mcdoof

The latest cover and theme of Der Spiegel magazine (which I think though available on-line a perhaps regaled with more premium advertizing space will never be something out-of-print or solely archived in waiting-rooms) really poses a message to consider, especially taking into account how convenience foods are engineered for endurance.

 Maybe such an EU-style Surgeon General’s warning writ-large is needed. Taste and texture conspire for something that is not particularly memorable for the palette, lest one gets too inured to it, something unlike a very good meal that would be unseemly nonetheless to repeat too soon. This sort of subliminal, proletariat appeal is by design and a wonder of marketing and promotion, supported by an army food-hacks and production short-cuts. The fast-food industry and of course other addictive substances are able to buck the justification that “but I had Chinese for lunch” or “Greek just on Tuesday.” It is becoming harder and harder, however, to position oneself in a landscape to honestly choose and avoid the underlying staples.

global hawk or pretty bird

There’s a very blurry line between hobby helicopters and aerial surveillance drones, and I fear that government agencies, wanting to protect their assets and bailiwick will probably begin severely restricting what hobbyists can and can’t do. Just as much as there is an already growing public resistance to and fear of sky-spying, home-made drones could be easily deployed as Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots to jam the airspace. Technology can be a kill-joy and make things quickly accelerate.

Watching a demonstration video about a local club that builds and flies these kit vehicles, and how they navigate and stay oriented with the help of GPS, it all of a sudden became clear to me that the EU project to build a separate, parallel global positioning satellite array, Galileo, was not just a prestige project or a waste of money (the world’s current GPS telemetry provider is owned by the militaries of the US, Russia and China and although made available to the public for civilian use, could be switched off at any time). The European GPS is not being built for the benefit of toy helicopter enthusiasts or vacationers that might get lost along the way to their destinations but I guess for a strategic reality that might see the satellite signals cut off in order to stop rogue and rebel and recreation from interfering with the business of scouting. I wonder, however, if the dreary imaginations of the people who plan for these contingencies also consider that guidance is adaptive and there are plenty of other less lofty landmarks to go by.

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.

It is wholly excusable, I think, for most of the international public to be aghast at the dysfunction while thinking that a temporary curtailment of the sticky wickets of bureaucracy won’t cause any significant damage. It’s an embarrassing situation and a disservice to populace, to be sure, but I think blame and hyperbolic overtures to the boogeymen of security and the already prevalent attitude (in perception and in fact) regarding faded glory do really overlook the cascading effects of the situation. Though the expected cost-cutting measures, immediately and projected out over the next decade, represent only a tiny, tiny fraction of the larger deficiency, some 85 billion dollars out of an either four, eleven, 15 (or exponentially higher) trillion dollar debt, cutting back work on the proposed scales could mean a twenty percent drop in the purchasing power of the federal work force and those associated with it, not to mention those indirectly affected by delay and errors, all of whom will probably never be fully redressed.
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.

east-enders or construction-spree

Although this sounds like a perennial face-off, since the city council has supported the building project since 1992, and more contemporary architectural initiative—like the unfinished money-pit of the Berlin-Brandenburg Airport or the reconstruction of the City Castle (Stadtschloss) lost during DDR times. make the government’s excuses and poor-mouthing seem less than genuine—one does not need any additional details or background to be shocked and livid at the on-going efforts of planners to raze one of the last remaining stretches of the Berlin Wall (disassemble and relocate, rather) to make room for a block of luxury flats.

Throughout the division of Germany the Wall was a pallette for graffiti and protest, and after Reunification international artists were invited to turn the remaining Wall into a canvas for free expression and personal liberties, here in particular on a section called the East Side Gallery running parallel to the Spree river, and it would be a tragic loss of culture and memory should it be made to tumble, especially for sake of real estate speculation. Protests continue as well but are now mobilized in the street and on-line, fixing solidarity, and hopefully will prevail.