barnard’s star or space oddity

The BBC has an item on a newly expanded public science project, called Planet Hunters, which invites volunteers to scour time-lapse images of some 150,000 stellar groups captured during the Kepler mapping mission. It is incredible and inspiring to think in the span of less than a decade, astronomy has gone virtually from uncertainty whether any planet was outside of our own Solar System to over seven-hundred confirmed extra-solar planets. Scientists posit that all stars host a planetary system of some kind, so there's a lot to be discovered yet. Computers have identified many potential candidates but computers are very good at spotting patterns in the universes that they create, and I am sure human recruits with wonder and imagination will be able to point out many more.  The Zodiac and its underlying mythology is a very human invention, a means to cope with mysteries and the the unknown, but the calendars and charts that were shook out of that approach have not been surplanted or bested. Being a part of such a project, I think, would be a much more constructive use of my well-honed skills for match games and mah jongg and I am very excited to contribute.

blackout warden

Although the White House and the US congressional contingency sponsoring SOPA has flinched, abandoning language that provides for a government firewall that blocks out whole swathes of the internet, nodding to some expert testimony and perhaps in hope of appeasing protestors who demonstrated how DNS blacklisting could invite more security problems and damage the architecture of the internet, the remaining provisions of SOPA are still devious and misguided and give Hollywood too many choke-points (any link), to stifle creativity and reporting. On Wednesday (18. January), many diverse websites are going dark in protest to this bill’s impending passage, to illustrate how broke down the internet could become if America enacts this law. People world-wide ought to join in, because the internet knows no borders, and no one suffered the privations or propaganda that tried to quell past and more recent uprisings. America fortunately does not control the internet, though maybe pressure is mounting for the US to act as if it does, and ought to receive a strong signal that such meddling in media and in politics and in the economy is unwelcome, especially through such cowardly, backdoor channels.

streitkräfte

Following the America's Secretary of Defense's (Verteigdingungsministers) announcement—rather, confirmation, that part of US redesign of a leaner and cost-effective military would involve reduction of the army's presence in Europe, the German press made some pointed observations, probably pin-pointing areas for closure, which has been the subject of desperate and heated speculation to a select niche of German communities. Planned reductions in the size of the Bundeswehr, following the end of universal conscription, has already delivered bad news to some towns and villages that came to rely on money that soldiers and Soldaten spent locally.

I am sure that the guess-work will continue, and the US army as a familiar of the US government certainly cannot be relied on to commit to the most logical course of action. I believe Germany will see some transformation but will continue to host its American partners. Regional threats have changed as has the purpose of America's far-flung garrisons, but I think the United States would imperil itself further by wholly quitting its European presence, hollowing out its military, for the sake of savings that surely won't materialise. Despite strains and disagreements, America's NATO partners have assisted in their belligerent adventures because of this presence. Working-exchanges between guest- and host-armies are especially strong in Germany, and there are a lot of joint-training exercises. Without this partnership and immediate closeness, what waning support and cooperation, especially after decommissioning their ability to sustain battles on multiple fronts, will go away altogether.

kurzfrist

The news of a rash of downgrades in credit-worthiness, both for the short-term and the long-haul, was generally taken with a healthy wince and a shrug by the governments of Europe.  After all, people who live in glass houses ought not throw stones: despite what prognosis rating agencies in the United States threaten, which only speak to a skittish cabal, a massive underclass of underwriters enabling a more elite class of cooler heads to continue exercising grander manipulations, that does not discount the fact that a group of seventeen and twenty-seven nations, with different cultures, languages and priorities are still willing to engage one another peacefully and fairly in order to work things out.

Meanwhile, the US (which also does not enjoy a rating par excellence) has a legislative body that has not been able to agree on a budget for a more monolithic and formerly agile union for over three years now and has been operating on temporary measures while its sovereign debt has continued to swell. The EU is keenly aware of this sort of stalemate, political and economic, and the irony of the speed of its own deliberations. Reaction to opinions--especially considering the source, those same fashion-mavens that so enthusiastically commended the sub-prime mortgage market and encouraged exposure and contagion to a whole series of booms and busts, may drive markets but not real economies.

tabloid and broadsheet

The US Heimatschutz (Department of Homeland Security) disclosed that since at least June 2010 it has been operating a Social Networking and Media Capability charged with monitoring popular websites for trends and intelligence. I would be very surprised if such surveillance was not happening all along--after all, in those infernal anti-terrorism/operational security (OPSEC) that we’ve through annually for years now, we’re battered with examples of evil-doers gleaning valuable data from the same sources, seemingly innocuous until pieced together. The admission, I am sure, is not complete and does not reveal the entire scope of the operation, but it strikes me as a little pathetic that the approach of America's security and intelligence apparatus is merely a reflection of our own gossipy idleness and that the triangulation and predictive abilities are no more sophisticated than what any of us can access and do on a regular basis.

Most of these sites are sounding boards and aggregators that drive what people may read and research further but contain little original reporting nor opinion. I guess I am a little disappointed that there is nothing as clandestine and imaginative as the agency that Robert Redford worked for at the beginning of Sidney Pollock’s adaptation of "Six Days of the Condor," where bookworms scoured all sorts of publications, including pulp-fiction, for new ideas, plots and plans. Ruminating what's there for public consumption is the modus operandi of spammers and censors and trolls, and not the work of discreet professionals. It is probably the least invasive tact taken in the name of protecting the US people (ostensibly from themselves) but still very disconcerting for the US DHS to own up to reading over one's shoulder.