeds ruin an otherwise fine dish, a fruit salad in my case, made out of fresh mango and kiwi slices in addition to the prickly pear. Mind, its pulp is nothing too spectacular, but it has a nice, exotic flavour. Such a waste!

(iii.a) New Yorkers love their pets dearly. Along Broadway, in the low 80s, you see “Adopt a puppy” stalls week by week, and kitten cuties looking for a new home can be found one day in front of Barnes & Nobles, the other on the corner of Amsterdam and 81st.

(iii.b) Sometimes, though, such affection borders on the insane. I have seen leg warmers on poodles as early as in late September, my dry cleaner’s wife puts her small bundle of cuteness into a fitted t-shirt, and stores like Canine Styles on Broadway and Wet Nose Doggy Gym in Greenwich Village (at 34 E 13th St) speak for themselves.

(iv) The homeless next door receive much less attention than bow-wow fido. A silent, conscientious choice on a daily basis, whom society considers the real fleabags, and a mark of shame for the haves in US society.

Taxi drivers at Friday Prayer, Riverside Drive

(v.a) Friday, 30 Sep: Jumu’ah prayer at 1 Riverside Drive, while festively dressed families take a walk along the neighbourhood streets and parks, honouring Rosh Hashanah.

(v.b) My speculations on an etymological link between Ramadan and Rosh Hashanah prove false. Yet many other similarities in the holy days of Islam and Judaism are striking.

(v.c) Falafel with French fries might not be a New York specialty; I, however, encounter this fast food merger of East and West for the first time. I am not quite won over by this (supposedly) halal dish.

(vi) With the onset of autumn in early October, charity ads appear on TV, imploring the audience to help the growing number of the hapless and less fortunate in American society. Wendy Malick gives maltreatment of animals a voice, Ben Affleck highlights hunger and malnutrition in America.

(vii) Recto: On the D line to Coney Island, at early evening, pretty much everyone around me speaks Mandarin. On the N train (local) towards Queens, Astoria: à la gauche on parle français, to my right Nihongo (Japanese).

In June, Google rolled out the reverse image search as a new feature, enabling users to “explore the web in an entirely new way” which basically comes down to allowing one to scan the internet and scour for instances of any particular image in use. Some raving reviews already praise this service as a free, and superior, instrument to Tineye, while others underline its usefulness in fighting rampant copyright infringement on the internet.

I set out to give it a try, and I am somewhat surprised by the results for my first, particular reverse image search, using an image of bacon I took earlier this month. Apparently Google thinks that –

Bacon similes

…Akina Minami looks like bacon on a bun.
…Jenna Elfman looks like bacon on a bun.
…a Dutch amateur model called Lynntjeee looks like bacon on a bun.
…a crying baby and a cute, little lump of sweetness look like bacon on a bun.
…a wooden toy kitchen looks like bacon on a bun.
…some jam-filled macarons look like bacon on a bun. (I have to admit, I took them to be mini burgers which seemed the best approximation so far among Google’s search results.)
…pencil shavings look like bacon on a bun.

It certainly looks like a wide array of wild guesses to me. I can only conclude, that Google’s image comparison algorithms, along with its database, still need some wee bit of fine-tuning.

The Southern moment

A mid-aged man, in his 50s, white collar shirt buttoned up, slowly moving towards the exit, his belly, pronounced, framed prominently by suspenders; right behind, following on to him, a young woman of Indian descent, dark skin, on suit, painstakingly taking notes; — as assistant.

(dinner at El Centro, 824 9th Ave / 54th St, 22.08.)

59th St / Columbus Circle 1904 tiles exposition

The Western decline

Speaking from a European perspective, health care reform in the States is just a tiny, tiptoey step into the right direction. Isn’t it odd that a nation which took so bold to the West, manifest destiny, yadda yadda –; now proves so scared of even teensy-weensy steps towards Western civilisation?

(in the context of the GOP presidential debates, at Fox News, 19.09.)

(i.a) During the final scene of Anna Bolena, a magic moment in the Met when Anna Netrebko, overwhelmed by the audience’s cheerful acclaim, slipped out of character and with a big smile applauded the orchestra, acknowledging their exceptional performance at the dress rehearsal.

(i.b) Set designers are modern magicians, with engineering skills.

(ii.a) Either my clothes have been shrinking due to professional laundry service, or my body has gotten really bloated due to excessive intake of food. I feel I cannot rule out either for sure.

(ii.b) Neither is a cure for my bloated ego.

(iii) A tv ad for the flawless face: An air void of all character and imperfection, is robbed of life’s essence itself rather than just the lines of time.

(iv) 12 Corazones makes me think I should consider learning Spanish, de veras! (15.09.)

Lafayette St (bet Spring & Broome St, nr Petrosino Square)

(v.a) The Yankees just got drowned tonight by rain, and the match against the Boston Red Sox postponed to next Sunday as second game in a day-night doubleheader. (23.09.)

(v.b) Bagging one’s hair is among the smartest choices observed by me this day.

(v.c) Right at the exit of 161st St / Yankee Stadium, ponchos sold for five US-dollars a piece. A few steps further down the street, two sold for five already. The mechanics of free trade versus overcharging by a touting street hawk(er)s’ cartel on the stairs up.

(vi.a) Kronos Quartet goes Einstürzende Neubauten: To watch, 30 years late, a group of middle-aged men banging hammers on scrap metal and using hand grinders next to cello, violin and viola, leaves me feeling seriously underwhelmed by their Awakening.

(vi.b) Low points of the programme were not limited to David Harrington emulating Blixa Bargeld’s vocals aghast and the all-too-cute Brooklyn Youth Chorus.

(vi.c) Sometimes avant-garde is just trying too hard - instead of delivering, spot-on, such as at the Met.

Curious about how long coins are in circulation, and without any scientific basis whatsoever, I choose 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down and somewhat shook the world’s fabric, changing the course of history (finalising it?), ending the Cold War between two competing ideologies and their clash on geopolitical objectives, as a point of reference for my investigation, 22 years later.

The sample chosen for this enterprise, shaken well, adequately and preemptively, with some goodwill constitutes an aleatoric element and does in no way adhere to the minimum requirements of a sample size, as I freely choose, at my sole discretion, the contents of my wallet as sufficent. There will also not be any paper published on these findings.

Quarters: 2.75 USD
1967, 1967, 1977, 1986, | 1989, | 1994, 1994, 1996, 2000*, 2002*, 2004*
* are part of the U.S. Mint’s 50 State Quarters Program and represent Virginia, Indiana, and Michigan, respectively.
36.4 % of the quarters examined were manufactured before 1989.

Dimes: 1.60 USD
1972, 1975, 1981, 1987, || 1990, 1995, 1997, 1997, 2000, 2002, 2002, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2005, 2009
Out of 16 dimes, a mere 25 % were coined before the fall of the Eastern Bloc.

Nickels: 0.20 USD
1982, || 1999, 2000, 2003
Again, only 25 % witnessed the crumbling of the Communist regimes, 3 out of 4 nickels are love children of the post-bipolar era and its affair with deregulation in a globalised US dollar hegemony.

Pennies: 0.18 USD
1971, 1975, 1976, 1976, 1984, 1987, || 1992, 1994, 1995, 1998, 2001, 2003, 2003,
2010, 2011, 2011, 2011, 2011
One third, or 33.3 %, of all pennies in the sample preceded George H. W. Bush as the 41st President of the United States of America.

One noticeable observation are the clusters existent in all the different denominations of coins. This is most apparent with the 2011 pennies, a result of the huge production of coins with the new Union Shield reverse design, and in the 2002 dimes.

Across all coin values, 15 out of 49 coins prove to be in circulation for more than 22 years, i.e. 30.6 % of the sample. With the exception of two pennies, one from 1987, the other from 2003, both exhibiting considerable harm due to verdigris following from prolongued exposure to moist and weathering, all coins show, if at all, just ordinary signs of age and daily use.

An interesting aspect to factor into these deliberations, would be the criteria of the U.S. Mint for the withdrawal of coins, or legal tender in general, from circulation, and how high the turnover and lifespan is of U.S. denoted coinage, i.e. which number of worn coins is pulled out of circulation each year and replaced. This may also depend on the material composition of each respective line of coins, as some prove more prone to damage and patina than others.

On a personal note, I’d like to point out, that something like 12.2 % of the coins in this sample still are older than me. Time, however, is running up. Pecunia fugit…

(i.a) Given my extensive consumption and ingestion of β-carotene in form of baby-cut carrots (the finger food alternative to junk), I am probably in acute and imminent danger of carotenoderma.

(i.b) At least I don’t eat infants!

(ii.a) Addendum to V (i): W 82nd St, 1 am, on my way back from Music After, Rattus norvegicus enters the stage, scurrying up the stairs from a basement to my right, jaywalking the pedestrian path in front of me, then slipping under some perennials covering a tree pit, bowing out of sight.

(ii.b) NYC’s RIP: Is here the wish father to the thought? Are we channeling Freud?

(iii) Waking up to drum rolls and Amazing Grace played on the bagpipe, as a last farewell: “The sun forbear to shine”.

FDNY 9/11 - Tiles for America

(iv.a) A horrible slogan, based on fear-mongering: “Drive sober, or get pulled over.” - Wouldn’t an appeal to reason do more good? Or a positive campaign, setting an example?

(iv.b) A terrible slogan, mismatching decency with disease, thus diminishing it as pathological: “If you see an elderly, pregnant, or handicapped person near you, please offer your seat. You’ll be standing up for what’s right. Courtesy is contagious, and it begins with you.” - Just not as a medical condition, I’d hope, lest I be patient zero instead of merely polite.

(v.a) I have such a craving for chocolate. Let it not be Hershey’s!

(v.b) Never a more delicious, or superior taste as evidenced by this address line: Made by Cadbury UK Limited, PO Box 7008, Bournville, Birmingham, B30 2PT, UK. Found at Fairway’s!

(i) Let me introduce you to New York’s fauna and its habitats: Mus musculus (a fugitive rodent at Westside Cleaners), Columba livia domestica (frequently observed on my window sills and the a/c), and the utterly abominable Scutigera coleoptrata, which ranks high among the most creepy extraterrestials ever.

(ii) An embarrassingly long-sought solution to a standard mathematical problem: t[h] = ((speed.A [km/h] + speed.B[km/h]) / distance [km])^-1. (See here if you wish to inquire what that means.)

(iii) How come all the jams I enjoy here in the States, are of Italian origin? First Fiordifrutta: Organic fruit spread: Raspberry, produced by Rigoni di Asiago Spa, Star-K kosher-certified, and now Pomegranate Raspberry: Organic Preserves by Mediterranean Organic, extra fruit, artisan crafted, “grown under the Mediterranean sun, [...] picked at the peak of ripeness and processed in small batches on a 4th generation Italian family farm”.

(iv) A Gourmet Deli? No doubt, I must be in West Village, bordering on Chelsea.

320 West 14th Street

(v) $800 for a dinner for two (omakase-style)? I’d rather go have cazuelas fajitas-style at hip Dos Caminos on the border to Meatpacking District, and then head over to Gaslight with its laidback, retro atmosphere.

(vi) I need my watch battery replaced. Looking for a dealer in the Manhattan yellow pages, I notice that 47 W St nr 5th Ave is the epicentre of New York’s watch-retail, -service and -repair - a.k.a. the Diamond District.

(vii) Spam: “The Jew Watch Project’s 1.5 Billion Pages Served Demonstrate Our Focus on Professionalism”. - What is wrong with you people?! About 1,500,000,000 skew reasons.

(viii) Do you also have a sense of epiphany with this Google Maps street view image?