swimlanes

I wonder if a flowchart ever really simplified a human decision-making process, or whether such diagrams always instigated a little aversion and defeat at first glance, regardless of content. Such a tool may be fit for representing, in terms of a more natural language, the input/output of computer programming but I think the collection of conditions and operators presented is just another layer shrouding instinct or bias in many cases. Flow diagrams provide a framework for solving algorithms, which computers can become very good at, but are not exhaustive or predictive of every contingency and are probably best at making snarls, choke-points more apparent.

Humans, I believe, are more apt to respond to a proof or a concrete and universal rule, rather than a passably effective way to work something out. While we are not always afforded the luxury of hard and fast laws for guidance and improvisation is called upon, but I do not think that the absence of established rules calls for the creation of provisional systems that either beggar our worse judgment or second-guess real leadership and such a method is not a substitute for an authentic imperative or thorough reasoning.

Once a system or method gets complicated enough, and I believe such code sketched out in long hand would quickly become too complex for human navigators, it becomes fairly convincing.

The people who design such charts are also fairly keen on the credibility of their work-product, and it can become problematic when inventors get too proud over their schemes and throughput. It’s scary to think that such guidelines (the branching off of process charts is called a swimlane), which is the deft guesswork and approximation of machines and field manuals, might be held not to the same rigour and standards as something inviolate and accepted without question.

polity

Only overshadowed by the awful graces of the conflagration over a smear video, stoked by other arsonists and fire-bugs, the uncensored and complete disdain that the appointed charismatic leader of the American duality holds for not only a full half of his fellow citizens but also for most of the rest of creation should come as no surprise—regardless how careless and candid one’s words can be among like-minds. It is tragic that such gaffes are usually cycled away, forgiven or forgotten, and press and public have stopped considering or stopped caring that this candidate’s (and generations of avatars) have already staked out his position, hectoring, divisive, and with hubris that never had a place on the world-stage. Ostracizing and dismissive words, like relegating struggling peoples to the domain of free-loaders, social-parasites or irreconcilable adversaries, is more a judgment on those who would declare hopelessness on the basis of otherness but does severely prejudice the chance for dialogue and cooperation. This outreach is necessary, despite what one faction may believe.

Sadly, it is probably true that no opinions were suaded any differently and most people’s minds are already set in this debate—even that small but deciding percentage of uncommitted voters that all these promises and money hope to court, but despite any amount of expatriation, bellicose rumblings and gentrification, the leader of the United States does not get to preside only over his half of the populace, plus that pandered middle.  Surely there are some people that are accomplished at working this system or generations that have been inculcated into the programmes of state-support but it is a grossly unfair and alienating characterization to say alleged, assumed support for the status quo can’t be bothered with and future generations are doomed to the same cycles of bleak prospects and disenfranchisement. Besides, the whole premise is more than a bit disingenuous since the serfdom of the US taxpayer tends towards just enough and no more than what’s necessary to support business-welfare, so corporate-persons also do not have to pay income-tax, and the half taken for granted as sure to vote in his favour also comprise the majority of recipients of that maligned government assistance. The hate and uproar is not a distraction but can be capitalized upon as such by skilled crafters for competing notice and attention, held just at arm’s length until defused.

doctor pangloss, I presume

The ever engrossing and a sure bet for a good take-away to ruminate on, Boing Boing, recently presented two brief and chilling tracts about the echo chamber of communication and some dismal reflections on the realities draped by economic cheerleading. Boy, this was some bleak stuff, presented in a way that was hard to refute or not be disheartened.

Both made some arresting assertions that only seemed truer on dissection, memorable and ready to be unpacked or walked back like the collection of pensées. Without being shrill or dogmatic, the first article offered the axiom that one's smart phone is basically a tracking device that allows one to place calls. I only ever use that app that allows one to hear and speak to people over any given distance and that other app that allows one to see the time of day, but the interview goes on to illustrate what systems are already in place to limn a complete dossier of anyone and how the idea that one has nothing to hide is smug and irresponsible, since communications are interconnected and false assumptions are made and errant words can unintentionally become artillery for anyone in our network. The second article is a virtual bucket-list of 21 facts from economist Ian Welsh that bespeak trembling and revolution. Among other truths, austerity is defined as the opportunity for venture-capitalists to acquire assets usually not up for sale, that wage-earners are beholden to the company store and are unlikely to escape (although that disbelief is what sustains even the worst of markets) and that resistance is futile for those regimes who would dare oppose the conditions levied on the public by corporate interests. Both are definitely worth the read, despite the discomfort and disillusion that may result.

eurotrashing or the columbian union

Although the most recent rhetoric against the general deportment of the body eurotique has been toned down somewhat—or at least, transmuted into a pseudo-intellectual soapbox about the urgent need for urgency and action, it is still very much cachet in Anglo-Saxon political debate and attacks to summon up the Continental, European leanings of one’s opponent—thereby ending all possible discussion.

The spectre of socialist regimes and bloated bureaucracies and welfare states are yet ammunition enough for a moment’s deflection at the expense of a distant and abstract punching-bag. One, I’m sure, can expect the criticism of the European club to become harsher and more pointed as the election season in America approaches. Meanwhile, the dissonant coda to all these judgments from critics, skeptics and sophists is that the EU government and member states ought to be converging towards a so-called United States of Europe, with common policies and standards.

I cannot imagine, however, a more disjointed and decodified union than America. The EU is not demanding that Alibamo impose the same sin-taxes as Nieuw Amsterdam does—or that Tejas or Øklahomå adopt their standards for vehicle registration plates or levy duties on income, retail sales or property uniformly either. Hopefully, once all the shouting is done with, people will realize that there are aspects, both traditional and experimental, about Europe and its organization worthy of emulation.

don’t let it rest on the president’s desk

Tumblr artist Meg Jannott has a new project, aiming to cast each of the forty-four US com-manders-in-chief as their own clever and sleek corporate brand. I really like the look she has developed so far, and it’s interesting to peruse historical memory and the epithets that these office-holders earned—especially as election-season in the States has reached such a pitch when reputations are reduced to barbs and snap-shots. As the collection grows, it is definitely worth a gander, along with the opportunity to discover some of her other works. What other subjects, series of incumbents deserve to be likewise branded—English monarchs, the some 265 Peter-Plus-One Popes of the Catholic church? Those would be fun and involved undertakings.

instructions to applicant

What an obscure thing to commit to paper, and what a bizarre punishment for those born under the sign of 87. I wonder what old legacy programming subroutine is triggered with this magic number. It’s like the legal fictions, which vary greatly by jurisdiction, for people born on a 29 February, which I imagine could get people in quite a bind and might only be remedied by a telefax addressed to somewhere on some other time continuum. These systems, which justify more than a few jobs by continuing to refuse to communicate with one another and require a translator and arbitrator, are not the most navigable and produce as much red-tape as the bureaus and agencies that the sustain. I wonder, though, if anyone has bothered to compile the surprising snatches of poetry in unappreciated bureaucratic boilerplate. Some passages are untouchable and have survived updates and revisions to regulations, like one of my favourite sections that includes “notorious misconduct off-duty—with regard to off-duty conduct, all employees have an obligation to conduct themselves so that no disgrace or disrepute will be visited on the Department of the Army” as a primary cause for dismissal—very non-committal and open-ended and probably a guildline that would defy being stated any other way.

as seen on tv

From the creative franchise that offers the daily web comics Toothpaste for Dinner, Married to the Sea, and Natalie Dee, there is a new Sharing Machine blog, The Worst Things for Sale, that is an intelligent and funny commentary on culture through reviews of the craptabulous and derivative ways to part people from the money and good senses.  You should check out them all. 

overseas telegram

Here’s a bit of typically nannying that strikes me like those Friday afternoon conscientious bureaucrat emergencies that necessarily wait until just before quitting-time and the weekend because to be unburdened and shared freely because it took the problem-holder all week to perfect it:

in a startling announcement, the culmination of some prancing concern and worse-case-scenario research that began back in 2007, the United States Postal Service, not the most agile and fleet-footed government entity even discounting strictures and operational model, has announced the ban on sending lithium batteries in the mail, extending at least over the holiday season and the beginning of next year, should contingencies and controls be in place. The electronics industry is outraged, although some meekly suggest that the ban is not completely without merit, since cellular phones, computers, navigation devices, watches, and hundreds of other little accessories are powered by such batteries, at times embedded and not so easily removed after manufacturing. Private shipping companies and contract couriers will still be able to post in- and out-going lithium batteries, which with the above, makes the decision seem completely arbitrary and misinformed, like the eager gloom of security theatre, since I imagine as cargo in boats and airplanes or in the bays of post offices, USPS and the packages of other companies are not segregated. Under extreme conditions or when poorly manufactured, there is a small risk of batteries catching fire or exploding in transit—but also I suppose at rest, on the shelf, in use, in Pago Pago or Novosibirsk and could be any hazardous or innocuous, randomly chosen, from substance Businesses and the national postal service will surely lose out over loss of volume and the effort associated with renegotiating carriers, not counting lost sales opportunities in the chaos or the large number of American expatriates living and working overseas. I hope that Royal Mail, Deutsche Post, and other rogue carriers do not mend their wayward ways, but such restrictions could possibly inspire electronics manufactures to invent new accoutrements that are powered by fear or by farce, which would still be hard-pressed to avoid end-of-the-day disasters.

bootstrap or birthright

For a land built for the most part on immigration, it seems sometimes like an arcane technicality that only natural born United States citizens can hold the office of presidency. I found the Birther hysteria undignified and distracting, although I didn't much appreciate California's bid a few years ago to amend the US Constitution so that a cyborg could become president. Turning the tables a bit, Reuters' examined the birth certificate of another contender in the election, illustrating that though a generation removed, the issue invited controversy and interpretation in the other camp as well. The candidate's father was born in Mexico, and once upon a time, sought the nomination of his political party to vie against Richard Nixon as a more moderate choice. The campaign was short-lived but demanded a definition of what a natural citizen is exactly, his parents both Americans. At the time, most judges and experts agreed with his reading. It does not seem, however, that being born outside of US territory was quite accidental, since religious colonies of dissidents were founded there to protest another very special type of non-traditional marriage that the US federal government was against and the family only, it seems, returned to America because of the Mexican Revolution.

chinese fire-drill

Cornered with prospects of more market bubbles (a dot-com bust redux of 1999 and 2008 after a less than stellar performance of a networking platform that’s only, but, not merely, the sum of its user-generated antics), aspersions are quick to be cast out, like so many throwing-stars and there are the usual targets, scapegoats.

Revelations that, after several years of negotiations, the Chinese central bank has been afforded direct access to the Federal Reserve’s treasuries auctions without having to go through a middle man, a Wall Street bank, to complete the transaction—bidding on, buying US debt, have raised headline indignation. While it is a fact that no other bank, domestic or foreign reserve bank, has this special privilege and everyone else must use a Wall Street intermediary and that does raise some suspicion in itself (especially in light of another revelation involving military contracts and knock-off computing components), it does seem like a false-flag diversion to first question why buying up American liabilities is facilitated for China and deflates the underlying premises: even the transactions between the Federal Reserve and government agencies are brokered by major investment banks, charging a commission, and perhaps other institutions ought to wonder about the special privilege that these select middlemen have. Are the bankers of Wall Street less than trustworthy? Should the US manufacturing Would more public disclosure of any country’s debt-buying activities (mediated through a bank) cue market volatility or keep prices low for the bidding pool of a closed-auction? Should such a pyramid-scheme be any country’s or institution’s primary means of staying afloat, no matter what nation is buying? Looking for engineered snares and backdoors, regardless of who’s the trigger and who’s the trapper, and cyber-warfare is healthy and circumspect paranoia, but overshadows more basic questions that should be asked of America’s penchant for off-shoring—its defense and its public obligations.

sock puppet or propagaИda

Bundled and buried within the US omnibus defense bill is a rather unassuming rider that would overturn protections for the American public from being subjected to disinformation campaigns by the government and the military. Proponents of this language argue that past measures, which came into force after World War II and a bit ahead of the Red Scare, makes for ineffective diplomatic correspondence in demanding a measure of accuracy in message and reporting, and the success of propaganda used on terrorists in foreign lands is too promising and ought not to be squandered on domestic audiences. I suppose now it might be even more of a challenger to discern the hype from the distraction and truth, half-true from the total fabrication.

serfdom or golden thread

The purported tax-avoidance scheme of one internet entrepreneur has once again set the brain-trust of the United States of America into over-drive and grand-standing with a retaliatory plan to glean taxes from individuals who choose expatriation. Already the US is a soured thug in terms of tax treaties, demanding its cut from citizens worldwide, regardless of their place of residence and regardless of whether the targeted income was earned with the help from the homeland, made travel a distasteful affair beyond even beyond its borders, place the burden of reporting on foreign banks so as to make them wary about dealing with Americans abroad.

The proposed law would seek to repatriate tax revenues, impose withholdings and an exit-fee—in addition to barring these individuals from returning to the States. Plenty to do at the Hotel California. I am sure that this bill, should it come to pass and much worse is being done, will not affect cosmopolitan billionaires (the timing of this whole casus belli seems pretty tacky but it is unclear whether the media or the government is rightly understanding the motives and no individual ought to have to defend his or her reasons, especially political ones, for making such a choice), those brazenly berthing their fortunes off-shore or corporations that hide behind a string of nationalities, but for the average citizen, it demands that he or she would face undue hardships should they choose to immigrate. America’s bastions are not only uninviting to immigration, the gate-guards are saying that one cannot leave either. It sounds suspiciously like the policies of Soviet Russia whose restrictions on movement presented many with the difficult decision to remain or flee forever. Despite the reactionary nature of this proposal, I wonder if there was ever much difference between the two super-powers—especially within the self-styled framework of a monopolar world.

ways and means or checks and balances

Immovable opposition to changes and supplementing US domestic policy by members of the Republic, not limited to principles and ideological differences but also even bound by childish and treasonous oaths that supplant duties to the democratic process and law, have resulted in untenable social reforms that came into force as defanged half-measures. Universal healthcare for America, transparency and fairness in lending-practices, jobs revitalization, education initiatives, equitable taxation, promotion of green-industry are all excellent ideas whose time has come, but impatience and impertinence are making social programmes into empty shells of bureaucracy and targets for criticism.

Like some king in exile, however, the prohibition on cooperation and meaningful compromise has created a strange and dangerous inverted arrangement where the only powers afforded to the president are those of foreign missions. Absent a venue to affect change at home, abroad emissaries attempt to terraform the world in a way most sympathetic to American interests, but pressing the adoption of international treaties is not a tool for pressing social reform domestically, and even the most high-minded efforts are being returned as something twisted and unrecognizable and possibly even more dangerous. America does not possess the largess for its ambassadors to move unchecked, and though there is no Republican opposition to Obama in the business of envoys, there are certainly competing interests. There have been the boomerang antics of the internet intellectual property protection, and though attempts for universal application have failed, the shape it took when it finally returned to the States was more opaque and rigid, the president denied even his voice in demanding more protections for privacy be put into place.

The same goes with the proliferation of the US-style security and surveillance mentality, which has become the chief export of this honourary consul. The intent behind Battlefield Earth, expanding the definitions of war and rules of engagement, was for the defense of the Republic and was not meant to be a civic apparatus or a desperate wedge for enacting unpopular or previously rejected legislation, but perhaps when there is no other outlet, the domestic aspects of laws express themselves awkwardly in diplomatic circles. Obama has not turned to ombudsmen to unblock politics, but seemingly frustrated and unheeded in his political backyard, he is being portrayed eagerly as taking on loop-holes (punitive and selective) rather than what he is doing in fact by working in the slow and imperfect framework of creativity, democracy and dialogue.

three-letter initialism

Though the US Internal Revenue Service is in fact a federal agency and not a largely autonomous entity like the Federal Reserve Banking system, deriving authority from its expanded charges but accountable to no one, America I think is poised to endow this other creation, the IRS, with similar dreadful powers. I suspect (and hope) that the intent is not as scary and grasping as some are making it out to be, but like other familiars of industrial and puritanical helpfulness that have grown out of bounds and terrorize the public much more than the unseen forces that they claim to combat (the TSA, FBI, DEA, FDA, EPA, CIA, NSA, DHS—and the DOT, the FED and IRS). Buried within a broader transportation bill to ensure continued funding for the US interstate highway system, rappelling its way through the US Congress, there is a clause (open of course to broad interpretation) that grants authorities the power to revoke one’s passport should the bearer be found delinquent (these two words cover an entire spectrum of meaning) on tax obligations.

 In theory, under this unholy alliance, a border patrol officer could bar an individual owing $50 000 in back taxes from leaving the US but I suppose that there is a large potential for such powers to uncoil and become much broader and more restrictive in terms of freedom of movement. This is the same mentality that has unleashed scads unending of rarified dollars on the world markets and driving inflation, or that has created a tax-regime that put such an administrative obligation on foreign banks (to do the jobs the IRS couldn’t manage itself) that doing business with Americans is becoming a liability, not remorsefully unburdened. What of the some 30 000 US soldiers or 98 000 government employees, many of whom are working overseas, that owe taxes? Is movement stopped for them as well? I imagine that enforcement would have to be equitable and without exemption, so no individual would feel targeted and singled-out because of his or her views. Everyone benefits in some way from the services, security or stability that government provides through tax revenue and again no one can simply shirk their duty, but (again) if America was earnest about taking in what’s owed them, they would go after businesses and corporations who’ve profited the most off of the market environment that the US has created and not devise a new mechanism to rustle the pockets of private citizens for diminishing returns. One further hopes that the helix of the secretive no-fly list or the battlefield Earth judgments of the National Defense Authorization Act (DE/EN) does not join up with the one of this collection-service, since then we would all be put in the dark.

776.012

rico sUAVe

Ruben Bolling who writes the uncomfortably true Tom the Dancing Bug series over at Boing Boing perfectly captures the off-putting dissonance behind the latest by-products of the war on terrorism, which is now turning back on itself--like the Ouroboros, the archetypal symbol of the snaking consuming itself and which ought to be the badge for this whole mission--in a helpful pamphlet. I found it most hard to understand how an individual with a background in constitutional law (Verfassungsrecht) could possibly, not under duress, let such conclusions and interpretations have free reign. There must be some horrendous goods and rank majesty out there to persuade those in power and in the public to suffer such a stance so lightly.  I like the pamphlet’s suggestion, for those equally confused, to write an essay about it which the CIA will grade after the thought criminals are dispatched with, but the whole subject, reality outstripping satire, is not so much conducive to humour.

plagerize, bowdlerize

It was not as if the activistas and the internet community was too busy running a premature victory-lap on putting off the votes on SOPA and PIPA not to notice, the matter was simply not being covered by the media and could not compete for anyone's attention it until it signatures were already penned, and without much debate, protest or bother twenty-two EU member states along with Mexico and Japan chose, in authoritarian style, to join America's Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a treaty which contains many of the same entertainment-industry engineered provisions and much of the same language as SOPA and PIPA. The spirit of the law, at least as it is being portrayed to signatories that needed little convincing, has merit for commerce but endangers freedoms, and at odds with existing and enforced national policies, raises the spectre of censorship. Those few who were aware of this unilateral decision did voice their concerns: there were rallies on the streets of Poland and some representatives in Poland’s national donned Anonymous, Guy Fawkes masks in protests.

That the people had no voice but will be the ones enforcing and working within the framework of the law is nearly as big of an affront as any of the bad policies it contains. The treaty will not come into effect until it is passed by the EU Parliament in June, and the parliamentarian formerly negotiating the treaty resigned his post in protest over the character of the treaty, the secretive lobby and that no regular citizens had any input. In related developments, another social-networking service has agreed, in order to continue operations internationally, to comply with redacting notices at government request. This is tragic news, especially for one of the facilitators and moderators of the revolutions of the Arab Spring to bow to oppression, but they had little choice. Perhaps, however, as bad as it is, all is not lost: approaching threats of censorship more systematically than has been done by others forced to comply, the blacked-out content will not just be elided but obviously censored and only within country, not to the world, and all redacted items and the take-down requests will be archived in a clearing-house that fights for freedom of expression. Faced with the unsavory task of unpublishing uprisings, no other service has gone so far to ensure the censors will be held to account.

talons or red-herring/black-flag

It is indefensible to earn fortunes by giving away the property of others, like the group of individuals behind a popular file-sharing web had accomplished. The vicious attacks and entrapment on the part of Federales, pressed into service by Hollywood who in turned leaned on international law-enforcement to make the apprehensions, is going to extremes.

Despite the example made of any one company, new havens and facilitators will bud up like the heads of a Hydra and the alternatives will never be exhausted. The cosmopolitan character of this sting operation, business incorporated in Hong Kong, owned by German nationals resident in New Zealand, whose piracy knew no bounds and face extradition to the US, hinges on the brief rental of server space in the US state of Virginia, which was just enough to breach convention and to invite the wrath of America. The United States has needed to back-peddle on some rash and heavy-handed moves in the past without sufficient cause, and while I do doubt that there is anything exculpable in the company’s flirtation with US jurisdiction, agility may have cost accuracy and certainly due-process. Lawfulness ought to be upheld that respect the rights of the individual, however, the mechanisms and balances that keep the processes of justice in check should not be trounced and abandoned for the sake of unseemly expediency. The blowback by pseudo-anonymous individuals too was to be expected but maybe also nothing to be celebrated neither--since it is only revealing capabilities and provoke a bigger crack-down and considering the pattern of strategies and outright smugness of aggravation (including involuntarily conscription of computers to launch attacks), I would not be surprised, if this faceless organization wasn’t another honey-trap, a false-flag, of the powers behind all these offensives in the first place, stirring up more concern and justification to continue their excessive campaigns.

byzantine

Yesterday marked the beginning of the internet's hour of desperate need, and I hope that the exposure and message sent reaches its intended audience. The vote, and perhaps subsequent hearings and challenges, however, is just a formal codification of the shady dealings that are happening in regimes the world over to silence the voice of dissent. The same champions of this current legislation shut-down Wikileaks as revelations were unfolding furiously and with the same attitude (but not with the same gravity, yet) as the dictators that tried to stop the uprisings of the Arab Spring. Though it is not the only insidious facet of the bills revealed, one major complaint of websites is the expected burden of policing every link, every tangent of what they post and of what they host, with criminal consequences for non-compliance. Most websites, fearful of litigation, will just give up or become expatriates, though there is probably not much of a margin for escaping.  

There is additionally the potential for oligopoly on the internet by a few media sources and, by extension, the chance to regulate the flow of misinformation.  The internet is just a series of tubes, but it is also a medium that is free and open and patched together by architects that do not suffer being bound by red-tape.  It seems to me that for whatever reason, possibly thrashing out against loss of power or prestige, the US government or its minders have taken to a new strategy when it comes to getting their way: a convoluted, byzantine legal support structure that places a Sisyphean labour on the public at large, like this obligation to make sure all ones commentary is copacetic or the reporting requirements of the US Internal Revenue Service imposed on foreign banks that would make them shun American clients (and investments) over the paperwork and administrative costs involved.  Just as if the government were serious about generating tax revenue, they would make businesses pay their fair share, SOPA and PIPA will not be effective in curbing piracy and copyright violations by "foreign rogue sites."  Maybe the Super Powers are expecting the rabble to do their patrolling, under threat of torture, or maybe these policies, which no one even bothers reading in full, are hopelessly complex by design, wearying one into submission. 

penny dreadful

Der Spiegel has an insightful, rather thrifty and sparing with words to let the satire and paradox appreciate, piece on the Prolefeed and rabble-rousing spectacle that is framing not only the Republican’s campaign for the US presidential party nominee but political deportment in general. European values have become a soft-target, a punching bag and it is not just the Republican candidates that are shrill about being less European than their competition: policy-makers and editorializers squarely blame Europe for threatening the world economy, blocking quick and unilateral action against rogue states (thereby enabling the terrorists) and debasing faith and religion with an Ersatz secularism that Europe is only too happy, apparently, to export. Any one in American politics, it seems, interested in keeping his or her job is quick to distance themselves from international partners, and a similar tenor is coming also from just across the English Channel. This revived McCarthyism is nothing new and the pith and moment of campaigning can certainly excite feelings of xenophobia and patriotism that turns in on itself. Once, however, the mudslinging and bashing is over and strained diplomacy resumes and deals are kept out of the public view, there is little hope that opinions and image can be rehabilitated (for the victims of Euro-bashing or any other scapegoat) or the ironies, deflections and the side-shows cleared away. One boon and bane (Fluch und Segen) is that constituents usually do forget this heated levying of accusations and find it novel when the whole spectacle is drug out again.