Quisquilia: Lib. nov.

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 ß-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?

Quarters: 1.25 USD
1967, 1978, 1992, 1994, 2000*
* is a Maryland State Quarter.

Dimes: 1.50 USD
1966, 1975, 1983, 1987, 1990, 1995, 1997, 1997, 2000, 2002, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2005, 2009

Nickels: 0.25 USD
1982, 1984, 1999, 2000, 2001

Pennies: 0.19 USD
1971, 1975, 1976, 1976, 1983, 1984, 1987*, 1992, 1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2003,
2010, 2011, 2011, 2011, 2011
* has tarnished quite severely unlike the other coins which, for the most part, show less signs of circulation.
From 2010 onwards, the Lincoln Cent features the slightly superheroish Union Shield as reverse design.

A few of them are quite vintage. Strangely, so far not one $1 coin has surfaced in my possession, neither the Sacagawea, the Native American nor the Presidential Golden Dollar. During my last visit to the States they showed up ever so often.

(i) In times of recession, even street advertising adheres to strict cost-benefit-analysis and lowers expenses: Hence the freebie ballpoint pen’s internal ink reservoir holds only enough ink for a few notes and empties within half an hour. Now that is disposable bait, Peapod Delivieries!

(ii) Who’d have thunk I’d ever get jaded of Diet Dr Pepper’s? Dr. Brown’s Diet Cream Soda seems a good alternative, for the moment. Notice the period!

(iii) Up until tonight (29.08.), I’ve never seen ketchup and mustard served as toppings at a Chinese restaurant. So it happened first time at the New Kam Lai take-out joint, 514 Amsterdam Ave.

(iv) I want to try Harriet’s Kitchen. Badly!

(v) Namaste, America! Bollywood at its hips’t on channel 73 (NYC World).

Shangri-La lies in Hell's Kitchen!

(vi.a) Forget about the monolingual Americans! It’s a cliché, although a somewhat justified one! At the cash register at Broadway Farm two nights ago, a young Muslim woman parlait français avec un couple, des touristes évidemment, et quand j’ai dit „bonsoir“ nous conversions un peu et ensuite je me suis présenté comme allemand, woraufhin wir unsere Unterhaltung auf Deutsch fortführten. In between, she spoke English and ??????? with some staff. Amazing!

(vi.b) A polyglot (a quatrolingual) at a low-wage job. An immigrant, Raquel suggests, a bright future, I’d think.

(vii) A friend is someone listening to your endless ramblings, keeping her smile and shine, forever patient and forgiving.

Dem Spiegel genügte die Sturmwirklichkeit also nicht, welche zumindest hier in der Stadt tatsächlich dem hysterisch angefachten Fauchen und Toben der Journaille glücklicherweise um einiges nachstand. Wenn auch Regen, Wind und Überflutungen beträchtlichen Schaden anrichteten, großteils außerhalb der Five Boroughs, samt und sonders Manhattans, und Irene knapp 40 Menschen das Leben kostete, so befand die Spon-Redaktion schon Sonntag früh um 6:02 Uhr EST den Hurrikan als „bisher enttäuschend“.

War das für die Öffentlichkeit bestimmt?

Was uns dieser Tweet über das Verhältnis von Nachrichtenwert zu journalistischem Ethos verrät, muß angesichts der zusehends boulevardesken Aufmachung und sensationsheischigen Ausrichtung des Hamburger Nachrichtenmagazins nicht ausbuchstabiert werden. Als Leitmedium hat sich der Spiegel ohnehin seit langem selbst diskreditiert, Qualitätsjournalismus findet woanders statt. Aber zumindest hat diese unwillkürliche Entäußerung, gleich ein jeder freudschen Fehlleistung, anstelle zuverlässiger und respektvoller Berichterstattung, uns das wahre und schamlose Gesicht der augsteinschen Erbverweser offenbart.

Die New York Times hingegen versöhnt just Leserpartizipation, Reputabilität und hochwertigen Journalismus wieder einmal ohne Tadel und Fehl, nachdem sie schon vor dem Sturm publizistisches Verantwortungsbewußtsein und Fürsorge bewies: „As a public service, @nytimes will allow free access to storm-related coverage on nytimes.com and its mobile apps.“

David Brooks, the Times‘ conservative cultural columnist who all too often likes to frame his op-ed contributions in fleeting terms and feuilletonistic sophistry, betraying his intellectual lazi- and sloppiness time and again, recently speculated on the merits and prospects of current Republican incumbent Governor of Texas Rick Perry as 45th President of the United States, a frightening thought indeed given Mr Perry’s inclinations towards the New Apostolic Reformation movement and its fundamentalist Christian teachings (including dominionism and the fight against witchcraft, Islam and demons), and the Governor’s proneness towards nepotism, corruption and hypocrisy.

Mr Perry, whose unnerving resemblance of actor James Brolin’s Governor Ritchie on The West Wing complements him in his embodiment of today’s GOP’s agenda of anti-intellectualism, anti-scientism, anti-liberalism, anti-progressivism, anti-multilateralism and anti-welfare, ever so often boasts about his successful term as Texan Governor, and his track record is impressive indeed if one takes a closer look at his policies and what they have yielded for the people and state of Texas, and whose modicum of humility is yet to be found as he gathers the citizens of Texas in a phillistine event to pray for rain.

That is minimum government at its best, a starved one even, one might think. Unless, of course, one remembers his use of the federal Recovery Act first. Nevertheless, the following comment by a reader on Mr Brook’s piece caught my attention even more than the blatant hypocrisy exhibited by Rick Perry and the disingenuous, yet obvious way David Brooks is currying favour with a power to be, as I feel pretty much dumbfounded by the point of critique therein which calls into question not, as one would suspect, in birther fashion the obvious, but rather what we take for scientific consent:

It is unfortunate that Mr. Brooks‘ article included the following snide, patronizing remark: „[Gov. Perry] does very well with the alternative-reality right — those who don’t believe in global warming, evolution or that Obama was born in the U.S.“ I fail to see a valid reason for Mr. Brooks to lump together those Americans who refuse to believe an established fact (i.e. that President Obama was, indeed, born in Hawaii) with Americans who take issue with a contested theory (i.e. global warming as an impending disaster, and a man-made one) and those Americans who take issue with an unprovable theory (i.e. Darwinian evolution as the explanation for the origins of human life).

(Posted by AlbanyAttorney40, Albany, NY, August 26th, 2011, 1:46 am)