Questions no-one is Asking

About the ignoble mullet.

Should Eighties girls stick to referencing the clothes or the music rather than the hair? Do you even like Eighties-inspired hair? Is the Eighties the decade the stylish should just forget? Hi [sic] did see a great mullet/rooster harido the other day.

Heavens, no, child.

The Distant Ago in Color

Despite its Name and Signature tune

It was called "Freheitsender 904" or Freedom Station 904, and actually broadcast on 908 AM/MW out of the East German transmission site at Berg, which also happened to be where "Soldatensender" for NVA soldiers was transmitted from, as well as a Station broadcasting to Soviet troops, and the DDR's only longwave radio tower.

It's a peek into a very strange world, thankfully lost to time. I know, I know... it isn't a number station, but it was a very strange form of propaganda, especially given that it would only broadcast for 30 minutes at a time.



"Enjoy." If you can, that is. If you don't recognize the present use of the tune, then check here.

Inselfieber

A 1979 Short Film by Christoph Doering shot in West-Berlin featuring outliers starting in the music scene.

How is it that Berlin has Stayed Somewhat Unique ?

The accent is disappearing, and the place is getting cleaned up in a way that doesn’t exactly scream “you’re in Berlin”, but it has managed to live in its’ own past to some degree. Natalie Holmes writes:

Just over 20 years since the wall came down and Germany reunified, the city has, predictably, changed and developed unevenly. Some areas, such as the central tourist and business districts, have caught up quickly and are virtually indistinguishable from their more established foreign and domestic counterparts.

Still, there are areas that development’s claws have not devoured, and yet other places refusing to accept that homogeneity is an inevitable consequence. Of course, Germany’s capital has its fair share of multiplex cinemas, but unlike any other city I’ve lived in or visited, I’ve never actually had to step foot inside one.

Hanging on to itself in part is taking the form of keeping alive independent movie houses, particularly in the former West-Berlin which in the post-war days represented the first sign of a a return to both intellectualism and aspirational living. They also hosted domestically made films, especially independent ones, going back decades when even then studio distribution was overwhelmingly powerful.

In the island called walled West-Berlin, it was also the broadest-ranging and least managed or controlled form of entertainment and exposure to new forms of the arts and thinking.

It needs to be understood that to those inhabiting the 2nd half of the 20th century, there had not really been an independent and thoughtful cinema culture in their lifetimes. Preceding it were two things: Hitler’s Ufa studios, and imports which were emotionally distant as they had emerged from other cultures.

While Holmes presents to us the beloved movie palaces that deserve their due, it’s easy to overlook the neighborhood Kinos such as Filmkunst 66 near Savignyplatz that have been in operation since 1971.

This is what the film culture had to emerge from:



It grew to become an affordable means of entertainment, providing an evening of relief in the difficulties of people’s lives, to become a conduit of new ideas and the arts as times grew better. And it all happened a long time ago without an arts council “minding” it, a subsidy, and on the personal initiative of free people who loved it.

That alone deserves as much recognition for unique culture and unique thinking as many other things.

East Berlin, 1969

Fragmentary images.

Between Rubble and Ruins

Presented by the German Historical Institute on their German History in Documents and Images website, is a rare collection of postwar photographs attributed to a known photographer, Friedrich Seidenstücker.

Feeding your Berlinalia:




A Flaneur between Rubble and Ruins – Friedrich Seidenstücker
Photographs of Berlin after 1945

Origins: Stoking Anti-Globalization

Founded on the theory that those Mexicans didn't need jobs anyway, a typical "editorial" from the golden age of self-delusion.



A Radio Berlin International broadcast from 1972

Park your Butt in the Land of Cool

The deliciously cool Bauhaus Archiv Berlin has had a few chair displays, as well as some seminal examples, but for the chair-crazed, it can't get any better or more genuine than this.

Of COURSE they Could...

Teams of laser-wielding satellites could shoot rogue asteroids

Researchers at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow are floating the possibility that a flock of small satellites could fly in formation and fire solar-powered lasers at a threatening asteroid, knocking the space rock off its path to Earth.

"Flock"? Thazt almost makes it sound that supernatural threat sound almost "natural".

Of course this is after we have been wizzened to the fact that they can't, or that nukes can take our imaginary decimator out, or that it can't. Etc. Stay afraid of imaginary things, my friends...

The likelihood of a humanity-threatening asteroid strike remains low, but astronomers have not pinned down the best way to deal with ones that pose a risk to our planet.

I'm so glad they're keeping it unreal.

A Cold War Radio Fragment

Radio Berlin International (DDR) - circa 1981

New and Improved Elektorsmog!

The Litzelstetter "tower-free residential area" club fears a new wave of elektrosmog. "I think it's the calm before the storm," club chairman Irene Mohn said when asked. The planned expansion of the high-speed network LTE (Long Term Evolution), they said will be a new tsunami of the mobile world over the cities and towns. Mohn believes that the electromagnetism is a pollutant, and thus believes it an increase on the burden on residents. This was why the club supports a possible low-emission, and thus human-friendly form of mobile communications.

I’m not sure if its attention seeking or hypochondria that drives these people, but despite the mere milliwatts that are at issue, and the fact that we shield the emissions of motors and other equipment in a way we never have before, they’re still at it.

Nonetheless, that kind of craziness sounds much better in the original Klingon:

Der Litzelstetter Verein „Mastenfreies Wohngebiet“ fürchtet eine neue Elektrosmog-Welle. „Ich denke, es ist die Ruhe vor dem Sturm“, sagte die Vorsitzende Irene Mohn auf Nachfragen. Mit dem geplanten Ausbau des Hochgeschwindigkeitsnetzes LTE (Long Term Evolution) rolle ein neuer Tsunami aus der Mobilfunkwelt auf die Städte und Gemeinden zu. Mohn geht davon aus, dass der Elektrosmog und damit auch die Belastungen für die Anwohner steigen. Dabei setze sich der Verein für die möglichst emissionsarme und damit menschenverträgliche Form des Mobilfunks ein.

Run! Hide! Save yourselves!