sammelw(m)ut

The European Union High Court ruled yesterday that individual and infra-state mandates for telecommunication companies to retain customer data, in anticipation of—for the eventuality of surrendering that intelligence to authorities to combat the spectre of terrorism or organised crime are illegal.  The court opined that such broad directives, previously installed after the mass-transit bombings in London and Madrid and challenged by freedom groups in Austria and Ireland, infringed disproportionately on individuals’ right to privacy and ownership, integrity of their personal information and kept the populace under the same menacing aegis of dragnet surveillance that needs no competition or shadow.
Acknowledging that such omnipresence and onus has no place within the framework of European law (the public is better protected and served in perception and reality by professional and targeted investigations and not this theatre of pre-crime) is certainly a positive development, raking in some of the expansive and virtually unchecked inkpads of human activity—however, not only governments are possessed with a collecting mania (Sammelwut).  Even if the justices of the High Court are willing to diminish the jurisdiction of the state in such matters and demand that more precise language be in place to govern the retention and release of records, the demographics of marketers and buccaneers are divergently becoming something more and more specific and impugning.  Private individuals may be at the mercy of government agencies when it comes to the disposition of their data—however, someone is ultimately accountable; with industry, on the other hand, though profits and potential customers (or victims) drive research and stockpiling, the information that business has on people—both amalgamated and detailed, is given to those businesses voluntarily.  The authorities may have no claims of custody over such information, and no longer in a position to petition the public, progress may be forthcoming, but seem better custodians than business—retailers and providers alike, which politicians are reluctant to reign in.   In response, governments that tailored individual guidelines for telecommunications companies may want to also shirk their follow-on responsibilities to precisely define what warrants scrutiny and archiving.

spanish armada or tonkin ghosts

The story of America’s other non-contiguous state is also a fascinating one and how it came to be is impacted not just by time and tide (and volcanic eruptions) or even just simple avarice (as I assumed).  Neither was Manifest Destiny a universally accepted doctrine of the expanding Republic.  It is true that the Kingdom of Hawai’i was ultimately annexed by the United States due in part by agitators who owned plantations and backed supporters in the overthrow of the royal family.  The seated US government, however, under the leadership of anti-imperialists, was exonerated of any interference, both in unseating the monarchy or encouraging the new democracy (a very short-lived republic) to make the transition to accession as an American territory.   The timing of events during the late 1800s and culminating in 1903 were the ripples broadcast of a larger stratagem for America to assert its strength as a world power.  The interest and acquisition of the Pacific island group began with the Spanish-American War, a forgotten and long-distant conflict itself but responsible for many of these geological artefacts and discontinuities.  Prior to the US Civil War, successive regimes in the US were interested in obtaining Cuba, a colony of Spain, for its farmlands and to enslave its native population—rather than importing slaves from Africa.  Spain refused to sell to America at any price and America’s own intervening civil war put a halt to ambitions of empire for several years.

 After the Civil War ended, however, the idea for conquest was renewed, enervated in part by nascent revolts in Cuba towards Spanish rule, which had been going on for years.  America saw the chance to feed the unrest, aided by the yellow-journalism, sensational and negative press by reporters Pulitzer and Hearst (whose names now seem to epitomise just the opposite quality in reporting).  The mysterious sinking of an American battleship in Havana harbour pushed the American president, William McKinley, reluctant for war and with no interest in colony building until and unless America could solve her existing domestic problems, into all-out war with Spain.  Perhaps part of the American public’s appetite for war was paradoxically just emerging itself from a horrendous and prolonged conflict and wanted to unite in one cause—though not a very just or honourable one, and perhaps a cause also picked by munitions-manufacturers.  The theatre quickly spread from the Caribbean to Spain’s colonies in the Pacific, and after ten weeks, the crippled Spanish navy demanded peace be brokered.  The Treaty of Paris awarded the US all Spanish colonies outside those in Africa—sort of a pyric victory, though, as the engagement brought waves of epidemic illnesses back to the US and introduced the country to the concept of crusading, which it tried very hard to avoid and has never been able to shake since.  Independence was eventually given to Cuba (with the lease in perpetuity of fort in Guantánamo Bay), Panama and the Philippines (all had to fight for it and were the subjects of other wars) but much of the rest of America’s overseas holdings came as a result of this little war: Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands and Guam are among the islands that came into US control—American Samoa sort of got caught up in the wake.  Though Spain was no longer a threat to the US and the Philippines wanted to be dependent of the US and not vassal to some other foreign power, the US sought to incorporate Hawai’i for strategic reasons, as the island was approximately midway between mainland America and its most remote holdings.

flik-flak oder carte blanche

Apparently tinkerers at the Swiss Swatch factory rebuffed the overtures of US security personnel recently, when they refused to allow investigators access to their workshop.
The officials wanted to ensure that no explosives could be smuggled in the watch casings or that they could not be weaponised as an instrument for assassination, delivering poison.  Undoubtedly the company had nothing to hide but innocence certainly does not oblige one to cave to the whims of bullies. The factory director flatly refused, raising some ire and a threatening gesture, the anti-terror expert commenting that it might become more difficult to export this product to America.

boob-tube or tl;dr

Literacy, practical and functional, comes in all forms and is an adherent to all things considered skills and human maneuvers; however, it is something hewn and honed and not some hard-wired instinct.  Just as the human body needs to temper its appetites against the abundant temptations of the modern diet and lifestyle, with greater or lesser degrees of success, because survival and perpetuation is neither subject to the etiquette of restraint nor aestheticism that goes against the grain, the ability to quickly skim and assess information without mediation seems certainly much more useful than the ability to comprehend the corpus of great literature.

It is something very tragic and regrettable to ponder the awfulness and base-depravity that this article from the Washington Post portends: that a reversion to the reptilian-brain, spider-senses is coming because of a general shift in literacy, looking for what's interlaced, brief and flashy—the stuff of marketing and advertising to catch the eye and offer a non-committal engagement that requires little investment in terms of cognition.  Often I find myself distracted and without the endurance needed to read something not only to its conclusion but to also build and reflect upon it and find that sort of fatigue to be very disheartening and not something that should be subsumed by shored up distractions.  Nimbler processes, ways to impart a message, ought not be dismissed as illiterate or without nuance, since communication is about signals, symbols and short-hand, but the marksmanship of scrolling and trawling is not really on par with true comprehension or thoughtfulness.  If the notion of being literate or competent is just an artifice, a function of the Parnassus, the towering heap of books that we’ve amassed, I wonder if there is the possibility that reading and understanding is conducive in two different gears—the idea of fostering bi-literacy as the article also explores by following one reformed, restored reader.

frühschoppen

Generally there is more resistance and popular momentum to do away with the seasonal time changes in the Autumn—whereas the tilt-shift towards longer days in the Spring is usually welcomed with relief, but the deputy minister president of Bavaria, Ilse Aigner, pledges to start a campaign to keep universal time year-around.
The impetus came in part due to her superior, Horst Seehofer, missing the regular Sunday morning conference call with the Chancellor—having overslept and not adjusted his alarm clock.  I suspect the later story is a promotion for championing doing away with the relic of switching time, and I also suspect that there won’t be a terrible lot of traction, since the change would probably have to pass muster in Brussels first.  This administrative embargo is unlikely to be overcome by the feeble arguments of the counter-clockwise, equipped mostly with ninnyish but true observations like saying that we’ll have less to look forward to next March or contrarily, how on earth will we remember to check smoke-detectors and fire-extinguishers without a bi-annual cue.  One maladjusted day aside, it hardly seems the time to be looking towards the Equinox, but what do you think?

salient factor

A little while ago, we had the chance to visit the spa town with ancient roots known as Bad Salzungen on the Werra river and not far from Wartburg. The settlement, which was founded originally over two millennia hence by Celtic tribes grew around a salty marsh, which contained the prized substance in high enough concentrations to yield commercial amounts through simple evaporation in shallow pools, salterns and saltpans, which at the time of its discover were mostly relegated to far off lands, like the coastal estuaries of Bordeaux or the northern reaches of Germany, die Salzmannstraße was a trade route from here to Erfurt and Halle (named not for a hall but rather the Latin term for salt) and on a wider scale connected Frankfurt am Main with Leipzig and beyond.
Throughout medieval times, this proved a huge boon to local royalty and led to the building of many structures and offices (also halophiles) who sought to tax the exchange, but there was not quite a bust once salt became a less valuable commodity and more of a condiment to be given away freely. In the modern era, the place quickly reinvented itself as a wellness destination with a lavish resort and galleries of graduation lanes (degrees of salinity in the air, Gradierwerke, where one can stroll and breath it in) whose inland theatres look like they're based on locales on the sea.

marathon or hurtigurti

Kottke has a brilliant article, including links to the video broadcasts in their unedited entirety, of the Norwegian revival of the phenomena of slow-television—like the advent of the station-managers to broadcast a burning Yule Log over the holidays so staff did not need to work on Christmas or interstitial filler of city scenes accompanying temperatures and weather forecasts from around the world.
Norwegian productions have included a hearty fire in the hearth of course, hours of salmon swimming upstream, and most famously an epic and majestic journey, lasting some five and a half days in full, of a cruise through the fjords. The live broadcast was wildly popular and was not only viewed at least for some length by more than half the population of Norway, but many residents also went out to greet and even follow the ship as it passed to be part of the show. What do you think it means that such continuous shots receive such high ratings? What patient activity, from start to finish, would you recommend for the slow-tv treatment?

aerial archaeology

The infinitely engrossing Colossal shares an amazing gallery of photographs that require a trained eye to appreciate, and not just the vantage and altitude of a Cessna, which the artist Klaus Leidorf pilots over diverse landscapes of Germany. Looking down, and not just as an eye in the sky, one begins to appreciate how humans have fashioned and transformed the environment, often without realising how large these tracts are, for their use. Though the smallest details and sharp focus ought to be receding, its this macroscopic attention are in the foreground and really seem to lend perspective and other-worldliness to the pictures.