In order to ensure that security theatre see its caliber of performance bolstered by no less than the finest special effects and pyrotechnics, MiniDef is installing (with no pretense at discretion) an anti-aircraft missile battery on top of a residential estate in East London, where some seven hundred people live.
Sunday 29 April 2012
east-enders
brigadoon or unscheduled appearance
Though more concerned presently is on keeping Venice and other islands from sinking further below the waves, our favourite BLDG BLOG reports on the very curious case of the sometimes island of Ferdinandea. Presently a volcanic seamount in the Mediterranean off the coast of Sicily and directly north of the island of Lampedusa, which garnered attention during the revolutionary Spring of North Africa when an influx of refugees came into this nearest port of the European Union.
catagories: ๐ซ๐ท, ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐ฎ๐น, ๐ช️, foreign policy
Friday 27 April 2012
rushmore
The fourth President of the United States, author of the Federalist Papers and significant contributor to the US Constitution, James Madison called government the greatest reflection of human nature.
Invoking the so-called Founding Fathers can be a tricky thing, since they are used as straw men many times for arguments that they’d rather not be brought into and reductio ad absurdum positions. No constitution is inviolate and can of course be read selectively. Madison said many sage things that are resounding and ought not to be forgotten and are certainly more agile, adaptive and current than the language of any law or designs at strategy. Though the charter documents of America could not have anticipated the complex environment of an intricately connected world, Madison was able to address, succinctly, the latest incarnation of nightmarish Orwellian conveniences being thrust upon the whole planet at America’s behest: “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.” After public outrage and protest defeated SOPA and PIPA and lamed ACTA, the US government was amazingly quick to regroup with the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). This law’s essential powers and scope are the same as its avatars—only the justification was changed from piracy to the more serious-sounding threat of corporate espionage perpetrated by Russian and Chinese agents, intent on sabotaging America’s prosperity and economic edge.
catagories: ⚖️, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, ๐ฅธ, networking and blogging, philosophy
Thursday 26 April 2012
mission midas or bergwerk im all
A cadre of adventuring entrepreneurs are making incremental moves, in earnest, to go prospecting in the asteroid belt (DE/EN). Although I am not sure of the details, whether the project will live up to romanticized notions from science-fiction and space opera with heroes and villains and high risk—or if the risks of this melodrama only pertains to business and investor losses and there’s only the tremolo-bravery of disposable robots and swarms of tug boats and pick-axes.
Either way, such a vision and ambition is something exciting and sure to have broader repercussions, like the cadre promises, of not only material wealth and resources and also tutoring (remediating) mankind in space exploration, and I cannot fully understand some of the jadedness and cynicism that’s being cast towards this enterprise—well, I understand some of the suspicion given the rank privilege that corporations enjoy and pulling down shooting-stars should not give us license to be more wasteful and less environmentally-conscience, especially considering how dirty, invasive and creeping terrestrial mining operations are. Efficiency won’t be necessarily discredited either, just because rare-earth and trace metals and alloys are increasingly precious components of current electronics and material manufacturing might become common-place; technology will still advance and probably in surprising ways. This research and exploration may not only succeed in overcoming the pettier expense barriers and lead to bolder experimentation and engineering developments, mining asteroids, while possibly not unearthing some alien mutagenic virus or uncovering the artifacts of an ancient civilization (perhaps we are the claim-jumpers) or finding unexpected residents, it will at least force us to think about the possibility of such wondrous and exotic things and give us a bit of a foothold beyond this poor abused and hollowed-out world.
catagories: ๐ก, ๐ญ, environment, transportation
Tuesday 24 April 2012
presto-chango or mission abolished
catagories: ๐, ๐, ๐ฅธ, ๐ง , foreign policy, revolution
Monday 23 April 2012
synaxarion or by george!
Though Germany is one of the few places not wholly under the patronage of Saint George and Germany has another event to mark on this day—the anniversary of the enactment of the Reinheitsgebot, the Saint Day has universal recognition and usually falls (the feast can be preempted by Easter) on a strange amalgam of celebrations that are as varied and involved as his cult and veneration. Aside from beer, literature is also synthetically celebrated on this day, due to it being the anniversary of Miguel de Cervantes’ death and the anniversary of both William Shakespeare’s birth and death (though this coincidence is a bit contrived because of subsequent calendar reforms)—books are a traditional St. George’s Day gift.
Sunday 22 April 2012
visa visum
The careless rhetoric of political campaigns can certainly re-phrase backwards proposals as something benign. The European Union is a striving towards perfection through integration and cooperation, and while though it may still have hard battles ahead of it (exacerbated by the economic climate and political scapegoating), one should approach the subject of closing boarders with extra caution. To have reinvented an entire continent of some four-hundred million people as an entity with no internal border control is a hallmark of the EU, extended even to more people than use the euro. Citizens of Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein also enjoy this privilege, though the Irish and the Anglo-Saxons did not fully agree to the terms of the treaty and still exercise elements of border controls with the rest of the EU.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ช๐บ, ๐ซ๐ท, ๐ฌ๐ท, ๐ฑ๐ฎ, foreign policy, labour, transportation
triangle man
In a follow-up interview, after adding his voice to the chorus of educators, entrepreneurs, innovators, futurists, writers and artists expressing grave concern over the openness and continued utility of the internet, Tim Berners-Lee (DE/EN), who made the internet accessible though his perseverance and invention of hypertext mark-up language, made a very eloquent remark that should be all rights be the coup de grรขce and last word to the bullies of the world.
Berners-Lee simply said that the internet is bigger than the entertainment industry, bigger than record labels and movie studios. The potential for fostering creativity and discovery and the threat to this freedom of congress is much more significant than the grossly magnified grievances of a few thuggish companies, who have the backing of politicians and inflated claims of damages. In fact, although apparently we’d be better off believing the charm-offensive that equates copyright integrity to the last bastions against all the nightmarish ills of the world, the scale of economy of the entertainment industry is relatively tiny and could be handily absorbed (though I doubt the situation would be improved) by anyone of the technological giants that has built empires of connectivity. We have been put at the mercy of bullies in a lot of other ways as—and though it’s an obvious statement, we’d do better not to forget again: freedom, honesty, integrity are bigger than any illusory security; peace and unity are bigger than any one nation’s peccadilloes or aspirations; not demonizing others is bigger than spreading one’s personal gospel; conserving nature is bigger than profits (though for the last two, forces are ardently at work with discrediting keeping matters in perspective). Understanding scale and priority is something that we are all capable of at first glance, and despite efforts to skew and burden our feelings, I think, with a gentle reminder, we’re able to see through that deception as well.
catagories: ๐, ๐ก, environment, networking and blogging, philosophy, Wikipedia
Friday 20 April 2012
one-off or noch eins
When the great mall-tree, the schef-felera whose bran-ches make a canopy over the bed, flowered last year for the first time, I guessed that was all the generative action we'd see out of it for the next decade or so. I thought plants that took time to mature were patient and stategically territorial, like a Century Plant (Agave americana).
I was surprised to see these stalks emerge again. I was also surprised and happy at the same time to find that the geranium that sprouted from the little nub of root that I salvaged from the balcony last Autumn survived. I had heard that one can sometimes keep the roots in a cellar and urge them to grow for a second season, but I didn't think I'd discover that it was a white (rather than a red) hanger-on.
catagories: ๐ฑ, environment, lifestyle
furor teutonicus
There has been much fanfare over the past week about a survey (Umfrage) of the American public that confirms a general affinity between Germans and their American cousins.
Thursday 19 April 2012
manuscript culture or head-up forward crawl
catagories: networking and blogging, philosophy
Wednesday 18 April 2012
three-letter initialism
catagories: America, economic policy, foreign policy, transportation, travel
Monday 16 April 2012
birthday paradox or pigeon-hole principle
The Pope celebrated his birthday today with an appropriately Bavarian entourage of well-wishers bringing some characteristically German traditions to Rome. He was treated to quite a few performances from this delegation. The Pope, the first German to hold the office in over a thousand years, shares his birth date with another, though perhaps less famous, German citizen, hailing from Erfurt, the city where Martin Luther was ordained and the Pope visited last September: Germany’s first test-tube baby (sogennante Retortenbabies, which sounds especially cruel, although test-tube is bad enough, as if they were sea-monkeys or kangaroo-joeys).
Sunday 15 April 2012
tribute or bread and circuses
I think that the Olympic Games have officially become more commercialized than Christmas or guilt. Since the Australian games of 2000, as the Guardian reports, the International Olympic Committee has been making exponentially greater demands of its host cities for enforcing the market capitalization of official sponsors.
For the upcoming event, authorities have been given an onerous charge of making sure no opportunist, ambusher (I suspect that such draconian measures created ambush-marketing in the first place) or bystander have the potential for profit by association with a date, place or Zeitgeist of what is supposed to be a celebration of culture, sportsmanship and human achievement. Not only are pubs not permitted to invite customers to watch the broadcasts on their premises or even dare suggest that they are in fact physically located near a venue (or cohabitate in the same dimension), players and spectators are not allowed to share footage or photographs over social networks under threat of criminal punishment. Given also the marked increase in surveillance, security theatre and hassle (a rise for a place already one nation under CC-TV) and the mysterious prohibition against athletes shaking-hands, a prophylactic for some unnamed social disease, being picked as the setting for this and other large-scale, officially sanctioned happenings does not seem such a great trade-off.
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐ฅธ, lifestyle, networking and blogging, sport and games
inรบtil
Saturday 14 April 2012
widget
redux or a man, a plan, kofi annan
While I have respect for the former United Nations’ Secretary General and hope that his mission does help stop violence and blood-shed, there is something decidedly unsavoury and inscrutable about the ways in which Western concerns are being manifest presently—along a continuum of interference and strategy—for the future of Syria and the whole region. If reports and accounts by the opposition are accurate, the present regime’s clinging to power is probably serving no one, but a peace negotiated by the US and the UN could be a very suspect treaty indeed, who may well be basing their assessments off of another disgruntled Curveball character (DE/EN). Since Western involvement with Libya, there has been a marked departure from the uprisings and revolutions of the Arab Spring, which took much of the world unawares, and like bankers and speculators trying to profit from the controlled-collapse of distressed and overburdened markets, petroleum-politicians are wanting events to unfold or crumple on their terms.
catagories: ⚛️, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, foreign policy, revolution, Wikipedia
Thursday 12 April 2012
jump-start
catagories: ๐️, lifestyle, transportation, travel
Wednesday 11 April 2012
penal colony
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐บ๐ธ, foreign policy
aberglaube or friggatriskaidekaphobia
catagories: holidays and observances, language, psychology
rosamunde
One would assume that all cultural trappings of a place are as old as the hills, however, like Oktoberfest, Biergรคrten in Germany just marked their two-hundredth anniversary this year. The German brewing purity laws had already been in effect for centuries when Bavarian King Maximilian I allowed that brewers could serve beer from their cooling vats in January of 1812.
Tuesday 10 April 2012
rigel 7
Monday 9 April 2012
medienecho or leaves of grass
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐, ๐, foreign policy
jabberwocky or orion’s belt
Contemporary imagineering for skies darkened by flocks of autonomous drones is unsettling enough without harking back to vintage visions of the future and premature excitement over the dawning nuclear age, however, an interesting article from Smithsonian’s Air & Space magazine that is over two decades old, reflecting on event more distant Cold War sentiments, previsions that sort of same primed grid of surveillance and offense. After America was dissuaded from pursuing the Orion Project and experimentation with nuclear-propelled space craft due to treaties that underscored how potentially catastrophic arming space and accidents in the upper atmosphere could be for all life on Earth. Partially bemoaning the loss to space exploration and the work of researchers and scientists, attention turned to miniaturization and weaponization with the same ram-jet technology engines that would funnel and focus the force of an atomic explosion that would shuttle forward this sort of infernal, eternal ballistic drone.
Die heutige Flugroboter sind schlimm genug, aber in der Vergangenheit vom dem Nuklear Goldener Zeit hat man auch gefรคhrlich Personenpotential. Ein zweiundzwanziger-jรคhriger Beitrag vom Smithsonian Museums (auf Englisch) magazine hatte eine รคhnliche Atmosphรคre die vollautomatisch Todesmaschinerie und weitverbereitet Abdeckung vorhersagen. Vertrรคge und Wagnis hat Amerika vom Experimentieren mit Nuklearantrieb ins Weltall widerraten. Also damit war dieser Forschung nicht umsonst, haben die Wissenschaftler ihre Aufmerksamkeit auf andere Dinge—wie die Bewaffnung. Die gleiche Grundsรคtze kann als die Kraftquelle fรผr einer ewiger Drohne benutzt warden, wie ein Atom-U-Bootflotte. Im Angriff-Modus, es wurde ein Sturtzflug machen und halten tief und langsam unterwegs zu sein. Es wurde ein abgebrannter und strahlender Weg durch feindlichen Gelรคnde bahnen. Glรผcklicherweise wurde keine dieser Prototyp je zustand kam. Hoffenlich wurde aufgrund angebliche Fortschritte in der Technologie zur Kontrolle nieman so wider begeistern.
catagories: ⚛️, ๐ก, ๐ญ, ๐ฅธ, transportation
Friday 6 April 2012
hippety-hoppety
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ✝️, holidays and observances, language
Thursday 5 April 2012
ex cathedra
Via the tremendously brilliant Boing Boing, there is a op-ed piece by Richard Clarke (DE/EN), anti-terrorism czar to the Clinton and Bush II administrations, chairman of the 9/11 Commission and cyber-security authority, that once again demonstrates the boundless work-shopping potential of the hubris and reach of the US Department of Homeland Security.
catagories: ๐, ๐ก, ๐, ๐ฅธ, networking and blogging
Wednesday 4 April 2012
honorarium
A very clever young man from the Netherlands, named Jurre Herman, offered a very elegant solution to help staunch the currency-crisis in the euro zone, which I think deserves more than an honourable mention in the open contest economic contest calling for submissions from all sources. Herman suggests that the Greeks, and probably with wider applicability, revert to using the drachma for day-to-day, internal affairs, buying drachmas from the government at an equitable rate with their euros. The government then can use the euro to pay down the debt. The value of the drachma of course drops precipitously but that again can make industry and the labour force more competitive. For those hording euro or stowing it away overseas, there would be a punitive exchange rate applied. And for those doing business internationally, they would be able to sell their drachma back for euro, at a rate slightly favourable to the government. With some tweaking, I think such a plan might work and perhaps economists and analysts are not the one to dictate what is and is not feasible.
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, ๐ฌ๐ท, ๐, economic policy
kopfgeld
The awkward tension between Switzerland and Germany over emerging taxation treaties, banking reforms and German bounty-hunter tactics has resulted in a legal volley between the two countries, including the arrest-warrants for the offending tax-inspectors, a travel-ban for employees at a major Swiss bank for Germany and harsh language that threatens to undermine any progress on transparency and cooperation struck recently (DE/EN). In February 2010, three German tax-inspectors entered into negotiations with an anonymous former bank executive, perhaps disgruntled, to acquire a data CD pilfered on the executive’s way out, which supposedly contained intelligence on international clients who may or may not have been banking in Switzerland for purposes of tax-evasion (the overwhelming countries and banking systems of choice for tax-dodgers are UK and American parking-spots, despite all the flailing and over-reaching of jurisdiction by Britain and the US) .
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, ๐ฅธ, economic policy, foreign policy, philosophy, Star Wars
Tuesday 3 April 2012
churben
airstrip one or britons never will be slaves
There was a strange, quiet collusion, like a cold-shudder that’s inspired of unseen connections and truly action-at-a-distance, of proposals that came out of the UK government regarding freedom of movement and association. Though the latter, at native initiative, is probably destined to be diluted and pulled apart by public outrage and walked down by checks and balances (a government scheme to grandiosely expand the powers to survey the on-line activities of each and every citizens), the former concerning transportation, is a kowtowing to America’s security apparatus, which might well escape any vestige of debate or scrutiny and land flatly on the traveling public. The assault against the freedom of association, requiring internet service providers to bundle spying hardware with their routers that will log a user’s ambling and contacts (though apparently not the content of emails) seems too ambitious and ill-advised to achieve, like making a map that’s at a one to one ratio.
Such plotting is not good and even if it were technically possible and didn’t put undue hardship on ISPs to denigrate their customers, I wouldn’t be for such an invasion of privacy and violation of trust—though I do believe that such lofty plans are not airworthy and probably ought to be taken in perspective: people volunteer private information all the time on social networks and submit to having their boredom, curiosities and interests tracked by companies and services that may not be less trustworthy than the government. The surrender of freedom of movement is a more worrisome and novel development: US secret no-fly lists have taken on a bit of manifest destiny. A UK citizen, planning to fly to Canada, Mexico or even the Caribbean British holdings (and with no connecting-flight in the States and without passing through American airspace, just near it) could be denied boarding, without warning, if the individual (or someone bearing a similar name) is on the list or if due to bad record-keeping or technical difficulties, the computer cannot prove that the individual is not named therein. This of course has no relation to reality either (to remove oneself for a moment and remember that the intent is to keep people safe), but it’s like an American citizen being told that he or she cannot fly from Los Angeles to Honolulu because the Public Service Intelligence Agency of Japan has unclear or incomplete files on the traveler—but the denied passenger would never know even this much. It is something to send a chill down one’s spine.
catagories: ๐จ๐ฆ, ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐ฅธ, foreign policy, transportation
Monday 2 April 2012
fuรpfad
Over the weekend, I took a long walk, seeking out a so-called Fossil Trail that I had seen posted beforehand in the area. The local foothill are built up of layer after layer of diatomaceous earth left by the denizens of the shallow sea that spread out from the Baltic millions of years ago. I followed the path for a little bit, but upon not finding a giant trilobite frozen in carbonite lurching from the cliff side, I got distracted. The trail, post-dating the signs which were somewhat lacking and aimless but maybe also removed for this healthy cachet, was modernized into a Nordic hiking path, which was quite nice too but kind of took away from the fossil hunting aspect. I did, however, come across an interesting installation early on: a reflexology (Reflexologie) experience with a little wading pool to refresh one’s tired feet.
catagories: health and medicine, lifestyle, Star Wars
okey-gnocchi
To make two large portions:
200 g of jarred mushroom slices
150 g of firm (a touch underripe) cherry tomatoes, quartered
3-4 leeks, diced
2 tablespoons of tomato past
1 tablespoon of flour (or substitute)
200 g of crรจme
600 g of gnocchi, fresh—or from the refrigerated section
Butter to coat the casserole dish
100 g mozzarella, cubed
100 g shredded cheese—like Gouda
Salt, pepper and oregano to taste
catagories: ๐ฎ๐น, ๐, food and drink
Sunday 1 April 2012
off-shore
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐ฅธ, foreign policy, lifestyle, networking and blogging
baumbastic
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ฑ, environment, holidays and observances, lifestyle
kein scherz or share-cropping
catagories: ๐ฑ, ๐ก, environment, food and drink