xenobiosis

Nearly three decades after the tragic industrial disaster in Bhopal, India that took some fifteen thousand lives nearly instantly and whose awful legacy is still causing grave harm, a German developmental and aid organization (GIZ, Gesellschaft für Zusammenarbeit) that executes projects on behalf of the federal government has been awarded the contract to remove three hundred fifty tons of toxic solid waste, five jumbo plane loads, stored in warehouses on site to northern Germany for safe incineration. The toxic waste being removed is not directly related to the gas leak from pesticide production that poisoned people living in nearby slums but rather the cumulative impact of years of manufacturing under atrocious, predatory conditions with no party or successor accepting responsibility for the environmental disaster and toll on human lives. The race to the bottom certainly did not end with this catastrophe nor limit it to developing countries with laxer oversight and stewardship and superfund sites punctuate the map of the United States and there are many other shipwrecks of industry all over the world, but Bhopal is far from the silent memorial that the hushing reproval and blamelessness of chemical concerns portray, and has become, though still a center for factories, a model city for its ecological practices and research.

 For some, Germany’s logistical plan does raise some questions—like why they will fly dangerous materials around the world instead of carrying out the disposal and neutralization in India—and while I believe there are compelling and honest reasons for doing so, one should not be dissuaded from dissecting controversy and mismanagement, and perhaps not only uncover some more dirty little secrets but also challenge the not-in-my-backyard mentality (,,bei-mir-aber-nicht!” Reaktion) that estranges consumers from the consequences of such products.

onomatopoeia

Although I fear not enough serious preservation work is being done to stop the erosion of cultural treasures, languages supplanted, traditions encroached upon and withering, worthy songs only existing as a resampled thread, one individual is working to prevent endangered and dated sounds from electronics and gadgets from slipping likewise into obscurity.

Indeed, how many people have no memory of the squelch of a modem, the ker-chunk of a video cassette player, the recoil of a rotary phone, the clacking of a typewriter keyboard, the purr and hum of any number of solid-state appliances, or the triumphal start-up reveries and fanfares of retiring and obsolete computer platforms or classic and bitty ring-tone melodies? Such noises can be quite evocative and are prone to being quickly replaced with something more elite and polished, with no whirring of gears. The collection is a small one and by its nature, based on personal experience, but is soliciting ideas for its archive. Wunderkammern like this, though, I think ought to have a physical address too, in order to anchor them from the whoosh and over-abundance of the curator called the internet. What threatened sounds and jingles would you nominate for conservation?

bas relief or input/output

Some clever researchers in California are working on a prototype for a brilliant enhancement to the touch-sensitive screens of telephones and tablet personal computers. Without compromising on weight or thickness, materials engineers hope to be able to add an invisible layer over the standard glass screens or consoles that would be able to dimple and rise into pseudo-buttons or or guide point and then flatten out again just as if it were never there. I could brainstorm about the possibilities as this other, artificial skin grows smarter and more tactile—not only might their be new challenges for games, the texture of fabrics, topographical maps and ways to build or compensate for dexterity (I struggle with the tinier canvas on my phone sometimes and I think it would be nice if the screen offered a bit of resistance instead of slipping too freely), this advance could also make tablets and other devices for people with vision limitations just as functional, meaningful and sufficient with adaptive Braille texts that rise and fall as quickly as they are read. What a neat idea.

florian-geyer-steuer

Despite polls showing majority public support for the matter were it put to a referendum, the Berlin plan for the European Union fiscal compact has been struck down again, primarily due to internal strife and international rejection of a financial transaction tax levied on stock trades. Using current market activity, some seventy billion euro annually could be skimmed off the top and shore up emergency funds. Opponents argue that such projections are unrealistic, since without region-wide or even world-wide buy-in, adoption of the tax, places with the tax regime would become islands, cordoned off from the rest of the financial sphere, which becomes in turn more lucrative for not having to worry about this tithe-ling—something very nominal, from a tenth to a hundredth of a percent of the value of the transaction.

Like the Tobin Tax on currency exchange, it would also reduce speculation and short-selling. At the same time, France has announced that it will introduce its own domestic transaction tax, regardless of what the rest of the world does, and given this weak contrary argument, I wonder how big that sphere of participants has to expand, according to the brokers and the bankers, to the make the field level, globally or within the euro-zone only. I am against austerity measures because in general they have been a poorly managed sacrifice (Aufopferung), uneven and without edification, but to corner the market and demand this tribute on any level is not only staving off the inevitable but also perhaps reducing the need to enact those tougher elements of the compact, including member states ceding control of their budgets and social programmes. A toll charge, easily and automatically born, that pushes some responsibility onto the banking houses that enabled this crisis is a better solution, despite any insincere fears of a temporary traders’ egress (to some other haven off-shore), than the lingering deflection of propaganda and stereotype, aggrandizing the status quo, which drains the possibility for real recovery and reform.

persona

There was a medley of developments in Germany today—again touching on individual sovereignty under fiscal solidarity, although at the end of the day, I suppose anyone should want to be part of a like-minded empire rather than in thrall to business and banking interests, and the reinvigourated failure of moving forward on a financial transaction tariff, however, deftly, I think it was the decoy story that let the others pass, virtually unnoticed:

nothing new, really, but quite relevant and publically digestable was the revelation that the chief German private consumer credit reporting agency (the equivalent of the triune of terror in the States of Equifax, Experion and TransUnion) and a university sociology department are researching the effectiveness of the internet and social networking sites in gauging the creditworthiness (Bonität) of potential clients. The team was a little red-faced about being exposed and assured reporters that the exercise was purely academic and on the up-and-up. I would not think that this sort of behaviour, while unpalatable in the extreme, was so very shocking. Already in American, it seems like fishing and harassment on-line is standard procedure for bill-collectors and underwriters. Just as employers might judge a candidate by his or her avatar and easily-accessible reputation (everyone’s a detective), I would guess that a bank or its minions might do the same thing before extending a line of credit to a stranger. An individual’s life on-line is certainly never complete and probably a caricature of his or her hopes, aspirations, maturity and responsibility, and there should not be an expectation of anything otherwise. Protection against this sort of prying is important but also, I think, tempting bait for the public’s and government’s attention, detracting from bigger and enforceable issues. I also found it funny that for all its covert research, the agency was not able to form an accurate picture of the performance of the same social-networking platform on the open market, which just shows what people will latch on to.