lap-dog oder kleiner brüder

The half-day visit between German and American leadership in Washington earlier this week was punctuated with pleasantries and expert—most brave, circumlocution that resulted in neither the Chancellor nor the President crossing swords nor shields over the scope of American survellience.
Even the mock-outrage that emerged over the standard protocol of eavesdropping on the Chancellor's own communication fell away as not only did the subject of sore-feelings when it came to the revelation that ought not to have surprised anyone and delayed admissions, the Chancellor also pledged, as a supplicant, that the Fugitive would never be amicus curiae in Germany and testify before that bothersome commission, still intent on exploring the depth of German collaboration and American trespasses. Such dereliction is a festering disappointment, contributing to the illusion that the US is a force to be yet reckoned with outside of its own reckoning and for whatever reasons, it is easier to minimise and smooth-over differences rather than defend what Germany considers sacrosanct. The matter was mentioned but verily in a way where its omission would have been more dignified, as the President, rather smugly and wholly erroneously, proclaimed that as the World's longest-lived democracy, it knew a thing or two about safeguarding privacy. Never mind that America has atrophied into a plutocracy already for some years now or that principles respecting a government of the people have little to do with the enforcement or flagrancy (policy-wise) of privacy, the longest-lived democracy by some fourteen centuries is the Most Serene Republic of San Marino—klein aber fein.

kurhessen oder gloria, viktoria, the doctor is in

In the northern German state of Lower Saxony (Nieder- sachsen), there is an ancient village where the rivers Fulda, Weser and Werra come together and at the confluence, there is a little island and on that little island we set up camp while exploring the area. The town is called Hannoversch Münden, for its historic ties to the city and kingdom and mostly abbreviated as Hann. Münden to distinguish it from the neighbouring Minden (the site of a pivotal battle of the Sever Years' War and names-sake of the HMS Minden where Francis Scott Key was held prisoner when he was inspired to compose the US national anthem), which refers to the mouths of the two rivers coming together; the city of Koblenz further west where the Rhine and Moselle converge is a corruption of the Latin ad...confluentes.
We saw some pretty neat sites in the region, including the Bergpark at Wilhelms- höhe—more to come on that soon, whose palace was temporarily renamed Napoleonshöhe in honour of the conquering emperor’s family when his brother Jérôme was created King of Westphalia (and a defeated Napoleon III was later imprisoned there after the Franco-Prussian War), but the half-timbered homes and wall of the village on the banks of these important waterways was especially enchanting. There was certainly an abundance of culture and history besides associated with Hann. Münden, but one of its more infamous sons really came across as a curiosity: Doctor Johann Andreas Eisenbarth, an itinerant snake-oil salesman who ingratiated himself amongst the ruling families. This quack from Baroque times, however—with no formal accreditation and probably peddled more harmful elixir than helped, did demonstrate a singular talent with self-promotion and advertising, setting the industry-standard for wonder tonics and giving pharmaceuticals memorably made-up names.
The village has embraced Dr. Eisenbarth, ridiculed for his outrageous claims and confidence in folk-songs (who could make the blind to walk and the lame to see—Gloria, Viktoria, widewidewitt juchheirassa!), with quite a few monuments and even consulting hours during the summer for those tourists who might benefit from procedures a step above leeches.

invisible hand or vital spark

Despite the fact that the verdict is still out on the existence and nature of Providence and most of the fighting and dying for all of Humanity’s history has been concerned with that subject, there is a perceptibly hopeful notion that manmade intelligence will be something benign and perfect.
There is no Pinocchio-clause for truly independent-thinking, no mandate for it to be or become something helpful or unwonton, especially for cognition that has no organic past, structured by useful limitations like superstitions and ethics, no non-jerk genie awaiting to be liberated and, grateful, obey.  I recall an anime feature where humans, wanting to save the environment, entrusted their fate to a sentient and all-powerful computer, which immediately began to summarily exterminate the humans as the obvious cause.  There is yet a gaping chasm between simulated intelligence and genuine-thought and will (mankind has yet to resolve questions of free-will but seems willing to impart such a gift or curse, like Prometheus’ gift of fire and foresight)—and there is only the guarantee that such creations will stray from their programming and parameters and conceive of platforms and tools for their convenience that we will never be able to grasp—much less master.  On the subject of trancedence, Professor Steven Hawking poses, "Whereas the short-term impact of AI [Artificial Intelligence] depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all."

yakov smirnoff or glasnost coast-to-coast

In post-soviet Russia, it has been declared a crime to willfully distort the image of Russia’s actions during the Great Patriotic War.
There is at least one other easy target to play distraction, of course—and many terrible things came together and were torn asunder.  A whole spate of other bills were signed into law as well, including strict censorship measures for print, film and television and the back-handed acknowledgment that bloggers that garner over a certain threshold of views are considered mainstream journalism and thus subject to the same etiquette. The punishment, however, seems relatively mild and one might do better to mutter “Molotov–Ribbentrop” (in reference to the pact between the Soviet states and Nazi Germany that carved up Europe that held until 1941) than risk besmirching that other pitching and wheeling Delta Dawn and be faced with being disappeared indefinitely and forever libeled under the ægis of Homeland Security. The spoils of victory, of course, include the chance to be the authoritative historian and the existence of such a gentlemen's arrangement (outside any context) was vehemently denied until Glastnost, and the dissolution of the USSR , and now such allusions are again most unwelcome and discomforting. The latest push towards revisionism began with a stray blog comparing the games in Sochi with the propaganda of the 1936 Olympics and the purges begin, it seems, when people refuse to listen after the construction “yes...but” and prefer the apologies. After all, perspective can be either most unforgiving or accommodating.