The Aardvark Speaks

The wondrous world of flavours

2010-03-02T23:06:02Z

The wondrous world of food flavours never ceases to amaze me. Take, for example, the ingredients of this rather delicious goat cheese. Everything looks perfectly normal until you stumble across... "natural goat flavour".

Now what is that supposed to be? And, more interestingly, how on earth do you make goat flavour? Squeeze out goats? Collect yukky stuff from goat pens? And why would you need to add extra goat flavour to goat milk? What am I not getting here?

Passage Brady

2009-12-09T20:19:37Z

The Parisian passages, or galleries, are in many ways the precursors of today's shopping malls. Housing numerous shops inside a roof-covered lane or passageway, they rightly prompted the German philosopher Walter Benjamin to write a body of essays about them, in which he cited tham as the prime example for the transformation of the world's cities into urban spaces in the 19th century.

Of the numerous Parisian passages that have survived to the present day (many of them restored to their former glory), perhaps the quirkiest is the Passage Brady in the 10th arrondissement (district) of Paris, linking the rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis with the boulevard de Strasbourg. Opened in 1828 and originally the home of numerous tailor shops, it underwent several changes in this slightly less than affluent area of Paris, never being truly "chic". The one that probably had the greatest impact occurred from 1973 onwards, when numerous immigrants from India and Pakistan opened shops here.

For the past decades, the passage has been host to countless Indian restaurants, food shops and barbers. It is a veritable enclave of the Indian subcontinent close to the heart of Paris, and a fairly inexpensive area to get a good Indian meal.

Indeed, restaurants as the Pooja and the Jardin des Indes are rightly recommended as being among the better Indian restaurants in Paris.

Further reading: Jean-Claude Delorme, Passages couverts parisiens. Paris: Parigramme, 2002. Available from Amazon.fr.

The Market

2009-11-29T18:03:48Z

The Market, a prizewinning film by the Croatian filmmaker Ana Hušman, shows one day at the Dolac market of Zagreb, Croatia, with commentary by greengrocers and customers.

The film is currently shown as part of the exhibition "Aspects of Collecting" at Sammlung Essl.

Journey to Obscurity

2009-11-27T20:52:07Z

Even though almost everyone has probably heard him play at some point, Emil Richards is still one of the more obscure musicians in jazz history. In fact, Richards contributed to some of the best-known TV soundtracks. The xylophone in The Simpsons theme, the finger snaps in the Addams Family theme, the bongos on the original Mission Impossible theme -- all of them were played by Richards, who, incidentally, is also the person who played the bells on Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair". Despite his extensive involvement in over 2000 movie and TV soundtracks, Richards' career as a jazz musicians never really took off. After a stint in Don Ellis' Hindustani Jazz Sextet, Ed Michel, then both a record producer and A&R man at Impulse! Records signed Richards for a 2-record deal. Both albums flopped.

The story goes that massive amounts of marijuana were consumed at Impulse! sessions at the time, both by the musicians and the staff, and that the surprisingly large number of psychedelic jazz records released by the label and signing of obscure artists in the late 1960s is largely due to everybody's drug intake. That would, however, be an unfair judgement.

Even though Richards was one of these obscure artists, his catalogue of recorded work qualified him well enough as a session leader, and even though side B of Journey to Bliss, his first Impulse! release, is full of weird sounds and esoteric chanting, side A is bona fide marimba madness in the best jazz tradition.

His second album for Impulse!, Spirit of 1976 (released in 1969) is a recording of a live performance consisting of original compositions as well as jazz standards, and there is nothing remotely psychedelic or esoteric about them. Quite on the contrary, it's a record full of infectious music with an incredible groove. A version of Miles Davis' "All Blues" also shows remarkable atmospheric density.

Emil Richards recorded with Frank Sinatra, Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa, The Beach Boys, Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, Marvin Gaye, George Harrison and many others and owns a collection of more than 770 percussion instruments.

Richards' two Impulse! albums were never reissued on CD.

Der Dativ ist nicht dem Genitiv sein Tod

2009-11-21T11:42:32Z

Da gibt es einen Autor, der über Unsitten des deutschen Sprach(fehl)gebrauchs schreibt und, weil seine Bücher sogar recht unterhaltsam sind, einigermaßen gut daran verdienen dürfte. All die sprachlichen Irrwitze in seinen Büchern sind in der Tat sehr witzig, nur eine Kleinigkeit hat der gute Mann übersehen:

Der Titel seines Buches, Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod, ist falsch herum. Es hat nämlich im Laufe der Zeit der Genitiv den Dativ ersetzt, und nicht umgekehrt, und das ist auch der Grund, warum sich der Dativ in vielen regionalen Umgangssprachen so hartnäckig hält.

In anderen germanischen Sprachen hält sich diese Syntax sogar sehr beständig. Der so genannte "Saxon Genitive" im Englischen ist historisch gesehen und sehr streng genommen nämlich gar keiner.

Nehme ich nämlich einen Ausdruck wie

the baker's wife

und bedenke, dass ein Apostroph ein Auslassungszeichen für zwei oder mehr Buchstaben ist, so stellt sich die Frage, welche Buchstaben da eigentlich ausgelassen wurden. Die Antwort: Das 's ist ein Überbleibsel des Possessivpronomens his, ursprünglich sagte man also:

the baker his wife

Also übersetzt nichts anderes als: "Dem Bäcker seine Frau".

How very reassuring

2009-11-12T14:33:51Z

A strange regulation exists in the American state of California, called Proposition 65, which requires apartment complexes, schools, etc., to post warning signs if any chemicals used on the property (e.g. detergents and suchlike) can cause cancer. Some of these, such as the one pictured left, do not sound very reassuring. You'd think that people should stop using such substances rather than warn others that they are being exposed to them. It's a strange world.

I was made aware of this through an interesting comment that Aardvark reader Jann posted here today.

]]> Jann wrote:

We have a strange situation here in California, where warnings, the purpose of which, is, I believe to protect people, seem to be having the opposite effect. I'm talking about Proposition 65, which requires that apartment complexes, schools, etc., post signs warning people about chemicals used on the property, chemicals known to cause cancer or birth defects. See:

http://tinyurl.com/ydybhnz
http://tinyurl.com/ydvdl32

There are many chemicals these places use, (yes, even schools), e.g., for gardening, which is a year round thing in southern California; pesticides, herbicides, fungicides; the list is quite long. The irony is the attitude these places have about these chemicals; they seem to think the purpose of the signs is to protect them from liability, and that as long as they have the signs prominently displayed, they can do whatever they want with these toxic substances. When I ask about chemicals used, all I hear is, "The signs protect us."

"Do you use these chemicals over there on that grass where the children play?", I ask.
"Oh, yes," they tell me.
"And do you keep the children off the grass for awhile after you use the chemicals?"
"No, we don't have to. The signs protect us," they tell me.
"Who protects the children?" I ask.
Blank stares is all I get.

And, of course, all these substances end up in the groundwater, the rivers, the ocean.

A madman singing Indonesian versions of William Blake

2009-11-10T14:53:30Z

Arrington de Dionyso is an American multi-instrumentalist who plays the guitar and the bass clarinet, does Tuvan throat singing and generally sings with the intensity of a madman. On his latest album Malaikat dan singa his singing sounds particularly demented because for some obscure reason he chose to sing in Indonesian; the lyrics are adapted and translated lines from poems by William Blake. Not that you would understand a single one of them unless you are Indonesian.

Accompanied by the brute drumming of Karl Blau, de Dionyso churns out 11 songs that may be among the rawest and meatiest music released this year. The combination of distorted guitar, bass clarinet and throat singing does have an impact that goes well beyond the obvious novel factor; not only is it direct, intense and full of urgency, some of the songs have surprisingly addictive grooves. Even if you don't know what he's singing (or perhaps precisely because you don't know), you get the impression of a possessed man spewing out the fundamentals of human existence. The last track, 13 minutes in a more meditative mood, comes as something of a relief. This album is quite something.

40 years of metro construction

2009-11-04T06:36:26Z

Vienna Transport is currently celebrating 40 years of construction work for the new metro system. Construction work started on November 3rd, 1969 with the excavations for the station at Karlsplatz (pictured left).

It's something of an ambivalent anniversary. First of all, before the new metro, the old metro had been in service since 1898; in fact two of the "new" metro lines are in fact nothing but converted old metro lines. Second, while there is no doubt that the first two stages of the new metro system brought significant improvements in public transport, the new metro is also responsible for the drastic degradation of the tramway network on the surface.

]]> Third, in recent years hundreds of millions of euros have been spent on extending the metro lines to thinly inhabited suburban areas, causing massive losses to the transport authority, while offering next to no advantages to most passengers. Future plans for the extension of the network strongly suggest that this problematic situation will be further aggravated.

In fact, due to the success of the new metro in its early stages, some politicians now view it as the only feasible way of public transport, totally forgetting about more efficient and cheaper alternatives. Whereas numerous plans for the extension of the tramway network have been shelved since the mid-1990s, the ten- to fifteen-fold amount of money is instead spent on metro projects that are massively oversized for the number of passengers that use them.

Mr Singh reviewed! Favourably!

2009-11-03T12:31:53Z

New Europe has published a review of Mr Singh Has Disappeared on their "Brussels Agenda" site and calls it "a little gem, unique, full of its own atmosphere and [...] very funny indeed." Wow.

Urban typography

2009-11-03T07:42:30Z

The graphic artist Martin Ulrich Kehrer spent three years taking pictures of letters and lettering on Viennese shop fronts, thereby creating a documentation of well over 2500 examples of urban typography from all 23 districts of Vienna. A small selection of these is currently shown in an exhibition at the Wienmuseum Karlsplatz, along with 26 concrete blocks showing individual letters from selected typefaces.

Kehrer describes the purpose of his project as twofold: on the one hand, to document obsolete typefaces, some of which have survived only in traces or fragments, and on the other, to point out changes in formal and material aspects of original typography (i.e. not the cheap, uniform, globalized kind used by multinational chain stores) over several decades.

About 200 of Kehrer's photographs were recently published in a book entitled Stadtalphabet Wien, which largely focuses on examples from the 1950s through the 1970s. The book is available from Amazon.de.

Martin Ulrich Kehrer: Stadtalphabet Wien. Wien: Sonderzahl-Verlag, 2009. ISBN 978-3-85449-300-6. € 18.

Darf nicht ins Abwasser gelangen

2009-11-02T22:14:33Z

Gelegentlich wundert man sich schon ein wenig, was alles verkauft wird bzw. verkauft werden darf. Zum Beispiel fand ich vor kurzem folgendes auf einer Packung:

Klingt noch nicht besonders ausgefallen, aber spannend wird es, wenn man in Betracht zieht, dass es sich bei dem Produkt um einen "flüssigen WC-Stein" handelt. Sprich, ein chemisches Produkt, das laut Definition des Herstellers "schädlich für Wasserorganismen" ist und "in Gewässern längerfristig schädliche Wirkungen" haben kann, darf täglich hunderttausendfach einfach so hinuntergespült werden.

Fehlt eigentlich nur noch der Hinweis "darf nicht ins Abwasser gelangen".

Es stellt sich die Frage, was "längerfristig" genau bedeutet. Stimmt der Gesetzgeber diesem Produkt zu, weil die Vergiftungseffekte eh erst die nächste Generation betreffen? Stimmt schon, dass täglich viel härtere Gifte in die Umwelt gelangen. Aber viel unnötiger als hier gehts wohl kaum noch.

Zitat aus unerwarteter Quelle

2009-10-01T21:13:56Z

Zum Thema Wirtschaftskrise:

Wenn wir nicht wollen, dass unsere Zukunft, die Zukunft unserer Kinder, die Zukunft künftiger Generationen durchsetzt ist von Finanz-, Wirtschafts-, Umwelt- und sozialen, letztendlich also menschlichen Katastrophen, dann müssen wir unsere Art zu leben, zu konsumieren, zu produzieren ändern. Und wir müssen die Kriterien unserer gesellschaftlichen Organisation und unserer öffentlichen Politiken ändern.

Zum Thema Abgehobenheit der Politik:

So fängt man schließlich an, einen Graben des Unverständnisses zu ziehen zwischen den Experten voller Wissen und den Bürgern, deren Lebenserfahrungen einfach nicht übereinstimmen wollen mit dem, was die Zahlen sagen. Dieser Graben ist sehr gefährlich, denn letztlich fangen die Bürger an zu glauben, man wolle sie täuschen. Nichts zerstört die Demokratie wirkungsvoller.

Wer hats gesagt?

]]> Antwort: Nicolas Sarkozy.

Kaum zu glauben, ich weiß. Ist aber wahr. Und weil es so unglaubwürdig ist, hat Die Zeit einen Artikel dazu veröffentlicht, de ich hiermit empfehle.

Diagnosis

2009-09-28T07:44:42Z

"You don't smoke," the doctor said after he had looked at my ECG.
"No," I said.
"I can see that," he said.

Zu spät für Alarmglocken

2009-09-28T05:33:11Z

Die Ergebnisse der oberösterreichischen Landtagswahl wirken noch um einiges ärger, wenn man ehemals rote Kerngegenden, wie etwa meinen Geburtsort, betrachtet:

Wenn man ehemals sichere absolute Mehrheiten hatte und dann in einem Satz von 47% auf 28% absackt, dann ist der Spruch mit den Alarmglocken, die schrillen sollten, nicht mehr angebracht. Im Gegenteil, das bedeutet Notoperation oder Totengräber.

Bloated women and probiotic yoghurt

2009-09-27T21:53:23Z

Ever since I upgraded my cable account from 35 to 94 channels in order to bring down my monthly TV/Internet/telephone bill to half of what I used to pay (don't ask -- the telecom industry is perverse like that), I've been watching slightly more TV than I used to. I'm sure it's temporary though, mostly because the ubiquitous commercials are driving me insane.

Most of them are simply stupid, many are insulting my intelligence (such as the countless attempts to convince parents that sugar bombs are healthy for their children), but a couple are annoying to the point of causing physical pain.

The most painful ones, at the moment, are for probiotic yoghurt. They are ubiquitous, they are broadcast at painfully brief intervals, and some of them are strangely bizarre.

Like the one that starts with the voice-over announcing "mothers talk to their daughters about digestive problems", or the other one in which several women talk about how bloated they are all the time. I may not be able to fully understand this as I am a member of the male species, but it seems to be a somewhat unusual behaviour, and seeing women talking about digestive problems and being bloated in quick succession at 5-minute intervals minutes may fundamentally change my entire perception of women.

]]> (All of the following links lead to German pages -- sorry.)

The German author Udo Pollmer has written a number of books (e.g. this one) on how so-called "healthy" food isn't healthy at all. Probiotic yoghurt features prominently in them, primarily as an example of successful marketing for essentially useless products (Actimel yoghurt, for example recently won the dubious honour of receiving a prize for the emptiest advertising promise of the year).

Pollmer claims that not only do these yoghurts not have any positive effects on your immune system, they may actually be harmful. The bacteria in these yoghurts are unable to survive in the consumer's intestines and have to constantly be refilled, but if you keep doing that, they will suppress your own bacteria and can thus weaken, rather than strengthen your immune system.

The provenance of the bacteria in these yoghurts is similarly dubious; obviously, they must be coming from the same place where they are supposed to go to. Once you get over the initial shock of this realisation, please remember that when it comes to your intestines and immune system, your own bacteria are always preferable to someone else's.

Of course the bloated women are unlikely to talk about yoghurt "made from finest excrement", but basically that's what it is, and I guess there may be some conscious or unconscious connection to the rotten advertisements for the product.

Udo Pollmer: Prost Mahlzeit! Krank durch gesunde Ernährung. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2001.
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