begrudge report

Quietly, and I am sure gratefully for some detractors to escape critical eyes and public debate, Palestine's ascension to the United Nations' UNESCO body (Gremium) has slipped away post-hast from the headlines and perhaps the public's attention.

While this awarding of membership that took place in Paris under split auspices does not recognize Palestine's full statehood, it does acknowledge their strife and strive and open up avenues towards membership in more UN institutions. Perhaps, if motives and agendas were bared for all to see, it was not diplomatically correct or expedient to force UN politics with petitioning to join what is primarily regarded as a cultural organization, but the attention on the detractors should not be excused with such interpretations and Palestine's membership marks an important first step. America, Germany and others voted their reservations, calling membership premature and perhaps counter-productive, but having let their stance be known, should have then been willing to engage Palestine as a partner, and not, as America has done, tried to delegitimize the whole body by begruding its membership dues. UNESCO, more famous as the accrediting agency for tangible culture, also does significant and important work (including within America, and no one is even asking what treasures Palestine holds) in promoting education and protecting the intangibles, which America's decision threaten and appear counter-productive and calculated.

demos

One of the great things about memes going viral, modular and remixed and remixed, is that that creativity is channeled into a sort of choose one’s own adventure type story. One template is pretty much accepting of any theme or expression. The same is true for democracy, a very Greek invention. Introducing this pomegranate (Granatapfel) of accepting the money and the terms of the euro-bailout fund as a ballot measure, a referendum for the voters of Greece, was an unexpected but necessary move. It is not quite accurate to compare the plight of Greece with that of Argentina’s decision to default on its loans years hence, since although both could survive this choice, Argentina was not part of a currency union, and the vox populi may well out-shout any usury and further anything more to do with membership in the European Union. The Greek people and future generations are going to be the ones who have to deal with the consequences (equally unenviable, it seems) of default or grand-receivership.

best in show or PR's PR award

The small oberbayerisch town of Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm beat out some 376 communities worldwide in its size category (populations of 20,000 to 75,000) to win the International Award for Livable Communities (LivCom) for 2011, presented in Seoul. Among the criteria rated were neighbourliness, city-planning, future-orientation, and environmental stewardship, and Pfaffenhofen's score impressed the jury. While I do not question the rigour and distinction of this honour, these sort of trade-show mavens seem to wander towards recursiveness and idiosyncrasy.

While waiting on queue to go up in the Berlin Fernseherturm earlier this year, the panorama along the interior walls not only illustrated and compared the tallest buildings and towers in the world, but also mentioned that the television tower was a member of the International Association of Tall Structures. I wonder if some of these contest also tend in that direction. I want to visit Pfaffenhofen and see for myself what a world-class livable city is like, and I am sure it does have excellent civil-planning that might be a good model for others, as I imagine that the city's residents can attest to as well, but without context and tradition (and Pfaffenhofen surely has history but those details do not seem to be competing against its latest bourgeoisie plaudit), I do wonder how much of winning was a strong marketing and public-relations campaign that isn't just in it for the recognition. After all, the life of communities is generally more than can be reflected in a single honour, though that is no small achievement.

mister sandman or traumhalf

A few weeks ago, Boing Boing, had a small item about the United States Army Medical Command's ambitions to treat soldiers suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) by applying dream-therapy techniques and implanting the seeds of ideas, as portrayed in the film Inception. Though there will be no dream secret-agents and ninjas, the research and development firm taking this project on might make for some interesting studies in lucid-dreaming and twilight-sleep, using specific virtual stimuli to counteract the recurring and debilitating nightmares associated with shell-shock and the horrors of the battle field. The decision to prosecute war should never be taken lightly and we ought not to gloss over these hard choices by editing out the bad and uncomfortable aspects of it, like surrendering the fight to autonomous death drones, but the potential, if administered well and the unexpected is entertained, for one to work through his dreams does seem a bit more productive and genuine than invasive, exculpating drug therapies.

flik und flak or endless summer

Trying to triangulate times among Germany, the States and Russia has become a bit more complicated. In Germany and most of western Europe, day-light savings time ended early Sunday morning--a change that occurs a week prior to when America falls back. Russia, however, opted out of observing the time-change altogether this year, stating primarily seasonal-affective disorder and, I think, inviting debate on a custom of dwindling utility. The apparent motion of the Sun around the Earth throughout the year does a good job of shortening and lengthening the days without legislative intervention, and the fact that Daylight Savings Time (and Standard Time) was first proposed and championed in the Southern Hemisphere where the seasons are opposite ought not to be taken as strong testimony. So the time's off in the United States and Russia, from a German perspective, although that may not matter much, since its likely a public holiday--a chaotic collusion either today or tomorrow: the predominately Protestant Länder (Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxon, Saxon-Anhalt, and Thuringia) celebrate Reformation Day (Reformationstag) when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg on Halloween, and the Catholic Länder (Baden Württemberg, Bavaria, North Rhine Westphalia, Rhineland-Pfalz and Saarland) observe the following day All Saints (Allerheiligen). Hours and days certainly count and the few seconds devoted to ensure synchronization are certainly well-spent as well, not so much for the early, bleary sunrise but in the custom and reflecting on what others do.

pferd is the word

We have accumulated, I was noticing, after we hung the hunting scenes around the old Chinese lamp, quite a few things from the horsey-set. Beforehand, I saw that we had more than a few goats around the house. The ceramic Trojan horse was made either by my grandmother or her best friend (that has been debated) in an arts and crafts studio in Bad Tölz sometime in the late 1960s.

The American army base there (in one incarnation) where she was stationed had been converted into a shopping centre with Freibad (public spa) when I investigated a few years ago, and a lot of the trappings of an American military presence still seemed fresh. I bet the CIA outpost from Cold War times survived that round of closures.

  Speaking of another extensive collection, we spent nearly twenty minutes this morning setting back the all the clocks for European Standard Time.  The time change that hastens in the dawn and chases away the sun earlier and earlier in the afternoon happens a week prior to the to recalibration in the States.

primogenitor

I thought that developments that significantly redress God and Country might be headline news and not just for the governors of the sixteen Commonwealth Realms (The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, CHOGM, which sounds an awfully lot like the Spacing Guild of Dune, The Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles, CHOAM) that share the British monarch as their head-of-state have together acceded to radically reform laws concerning Royal Succession at a summit in Australia. Deference to males is removed, so the eldest child, whether a boy or a girl, becomes the heir-apparent (absolute primogeniture), which seems like a very reasonable and forward-thinking thing to do to our modern minds but I believe, like the BBC reporting puts it, that our point-of-view masks the real comprehensive (three centuries of the past, present and future) perspective and impact it has. Perhaps equally as sweeping is the change that would allow the monarch and members of the royal family to marry Catholics--though as Supreme Head of the Church of England, the monarch himself is necessarily Anglican. It strikes me as impossible to get one's head around the lifting of this restriction without delving through all the revolts and revolutions of history. Had the Act of Settlement of 1701 never come into force, as the Daily Mail speculates, and all other things being the same (which is deliciously unlikely), then the UK's current ruler would have been Franz, Duke of Bavaria.  The Queen, looking forward to her Diamond Jubilee, suggested these reforms be entertained and has certainly added something more to her considerable legacy.

marco, polo

Through the lens of history and particular Weltanschauung that has kept relations between China and much of the Western world at an awkward age--not really maturing beyond mystique and fear and trade that seemed to erupt like spontaneous generation until the 1970s, this outreach of munificence--offers to buoy up the image and reputation of the euro and the EU--is difficult to put into context. I don't believe fears of quid pro quo and other obligations are entirely valid, because it is in China's best interest to sustain its biggest export market, and prior trade deals and wonky, uncomfortable balances of exchange or supersaturation of markets, cheap and laxer labour seemingly popped into existence from nothing, overnight, for America and took on threatening airs, which were probably unjustified. The EU is not under new-management and is a far sight less beholden, financially and politically, to Chinese vehicles of recapitalization than it would be to the sacrifice, the martyred attitude, of local big banks and their minders. Just as it only takes the gentlest of persuasions to set off one's latent xenophobia, as with questions of immigration and multiculturalism, stories of Chinese investors buying up vineyards in Bordeaux or copying Austrian villages on the sly I am sure are enflaming and raise suspicions.

Investment opportunities surely can be sour and toxic things, but Europeans, though they should never stop watching their governments, are not ransoming their principles on this nor compromising their voice in trade relations, jobs, the environment or human rights. Maybe Chinese intervention was not absolutely necessary and only leaves the EU with the bigger challenge of not letting a bailout enable more of the same sloppy behaviour, but it did not come unbidden and unwelcome. With so much of the world economy built on illusion and deception, and the utility of wealth diminished the more one has of it, money at rest, when it could go to a greater good, assuaging some baseless (instead of being in hock to those fears) is a positive development.