Although I still declare that anyone truly shocked by learning that the world is the prying, groping place is a measure naรฏve or even complacent or complicit, public attention and outrage ought not be placated by life intimato Ars, the words of prophets of doom, or by practicality, commonality—offensive aspirations.
Wednesday 10 July 2013
cri de couer or you can't handle the truth
Tuesday 9 July 2013
percentile or blue-screen
catagories: America, foreign policy, labour
Tuesday 18 June 2013
oh weal, oh woe or ttip—ta ta for now
Watchdog CEO (Corporate Europe Observatory) delves into the details of the US-EU trade agreement that was ratified at the G9 summit and shows how, without much imagination of an embarrassment of gullibility, public welfare is becoming a nuisance easily steamrolled by business interests, constituted in such a way as to give industry carte-blanche to flagrantly ignore established national laws and policies and give pause to governments thinking of championing the common weal. Of course this development is vying for attention (or rather, seeking cover) with the Conference itself and the effective-date for FATCA in Germany, plus whatever distracting scandal of the day.
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, America, economic policy, environment, labour
Tuesday 23 April 2013
pyrrhic victory or the hundred years’ war
Though characterized and distilled mostly as the proprietary authority for businesses to demand applicants, supplicants and current employees surrender their social-network profile upon request, which while good for garnering glancing concern and attentions, is sadly short-lived and is not engaging public dialogue in CISPA is again positioned for passage in the US Congress, despite conflating opposition.
Just as there are champions for keeping us over-safe, we have our tireless advocates, but the issue and the real, long-term stakes remain something that is easily placated or dismissed.
eroding privacy. Victorious skirmishes, sometimes ceded over inflated (at least, in the here-and-now) fears, overshadow—by design, I think, the larger struggle, since these assaults are becoming perennial continuing-resolutions politically.
catagories: ๐ฅธ, ๐ง , America, networking and blogging
Saturday 2 March 2013
ab in beurlaubt
The US executive and legislative branches were unable to reach or fake a compromise, which triggers a count-down, sort of like a Rube Goldberg contraption, towards budgetary sequestration across most of America’s federal programmes, mandatorily paring funding and raising the spectre of furloughs (unpaid absences) for hundreds of thousands of government workers world-wide.
This fifth does is not a chuck out of the whole of the abstract US economy, mostly conjuring money out of the movement of money and pushing paper, but—and perhaps even more urgently, this reduction is a double-decimation, not just in terms of income and employment and delivery, but a realignment, like annexing twenty percent of the America’s smaller communities, absorbing them into larger neighbours with an even more massive yet over-burdened civil institutions. It is like the pettiness and gridlock of the Congress leaking out of the Beltway and set loose on all aspects of the American public. The wheels of government will continue to turn with skeleton-crews, more work pressed out of staff remaining, rotating singly through the work week with less continuity and more matters overcome in the transition because it will have to. Authorities, in spite or because of the knock-on effects, may realize that adjustments (austerity American-style) can be accommodated and can make do with a scaled back government—or, and probably heralded by flagging spending and all around timidity, essential and uniting services both will become untenable under a reorganization that excised too much stability, functional determination and assuredness, whether or not misplaced, out of communities too quickly.
catagories: America, economic policy, labour, Wikipedia
Friday 25 January 2013
autostrada
Since their inception, there have been standards enshrined in the culture of highways, Autobahnen with the intent of breaking up monotony without sparing on utility. There are mandates for gentle curves in order to keep drivers alert, in contrast to straightaway, required in some places to allow for emergency airplane landings.
Sometimes such subtler persuasions are overshadowed by constant construction works, same-otherwise by a few vistas of spectacular scenery and roads hugging the contours of the landscape. There are still, however, quite a number of long numbing stretches of road, especially for the express route through flat lands. Although not common in America or Germany, there are score of techniques tried in France, Denmark and the Netherlands to with art streaming along the margins, posts a-pace with the traffic that change like flip-book animation, rather abstract and Jungian and light installations. Some really creative things have been done, but now such Dutch civil engineers are applying their artistry to creating smart-roads, beginning with a stretch of highway by Eindhoven.
catagories: America, Europe, technology and innovation, transportation, travel
Saturday 12 January 2013
underpass or suburban legend
Though second- and third-hand tales abounded, until recently there was no undisputed evidence of cow tunnels boring under the streets of Manhattan’s West Side. Although far less incredulous than giant crocodiles, sprung from unwanted pets flushed down toilets, lurking in sewers, urban spelunkers are beginning to map out this forgotten underground network, meant to reduce the traffic of livestock brought into 1870s Gotham disrupting human transportation.
catagories: America, antiques, food and drink, transportation
Thursday 10 January 2013
cosign and spirograph
catagories: America, economic policy
Friday 28 December 2012
down on cripple creek or stockholm syndrome
By engaging in the politics of terror, I think the United States is poised to play a very risky game that risks it becoming a caricature, mockery of the democratic process. It is unfair to lay blame squarely and solely on one party faction, since there is more than ample blame to go around—including the voting-public and the abstentious, but I think it is a safe assertion to point to one cadet wing of the Republican Party, trenchantly conservative and angry, as blocking compromise and negotiation.
catagories: ๐ง , America, economic policy
Sunday 23 December 2012
cliffhanger
A polarized, frightful and fear-mongering legislature, with an array of cadet tentacles and inventive pseudopodia (ฯฮตฯ ฮดฮฟฯฯฮดฮนฮฑ, false feet), is projecting away from any language of compromise, familiarly and characteristically stalling, a move taken from a playbook that could be transposed anywhere and for any episode, showdown that has passed recently and for the foreseeable future. Such inflexibility and laming division allows government to conveniently ignore the mandate of the people who they are supposed to represent and stoke other external pressures, like business and the markets, which always trump congressional indolence and force many hands. It is a vicious cycle of dismantling and up-building inverted, where the conventions razed or raised are the opposite of what’s in anyone’s long-term interest and more and more dulling with each passing deadline and limit.
catagories: America, economic policy
Tuesday 20 November 2012
null set
I first thought it was a gag-headline but soon realized that indeed, with various levels of earnestness and symbolism behind the dissent, all fifty states of the union have filed petitions (via an official submittinator) for peaceful and orderly withdrawal from the United States of America.
catagories: America, Europe, revolution
Friday 9 November 2012
snowball
Those who criticized and ridiculed the Occupy Movement as something disorganized, unfocused and undisciplined are already getting a good dose of evidence to make them want to retract that statement through their help for the displaced by Super Storm Sandy and other charitable works. The cynics, however, might learn soon not to underestimate the power of the people through their latest venture. It goes without saying, I think, that there’s no revenge or getting back at the powers that be motive behind such projects—getting even is hardly hopeful or affirming and I think such objectives pull down the whole enterprise to the same sort of thinking, characterized by greed and insecurity, that got all of us in this mess to begin with.
catagories: America, economic policy, labour
Wednesday 7 November 2012
forward
catagories: America, economic policy, environment, foreign policy, revolution
Tuesday 6 November 2012
ojos bien cerrados or pay no attention to that man behind the curtain
There a perfect cover for the meeting of finance ministers and reserve bank chiefs of the G20 nations going on in Mexico. One wonders about the timing of such things and though the meeting seems kind of formal and anodyne, one still cannot quite shake the feeling that important decisions are being vetted—the kind that governments cannot rely on democracy and openness to choose wisely. There is no rudeness, nor strategic advantage, I think, in not waiting for the outcome of the US elections, even though neither of these events went unplanned or were scheduled in a vacuum.
catagories: ๐, America, economic policy, Europe, foreign policy
Monday 5 November 2012
syncretism or give me that old time religion
Though my vote would be for the “black Muslim,” it’s remarkable, I think, that politeness and discretion and tolerance flag in such an asymmetrical fashion. One’s personal beliefs and convictions are important indicators of official deportment and ought to be afforded with respect, regardless of pedigree. Such a big schism erupted over the Kennedy presidency, the one and only Catholic office-holder (though there is an unlikely union between the challengers, and we will see what happens with that), and there’s this strange cauldron of questions and assumptions about the incumbent that’s bewitching to a large part of the voting-public—and though maybe assumptions and prejudice are already cemented in regards to the challenger candidate’s affiliation and confession, that there’s little talk of it is still rather incredulous.
catagories: America, foreign policy, lifestyle, religion
Friday 26 October 2012
gestalt
catagories: America, economic policy, foreign policy, graphic design
Wednesday 10 October 2012
swimlanes
catagories: America, graphic design, language, philosophy, technology and innovation
Thursday 20 September 2012
polity
catagories: America, foreign policy, labour
Thursday 6 September 2012
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.
catagories: America, economic policy, labour, networking and blogging, philosophy, revolution
Saturday 11 August 2012
eurotrashing or the columbian union
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, America, foreign policy, graphic design, transportation