memory alpha

Though I am sure that the competition has already seen its victors, this work by John Martz, Trexels, which catalogues (coming down in eight-bit harmony--click on the poster to see the full Space Invaders effect) many of the memorable characters from all the different Star Trek series, it is still fun to peruse the collection and remember the Horta, tribbles, all the doomed red shirt ensigns, Klingon poetry, Cold War space opera, Romulans, Borg Picard, the Q-Continuum, Guinan, Wesley Crusher, the Wild West of Deep Space 9, or when Mister Data was obsessed with Sherlock Holmes and when Lieutenant Broccoli had holo-diction.

Can you name them all?  It is sort of like looking back at the bestiary of creatures and enemies from Legend of Zelda, and a very nice tribute to the classics and classic story-telling.

en prison, la partage

Not that I believe there was ever any cunning and masterful strategy infused into the socio-economic-fiscal-dogmatic standoff that is presently looming in America's capital and coursing through all of the extensive system of moneyed and political tendrils throughout the world, mostly such acts, either symbolic or feckless or both, usually are center-ring of this circus.

There are too many other events of greater pitch and movement, however, than this ill-conceived and manufactured crisis--not that forcing the issue won't have devastating effects privately and publically. For all the suffering, anxiety, delay and inconvenience, all tremolo-complaints, really, until they become the big-picture which is certain, caused, this shutdown will be no solution to the fiscal impasse. Already, even if the shutdown does not happen, it has had affect, stymieing the business of government with all attention focused on what Congress will do, and panic descending into chaos has set in: Washington, DC will be severely curtailed should this happen, but so too will those peculiars of the US military and State Department, overseas outposts and embassies where all services are federal, and there is already panic buying at the company stores, the commissariat, with check-out lines snaking around the building. If the Congress begrudges federal employees those lost wages during the possible closure, y2k-like hysteria, looting, riots and pillage cannot be far behind. Though war-fighting will continue not so fleet-footed without the bureaucracy to support and justify it, America's governmental absolution, shirking its duties to its people, is rather embarrassing.

Debt and misappropriation will still be a drag on employment and making families whole and gainful and still insurmountable by any estimation or exotic mathematics. Lashing out over the funding a few social-engineering projects while gaps in taxation and enforcement--or wholesale corporate welfare at the expense of public good--is as desperate and frantic as some of the lightly-mentioned problems over the next rise: default and slipping confidence that America proposes to bolster its coffers (war-chest, rather) with creative marketing, like selling phantom gold reserves from Fort Knox or its massive pile of student loan debt as promissory notes.

tilting at windmills

Google, who is also the underwriting force behind an elusive armada of server barges that form the vertebrae of the internet's infrastructure and redundancy that float on the waves and are powered by the motion of the oceans, in sponsoring a photovoltaic park in Brandenburg--the company's first such venture in Germany. Google cannot be faulted for the timing of this project, as advocates and detractors disagree on energy policy and whether the country can be self-sufficient without nuclear energy and without importing power at a premium.

Formerly, Germany was a power-exporting country and for a place where sunlight is sometimes also at a premium and wind is not guaranteed and derives nearly equal parts from renewable, low-impact sources as it does from all others, and I believe it can easily match and surpass that deficit by practicing a bit of conservation and intelligent channels to distribute resources. Government mandates and schemes like carbon-credits have good intentions, though efforts to meet baseline standards and swap environmentally responsible behavior for pollution elsewhere is sometimes a shell-game, companies and institutions usually do not go beyond the requirement and sometimes unfortunate tradeoffs take place, like ethanol in gasoline making foodstuffs scarcer or those LED traffic lights that do not generate enough heat not to freeze over in the winter. Though regulation and practice should not be opened up to entrepreneurial reinterpretation and redrafting, to turn laws in favour of corporate interests, a bit of work in tandem could make for more efficient systems and fewer tough choices for all.

point nemo or sky of blue, sea of green

In his latest daring undertaking, Sir Richard Branson through his Virgin Oceanic venture will set out to explore the unplumbed depths of the seas in a miniature submarine, specially designed to withstand the untested pressures of such unexplored depths.  Who can tell what sorts of strange and unexpected vistas and creature he and his team will encounter?  As pointed out, more humans have walked on the Moon than have dove below twenty-thousand feet, and though science-fact and science-fiction has populated the stars with study and imagination, the bottom of the ocean has been mostly undisturbed, save for prospectors.  It's pretty keen that these rare sorts of individuals can act on this urge for challenge and exploration.

bucket brigade and bail-in

Collusion, conspiracy seems to play a big part in commercial affairs, especially when deferment, demurring on the inevitable, is playing an event larger role. Adventures in the Middle East, under U.N. sponsorship, are proving costly but sorties were inspired by the misapplication, transference of one uprising to another.

The pressure to act or react, according to a naïve paradigm, has anchored military and statecraft to a civil war or a tribal war, an internal affair, that even the rebel forces are finding awkward and unwieldy. Meanwhile, the same precedence that's potentially prejudiced with misjudgment hangs over the Ivorians, Syrians and the Iranians. Procrastination and bickering over nuance and semantics has been another form of deferment for the US government, interested in defanging, surgically certain programs. Kettled though undeterred, there is another uprising being organized, different though inspired by protests in the UK and witnessing what can be accomplished elsewhere, that aims to garner maximum attention, and make the beneficiaries of all this strife and delay take notice. There is a huge disconnection between economic health and the health of a people, of a nation--no matter what's selling, which is only proportional to the disconnection between the classes.

Solidarity and education are certainly powerful, but when fundamental problems are not addressed and too much profit is skimmed off of that dawdling, conspiring forces are invited in: with sovereign default and shutdowns looming, the spectre of meddlesome quagmire and people financially alienated, these major banks and their familiars only need the bad press of sunshine.

a working-class hero is something to be

A Washington, D.C. journal featured an important and intensely personal account of the how being out of work changes a person and a family, affecting one's dignity, attitude and outlook. It is absolutely crushing, gathering small blessing nonetheless, how the writer realizes that America has become a plutocracy, a kleptocracy and the only relatively safe careers are those that appeal to the vanities of the wealthy.

For the writer's intended audience, such transformations should be obvious and prevented, dealt with sympathetically, but just as hard as her revelations are about the state of affairs, understanding the consequences of unemployment or underemployment can be very difficult, for those spared the brutality and the insult.

The struggle is different for any individual anywhere, but it is nearly impossible to fathom for many Europeans, where the chance to live the American dream is still possible for immigrants and natives alike, who are rarely confronted with threats of eviction or a constant plague of bounty-hunter debt collectors or shudder in the absence of any sort of meaningful social safety-net, recourse or cushion. Sincerely, I hope that no one ever need to go through this, especially with the lowered expectations that globalization brings, disgust and futility with the ability and impetus to organize and protest against injustice even taken away.  One hopes, as well, that the message of this story shared is received and that awareness and empathy increases.