botanical update

I am sure that sometime in the near future, one’s house plants, pets, and evn one’s own bodily organs will be afforded the opportunity to enrich the internet through social media and will be able to update their own status, without us having to speak for them. I seem to remember reading something about some odious smelling flower in a botanical garden "tweeting" its daily impressions or some zoo-captive with a running commentary of its audience--or perhaps I am just imagining that. I am sure that humans would be disinclined to friend or follow a wood under siege from a lumberjack, farm animals, etc after a while. For now, however (and I enjoy speaking for the trees too), the venerable baobab is starting to bloom.

The little flowers are quite nice, delicate and with a repeating five-point symmetry. I also wanted to share a picture of the less attractive primogenitor of all those healthy offspring. Fit to burst that little honey pot, this is the sort of baobab that the Little Prince had to look out for, lest his little planet be split in two.

imperium or neap tide

Speaking from the Pentagon, the US administration announced (DE) some vaguely but patriotically worded plans to transform America's military forces into an agency more compact and agile and with costs commiserate with desired results. Although the reduction is promised to be significant (it remains to be seen what they will be able to deliver, considering the soldiers of fortune, mercenaries and defense contractors probably have other plans) and few details were specified other than what goals are to be sustained--all of them and more with less--the speech was symbolic, not for the cuts to military support which is the only form of social welfare and support that the US has executed well and millions of soldiers and families rely on for careers, education and health care since the number of soldiers can be cut but because I doubt the budget will go down, and they will be replaced with drones and kill-bots and service contracts, but rather symbolic for America abandoning its self-appointed role as world-police.

Though the US was oblivious or otherwise in denial to its decline, this nebulous but surgical extraction from that leadership position does bring into contrast those differences between a vested and a vetted leader. For many decades, the US has not been fighting the world’s wars but rather its own battles, drawing the rest of the world into it, and the other major powers have avoided direct confrontation and fought wars by proxy: the US funding the Taliban in Afghanistan to send the Soviet Union over the tipping point, USSR vs US vs China in Vietnam and Korea, the US vs the British Empire in the Suez Gulf through currency manipulation that devalued the Pound Sterling. I wonder if there’s the potential even for a power-vacuum to be created. Recent military adventures have created more miseries all around than good and it would be a welcome change in attitude and posture if the priorities of the US erred on the side of restraint and partnership, but I think America, pensive and excitable over its faded glory, will try to maintain the same hulking footprint in the world with video games, and with the same costly profligacy and with fewer (soldiers--who put their lives at risk but are valued and cared for) whom stand to profit by it but with just as much to lose.

something in the water or it's the plumber, i've come to fix your sink

I am continuing to use plain soap when I brusha-brusha and I am pleased with the results, although I think rehabilitating my teeth, bad habits notwithstanding, have hit a plateau.

Reviewing the literature, I guess the second most important practice for unconventional tooth care is avoidance of fluorinated, treated water. Being outside the States and Russia, the two major areas that manage their plumbing as such, I thought I was safe. A few weeks ago, however, I noticed a curious installation at the Family Housing Area, the American Army Ghetto, called "Chlor-Station," which incidentally was heavily fortified against tampering. I wondered about this feature and the water towers but never was bold enough to ask, for fear of looking like a kook. Just recently, the Public Affairs Office, to assuage the tremolo-fears of American families newly arrived in country, put out a press-release that detailed how, ja, German tap-water is safe to drink (especially delicate goldfish, like Schrödinger's goldfish, test the waters at purification facilities around the country) and how the Army's engineers strive to make the water taste better, according to American standards, by adding chlorine and fluoride. This is done for the entire military community and not just for those apartment buildings where the soldiers live. Taste better?

I was a bit horrified with what was on-tap, thinking about the office coffee being made with conspiratorial water or all the regular trips to the water-fountain for a sip. Now I have resolved to bring in bottles of tap water from home for everything, including the plants. I do not know if I ascribe to all the supposed plots behind why drinking water is treated, but the claims that it makes for stronger and healthier smiles have been proven untrue. Maybe they put fluoride in the water to gird their population against the effects of radiation poisoning, with an on-going nod to the Cold War--or maybe fluoride has keep dentists in business all these years, but it is just as likely these additives are an opiate for an obedient workforce.

honeycomb hideout or zombee

A professor in the American state of North Carolina may have accidentally discovered the pathogen behind the mysterious and wide-spread die off of bee colonies.

Though all sorts of plausible theories have been put forward, ranging from genetically-modified crops to pesticides to global warming and electromagnetic smog from cellular telephone masts and it is probably a combination of these environmental factors, the chance observation of a bee playing host to an insidious parasitic phorid fly could explain the honey bees' erratic and zombified (like ignoring the brood, sitting out the bee-dance that communicates the whereabouts of flowers and foraging at night) behaviour that results in them neglecting their hives. Such a parasite could also account for the pattern of the occurrence and contagion, which is not helped by the practice in some areas of renting hives and trucking bees to fields in bloom. The health and well-being of bees is vitally important for the food-supply, since there would be no new crops, despite the smugness of G-M plants adapted to harsh conditions and tweaked to produce their own pesticides and even as pharmaceutical factories for human medicines--all these plant-hacks to a degree, of course, have been happening without geneticists since the beginning of agriculture and selective-breeding. Trees, grasses and plants that only bloom once in a blue moon would also be gravely affected. It is good that researchers have perhaps isolated one cause and can move forward, but I suspect that human intervention was behind this latest plague too: a related species of phorid fly was used in Texas and Alabama to quell the invasion of fire-ants, with similar ghoulish results for the ants and their colonies. Maybe the same thing was tried in the early 1990s to stop the killer bees, Africanized and aggressive honey bee hybrids, and slowly control over this infectious agent was lost. I hope the bees can be saved, and without creating even bigger problems and imbalance. Maybe the cautionary message of all those zombie movies has stuck.

field and fountain, moor and mountain

Epiphany (or Drei Königs Tag for the Three Wise Men, the Magi, Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar) is celebrated this week all over the German Sprachraum. Children of the community dress as Sternsinger and troop from house to house, collecting donations for good causes and in return blessing the home for the year in gratitude. It is, however, not a holiday in most places, including ironically the state of Nord Rhein Westphalia where the city of Köln is located.

The magnificent showcase of the Kölner Dom is the reliquary of the holy remains of the Magi remembered on this day. Here is a picture of it against the city skyline, rather dreary and pixilated and taken years ago.  We need to visit the city together to see the relics and re-capture some of the amazing scenes.  Not only did this purpose-built cathedral draw many pilgrims, it represented progress and innovation in architecture.

Drei Königs Tag also marks some other Christmas traditions, like jettisoning the tree, with ceremony, over one's balcony and ensuring all remaining Christmas treats are dispatched of, and begins Carnival season, which Köln is also famous for, in earnest--plus some folk-wisdow to prognosticate the weather: if Winter hasn't come by now (which for us it has not) then Winter won't be coming.

you've been rick-rolled

Like the Summer Olympics and Leap Years, America is gearing up for their presidential campaigns and elections, and already with the first state primaries to nominate party candidates (only two parties of consequence) with the best chance of unseating the incumbent. 

Nothing is inherently bad or wrong with either ideology and statement of priorities in preserving the union, but these political workshops, civic engagement that has atrophied to a highly polarizing social-hour, grow stranger and more extravagant each election-cycle. It is striking how one does not vote for or run on a platform, but instead for personalities and dogmas--holding court (with courtiers and jesters of all sorts), genuine dialogue, debate and coalition-building are foregone to preach what a narrow majority of the voting-class wants to hear. I suppose politicians have earned that negative reputation and there is adequate (and disheartening) precedence to confirm all the talk of corruption and back-peddling, when hope was brought down on appeal (by that same vanishing margin) to more of the same disappointment and disenfranchisement and even a few such bold affronts against personal liberties, that had they been proposed under the last US regime, Bush would have been laughed out of office. Once achieved the designation of elect, the voter seems to be alienated from the whole political process, with representatives beholden to lobbyists even more than their chosen base or pet-projects.

Outreach and inclusiveness are usually the first campaign promises to wither but the incivility seems to have started before word-one: this once every-four-years event, though perpetual and non-stop for the wrong reasons for many, is not just to govern a 51, 49, 99 or 1% American and just sail through to re-election. The antics and outrage may make matters seem to the contrary and elements of democracy may be held hostage by corporate interests, but the outcome is important. Every government can face straits and gridlock and sometimes better intentions are sacrificed to squabbling but working together is the only way to affect real progress. Cooperation, to a degree, allows one to see the bigger picture, and from that vista it might be hard to know where to begin, but at minimum, government could strive towards making the young people of America not heir to a terrible financial crisis of the older generation's making: youth unemployment stands at nearly 30% in the USA with bleak prospects of improving, since overall conditions are forcing people to defer retirement longer and longer, and to try to gain a toe-hold in the jobs market people, younger and older, have sought higher education and outstanding student loan debt has surpassed credit card debt. People ought not to shirk their obligations (we're better than bailed-out corporations) but, just like some workers are putting off retirement, young people are deferring setting up hearth and home or even committing to a relationship. Something could be done to achieve meaningful savings that would be a bootstrap, not just for the young but all of society. This sort of arrested-development, for one, for a generation does not ascribe to party lines and is not a perennial outcome befitting for any vote.

tiki lounge or the long now

From the outstanding science desk of Boing Boing, the editor refers the curious and eschatological alike to this definitive series of questions and answers from archeologist John Hoopes for Psychology Today on the 2012 Phenomenon. As the editor concedes, if this detailed treatment on the history, scholarship and day-keeping of the ancient Mesoamerican peoples, the Zeitgeist, event-marketing, the architecture of modern computers, pseudoscience and appeal to fill a spiritual vacuum cannot debunk, disenchant or otherwise unstick one's fear over the end of the world, then probably nothing short of Christmas Day 2012 will.

I also like how Hoopes does not totally dismiss and dash the predictions of the Maya (a designation that is an over-simplification in itself, like the kitsch of Tiki culture) and the cult that’s formed around it, grasping the enormity of such cycles within cycles and articulating the mathematics for it as well as a keener sense for the procession of the heavens is certainly impressive, and from a sociological stand point could signal positive change, however, it is an insult to the Mayan peoples and to ourselves to burden artifact with prophesies of own making.

¡achtung!

H and I are finding an unlimited stream of documentaries on Justin.tv and the latest saga that we are engrossed with is the history of submarine warfare during WWII, endearingly produced by the Royal Spain Marine.

There's a lot of in depth knowledge presented in the series, that makes good use of a wealth of historic footage--clips are never repeated nor the soundtrack of incidental music which is always different too. The documentary has a charming A/V class feel to it sometimes (translated from Spanish to English, then dubbed in German), but certainly not in quality of in scholarship. Although we have watched a lot of programs on this theme and been to the U-Boot yards and docks along the Atlantic, it never really registered to me that submarines were taking advantage of more than a niche in the battlefield. The documentary took the time to people the culture of the submariners and impress what a really big piece of the war that front was, and not the planes and rockets that garner more attention. Similarly, WWI some contend that the Empires fell for the want of horses. One of the most significant denouements of the war was perpetrated by sloppy manufacturing of torpedos, which led to a reversal of power and untold lives and supplies not lost. The Italian war-time navy even produced little one-man vehicles that zipped around the Mediterranean like under water Vespas. One architect of the Kriegsmarine's submarine campaign, Otto Kretschmer, surrendered and was taken as a prisoner-of-war to Canada. Afterwards, he joined the German civil naval forces and rose to the admiralty of the NATO navy. Like the German engineers who became darlings of the American space agency during the Space Race, many apparently could transition into such careers. The components of peace and war are quite complex affairs to unravel.