fig leaf or bootsy collins

This day marks the anniversary of the assassination of the Roman emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus by a cohort commander and a group of dissatisfied members of the royal guard. The emperor was is more commonly known as Caligula, a nickname earned in his childhood while accompanying his father on field marches, scurrying to keep pace with the adults in his little boots. I am sure that was only earned posthumously. His removal from power makes the first known occasion in the history of the Empire that an emperor was removed from office by a grand collusion of the military and the Senate, and not the usual intrigue over succession by their own relatives.

Whether accounts of his exploits, deviancy and cruelty were wholly accurate or otherwise—victorious politicians get to write histories and not the deposed and surely there is some embellishment to make one’s predecessor more unpalatable and make the transition of power more acceptable in the eyes of the public: making a priest of his horse and threatening to promote him to Consul, pimping his sisters, torturing innocent bystanders out of boredom, &c. The list of crimes goes on, and no particular engineering project, campaign or public works attributed to his reign has much power to unsully that reputation. It would be hard to ever separate rumour and backbiting from the truth, but it does seem that Rome anointed no shortage of colourful statesmen and ambitious dynasties. Some one hundred fifty years prior to Caligua’s rule, there was a boy Caesar called Heliogabalus, who was accused of a host of eccentricities, decadent but not inhumane and a foot-note to the Major General’s song from the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. If true and not fabricated as an on-going smear campaign against his memory, it is possible that later writers and opinion-formers only were holding neutral (and not the cause for regicide) chronicles up to their own standards of morality and deportment. Of course, the near or distant past is not a distorting plain of ill-repute in itself and many figures don’t need a relativistic or revisionist lens to be qualifiedly bad. I just hope that we are able to look beyond historical prejudice and perhaps unreliable narration, sift through the muck and tell the difference.

ship of state or islands and bridges

The announcement by British prime-minister to subject the country’s continued membership in the European Union to a plebiscite, something once and future, is inviting a broad spectrum of comments and opinions. From opinion polls in France and Germany, anchors of the enterprise, there is a leaning towards some kind of glee when they can ceremoniously roll out the red carpet for Britain’s exeunt, warnings from EU leadership underscored with cries against the UK for wanting to dictate terms, and perhaps most salient, there are demands on the contingencies of it all.
Putting the matter of Britain, which many conclude as foregone, to a vote by the public is bound, perhaps hopelessly, with retaining the current government, and is deferred to a future date to ensure the reelection of the prime minister’s political party. Such an opportunity is unmistakably a mandate for many of the voters. Special arrangements can certainly be made (the EU should not be mistaken for the euro), and hopefully this proposal is not a political ploy and the choice should absolutely be in the hands of the citizens, but such promises and pandering seem only confounding and leverage for more concessions that will weaken the union, inviting others to grow finicky over their own dues.

herbie or christine

There was a rather disturbing report on the radio, heard naturally driving home when one can reasonably expect to be able to divide one's attention to an extent, confident that one's car is reliabily able to behave within certain parameters, regarding the very real eventuality that highly computerized modern cars, swarming in some cases to the beginnings of a network or at least integrated with accessories normally associated with networks, are quite vulnerable to digital sabotage.

This awareness and pushing the possibilities has not shown itself as something malicious, but has rather grown from the frustration of hobbyists and independent mechanics, restricted any administrative rights to their own cars, without the expensive intervention of a factory-authorized workshop. Hacks and back-door methods (all variety of strange tricks built into sub-systems for the programmer and technicians to pry into a car, figuratively, like clicking the door-opener in a certain sequence—sort of like the control tone of an automatic telephone dialer or the squeltch of a modem) are widely circulated among enthusiasts, and could be easily turned towards more sinister purposes. Doors could be made to only appear to lock, breaks could be made to fail on command. The possibilities are really frightening and limitless, considering how most people feel fairly secure and self-sufficient behind the wheel, and a computer virus disabling productivity and entertainment is one thing, but it is certainly another matter considering how a similiar infestation, not viruses but gremlins in this case, I guess, could manifest as something physical, hulking and deadly. The reporters even made a practical exercise of what they learned with the help of some experts and learned how easy it was to inobtrusively break into a car and rewire the settings. They were not yet quite able to remotely control the vehicle via cellular phone, but that scenario of marshalling zombie fleets may not be so far off.

spendthrift or plakateller

A delegation of officials from the city government of Berlin will be making a rather spartan holiday to the city of Athens, hoping to glean a few tips from the Athenians for economy and efficiency in operating a municipality under budget-constraints. The trip, planned for sometime in April, seems ironic and maybe a little bit disingenuous, since the German capital is not being threatened with real austerity, despite being unable to run its affairs without a significant in-pouring of funding from other German states, though I guess someone always gets the blame for bad management in the end. I hope there is no condescension behind the idea and that people take to heart what is working and what is not.  Maybe a little bit of fiscal-restraint, executed with empathy, will make for better governance and less hubris all around.

stalagtite

sour grapes

There have been quite a few studies that tend to indicate that a few, well-spaced random distractions, breaks to look at pictures of dogs and cats, increase over all productivity at the workplace. Part of that logic seems like a concession to me, because after all, what is routinely pressing and requires laser-like focus (or occupies a full eight hours of the day) to begin with? A hypnotic gaze at this cat might restore meaning in your job, since having such luxury to squander might propel one´s work-ethic into over-drive. Or not.

ersatzteil or fantastic plastic

The industrial and design revolution that will make makers and engineers of us all with the rapid introduction of three-dimensional printing is patently exciting, and it will bring in its wake consequences that we cannot foresee in form and function that is instant, intuited and mediated by a collective inspired for its own sake.

The majority of these knock-on effects will be positive, creative—and I think there will be a revitalization of the neighbourhood copy shop, repurposed to print custom extruded plastic dinguses and in the commons of internet cafes and lounges, besides all the workshops and laboratories unhinged with no need to conform to the dimensions of traditional industry. There is a great sense of expediency, of course, which does mark a difference, but plastic smithies are not far removed from the village forge, whose smiths required skill to work the material and envision their product, and I can remember a wonderful, though limited, replicating machine from my childhood: at a metropolitan zoo, there was a contraption that would allow one to choose a souvenir animal, from a selection of molds, and before one’s eyes, inject molten plastic into the form and dispense it—still warm and a bit malleable.
I got a blue elephant, but with this modern invention, I suppose one could wish for anything, from a replacement bumper, a personalized action-figure, a key to leave with the house-sitter, a bicycle-helmet, a scale model of my block, a watering can with a long, thin spout at the right angle to reach the plants without spilling, a pedestal that’s just the right height, to a prosthetic foot, tailor-made. I think the un-apprenticed will quickly acquire the spatial- and stress-knowledge for their Goldie-Locks cobbling, working up to ever bolder and artistic departures from the template through trial and error. The movement would I think bring back a sense of community, things, piece and part being no longer exclusively in the estranging and ransoming hands of business, which is excellent, but I hope the fabric of the revolution is managed in such a way that we are not splintering the problems of manufacturing from a few areas to something omnipresent and contributing more towards pollution and consumption.
Safety and durability should always be a factor along with resource-fulness and caring for the environment, but I suspect that the clever architects of a technology that is continuously progressing will see to that the 3-D printers will become more and more energy efficient (not reduplicated factories in miniature) won’t remain finicky machines (like cheap paper printers with their exacting and costly refill cartridges) but will be able to process plastics presently destined for the recycling bin and sort-yard. It will be nice to see the return of collection drives, as well, as recycling too becomes an immediate process.