colourfast or ghost of laundry future

From the balcony, I have noticed that one of my favourite sweaters, zebra-striped that maybe makes me look like a mime or the Hamburgler, has a strange optical effect reflected in the window. The equally-sized black and white stripes become half as thick and are boarded by grey ones. The photograph is a little bleary but the effect is visible, I think.  Perhaps this is a form of polarization caused by the double panes of glass or my dousing the windows with Windex and calling them spotless. Weird quantum characteristics of light and shadow are shaken out when one starts to meddling with the whole business with refraction.

One experiment, which I always found maddening and counter-intuitive but I do not think others are so easily impressed, is that two polarized lenses never fully cancel one another out, as I’d expect: each only lets 50% of light through and rotating the other around, even when the filter is at a right angle, perpendicular to the other, still lets 25% of the light to sneak through in as a particle-wave prankster.

dromedary

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the US response to the revolt in Egypt is mild, cordial to the old despot, as if in these past three decades, he could most heinously be called the Grinch who stole Twitter. The sympathy is creeping although, and however shameful the lack of support and commitment may be for revolution, it is perhaps more telling of America’s dwindling relevance.

The US and the West have supported this and similar regimes with billions of dollars in aid and resources in the interest of preserving the status quo, idealized and reflexive banana republics to American eyes and perhaps models for their own civil aspirations. There has not been any esteemed revolutions that America could not equivocally claim it managed for quite some time—those of the greatest pitch and moment being the dissolution of the Soviet Union and various influence peddling in the Middle East and Central America. The West, overall, is left speechless when it comes to unmanaged change, because, like the Grand Inquisitor of Dostoyevsky, rapture, democratic reform, is unwanted. There is too much profit to be made in encouraging freedom with one hand and maintaining this friendly arrangement with the other. There is fear, whether genuine or not, of what will fill the power vacuum, dangerous radicals or other despots not of their choosing. No one remembers, it seems, that real reform is difficult but can turn out well in the end. These matters are serious and persecution should cease, no longer suffering the grace-and-favour tyrants. Another important lesson, though masses are mobilized all the same, is in that a very sizable country, with the population of Germany, could completely censor all forms of communication. The American government, for one, wanted to invest itself with such martial powers, over some uncomfortable disclosures. This should be a cue for all peoples to scrutinize broadening authority, especially as that government’s intimacy with the media has made the incriminating, suspicious and otherwise undesirable transparent and instantly discoverable. Enough rope—even if the outlets and the conduits are not closed off, it is becoming possible to monitor and prevent civil unrest before it has a chance to organize and express itself.

spectral analysis or pink is like red but not quite

Wired! magazine has an excellent eulogy for the US Department of Homeland Security's colour-coded scheme for threat and terror alerts, which will be phased out in the Spring. Apparently, the bad guys have finally managed to crack the code. Although rivaled and much criticized and generally useless, it is a bit endearing, like losing the Time and Temperature service or replacing McGruff the Crime Dog or Woodsy the Owl with trendier, modern mascots. Instead of panic-inducing swatches of colour, a newly refined level of bureaucracy, the National Terror Advisory System, will now be able to manage the appropriate level of fear on a local level. I wonder what magical palette and brush will be able to address that. Given that the danger level, across the US, has not been relaxed in the past four years, I suppose yellow (amber, rather) fits all.

der zauberberg oder table, donkey and stick

The gathering of the World Economic Forum annually in the alpine retreat, exclusive and guarded, is a very strange, ornamented ritual, and I wonder if Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg), set in a sanitorium in the same village, is required reading for any and all attendees.

I would almost expect that the audience indulges this all too apt quirk of literature leeched into reality as a wonderful honorific, bestowing some of the big personalities present with epithets from the book. Economic civilities brokered is likewise nursing, cloddeling a sickness. I wonder if the Swiss appreciate the irony. In recent years, I think it was gotten to be a dull challenge to match characters with their assembled ministers and handlers. Peripatically, France in Davos has pontificated about the importance of maintaining a monetary union, which may be true and sound but the asides used to merit the argument were inscrutible and big reaches: embroiled in barbaric wars that are still within living memory, forever seeming the lastterrible gasp in violence and not counting the Cold War that evaporated a scant two decades ago or all the war-making that went before and since, but Europeans are not at each others throats for the time being and economic cooperation is a surrogate peace. Some are saying that the rise and prosperty of the Western world is an anomoly, and for most of history Asia has enjoyed the dominant reign. I am not quite sure what that means. It seems arrogant to weigh the two and to force one's ideas of god and kingdom upon another, and calling it commiserate. The long peace in Europe and stability, hopefully not premature or anomolous, are outstanding things, but to proffer money has the binding factor, no matter what the venue, only cheapens how far we all have come.

no sugar tonight/new mother nature

The company store here at work, which business nee social-hour revolves around, apparently was a little slap-happy with orders and inventory and as a consequence, is unloading palettes of a sugary-sweet caffeinated beverage in a can, something of the voulez-vous coucher avec moi (ce soir) moco choco latte variety, for free, since they surpass their sell-by-date, for which co-workers are of two camps, either ignoring that recommendation entirely since the little organic content is bolstered by preservatives and artificial flavours, or are generally adverse to the transgression but take it as a mild recommendation. Anything free, people will lug away with abandon. Coffee confection.  As a result, all the offices are wired and jittery like Mario when he gets the Invincibility Star and the music goes double-quick time, and it makes doing the budget revisions even more urgent and manic, along with everything else.