bauwerk

Slowly the flea markets are beginning to rose from Winter's hibernation and H and I hope to start up the circuit again soon in full force. There was a small antique market in a remote part of the Bundesstadt of Thüringen in a town called Suhl (abbreviated SHL on its license parts, which really does not pan out as an economy of letters). It was a nice drive through the mountains and we did find a few items, but I was just as excited to see examples of the architectural style called East German Socialist Modern (DDR Sozialistischen Moderne).

I did not realize that this was a particular and distinct school of design that is typified by some of the structures in Suhl, like this Kulturhaus across the way and the exposition center (Congress Centrum and formerly the Hall of Friendship) that held the antique show.  There is a better perspective (nur auf Deutsch) of the hall and architecture of East Germany here, as it was difficult to manage a good vantage point for taking pictures.  It is pretty remarkable how ancient and post-modern, the future of the past, can co-exist and ideology's buidlings survive on the quality of one's convictions.

plagerize, bowdlerize

It was not as if the activistas and the internet community was too busy running a premature victory-lap on putting off the votes on SOPA and PIPA not to notice, the matter was simply not being covered by the media and could not compete for anyone's attention it until it signatures were already penned, and without much debate, protest or bother twenty-two EU member states along with Mexico and Japan chose, in authoritarian style, to join America's Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a treaty which contains many of the same entertainment-industry engineered provisions and much of the same language as SOPA and PIPA. The spirit of the law, at least as it is being portrayed to signatories that needed little convincing, has merit for commerce but endangers freedoms, and at odds with existing and enforced national policies, raises the spectre of censorship. Those few who were aware of this unilateral decision did voice their concerns: there were rallies on the streets of Poland and some representatives in Poland’s national donned Anonymous, Guy Fawkes masks in protests.

That the people had no voice but will be the ones enforcing and working within the framework of the law is nearly as big of an affront as any of the bad policies it contains. The treaty will not come into effect until it is passed by the EU Parliament in June, and the parliamentarian formerly negotiating the treaty resigned his post in protest over the character of the treaty, the secretive lobby and that no regular citizens had any input. In related developments, another social-networking service has agreed, in order to continue operations internationally, to comply with redacting notices at government request. This is tragic news, especially for one of the facilitators and moderators of the revolutions of the Arab Spring to bow to oppression, but they had little choice. Perhaps, however, as bad as it is, all is not lost: approaching threats of censorship more systematically than has been done by others forced to comply, the blacked-out content will not just be elided but obviously censored and only within country, not to the world, and all redacted items and the take-down requests will be archived in a clearing-house that fights for freedom of expression. Faced with the unsavory task of unpublishing uprisings, no other service has gone so far to ensure the censors will be held to account.

lethe

Just recently, European Union courts have ruled that individuals have the right to be forgotten (DE), to truly have their auto-biographies expunged from the internet--at least, what people have contributed themselves to social-networking sites. It would not be feasible to have one's record totally cleared, but hosts of the bigger gatherings are obliged to remove, retaining no copy, remove material at the user's request, for instance, old images from parties that might prove embarrassing or incriminating, regrettable and untoward announcements or opining or one's entire profile, although there is a definite persistence of memory given all the connections that one forms with automatic gestures, fast and deep. Lethe was one of the legendary rivers of the Underworld of Greek myth, and to drink of its waters helped the recently arrived to forget and lose some of the sting associated with no longer being among the living, and according to some traditions, the forgetting waters that ensured reincarnated souls could not recall their past lives. Ownership of one's personal and private memories is an essential part of one's selfhood, but there are times when one does need to dull and filter recollections (verbatim memory of the wonderful, banal and the debilitatingly mortifying) with some selectivity in order to function, and it would be equally torturous to know that our imperfect memories would always be bailed out by such a permanent and unwavering record.

origami or copy pasta

I have written a little bit previously about three-dimensional printing and what that might mean for manufacturing and industry in the very near future. Recent legal defensive and international offensive wrangling over copyrights and property law could make the technology, as the process advances, an even bigger game-changer, as this thoughtful tract from the Big Think posits, and does a great job of illustrating, in a few words and leaving much up to the imagination, what a wonderful Santa's Workshop the whole concept is.

How will design, form and function change once everyone has such a workshop and the only constraints are individual imagination and motivation? What will it mean for the transportation sector once items can be produced on site and in situ? One is not beaming or faxing physical objects but as materials, the substrate--the paper now folded into form--and instructions, formulas, recipes, DNA to reproduce become more precise, I suspect that civilization will undergo another industrial revolution.

yarn-bomb or garment district

The broadcaster Nord-Deutsche Rundfunk presented an interesting and tragic documentary illustrating the consequences of Western consumption and cavalier disposable attitudes and some of the unintended consequences of best-intentions.

Donations (especially from European countries) of clothing has glutted the market, and in places like Tanzania has destroyed the emerging, native textile industry, resulting in more unemployment and poverty. African manufacturers could not compete with essentially free--though a whole trade has grown around the logistics, distribution and sale of donated clothing. Surely everyone who gives away clothes to charities is doing so in hopes of helping but the system in place (geltenden) and the shear bulk of materials has had some destructive effects. I never knew there was such an overwhelming crush of charity items bound for places outside of Germany, but my neighbor once made me think about when remarking on the shoe-donation bucket on the kerb and wondered if they really wanted all her old shoes, which incidentally were almost exclusively sandals bought at the local Africafest. The spirit of giving is a very noble thing but people ought to evaluate as well buying what is to become surplus in the near-future in the first place.

dash, pinch, grain

There is apparently a modest proposal circulating on the internet, which touches everything from credible sources to social-engineering to censorship to Orwellian thoughtcrime, and it is difficult to dissect the tone and earnestness but I think the suggestion that major search engines should either filter out or at least warn gentle-readers when they come across a website espousing fringe- or conspiracy-theories or pseudo-science has to be a provoking gadfly to raise all sorts of debate and get those debaters engaged. After all, who would be determining the criteria that would earn content an almost universal and discrediting label? The internet, beyond ensuring free-exchange of archival knowledge and new experimentation and even assertion, with or without suffering the rigours of the scientific method or peer-review, also is good at creating an environment that incubates such alternatives, perpetuating them and allowing others with similar convictions and suspicions to find one other. Whether confirming and reinforcing the "false" beliefs of another is a dangerous or irresponsible thing for adult and literate advocates and detractors alike should not be taken away from the individual, of course, and ought not be a matter for the facilitators (the search engines) to condone or condemn either. The printing industry was not expected to police the more outrageous tabloids and most were still able to raise the appropriate level of skepticism or curiosity while waiting on queue for the super-market checkout. Beliefs, mainstream or not, about the environment, diet and nutrition, vitamins, water-purification would not be the only matters subject to labels, but someone with sufficient passion to be assured that any other point-of-view is wrong and a risk to public-safety could extend uniformity to matters of politics and even religion too.

lite cavalry or jawohl

Having gone through a few rounds of base-closures, de-basing as it is called overseas and RIF (Reduction in Force) in the States, and emerged unscathed, I am uncertain what to feel about this next cycle of transformation, a reset for appraisal of America's military after quitting Iraq and poised to leave Afghanistan. Locally (vor Ort), people are nervous over the potential negative economic impact of loosing soldiers--or making European rotations unaccompanied, tours lasting only a year and without bringing one's family.

This threatens a broad cross-section of livelihoods and probably in unexpected ways. Landlords, sometimes accused of price-gouging since the Army pays the rent, will suffer as will restaurants and clubs with the loss of patrons--not to mention both German and American civilians that support the Army that could face redundancy. All of these factors, compounded with rumour (munkelt), are of course crazy-making and potentially painful but are irrelevant in the æther where things make economic and practical strategic sense. I always had a sneaking suspicion about some of the military establishments in Europe and wondered if the whole racket wasn’t set up as part of a grace-and-favour plan or some extension of the witness protection programme. I just noticed that possibly some definitive answers, a time-table, might come on my tenth anniversary to the day of arriving in Germany. We will have to see what the Grand Poobah has to say about the changes, which might be able to staunch speculation and allow host, civilians and soldiers to execute their contingencies but probably not. Moreover, I suspect that the only reassurance that can be hoped for, expected and perhaps deserved, is that leadership has not surrounded itself with more yes-men, willing to expedite a rash and sloppy job. That sort of behaviour keeps people of a general's rank suspended in a fantasy-world, disconnected, and leaves others to deal with the consequences. Being crest-fallen economically means that America cannot maintain its standing armies in the fashion it was formerly accustomed to and there are sacrifices to be made, however, money and illusory ideas of flexibility are not the only considerations. More intangible factors exist that cannot be bought back at any price and should be reckoned in the budgeting: soldiers separated from their families, should the rotational plans come into effect, insular and sheltered Americans not being able to experience another culture, as this exchange has importantly done for decades in peace and war, and fostering partnerships and cooperation with Bundeswehr and NATO counterparts by being in the here and now. It is strange that this news is falling on my decade anniversary, but I don't look to the future with apprehension and know Germany will be my home always.