While only the Daily Show and the Colbert Report continue to have a handle on the illusion we call reality, the latest German think tank report on the distribution of wealth turned our attention to numbers once again.
Yes, the rich gt richer, and there are more poor people in Germany.
The huge multi-billion Euro train station in the southern city of Stuttgart continues to be built despite the fact that the break-even point of the investment is roughly a thousand years from now.
In the face of such figures beyond comprehension, the blogster decided to go back to basics. Bob Larson, not the preacher but the one who wrote a series of handy books about German culture for Americans, pointed out one of the small annoying numbers in Germany: 1.
When used in numbering the floors of buildings, the German 1st floor is the second American floor. The American first floor is the unnumbered ground floor around here.
In elevators, it has a button labeled "EG". But not in all elevators, that would be too easy.
At least, the Germans are not squeamish about the 13th floor.
Unless you stay at a hotel at an unnamed major German airport, where you get 12, 12a, 14.
Which made the blogster ask some friends about the "perfect" floor numbering scheme for a truly global building.
Input from countries as far apart as Italy and China left us scratching our heads [which raises an altogether different question].
Anyway, a global floor numbering system would be full of holes, so we would suggest simply starting at floor number 20 for new buildings. Any takers?
And, in Germany, numbering buildings on a street is far from evident, as we found out the other day when a friend asked us to meet at a small bar at 33 Hauptstrasse (33 Main Street). There were three buildings sporting the number 33.
Three! Only one was a bar, though.
Putting our diminishing brain power to work on a simple problem like this makes the news about the rich getting richer without working harder while the poor get poorer while working harder so much easier to digest. Hint: it is all about finding a tiny area in life that you can feel in control of.
And Bob Larson? Not sure. Celestial Press may have published that book "Getting along with the Angels", or maybe he is just hanging out, making fun of Mad Max*, or doing Bistro Math.
* In case you feel empathetic today: Bob Larson gave the nickname Mad Max to one of the blogster's managers. A well deserved nickname.
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