rock lobster or divide and conquer

There ought to be no surprise that the provisions of the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act were a slippery slope, window-dressing and wallpaper, though load-bearing it may be in terms of supporting belief and angst, and that the public would be lulled into submission by this new normal, like a lobster in a pot slowly brought to boil. It is a welcome sign, however, that the American people and those early-adopters (one may want to follow the money-trail, in case the US market actually does wither away) and dwindling list of social-callers have reached their collective boiling point over Department of Homeland Security/Transportation Security Administration's hyperbole and traumatic and taming options for flight: either molestation or a starring role, exposed, in a conscripted bawdy film, which are neither discreet, private, nor effective. I cannot imagine how anyone could abide by a loved one or even a fellow traveler faced with this uncomfortable choice, much less submitting to either a gratuitous physical violation or potentially dangerous and enduring memento--especially to very young or older people. It is just terribly sad that the means of control and influence have stooped this low and is sure to significantly curb airborne travel and keep North America as a destination to avoid. Perhaps the makers of aircraft should be rethinking their giant-capacity air-galleys if there is this much vitriol in mass-transit.

Pilots and crew are a source for solidarity with passengers, however, I suspect that the unions that rightly argue that the exposure to the scanners is unsafe, attended by an endless army of untrained goons deputized, baptized with too much authority and hubris and snared with fear themselves over job-security in a poor economy, will be given a concession, a pass in the form of an alternative screening that alleviates just enough industry pressure to give the travelers no recourse. I am happy that this holiday season, I do not have a need to travel to the States, the Atlantic has certainly gotten wider, but I don't relish the thought in the future either. If flyers just grin and bare it, resigned as intended, things will only get worse, more invasive and more unreasonable.

stitch-witchery or hobby lobby

Though maybe not the sort of realization of the Star Trek style replicator or teleportation that the purist might be hoping for, three dimensional printing, using a variety of media from fast-setting goop to foam to ceramics, seems to have a lot of promise for empowerment and expression. Taking the idea of speedy prototyping and delivering it straight to the cottage industry, items (and any item), given the patience, can be sprouted layer by layer in exacting detail, from a three-dimension scan or original design—or assembled like a model airplane from a punch-out sheet. To revive the care, dexterity, and continued concentration for modeling, tools and fittings and generally smithery and carpentry and pottery, is a very positive detour away from art, progress and participation measured on only flat planes.

Of course, malleability and ruggedness will only improve over time and perhaps the potential for domestic manufacturing will explode, already with talk of fabricating architectural elements, sculpture, ginger-bread houses, integrated circuits, clothing and even human organs. Boing Boing, MAKE and many other websites host creative conversions about 3D printing innovations regularly. Just see what you can find. Design will be customized and revolutionized, with no restraints or anything extraneous. There will be, no doubt, a Gutenberg moment of singularity when the means are available to all, and surely there will be some businesses that want to ensure that their designs are protected and maybe computer companies will someday soon turn to peddling patterns, like the Simplicity paper cut-out guides in fabric stores and turn spiteful like those who belittle homemade Christmas presents over the store-bought variety. Clay might be the business of the future.  Perhaps contemporary designs will retain some proprietary protections, but I am sure that any home would be happily and comfortably outfitted with Art Nouveau and Classical motifs—brilliant and timeless and in the public domain.

blackletter fraktur

Deutsche Presse Agentur announced that the German ligature Esszet, ß, will be deigned allowable in internet domain names beginning soon by the shadowy registrars that determine such protocols. For those unused to such foreign characters, there is always a bit of reluctance and apprehension of unleashing a letter transcribed as an "ss," "sz," "B," Greek beta or ampersand or could insert some wild and rogue, non-displayable carriage-return.  Some degree of oversight is needed to maintain functionality across the world-wide web: just think of relative uselessness of the @-sign not so very long ago.  Until just last year, all the world was at the hegemony of the standard Roman alphabet, and while it could present particular challenges to those not immediately able to input an umlaut or other diacritic or fancy ligature, websites with native characters would be more targeted to local use and still not relegated to internet obscurity, like the nonsensical strasse.de instead of straße.de. Aside from potential loss of foreign traffic and idle looky-loos, I suppose internet watchdogs want to be able to keep easy access to their wards. They would not have their clerks undone for want of an extended alphabet. In addition to Chinese and other Asian syllabics, now it is even possible to navigate in Arabic with traditionally right-to-left order. This is a pretty significant and positive development--and I probably betray my own cultural hegemony when I admit I marvel at a Cyrillic or Japanese typewriter--and I think it is an appropriate celebration of one's language, expressed properly, and ensures that no flavor is lost conforming to arbitrary standards.

atom-mill

Sometimes the bi-weekly dispatch for Bad Karma is neither very informative nor topical, seemingly shying away from anything controversial, including town markets and events until after they have occurred, but sometimes it excels with coverage. Today it reminded readers that Bad Karma was chosen as a model city for developing electric-mobility as an alternative to traditional forms of transit, and had two articles, including some historic background, broaching a highly provocative subject: atomic energy. With the protest that dragged along every angry inch of the shipment of spent nuclear fuel and sundry to the transitional depot in the community of Gorleben in Niedersachsen, discussion is ensuing regarding the power plant in the neighbourhood that I spy in the distance from my office window. I call it our “Cloud-Maker,” cheerfully but defraying what it really is and the trade-offs it represents. It is a divisive subject, and while I understand the argument it is a bridge technology that some believe should endure until such time as truly clean methods of energy production can be installed, it does seem a dangerous and unretiring curse that I would not want in my backyard, and for which I am glad our local paper could address.

QEII is not just a luxury liner or deconstructing dorothy

National Public Radio's Democracy Now! posits in an interview with economist Professor Joseph Stiglitz that the US Federal Reserve's latest round of quantitative easing is an act of aggression--though possibly less familiar than more traditional methods of hostility like invasion, religion, piracy, regime-change and building up banana republics, skirmishes surrounding devaluation, igniting currency-wars, have happened before, perhaps most famously after the Great Depression of the 1930s that erupted into World War II. It is rather insidious that loose credit, transnationally at least but banks are no more eager to lend to regular customers, awash in cheap dollars when more hoarding is necessary to retain any semblance of value, can be hewn into weapons, and that the hottest commodity being produced, at least in places where the shell game of government debt is ran by the central banks, is bonds--i.e., debt.

Response will be in kind. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, always a quirky non sequitur, too, was a complicated if not sometimes opaque allegory, railing against notions of money by government fiat. Maybe when it premiered, audiences who had read the book groaned at a thinly veiled economic policy critique turned into a theatrical production but I am sure such underlying messages were quickly lost in the spectacle of Technicolor. Maybe poverty is meant to be memorialized as a perennial favourite like this, a more welcome survivor and witness than the realities of contraction and hyper-inflation.

ornithopter or kid icarus

The aerodynamics of the American economy many individuals, and not just those solely concerned with the next boom and bust cycle or their own portfolios, have declared a dangerous drag on the world's financial health. American enterprise and innovation, somewhat shrouded in mystique and mythos like the notion of American exceptionalism, have been repackaged and resold over and over again, exhausted like a field over-farmed and never allowed to fallow--until only the service job-set, from brokers and financial advisors to hotels and restaurants to traders, are the only businesses going. Being ravenous from the easy, non-committal profits from trafficking and spell-binding in exotic financial instruments on speculation and forgiving credit, has successfully driven the US out of manufacturing and any meaningful industry. The stock market is not the same as the market place, and there is ample evidence that this too can thrive with a bit of diligence and discipline, because the gradient for honest commerce is still sustainable, but the Americans may end up excluding themselves, desiccating their wealth and not be the world's bursar any longer, with sufficient quantitative-easing and policies that undercut the natural equilibrium of others. Aside from losing the US consumer as a potential customer, the escalating panic of free-fall will snatch out for any support it can reach, beggar-thy-neighbour, and throw down possible cushions for the hard landing.

pharmacokinetics or better living through chemistry

Before repairing to bashing the industrial standards of Asian maunfacturers for toothpaste with high lead-content, and eliding over our own thiftiness for going with the lowest bidder in the first place, the Western world makes and has made for decades quite enough poisonous products all on its own.  One piece that rather made my skin crawl and left me shuddering for the checkout girl where H and I went shopping just a little bit earlier concerned studies showing that Bisphenol A leeches from thermal-receipt paper through the skin and into the body just from casual handling.  It's nearly as devastating as the formaldehyde that leaks out of new furniture and carpeting.

Though Bisphenol A (BPA) has been synthesized since the 1930s, more familar as the acetone in finger-nail polish remover and paint-thinner--what a compliment to one's home chemistry set--it has never been proven safe, and the substance, ubiquitous and seemingly innocent, sparks the occasional uproar, like not practicing microwave cookery in microwave-safe plastic containers, PVC piping, and because it mimicks estrogen and acts as a replacement for the hormone, it has been attributed to a wide range of disorders that could  seem to have no other explanation, like frequency of breast cancer, premature birth, liver disfunction and even obseity and attention deficiency.  Even places, like the European Union and Canada, that have enacted restrictions against environmental BPA probably are not looking to their cash registers yet.  In Germany, one's receipts are forced on one or left to gather as trash at the end of the shopping conveyor belt, but there was a trend that's gone away not to handle money, at least not to put change in the customer's hand but offer it up on such a tray.  Surely the thermal printer and point-of-sale cartels could be convinced to employ safer means.  Next time, everyone should refuse a printed receipt, when it's not needed, and tell the cashier exactly why.

trojan horse

Results of the investigations were not completely clear and I was under the false impression that a gun powder black ink-jet was the latest cachet noir in concealing terror paraphernalia, but earlier in the week, it was disclosed that the suspected couple of mad bombers from Greece hid their postal bombs in hollowed out charity brochures. This technique, and fortunately falling just short of their targets and without causing serious harm, delivered explosives to the doorsteps of embassies, chancellors and presidents and blockaded all Greek commercial shipping for a few days. Using some innocuous religious books as disguises was a work of diabolical genius, wily like Odysseus: no one would look twice at a load of Watch Tower magazines or Hare Krishna pamphlets. I am sure that spy or terror networks of all ilk make scatter-shot announcements through equally bland and insipid spam and junk mail, and no one would give it a second glance, and hiding in plain sight like the purloined letter and unlike numbers stations or other more lively red herrings.