capitol intelligencer or no such agency

The Washington Post released its compendious study of the parallel topography and the sprawling landscape of Top Secret America.  It's a very clever read.  The two-year project concludes that the forces to combat terrorism have grown so large as to be unwieldy, information is not promulgated nor shared for coordination and triangulation, and petty tyrranies and turf-battles not only are squandering the whole enterprise with redundancy but also inviting warring shadow-factions to rise up. 

No creature is better at job-preservation by sustaining need than government bureaucrats and job-security could turn vicious.  Maybe this is not as sensational or surprising as the revelations of Deepthroat but maybe it can cue public attention and bring about reform to a problem that is endemic to the US government and cull some unneeded duplication and coveted red-tape.

insektenvernichter

I thought that the name of the friendly guesthouse by our campsite on the Prorer Wiek was a bit ominous and foreboding, Zur Muecke, the Mosquito, and we sustained a few nasty bites and an inconstant nuisance in the evenings but it was not intolerable.  I have a cruel and untested in field conditions bug-zapper that I forgot to bring along, which was probably a good thing.  I also tried to guard myself from the perils of the sun, and considering the defensive freckles that surface on my whiter shade of pale skin, I think I managed pretty well with two weeks of fine weather on the beach with sun protection factor 50.  I emerged a bit tanned and unscathed, except for a patch on my knee that I guess I missed.  I felt like Achilles dipped in the River Styx, with my vunerabilities that I am sure that the mosquitoes took advantage of as well through the cloud of Autan/Off, or more appropriately like when Nibelung Siegfried bathed and that one leaf fell on him.

baltic avenue or gravity's rainbow

H and I have just returned from a camping--though not actually roughing it, holiday, spanning as H points out the entire length of the former German Democratic Republic, from Thuringia to the lighthouse at Kap Arkona at the northern tip of the Island of Rügen. 

Lazily making the transition from one, beautiful, clean and uncrowded beach to the next, we saw many remarkable things and took in a lot of history, including Werner von Braun's rocket facility at Peenemunde, which saw the first launch into outer space, ancient fishing villages, buildings bleached white and authentic and justified martitime decor, outstanding natural beauty, the chalky cliff face at the Jasmunder Bodden,

to the endless coastlines of Usedom, to our final campsite and headquarters at the Kraft durch Freude (KdF) seafront resort ruin of Prora, built to accomodate some twenty-thousand holiday-makers and some 4.5 kilometers long but never used used for that purpose.

It was absolutely outstanding to be nomadic and take away so many impressions, even more than I can list here, while sustaining the relaxation that should come with the standard--or non-standard two-weeks' vacation, and cannot wait for the next adventure.

 

im urlaub

H and I are touring the exquisite Baltic coast, and PfRC is on sabbatical too.  Please check out Our Little Travel blog for further adventures.