something in the water or it's the plumber, i've come to fix your sink

I am continuing to use plain soap when I brusha-brusha and I am pleased with the results, although I think rehabilitating my teeth, bad habits notwithstanding, have hit a plateau.

Reviewing the literature, I guess the second most important practice for unconventional tooth care is avoidance of fluorinated, treated water. Being outside the States and Russia, the two major areas that manage their plumbing as such, I thought I was safe. A few weeks ago, however, I noticed a curious installation at the Family Housing Area, the American Army Ghetto, called "Chlor-Station," which incidentally was heavily fortified against tampering. I wondered about this feature and the water towers but never was bold enough to ask, for fear of looking like a kook. Just recently, the Public Affairs Office, to assuage the tremolo-fears of American families newly arrived in country, put out a press-release that detailed how, ja, German tap-water is safe to drink (especially delicate goldfish, like Schrödinger's goldfish, test the waters at purification facilities around the country) and how the Army's engineers strive to make the water taste better, according to American standards, by adding chlorine and fluoride. This is done for the entire military community and not just for those apartment buildings where the soldiers live. Taste better?

I was a bit horrified with what was on-tap, thinking about the office coffee being made with conspiratorial water or all the regular trips to the water-fountain for a sip. Now I have resolved to bring in bottles of tap water from home for everything, including the plants. I do not know if I ascribe to all the supposed plots behind why drinking water is treated, but the claims that it makes for stronger and healthier smiles have been proven untrue. Maybe they put fluoride in the water to gird their population against the effects of radiation poisoning, with an on-going nod to the Cold War--or maybe fluoride has keep dentists in business all these years, but it is just as likely these additives are an opiate for an obedient workforce.

honeycomb hideout or zombee

A professor in the American state of North Carolina may have accidentally discovered the pathogen behind the mysterious and wide-spread die off of bee colonies.

Though all sorts of plausible theories have been put forward, ranging from genetically-modified crops to pesticides to global warming and electromagnetic smog from cellular telephone masts and it is probably a combination of these environmental factors, the chance observation of a bee playing host to an insidious parasitic phorid fly could explain the honey bees' erratic and zombified (like ignoring the brood, sitting out the bee-dance that communicates the whereabouts of flowers and foraging at night) behaviour that results in them neglecting their hives. Such a parasite could also account for the pattern of the occurrence and contagion, which is not helped by the practice in some areas of renting hives and trucking bees to fields in bloom. The health and well-being of bees is vitally important for the food-supply, since there would be no new crops, despite the smugness of G-M plants adapted to harsh conditions and tweaked to produce their own pesticides and even as pharmaceutical factories for human medicines--all these plant-hacks to a degree, of course, have been happening without geneticists since the beginning of agriculture and selective-breeding. Trees, grasses and plants that only bloom once in a blue moon would also be gravely affected. It is good that researchers have perhaps isolated one cause and can move forward, but I suspect that human intervention was behind this latest plague too: a related species of phorid fly was used in Texas and Alabama to quell the invasion of fire-ants, with similar ghoulish results for the ants and their colonies. Maybe the same thing was tried in the early 1990s to stop the killer bees, Africanized and aggressive honey bee hybrids, and slowly control over this infectious agent was lost. I hope the bees can be saved, and without creating even bigger problems and imbalance. Maybe the cautionary message of all those zombie movies has stuck.

field and fountain, moor and mountain

Epiphany (or Drei Königs Tag for the Three Wise Men, the Magi, Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar) is celebrated this week all over the German Sprachraum. Children of the community dress as Sternsinger and troop from house to house, collecting donations for good causes and in return blessing the home for the year in gratitude. It is, however, not a holiday in most places, including ironically the state of Nord Rhein Westphalia where the city of Köln is located.

The magnificent showcase of the Kölner Dom is the reliquary of the holy remains of the Magi remembered on this day. Here is a picture of it against the city skyline, rather dreary and pixilated and taken years ago.  We need to visit the city together to see the relics and re-capture some of the amazing scenes.  Not only did this purpose-built cathedral draw many pilgrims, it represented progress and innovation in architecture.

Drei Königs Tag also marks some other Christmas traditions, like jettisoning the tree, with ceremony, over one's balcony and ensuring all remaining Christmas treats are dispatched of, and begins Carnival season, which Köln is also famous for, in earnest--plus some folk-wisdow to prognosticate the weather: if Winter hasn't come by now (which for us it has not) then Winter won't be coming.

you've been rick-rolled

Like the Summer Olympics and Leap Years, America is gearing up for their presidential campaigns and elections, and already with the first state primaries to nominate party candidates (only two parties of consequence) with the best chance of unseating the incumbent. 

Nothing is inherently bad or wrong with either ideology and statement of priorities in preserving the union, but these political workshops, civic engagement that has atrophied to a highly polarizing social-hour, grow stranger and more extravagant each election-cycle. It is striking how one does not vote for or run on a platform, but instead for personalities and dogmas--holding court (with courtiers and jesters of all sorts), genuine dialogue, debate and coalition-building are foregone to preach what a narrow majority of the voting-class wants to hear. I suppose politicians have earned that negative reputation and there is adequate (and disheartening) precedence to confirm all the talk of corruption and back-peddling, when hope was brought down on appeal (by that same vanishing margin) to more of the same disappointment and disenfranchisement and even a few such bold affronts against personal liberties, that had they been proposed under the last US regime, Bush would have been laughed out of office. Once achieved the designation of elect, the voter seems to be alienated from the whole political process, with representatives beholden to lobbyists even more than their chosen base or pet-projects.

Outreach and inclusiveness are usually the first campaign promises to wither but the incivility seems to have started before word-one: this once every-four-years event, though perpetual and non-stop for the wrong reasons for many, is not just to govern a 51, 49, 99 or 1% American and just sail through to re-election. The antics and outrage may make matters seem to the contrary and elements of democracy may be held hostage by corporate interests, but the outcome is important. Every government can face straits and gridlock and sometimes better intentions are sacrificed to squabbling but working together is the only way to affect real progress. Cooperation, to a degree, allows one to see the bigger picture, and from that vista it might be hard to know where to begin, but at minimum, government could strive towards making the young people of America not heir to a terrible financial crisis of the older generation's making: youth unemployment stands at nearly 30% in the USA with bleak prospects of improving, since overall conditions are forcing people to defer retirement longer and longer, and to try to gain a toe-hold in the jobs market people, younger and older, have sought higher education and outstanding student loan debt has surpassed credit card debt. People ought not to shirk their obligations (we're better than bailed-out corporations) but, just like some workers are putting off retirement, young people are deferring setting up hearth and home or even committing to a relationship. Something could be done to achieve meaningful savings that would be a bootstrap, not just for the young but all of society. This sort of arrested-development, for one, for a generation does not ascribe to party lines and is not a perennial outcome befitting for any vote.