I learned on this trip that the German word for the small computer you carry everywhere is "Handy." That got me thinking.
In the US we call it a "cell phone." Most of the rest of the Anglosphere calls it a "mobile." Same in Czech ("mobilní telefon"), French ("téléphone mobile"), Spanish ("teléfono móvil") and most other European languages.
I find this interesting because in most parts of Europe, the name describes what the thing is. In German, it describes how you use it. But in the US, we still use a phrase that describes the underlying technology. It occurred to me that a US-based company invented the thing in the early 1970s, and it came into broad use in the US probably 10 years before the rest of the world.
But I wonder if that's also cultural? Are we Americans more interested in the tech than the thing itself? And why do Germans call it by an English name that has nothing to do with either the tech or its use?
Hypotheses welcomed.
The billion-pound London rail project called "Crossrail" when it began opened a year ago as the Elizabeth Line. I rode it for the first time to West Ealing last Sunday, and thought it absolutely the slickest, cleanest train in the UK. (I'll ride it again tomorrow thanks to industrial action and construction on the Piccadilly Line.)
British Airways pilot Mark Vanhoenacker takes it every time he comes home from a trip, and loves how it connects the city in all new ways:
Running from Reading and Heathrow Airport in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east, the Elizabeth line brings an additional 1.5 million people within 45 minutes of the capital’s busiest districts; eases congestion on older lines; and makes London more accessible to all, as wheelchair users can reach its platforms from street level. As a pilot who commutes to Heathrow — I fly the Boeing 787 for British Airways — I’m often among its 600,000 weekday riders. The line, which runs alongside the Heathrow Express, offers another comfortable way to get to work.
[T]he line empowers travelers to leave behind the familiarities of Zone 1 — the often tourist-clogged core of the city’s transport network — and embark on fast, inexpensive journeys to fascinating outer-London destinations.
On the line’s northeastern branch lies the market town of Romford. Start at the Havering Museum, whose exhibits include a model of the long-gone Havering Palace, where Queen Elizabeth I occasionally stayed. You’ll also learn about Romford’s link to William Kempe, an actor in several of Shakespeare’s original productions, who morris danced around 100 miles from London to Norwich in 1600, and about the weights and measures that once set standards in Romford’s market.
It’s fitting, then, that the first station beyond [the eastern Thames] tunnels is Woolwich, where armaments were manufactured for around three centuries, including by one Henry Shrapnel. Woolwich was also renowned for music — its Royal Artillery Band, Britain’s first formal military band, was organized in 1762 — and for football: Arsenal, based today in Islington and still nicknamed “the Gunners,” was founded here in 1886 as a team for armaments workers.
Between my arrival this afternoon and my departure tomorrow afternoon I'll be in the UK only 23 hours, many of them in my hotel room asleep, so I won't have time to explore the places Vanhoenacker describes. But I have a hunch I'll return to the London before too long.
There's a line in The American President, when President Shephard (Michael Douglas) is trying to intimidate lobbyist Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Benning). He says, "the city planners, when they sat down to design Washington, D.C., their intention was to build a city that would intimidate and humble foreign heads of state? It's true. The White House is the single greatest home-court advantage in the modern world,"
Good thing Aaron Sorkin qualified it with "modern," because this is the summer residence of the Austro-Hungarian Emperors from the 1720s until 1914:
Contrast with this mix of Soviet-era and 19th century architecture just 50 km away in Bratislava:
Near the end of my walk earlier, I climbed these stairs to the train station, and it really felt like something out of a Cold War novel:
And this cute cafè is exactly halfway between my hotel and the nearest U-Bahn station:
OK, now I really need that shower and nap.
I chose not to poke into Hungary, but I did pop over to Bratislava, Slovakia, and took a quick stroll around the Presidential Palace:
I'll have more photos possibly later today. Since I walked 3.5 km getting to the Vienna train station, I really could use a shower and a nap. Then I'll explore a bit more.
I have discovered the tram network, so I took it to the Royal Gardens and the Castle. (Also, apparently, to the president's residence, but the Czech army dissuaded me from exploring that area.) I wish we had something like this in Chicago, but then again, we don't have anything like this in Chicago either:
I took a short (5.5 km) walk and ended with a Czech open-faced egg sandwich:
For the record, I didn't stop in the Sex Machines Museum, tempting as that sounded. Stopping ever few meters to take photos didn't help my time. Neither did the perfect weather.
I did stroll around the Czech Senate grounds, which felt a lot different than our Capitol Hill:
It almost felt as if our Senate sits in a building designed to dominate the city around it, while Czechia's sits in a walled garden. There's some profound political theory in there, I'm sure.
I'm in a European-sized hotel room in a European-sized city. I'm also exhausted. But I did get out of Heathrow for about an hour and a quarter, and walked around Ealing a bit:
And now I'm here:
More tomorrow. I'm pooped.
As the right featherweights of the right wing of the Republican House delegation play chicken with the world economy, a Federal Court in Boston weighs a lawsuit demanding the President's chicken starts driving a snowblower*:
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Stearns set a May 31 hearing on a lawsuit filed by a federal workers union contending that the 14th Amendment empowers Biden and other officials to sidestep the standoff with Congress that has threatened a potential default.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the so-called X-date for a default could come as soon as June 1, just one day after the scheduled arguments on the National Association of Government Employees’ request for a preliminary injunction requiring Yellen to keep paying bills — and salaries — as usual.
[Justice Department lawyer Alexander] Ely said he was not authorized to stake out a position on that question and he suggested that the department would argue that the union’s suit is not a proper vehicle to force DOJ to come to a legal conclusion.
“This requires high-level coordination among the U.S. government,” said Ely.
But an attorney for the union, Thomas Geoghegan, pointed out that the claims of an imminent cataclysm from a possible default originate with the very officials named as defendants in the suit.
Josh Marshall says the veritable excrement is inbound at high speed to the ventilation device:
There’s a really stunning report out from the Journal last night. Corporate bonds at some of America’s top-rated companies are now trading at a yield discount to Treasuries. This isn’t quite the same as investors thinking U.S. corporate debt is safer over time. It’s focused on the what happens over the next few months rather than where you put money over time. But it’s still a stunning development, cutting at the very architecture of the world financial system and the United States’ position as its gravitational center.
To put it in layman’s terms, if you need a place to put money over the course of this summer and you need it to be as safe as possible, investors are deciding Microsoft’s corporate bonds are more attractive than bonds issued by the U.S. Treasury.
It’s a clarifying perspective on the impact of GOP extremism and nihilism on the nation’s finances and global power.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) continues to pretend he has any actual sway over the arsonists in his caucus.
I'm going to be out of the country on June 1st. I sure hope the Government continues to pay air-traffic controllers and Customs officials until I get home...
* The metaphor works if you think about it, but yeah, it's gruesome.
A family of red foxes has taken up residence in Millennium Park, Chicago:
The fox family “just walked right in” to the popular downtown park a couple weeks back, said Kathryn Deery, head horticulturalist at the park’s Lurie Garden. The family — two adults and four babies — typically pops out when the park is less crowded in the mornings and evenings.
Deery has watched the “adorable” baby foxes, known as kits, wrestle in the garden and play with food as their parents hunt for rabbits, birds, rodents and plants.
Foxes have been spotted at Lurie Garden over the years, but there’s never been a full family quite like this, Deery said. The garden workers plan to put signs to educate people about the animals and their habitat.
Go to the article for information on foxes, but stay for the photos. They're adorable.
The roofing project continues apace, taking advantage of an exceptionally lovely bit of weather this week. So, yay us, new roof and all. But I'm trying to work at home today—my last WFH day until June 8th, in fact—and the roofers have devised new ways to make it suck.
First came the generator. I don't know whatever reason they needed to put a large generator outside my office window, but there it sat for about 90 minutes. Closing my window helped the noise but not the temperature (remember, they relocated my air conditioners to put roof under them), and a generator makes a lot of noise that can go right through a wall.
The generator finally stopped around 10:30. Finally! I opened the window again and got back to it, until just a few minutes ago when I detected they had started spreading tar right outside my window. Fortunately, this appears to be the final stage of the actual roof replacement, so I expect my home office will be perfectly serviceable again in time for me to work downtown tomorrow and Thursday.
I'm also getting a headache from the VOCs in the tar.
This may be a good time to take Cassie for her lunchtime walk.