unwater or solvent green

Holidays by fiat are something different than awareness months. Designating a day, setting it aside, can generate understanding as well as giving one the chance to focus on a certain theme, with some needed pressure to set summits and not to allow it to be elided over. It's the same kind of tinge of regret for missing "Talk like a Pirate Day" or Pi-Approximation Day or committing some environmental heresy on Earth Day or buying festive candy when it goes on sale the day afterwards--because after all, one has been in training all year for such things. Avast ye there, aarg! The United Nations has declared a whole calendar of special days for social, cultural and environmental issues and celebrations.

This year's observance of World Water Day brings attention to urban resource management.  Nothing else is quite so plastic, varied but also forgiving and abused, profligate as a universal solvent, diluting all of our poisons and what we'd like to hide away--not to mention the floodgate, magic carpet, weather and landscape and landscaper. Eventually what we are hoping to become so rarified and impalpable does, soapy or irradiated, however, become part of the rain and the beach.

trojan sunset

Trojan sunset, which sounds like some exotic and potent cocktail, or Delta Dawn (what’s that flower you have on, could it be a faded rose from days gone-by?) or whatever it is being called is some inscrutable name for an operation—that has been renamed the military forces of the various players (the French Opération Harmattan, the English Operation Ellamy) and called a crusade by the antagonists, and I doubt there’s even appreciable irony in it, much less some symbolic or allegorical meaning behind it. Many argue that the debates at the United Nation, on whether to violate the sovereignty of one of its members by imposing a no-fly-zone, was glacial and infuriating. Inaction, times before, allowed the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and the genocide in Rwanda. It is decision that is not without sympathy and an unenvious debate, since whatever coalition, backed with whatever support, has to proceed with extreme caution.  Hopefully, the motivation is framed by a genuine desire to want to protect fledgling reform movements in the region and protect citizens potentially in harm’s way, and not bemoaning lack of engagement or invitation to participate in those emboldening rebellions. Or just another excuse to make war and raise armies, which has dangerous and scary parallels—nearly word for word, with the aggression in Iraq, which has not yet ended well, and began with enforcement, albeit more autocratically but with the eventual endorsement of the global community, to unseat a madman from power, who was also a danger to his own citizens and the broader region. It is not an easy task to surgically dissect the way dissent is playing out here, and disaffectedness is either not so well studied and established or seemingly not as universal as in the other uprisings. After leadership was tolerated or made the confidant of Western powers for so many years, distrust and aversion are not so lightly earned without suspicion. Because or despite of this intervention, however it may escalate, one hopes that peace and prosperity can return and that the conduits for dialogue and diplomacy are not shut off.

iod

Boing Boing science maven, Maggie Koerth-Baker, has a very praiseworthy article, really outstanding reporting, on the panic over radiation, which is no doubt spreading much faster than the trade-winds could carry it and is not growing more diffuse, answering questions about what precautions could be taken and what's counterproductive. In the face of all this alarm, run on salt, and nonsensical pledges to stop all emanations at the border, this quality of journalism and reflection is very refreshing and informed.

auto-archive or bait-and-switch

here is quite a bit of twitterpation about a a certain outreach initiative among the US armed-forces and the trans-national military-industrial complex called Operation Metal Gear, that is really a novel and new form of owning up to skull-duggery.
 This program is designed, ostensibly, to render formerly anonymous posts and social network activity into a form of self-incriminating libel by filling in the connections and transitions of bloggers and social-butterflies. Personnally, I became very suspicious of bookface once the US army embraced it and removed nearly all restrictions on networks for friends, though admittedly it makes it easier for many people to pretend that they are working. The operation's second, though perhaps primary, goal is to raise an army of sockpuppet (bot or spam) accounts in order to manipulate public opinion.

 Tools of propaganda and disinformation could certainly influence the shape of revolts to come and such moles, monitored and imbued with uncanny realism, could tell people what to think, and we have certainly made it a simple matter to pass the Chinese Room test. Of course the Pyramid Scheme, chain-letter, and cult indoctrination are modes that have become too labour-intensive. Whenever coming across something antiquated and therefore inaccessible--unlike most American public institution, the military is not lousy with obsolete technology, except what it was managed to horde through inaction, I wonder if ne'er-do-wells would even take the time. Perhaps such out-dated formats have become the best hiding place.