raubkopier

There is a fairly impassioned debate going on in the German government about the ethicality of reviewing the financial data on a pilfered CD-ROM from a Swiss bank clerk.  German already paid a tidy ransom to the bank clerk for a list of reportedly 5000 German individuals who have been stashing money away in the Confederacy to avoid paying taxes.  The German government justified its purchase, since it stands to recoup up to a billion euro in tax revenue.  Not every one is pleased with Germany's conduct for dealing in stolen goods.  What if it was not a stolen list of tax-evaders, but a list of welfare grifters or people with outstanding hospital bills?  What sort of message does it send to Switzerland--that there should be a similiar bounty on German confidential files?  There was a big to-do already in Davos over what previous few props are available for banking giant UBS and what would it mean to hand over a slice of bailout pie to Zurich.  It does not seem any different than state-supported piracy to me.  Last year, this sort of exchange between Vaduz and the States led me to cleaning out and closing my Liechtensteiner, Swiss-Lite account.  Now, however, I understand that there is a plaintiff in case against the partner bank that surrendered his financial data, that made him cough up his back taxes, who has successfully sued for several millions due to distress incurred.

hosana superstar

Since first seeing a passion play as a little kid put on in other worldly crater in the Witchia Mountains in Oklahoma, I have wanted to see the play performed in Oberammergau.  It's not an opportunity that comes up everyday to see that sort of spectacle and I didn't want to miss it.  I was there once to visit the NATO school there--I wonder if those students take part.  For over four hundred years, the residents have performed this grand play to fulfill a pledge to God, promising to do so because the village was spared during the pestillence.  I guessed, like most passion plays, they have a limited run and confined to the Eastertide.  It turns out, I discovered while plotting vacations and other such get-aways, that the Oberammergauers take this show on, daily, for an entire season, running from May to October.  Jesus, for this decade, will be portrayed, by the village psychologist, and Mary will be played in this performance by an airline stewardess.

teach me tiger

This year Valentines' Day and the Chinese Lunar New Year coincide.  This year is the year of the Tiger, and according to the Feng Shui Index it will be volitile but especially auspicious for people born during the year of the Dragon (I count myself as one of those, dim sum and then some).  As you celebrate the dawn of the new year with your special Valentine, I'd recommend listening to the April Stevens classic.

semantic memories

I have a host of strange dreams, almost nightly.  A lot of them invoke some architectural associations, vast halls and impossibly high and steep drops, endless stairwells.  I dreamt the other night I was in an ancient Russian fortress, which had seen an incarnation as a firestation.  Deep wells ran through the turrets that formerly had fire poles to slide down.   Nothing so strange or spectacular there, but I distinctly remember taking out my digital camera and snapping a few shots of the castle.  I cannot recall ever having the wherewithal to have a dream camera at my disposal.  When I woke up, I reviewed the photos on the camera, just to make sure.

the mouse that roared

Ahmadinejad at Muppet Laboratories really amuses me, like some dancer in the chorus of a Busby Berkley musical number.  I do appreciate Iran's efforts to fill the science void that the devestiture of NASA will bring, and I am not sure if this was part of the promise to deliver a powerful message to Western global powers, but a rocket launched a little menagerie of two turtles, a mouse and a "few worms" to a sub-orbital clime.  A few worms doesn't have the same celebrity as Latka the Russian space dog.

2.0

The US army services are being dragged into the next decade over the broken debris of its missed opportunities.  Last month's close call with the underpants bomber was blamed in part on out-dated government computer systems, and now the military is rethinking its stance on all sorts of types of blocking.  Despite not having uniform policy and enforcement, the army is embracing WiFi and the so-called Web 2.0 to allow the hive-mind full freedom and unrestricted dastardliness, through the vehicles of Facebook and Twitter.  140-word spasms are certainly grown-up steps.  The army is even moving to repeal some of its more nonsensical information security measures, which contributed to neither information nor security.  And now there's buzz about gaying the whole party up a notch.  Brava

the lunatic is on the grass

After the scheduled decom-missioning of the fleet of space shuttles this year, NASA will be more or less grounded.  A portion of the funds that were to be allocated for space exploration will go to sponsor private ventures, which is surely exciting but Virgin Galactic does not front the same officiousness as a national space agency.  The US is dropping some of its support missions to the International Space Station and curbing other projects, including the re-commitment for a manned-moon mission.  I understand that there are more immediate priorities and that crown and coffer have evaporated, but it's more than a bit sad that there won't be that sort of spectacle and wonder for the forseeable future.

shah

Apparently Ahmadinejad has accelerated his rhetoric, and the US is responding by deploying more land- and sea-based missile shields for its allies in the Gulf region.  Iran is promising to delivery "a telling blow to global powers," on 11 February, which is the 31st anniversary of the Iranian Revolution that installed Ayatollah Khomeini.