speakeasy or yes, minister

For some time there has been a continual soap-opera cycling in the hallowed halls of the US government, yet it is hardly the stuff of dramaturgy without great license and a keen imagination, being that the dialogue outside of what the public is subjected to and the secretive pow-wows whose proceedings are all to easy to envision, is the sum total of the exchange. The two parties do not engage one another off-line, as big as the growing disconnect between civilian and military leaders. That is not to say that backroom, unregulated deals are preferable—enough of those end up codified without the watch-dog of checks and balances or the consent of the public that the elected legislature is supposed to represent, but at least, without too much theatre or romanticism, there was in the past the water-cooler, the break-room or social-dues that saw senators and congressmen, regardless of political ilk, spending time together at private haunts, after hours.
This club culture is undone by hasty retreats to their constituencies whenever recess is called, which no matter how short can find repre- sentatives home and back again in no time and the conscience decision not to filter one's public and private lives. Thinking of two congressmen casually finding commonalities by forgetting differences and spending a spare moment together seems unfortunately like a laughable prospect nowadays, for fear one might question their party loyalties. I couldn't say whether any great compromised was ever reached in Congress by a dining-out but it's a fact that only keeping company that's like-minded is quite sufficient for justifying one's own views—or rather the unshakable views that one is expected to have.

stockholm syndrome

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Sweden just released a comprehensive report on global-warming that is unfortunately is being down-played as more alarmist palaver, but is nothing to scoff at or ignore.
Even though the multidisciplinary study that took several years to comply and analyze has few new startling revelations (trashing ecology is startling and shameful enough) and merely is another bleak assessment in the same traditional, it does serve to confirm our worst fears. In that there is nothing new in it, however—too, the skeptics and the procrastinators remain inured and unconvinced, though their contention with this fact-finding mission defies unity and leaves little open for objection. There is no one country or political persuasion that presents a the ultimate roadblock or challenge to policy but rather commitment to halting and healing the climate is a matter of individual priorities and choice, though national fronts and dogmatists can certainly be a source of opportunities and threats. Disparagingly, platforms—whether critical or regaled with the best of intentions, tend, I think the mutilate urgency, and rather than considering that the house is on fire, and still pits one group, bundled with all sorts of tangential priorities against another, rather than accepting a cold and disquieting fact.

hunting of the snark

From antiquity through the Renaissance, most productions and publications were content to rely on the intellect of the audiences to discern satire and irony, but with the decentralisation of governments and the displacement of the Lingua franca of the Renaissance, which saw the rise, through printing of native languages, many authors feared that their sense might be lost, especially in translation. Hence, many thinkers attempted to independently espouse a new series of punctuation marks over the years to denote something meant to be ironic or tongue-in-cheek. Sometimes variations on the exclamation mark were employed or an opening and closing quote with a glyph like the the Greek letter psy (Ψ), maybe in deference to the eirôn, a stock character of Ancient Greek comedies who through understatement and sometimes self-depreciation, usually triumphed over the braggarts in the end. Such flags were thought to be important, especially in dicey diplomatic situations, were it became important to maer distinctions between what was spoken ex cathedra and what was the modest proposals of uncredentialed journalists and opiners.
The perennial failure of this sort of mark-up language—though maybe its time have come with shouts and murmurs and snarky comments regularly framed by inventive interjections, sort of reminds me of the struggle to introduce the metric system to the hold-outs, which always seems to fail as well but for interesting reasons and in spectacular ways, is just one of several typographical adventures explored in the new work, Shady Characters: the Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols and other Typographical Marks, by Keith Houston, showing that the stories behind those oddities that never managed to catch on are as fascinating and perhaps as influential as those that did endure—or linger in ways much changed from their original purpose.

aca, ada, abracabra

It is the Anti-Deficiency Act of 1882, as amended, that puts the American government in the precarious situation of dismissing some one-third, deemed non-essential—which has the interesting ring of the imagination of Douglas Adams (not a statesman)—of its workforce without compensation. The government will still discharge its duty to protect, duty to warn with a skeleton crew, who themselves will not see their salary until such time as Congress has set a budget, being legally bound against the incursion of further debts that it cannot vouch for. The last time a full government shut-down happened, notwithstanding many intermediate close-calls and political staring-contests, was in the winter of 1995 and 1996 and I remember being quite frustrated that the National Galleries were closed to visitors and I came expressly to see a special Rembrandt exhibit.
I was content, however, at the time with making snow-angels on the Capitol. There were dread inconveniences (a weak word) to public services and those employees embargoed, and this time we can only project the impact of disrupting the paper-push of bureaucracy the hardship of individuals just now starting to recover from the last rounds of an administrative-, as opposed to an emergency-, furlough, though the predictions of doom and despair did not come to fruition at-large and the output of the federal government is largely invisible and looks expendable until one is personally affected by the loss of a cog or two. Though the causes reach back much further and the US government has expanded into something unwieldy and self-serving—surely to be redressed by follow-on show-downs like the looming matter of America's debt burden that will make this intransigence seem like theatre, the major bone of contention that is keeping the legislative branch staunchly divided is over another Act, the Affordable Care Act (a new idea only to America, though, with most of the rest of the world having put universal health-coverage in place long ago), and not in costs, immediate nor long-term, but rather in perception and principle. The devil's advocate seems to keep company with a business-lobby not renowned for its fair labour-practices to begin with, and considering that all of the really awful and onerous laws that the US has implemented and unleashed upon the rest of the world (lately, at least, if not always) have been done so at the beck-and-call of this same cartel, perhaps it would be wise to consider careful what these groups through inflexible fear-mongering might be trying to un-write.

truncation or mot-valise

In German common-parlance, there's a whole array of pet-names, abbreviations, whose practice does not seem to have an analogue in other languages—outside of jargon, where trying to make acronyms pronounceable reigns, portmanteaux or celebrity nicknames.
To name a few: there is Abo for Abonnement, a French borrowing for subscription, Azubi for Auszubildener, an apprentice, the plural Elis for the ever dual Eltern for parents, Deo for deodorant, Bio for biological or organic, and earlier Ami for Americans and Stasi for Staatssicherheitsdienst. I was exposed to a new example recently—or so I thought. Miliz, it turns out, is the full and proper term for militants or a militia. I recall once watching sail boats out on the bay with some friends when a stranger asked if he could borrow our binocs. Of course, I obliged but wondered ever since where by what leave he got dropping the rest of the word.

bad soden am taunus

In the afternoon, I visited the nearby town of Bad Soden am Taunus. Well outfitted and known for its thermal springs since Roman times, today it is a quiet bedroom community for neighbouring metropolis of Frankfurt am Main but there was quite a bit to see and to test.  Dozens of beautiful villas, pensions for guests taking the waters, surrounded the town's core and the ensemble of stately structures like this spa with outdoor theatre and other buildings divided among three adjacent parks. To cater to an impressive guest list—some of whom are depicted on this unique fountain, also a thermal well, with poseable metal statues with kung-fu grip, but possibly not Otto Frank, Anne Frank's father who worked there before taking his family to the Netherlands or the fictional Kitty who was Anna Karenina's niece who sought a cure here (as Tolstoy did)--the town was the first to have electric street lamps and other advanced infrastructure in the then Duchy of Nassau.

There was a trail that bounced from fountain to fountain and I had a drink at a few: the warm water tasted strongly of sulphur and salty and each well had a protocol, reading like the labels on medicine about its healthful benefits, although all recommended only small amounts as there is quite a heavy concentration of iron-oxides dissolved in the source. A popular, almost with cult status, lozenge is manufactured with this special water. There was also a nice surprise with a happy, colourful apartment block designed by renowned Austrian architect Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser.
The flats, which also host a parking garage where I would have tried to park had I known, are just outside of the Quellepark and are pictured in the background, behind the gazebo sheltered what is designated as Fountain Number One, the Solbrunnen with the town's neoclassic personification and mascot, Sodenia.  I am learning there are quite a few more things to discover and we will definitely be returning to this area.

appeasement, rapprochement

Though not exactly compelled to resign their posts—excepting by expectation and precedent, five senior ministers of the German cabinet, belonging to the junior, business-orientated coalition party, fell on their swords and took a hiatus from politics in a ballot that oversaw the ouster of the FDP (Freie Demokratik Partei) and overwhelming support for the incumbent—but not necessarily the status quo also.

Germany's leader is the sole-survivor of the financial crisis that overthrew all the other large-holder governments of Europe, and though the election results results suggest a clear victory for conservative policies (demonstrating those fickle hissy-fits of campaigning, like assuaged fears for privacy) and tough-love for malingerers that may not be exactly the case.  The regime of the CSU/CDU (Christlich-Soziale Union in Bayern/Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands) have not merely eliminated a gad-fly to cater to in the FDP, which was the force majeure behind the notion that Greece should be exiled from the monetary union, but likely gained another “pest” in the Green Party, the Left and the SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) to check direction and present challenges that could transform into mutual and far-reaching opportunities.