time takes a cigarette

German AP reports that the European Union is extending the push for 100% compliance for a smoke-free workplace and has issued an edict that calls for the dismantling and removal of all ashtrays mounted on building exteriors and in public parks.  One already cannot purchase a new car with an ashtray or an electric cigarette lighter, and the smokers have been banished from restaurants and have been reduced to shivering, loitering in entryways.  Now cigarette butts will just be strewn all over parking lots and stuffing rain gutters.   I like how that's done, rather than just tossing a cigarette on the street--pushing it down the sewer grates, I am sure, keeps the CHUDS appeased and lets them get their fix without attacking humans.  I hate to think of the EU dispatching bulldozers to eliminate the smokers' outposts.  Ashtrays can sometimes be works of art and I think would be nice to keep around, if for nothing but the nostaglia and anachronism, like those antique metal posts sometimes by exterior doors to scrape horse poo from your boots.

reportage

Bad Karma, our fair city, made a unenviable appearance on the national news as part of Siemens' announcement to cut some 2000 production jobs in Germany.  About 850 of those will come from our local plant and sent to a facility in the Czech Republic.  Siemens is not the only comparable, industrial, technical employer here but it will have a huge impact.  American Woman, stay away from me--just let me be.  I have fortuneately not heard of this happening much yet--only when redundant government positions are eliminated (through atrition) when the country unites or when US military bases are mothballed.  A colleague, however, predicted we would be seeing this kind of job flight in response to the bad economy about a year after it began in the States.  My former village, Wicked-Awesome-Heim, was also in the following traffic report--a truck had jack-knifed in the driven snow on the stretch of road running parallel to the village walls.  Fortuneately, no one was hurt. 

anticipation

Of the iPad, Karl Marx summed it up really well--"New thing, desirable, old thing, undesirable."

copyfight or Rhaetorian Guard

On the eve of the Davos summit, the APF reports this mystery:

The Swiss police commander overseeing security for the World Economic Forum in Davos was found dead Tuesday, police said, adding that it appeared to be a suicide. The announcement came as political and business leaders began arriving in the Swiss mountain resort for the start Wednesday of the annual blue-chip meeting. "Dr. Markus Reinhardt, commander of the Graubuenden cantonal police... was found dead in his hotel room in the morning," Swiss police said in a statement. "All indications point to a suicide." Reinhardt, 61, has headed the canton's police force since 1984. The force paid tribute to Reinhardt as a "treasured, important personality".  Local authorities said another senior police officer had taken over his duties for the forum, the Swiss news agency ATS reported.  World Economic Forum (WEF) organisers stressed that Reinhardt was not a member of its staff but said the forum had long worked with him in preparing for the annual Davos mega-conference.  "The World Economic Forum has with great sadness and regret learned of the tragic death" of the police chief, said a WEF statement.  "During the many years during which we co-operated with him over security for our Annual Meeting at Davos, we appreciated his professionalism and his kindness. "The (Swiss) Security Forces continue to have our full confidence and trust in their work," it added.
Of course, I am invited to re-tweet this news item, which seems much perferred to a sloppily cited cut-and-paste and is sometimes blocked by some unknown process.  I do not agree that sharing should be restricted to such conduits. Jinkies--this does sound like a case.  When thinking of the Swiss and security, I can only fathom up them guarding the Pope, which seems to be working well for all involved.

deep breath

Last summer, I ordered a terrific, hopeful T-shirt adapted from a vintage British World War II poster, advocating a stiff upper-lip and moreover to not panic.  "Keep Calm and Carry On."  I think that this Etsy entrepeneur is espousing equally good advice.  Etsy, which is a wonderful outlet for creativity and handicraft and represents those handmade gifts that are great to give and receive, is especially smart considering the sorry state of the economy and jobs market and the prospects for revival of such a monstrosity.  We should all hone up on our knitting skills.

gerrymandering

H and I just took a short trip this weekend to get out of the house and shed some of the winter detrius.  Had we been traveling during 1789 in the Holy Roman Empire, however, it's boggling to think of how many international boundries we would have crossed with city-states and peculiars of the Church and Crown.  How did so many separate jurisdictions cohabitate?  Surely it wasn't peaceable.

we won't be pwn'd again

Hoping I am not one of these merchants of gloom or persistant naysayers (though I am very quick to criticize US policy), I cannot see there was much good news for the Obama administration during this past week.  After the end of the Kennedy dynasty, the Supremes were quick to follow with another blow, relaxing campaign finance reform and reversing the goals of McCain-Feingold.  Politicians are already tools of corporate interests and their cherry-picking of candidates that will support their agendas should not be made any easier, and now the opinion of a gaggle of investors, stakeholders is on equal-footing and apparently just as sacrosanct in terms of First Amendment Bill of Rights™ protection as any individual voter.  That does not bode well for America's credibility or sincerity.  Mixed signals are abundant with the call for taxing the bohemoth banks and tripping over healthcare reform.

skimming with sharks

Overshadowed by the super-loss of their super-majority and other kinks in the process of cauterizing state-run health-care, there was a second news item (the story is no longer available) concerning nationalization of the multi-billion dollar student loan industry.  SallieMae was always a strange sort of quasi-governmental agency with a weird and shadowy sort of authority and potential to do its worse.  I wonder what it means for my Diploma Mill University, which was just re-accredited by the association of reputable accreitors, thank you very much--which I am sure were reliant on a lot of free and easy federally subsidized monies that seemed to be granted like wishes, or for those loan agencies that operated under the same federal umbrella.  I am not sure what this news could mean.