poll tax or right-of-return

Thanks to the vigilance of BoingBoing, since the machinery of bureaucracy usually does not garner much attention and was only noticed due to a mandated window for public commentary (on the particulars but not the process) that has since closed, maybe the US government, intoning another refrain of its swan song, will not be able to raise the stakes on what its people will tolerate not without some dissent. First of all, who knew there was this forum for soft-suffrage, being able to offer one's opinion, for what it's worth on American policy--for maybe gauging outrage and deciding how to bury reporting on the changes? I suppose public-opinion would be an excellent inverse-marketing tool. In essence, the passport application process will become an impossibly difficult task, with a revised questionnaire that mines deeply into the applicant's past and genealogy.

For now, the arduous task is supposedly reserved for those who cannot produce an official copy of their birth certificate (giving this new gradient of bureaucracy a strange twist with one faction calling the current presidency illegitimate and questioning his citizenship), but I am sure there will be some seepage of red ink and maybe all applicants will be expected to submit all these answers--which are more in depth than the battery of questions one must answer (if not correctly then at least consistently) for a security clearance. Moreover, delving that deeply into one's past and familial relations create assumptions and affinities before individuals have the chance to decide for themselves--not to mention. That sort of concentration of personal data--extended enough so as to form anyone's complete biography, connected to a machine-readable, RFID document also seems rather ill-advised.  I am not certain what ought to be read into breadth of questions and answers but controlling movement (as America has already pioneered in the name of air-security) has at least what the propaganda would have us believe about liberties of underclass in Soviet times and with Soviet objectives. Making it more difficult to obtain a passport leave more stranded on Exceptional Island, and discourage the cultural exchange, travel, commerce and exploration that all should have the opportunity to experience.

handschuhe

Over the weekend, I found a pair of these new sporty foot mittens on sale and decided that I would try them on for size. 

I wanted to get them in any case, but I did feel rather obligated to get them after plastering them onto my bare dirty feet with other customers watching.  They do seem rather amphibious and are very light and probably very good over a lot of terrain--or possibly for skittering up a tree.  Socks are not an option but they are comfortable, and nearly like being barefoot (though probably not a significant departure from the latter--I did think, however, that I would be in trouble for tracking my dirty feet in the houses and then I remembered I was wearing these shoes) since the toes are articulated--except for the wanky smallest ones, making one either looked evolved or like a cartoon character.  One does not feel entirely the grain and texture of the surface, although the I suppose toes and parts of the feet that are usually sheltered and isolated are sensitive and a little sheepish to the experience--almost at first like walking in shoes with holes in them, feeling the contours of the street and ground.  These, I think, will be good for outdoor adventures.

möbiusband

For Easter Sunday, H and I took a leisurely stroll up the Fockeberg in South Leipzig.  This hill with winding trails up to the summit, which affords a picture postcard views of the city at the top, is actually a bit of manmade landscaping, a Schuttberg or a Trümmerberg that was built up out of the rubble from WWII.  H told me there was also a downhill race, with all types of vehicles with four wheels allowed--just so long as they are powered by gravity.

The vistas were a nice way to take in the sweep of the place, that we had visited many times before but had not really seen from this map-maker's perspective, with the whole of the skyline visible. 

This park would have also been a perfect spot for an Easter egg hunt.  Earlier, and not in the same part of town, I noticed that we passed a street called Möbiusstraße--which amused me immensely.  While climbing the hill, I was still wondering how that might work and what it would be like to live on that street.

tag des bieres

Today also marks another historical anniversary that has shaped the way beer is brewed and enjoyed for centuries: from Ingolstadt in the year 1516, Bavarian Duke William IV instituted the “Bavarian Purity Law”—the Reinheitsgebot (EN/DE) to standardize beer product and introduce price controls that would mitigate the spikes in demand for wheat and barley. With some puritanical influences building off of Emperor Barbarossa’s earlier call for an industry standard, the variety of beers and beer brewing processes and alternate ingredients which often produced much more intoxicating brews were by law curtailed and relegated to monasteries and registered brewers, and not experimental moonshiners. Setting down this standard has of course influenced the way beer is made not just in Germany but also where ever German brewers set up shop or lent their expertise to help get a company started, like in America or even the old German colonial city of Tsingtao, China. It is something to think about next time you are enjoying a refreshing beverage.  Prost!

greenwashing

The first Earth Day (EN/DE) was held in 1970 in response to significant relaxing and deregulation of environmental safe-guards on the part of the US government and a series of resultant oil spills, when one Senator called for an ecological “teach-in” to educate people on the consequences of consumerism and poor custody of the land and water. The annual observance does seem to rather nowadays compete with rather than compliment other green movements and summits, like Earth Hour and apolitical and pleasant Arbour Day (Tag des Baumes).

Good ideas and motivation is put out but more with the cachet of a televangelist telethon. Soliciting for a billion green ideas and pledges is certainly a positive thing that could make some real impact, but it is sadly a little gimmicky and there ought not to be credit given for what one should be doing away. According to the original vision of Earth Day, simply learning about eco-systems, where trash goes when its spirited away and the logistics of where products come from, is an important focus. Being mindful of the results of one’s actions, not discouraging creative acts to undo those effects, is a necessary first step.

the secret-sharer or johnny apple-seed

The developing news that certain telecommunications giants have implanted a simple and vulnerable routine in their mobile devices that records a user's whereabouts, tagged like some nomadic animal for naturalists to study and present with targeted advertisements, struck me at first as significant and dishonest but maybe also a bit naïve.

After all, besides Big Brother and the Snitch Mob and warrantless wiretaps, internet companies kowtowing to repressive regimes, phone companies hoarding one's foot-print, as well as what's freely given out, indelibly over social network sites, but it is nonetheless eye-opening. The technology and information is there in the aether, and there are no unambiguous laws for the deportment of such data, only ethics and the tolerance of people to have their private lives exploited for marketing-purposes or worse.  This are very tenuous measures of protection, especially if users do not understand what kind of traces they leave behind and how it is collected.  Vice-squads may be a thing of the past since many of us are carrying around our own chastity belts that keep no secrets. Electronic privacy is no longer confined to the internet, though where one goes in subspace can be incriminating too, and not something intended for public display.

dim bulb or mad as a hatter

A consumer advocacy lab in Berlin, completely outfitted a simulated living space with energy saving light bulbs, to study their ambient effects, compared to older, filament style incandescent ones. Researchers noticed a rotten smell in the enclosed space and found it was from the toxic gasses, like phenol and mercury, leeching from the bulbs, if left on for extended periods of time. Foremost, consumers do not derive any benefit if they switch on and off these energy saving bulbs like normal people since they burn out fast and one cannot recuperate the significant extra cost, and second that with the fact that they are potentially and frighteningly hazardous to one's health and are nearly impossible to recycle, this makes for a really prime example of industry hijacking environmentalism and forcing it on the public through the governments who've been paid-off or duped into thinking they are backing the responsible horse.

It is very similar to the unpalatable choice that the failing campaign of E10 petrol raises: is it more ecological to dilute one's tank with ethanol, grown from corn that is diverted from the food supply and cultivated by highly energy intensive means (maybe only made profitable because it is subsidized by the government), or to simply perhaps drive ten percent less?

a moveable feast

 We were a little late in decking out the Easter trappings this year, so there has not been some much time to enjoy them, but of course the holiday hadn't passed us by. Easter itself is a very strange fusion of Christian, secular and pagan traditions and certainly makes for an awkward alibi and accounting, should humans ever be called for testimony in an alien court of law.

Peeps--sorry, can't begin to explain what that one has do with Easter Sunday. What makes it even more extraordinary, and impenetrable like with the non sequitur and surreal rituals, is that the date of Easter can vary so widely, so as the holiday escapes one sometimes, and is figured using a complex, alchemy of maths called the Computus. This method not only previsions computer science, algorithms, matrices, all these correcting factors that make modern Western calendars fit to a lunar one are very much like the cosmology of Ptolemy, who, while acknowledging a sun-centered universe would be more straightforward, sought to preserve the appearances of a geocentric model with all sorts of celestial wheels, gears and cogs.

Getting the liturgical dates right in general, counterbalanced with the cycle of the Moon and the observable equinoxes and the odd Leap Year, helped keep annual occcurances meaningful, coinciding with Spring, Mid-Winter, etc., and guard against slippage and calendar migration that would eventually, glacially led to Easter overlapping or falling before Christmas. That holiday would be a bizarre affair to decorate for.