zan & jayna

Chair--form of sofa. Students at École polytechnique fédérale in Lausanne, France are experimenting with intelligent, modular furnishings, Roombots, that autonomously reconfigures itself to suit the situation, like a dining table lowering to a bed, extra rows of chairs shape shifting in a conference table, or even an unneeded office suite transforming, desk, chairs and all, into a cubicle wall or shelving unit.  Aware of independent components, smaller units divide and unite according to design and need.  Developments from such prototypes could really innovate space utilization, in conference centers and exposition halls, museums, warehouses (where the shelves are the forklifts), day care centers and hotels, not to mention greater flexibility to the tiny home movement by making better use of a modest footprint.

public service announcement

Diploma mill university did not saddle me with an excessive student loan burden, but the more I peek and poke around it, eying to undercut any exorbitant interest payments for myself and not bankroll the loan sharks, the more I realize what a tar pit of inescapable debt, and perhaps the next financial bubble student loans are.

College Scholarships makes the issue, the game, wholly accessible, if still indigestible, with their infographic (what does that even mean? Rebus sentence, collage, vanity license plate?) in the marginalia.  While at the height of the mortgage, sub-prime lending crisis--which the US has not exactly recovered or apparently gleaned much of a lesson from either, defaults on something so serious as home and hearth hovered at around a quarter of households.  Student loan default rates for recent graduates, however, range from 30% to 60% and that's without any government intervention and forgiveness, which attempts to make amends to keep people from loosing everything, but defaulting on student loans has no recourse.  Ever.  Recent government reform, coinciding with student loan debt surpassing credit card debt in America, only served to cut out the intermediaries and keep more of the profit that high tuition and outrageous, long-lived repayment terms have milked from young people.  Someone in America has the chance to start over through declaring bankruptcy and absolve bad credit, but the government will always recuperate student loans, with interest, for the academics that it vetted.  This sort of servitude is despicable and self-perpetuating, either pushing young professionals to the highest-salaried, most soulless positions that they can find to repay debts or to the citizen service corps to erase accumulated loans.  It is really rather terrifying to think that this sort of abject treatment and cornering could bloom into a great reckoning, especially compared to the nominal cost associated with university any where else in the world, and levels of private impoverishment that would challenge any soverereign debt default.

drizzle, drazzle, druzzle, drome--time for zis one to come home

The privacy debate, and not without good cause, is still part of the German Zeitgeist over Google Maps and Street View.  People, no matter where, should not become complacent to the extent with their private lives or reasonable expectations thereof where they accept any possible encroachment at face value, though what not readily available online, whether unwillingly or freely given, is becoming more and more rare and precious.  To get more acquainted with the vistas that Google affords, however, Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student Joe McMichael developed this Global Genie that can beam one around the earth at random.

inland empire or BLUF

As the stimulus printing-presses in the United States are working in overdrive to try to restore enough confidence to unfreeze the hording of surplus money, which is rather counterintuitive since the easing of financial instruments (i.e., printing more money or selling more dubious debt to cover these outlays) threatens deflation, making money worth more by making things cost less, there is some dangerous momentum being set off. Regardless of what gossip is going on in broader stock markets, however, it is the wages of the wage-earners that is the bottom-line--BLUF is a misleading acronym for "bottom-line up front" that I always thought was an ironic way to start out a communiqué, no, seriously.

On that front, whether distinct or not from instilling confidence in market fundamentals, stimulus dollars have also been allocated in what some would call "make-work" programs to improve infrastructure. Making the delivery systems, roads and utilities, of America better and more efficient is a worthwhile cause, since better and more reliable transportation and support systems are the only things giving the US a slight advantage over India and China, but I am sure that such initiatives are the brunt of a lot of criticism: utility companies in whatever form, from the internets, to the telecoms, to the gas and electric companies, are despicable things that always breed a begrudging relationship, and when compared to the stuff of Roosevelt's New Deal, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Hoover Dam, national monuments and stupendous gothic revival city halls and courthouses, a few filled potholes and hydrogen powered busses seem rather boring. Repairing and improving infrastructure is very important, but I do hope that same sentiment is not further transmuted to bolstering America's bucket-brigade of garrisoned and standing armies worldwide. It is a disservice to peace and security by posturing as the world's police force and imperial guard. There are dwindling occasions where such expansionist policy serves the US well, aside from political bullying in the interest of US corporations--a very bad thing though perhaps diabolically astute, and in case of an alien invasion, whose justification I might believe if they were trying to sell it that way.