matryoshka or flying circus

In his work about the experimental Republic, Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville made the initial observation that the country was too big, diverse both in terms of territory and population, for the democratic exercise and would most probably end with monarchy.

I wonder what the political scientist would make of the royal family of brokers and bankers, and though Russia has elected no czar or despot, I wonder if de Tocqueville would have made the same prediction of the much vaster land in the east. No novice candidate in his or her mid-twenties—someone with no direct and living-memory of the old order—would be called to run, nor would anyone want that sort break with the past, and the opposition presented a paucity of choice, that’s very much a part of the democratic process. Acrobatics and a little braggadocio are essential for straddling those points of departure, schisms that are mostly attributed from the outside of the continuum of Russia. To a large extent, freedom from want has been transmogrified and restructured in an orderly fashion. With a clear mandate and no reasonable chance of losing, why would Putin have risked the side-show of ballot-stuffing and vote-fraud? The cries of foul were not just the sour-grapes of the competition nor administrative irregularities but perhaps something more orchestrated. A monopolar world is always slipping, and perhaps the guardians of democracy, croupiers and ring-masters touting the freedom to want, would rather not see individuals outside of their vetting and credentialing process retain power. Maybe the financial dynasties, the ruling elite, would like to discredit and destabilize the regimes that they cannot buy.

blue laws

Generally, I am only keenly aware of the restrictions against smoking when corralled through security after a trans-Atlantic flight. The labyrinthine shepherding through the airport, hermetically sealed and no chance of escape is maddening. Already the ban on smoking in bars and restaurants is over four years old, and though it is no hardship and actually more pleasant all around—although I have not really just gone out for a drink or stayed for more than one, since the rules went into effect, it does strike me as strange that the whole of Europe could screw its collective nerve and resolve to a comprehensive ban that was not universally favoured. One still sees a lot of smoking in thresholds and out-of-doors during nice weather, but it is hard to dispel images of soupy smoke in cafes and pubs, and even as some businesses contemplate the unthinkable, relaxing the ban, there is a certain stale smell of revision—not that some establishments might be allowed to go back to the way things were before, but rather that smoking indoors was never permitted, except in the movies. Bavaria instituted some of the most stringent restrictions, to later back away from a few that were over-reaching, and there’s yet this funny legal steering to get around the letter of the law, with smoking “clubs” that are not open to the general public and only to dues-paying members, or the elaborate (and rather kosher-sounding) work-around of having a tent erected inside a community centre, since one could smoke in a tent. The powerful tobacco lobby in the Netherlands is making it possible for bars that are tended and staffed only by one person who owns the establishment to permit smoking. This sort of conditional dispensation is even more strange.

vor ort, for you

Though I sincerely hope that it remains otherwise and the rare exception, changes in the landscape of the German jobs' market are being politicized as assaults and affronts on labour, with the same shrill cries of their American cousins. Ensuring a fair and level venue for business is one part of legislation, so is aiding those poisoned or exploited, but governments cannot outlaw poor business practices nor incessantly cushion bad decisions through subsidies and bailouts.

While I do not think any of the current transitions, brought before the public, like the decision to mothball Berlin Templehof airport or to expand the Stuttgart train-station (though many people do not like the outcome and perhaps the tyranny of the majority is out-of-place, deceived or bought), or ultimately transparent through mismanagement and complacency, I am afraid that support for the worker could all around degenerate into some campaign pledge or distinction, meaningless but divisive. Listed from minor to major in the terms of real impact--the latest bundle of changes have not yet been characterized as such but are good candidates for this new dispersing wake: the upcoming rounds of draw-downs of the US troop presence in stations across western Germany, the forced closure of more than half of the outlet of a chain of neighbourhood drug stores and energy reforms. None of these arrangements came to a crisis point without missteps or a narrow field of vision but the changes also will not be without consequences. Not only are German civilian employees facing the prospect of loss of jobs, communities hosting the Americans, from renters to retailers and restaurateurs will be losing a client base. And although this is not the biggest or the first transformation in US troop presence in Germany still the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, the incidence is magnified by the other changes in the jobs’ market and the Bundeswehrs own restructuring, ending mandatory service and the alternative civilian service that went along with conscription. The insolvent chain of drug stores, just before the state of its troubled finances were revealed, introduced as new marketing slogan, "Vor ort, for you," which is a confusion of German and English (vor ort means locally) and I am not sure what the aim was with this appeal.  It was, however, a good way to describe their important role in communities, especially smaller, more isolated ones with an aging population. These stores are everywhere and are vital in small villages, serving as an employer and selling to people that are perhaps not very mobile.

Their ubiquity probably made them a victim of their own success, anchors not only in rural areas but also in urban neighbour-hoods, saturating the market and not as agile as their competitors. Energy reform (called die Wende, like the term used to describe the turning points of Perestroika and the opening up of the former East German borders) was not invoked in the immediate aftermath of the disasters in Fukushima, plans to phase out nuclear power was already in place, but the tragedy in Japan certainly provided the impetus for Germany to wean itself off of the reactors at an accelerated pace. Redirecting the industry, however, will cost jobs--though hopefully create others, and the associated cost, making many resources more dear unexpectedly, is having unforeseen repercussions, like forcing subsidies for other alternative energy sources, like solar-power credits, to be cut. People should not strive to better the ecology merely in exchange for tax breaks, but loosing that incentive has consequences too. Like all my co-workers, I have had some idle angst about job-security, but I do feel confident that this change is only going to open up better opportunities. I stopped my whinging and feeling sorry for myself too, after learning of one co-worker's potential situation--not only does she work for the US army at a post slated to close, but her son and husband work at the nuclear power plant and her daughter works at one of the drug store franchises that will close. Her predicament seems much more dire, and already without polarizing politics, and though she is not being complaisant, counting only on government welfare and forces of advocacy, she is also not panicking.

thesaurus or go ahead, NARC yourselves out

Joel Johnson of Animal New York reports on America's security jabberwocky and its recently disclosed and clarified policy of trawling social media networks (via subcontracted proxy) for possible emergent activity and warnings. Certain, recursive key words invite further scrutiny, as illustrated exhaustively in this word cloud generated by Wordle, but such augury is after wider social trends and sentiment and does not target the individual, unless he or she has been identified as a person-of-interest. I wonder how that works, with the author's anonymity burdened with being uninteresting in the first place.

face the book

Much of the computing press (DE/EN) has looked to this day, when the coordination and communication among the ancillary services of a major internet search engine is allowed free congress and is no longer compart-mentalized among the respective services, with great trepidation, as if, untimely, like a baby at the ball, the internet would vomit out, inopportune and indiscrete, every single embarrassing thing that one has done on the internet and inexorably link it to everything one does henceforth. I think those fears are magnified, latent insecurities over the Pandora's Box of convenience and connectivity that can't be put back in the bottle. Vigilance and education about privacy issues and abuse is very important if we are to prevent the drift of nosiness and full, involuntary disclosure, but, given that a rival social network was discovered to have slandered the major search engine by promoting exaggerated and false stories in the press about its competitors' policies, mostly to deflect from its own unsavoury and prying practices. I wonder if the bigger prize is not merely the users' data but rather sewing distrust.

intercalary or lieblings

I understand the method and the modulo behind leap years, although it seems a rather inelegant solution just to tack on an extra day to poor, over-burdened February.

Devising a calendar that preserves all the human cogs--work-a-day stuff and holidays, and matches to the procession of the seasons is almost without maintenance and human-intervention is pretty impressive in itself. I never noticed before, however, that some major (depending on one’s point-of-view, of course, and I am sure others as well) anniversaries are synchronized with the uncommon year. I wonder if it is just a coincidence that the modern spectacles of the American presidential election, the Summer Olympics or the European soccer championships fall on leap years: was there some administrative impetus with this make-up day? A single day by most estimates does not compensate for all the exposure to campaigning, nor it is enough time maybe for procrastinators to complete projects. I am not sure. That the 29th of February might be a cue associated with such sport makes me think about a story that I can’t fully recall, but it featured an isolated man, who was completely mathematically illiterate, and invented his own counting system. It was not binary or base-ten in a way that anyone else could understand, but he associated items in his environment, specific and ranging in the hundreds, with the cardinal numbers he was ignorant of. Instead of “1,2,3” he used “shellfish, clam, lawnmower, potato, tin-can-buried-on-the-beach.” I guess some societies name every day of the year, with a specificity greater than just a coordinate in time. I wonder what canting history might apply to today.

meet and seat or strangers on a train

A European airline has a new pilot program for its passengers, which invites solitary fliers to pick their seatmates based on their social- and business-networking profiles for long-haul flights.

Apparently there have been certain cliques of frequent-fliers that have tried something similar in the past, and I suppose the idea behind it is to deflect an unwelcome chatty companion or colicky baby without having to be rude, or perhaps pair people with similar interests and backgrounds, but I really don't know what to make of this voluntary screening and choice. There is certainly more to learn about a stranger that is not part of his on-line presence, and maybe some back-story would make transoceanic conversation quicker to come about, but it takes down some of the better and more developed social barriers when it seems one could interact with their profile on the video screen of the seatback in front, rather than get to know, politely ignore, or help the person right next to him or her. Fate and chance can bring one books, movies and bargains, as well, but the skills that it takes to meet people make the seemingly random more meaningful. It's as if the more traditional ways of human-interface (without some digital overlay, a gel for spotlight) are becoming too novel in their straightforwardness, but I am sure that communication and the adventure of widening one's social-circle will outlast gimmicks and layered shyness.

long winter’s nap

BBC's news magazine is drawing on a body of evidence, anecdotal, historic and scientific, which strongly suggests that conventional wisdom regarding sleep may be a very modern contrivance and something unnatural and possibly something that we are not ideally suited for. Rather than sequestering oneself for a solid, uninterrupted and sacrosanct period of eight hours, which does seem like an awfully lofty and impractical demand, mankind through most of its history had distinct periods of sleeping and waking during the night, a segmented sleep.

It, I imagine, is difficult to research what was considered standard practice and common-knowledge, but sociologists have found all sorts of references in literature, liturgy and medical guides that before the inversions of the industrial revolution, which ironically gave people more to do nocturnally but also put a premium on peoples' time. Personally, I usually make do with less than this attested eight hours of sleep, and as a rule, I would find myself waking at two or three o’clock. Generally, I was frozen in place, just longing to go back to sleep. Surely this nighttime brush with panic was not a healthy impression and would probably carry over into the daytime with more serious repercussions than being simply tired. I figured it did not matter much if I had had a restless sleep, since I was surely not alone with this touch of insomnia, and it seems more of a disservice to one’s well-being to worry over sleeplessness. I am not sure what agents of the Sandman made segmented sleep unfashionable and even feared, but I should not, I guess, be content with staring in the darkness, stock-still, if I wake in the night. After all, that second sleep is always more refreshing and rewarding than the first.