Wednesday 13 January 2010

Hoodoo




















The people of Haiti are in trouble.  Please send help if you can.  Artze ohne Grenze.

Tuesday 12 January 2010

baden baden

On these cold winter weekends, nothing could be finer than an afternoon spent at the spas.  Bad Kissingen, Bad Neustadt, Bad Bocklet, Bad Karma.  For the brave or the fool-hardy, some even have a chute from the inside to the outside pool, thick with a bank of lazy steam tampt down by the cold, cold air.  From the envelope of warmth, the fragile currents above the waters look deceptively inviting.

Monday 11 January 2010

nomenclature


The wintery storm was not a total bust, as we await early dismissal, but the Germans seem to have developed a sort of naming-envy, American-style.  The weather men have called this depression Daisy, as one would name hurricanes or cyclones.  H says they used to just call it winter.  I am afraid they might take it to a further extreme and pop the suffix -gate on it, like the US has done with every political scandal or hissy-fit since Watergate.  Monica-gate, Finance-gate, Climate-gate.  Giving something a name has become more than just short-hand for the weather system that made a mess of the roads during a certain time, it gives it a personality like El Nino or La Nina, which one does not hear so much about these days--possibly non-compliant with global warming.

Friday 8 January 2010

pnw'd


The creation of the US Department of Homeland Security and other various agencies of angst have succeeded in deputizing an army of untrained goons with a dangerous sense of authority.  Such organizations too have dismal track records when it comes to implementing new technologies that mean to keep us safe.  I am sick to death of seeing pervy and gross pictures of people in x-ray vision.  The unlucky models for the body-scanners all look like that creature from Pan's Labyrinth.  I wonder what fly-by-night contractor threw these together and stand to make a tidy profit.  It is like the electronic voting machines that supposedly make democracy better or taking away our USB drives at work and giving us something called "data armour" that seizes up at random and requires eight minutes to open an email--or the $2 500 toliet seats that the Pentagon is wont to purchase.  What is worse is that some believe that such flashy contraptions are more than show and could actually prevent an attack.  Nothing's gained, expect maybe a false sense of safety, and we'll never get back are thumb-drives, cigarette lights, paper chads, potable water.

Thursday 7 January 2010

these kids today with their y2k...


The millenial bug after dire predictions a decade ago has reared itself again in some 30 million automatic teller machines, bank cards and point-of-sales registers all across Germany, leaving vacation-goers without access to cash and causing undue embarassment and worry in checkout lines.  A mistake in programming causes an error when the card or device processes the 2010 date.  YYMMDD--100101, DDMMYY--010110.  Computers don't make mistakes; people do.  I wonder if all the focus and patchwork that went into preventing the crash in the year 2000 contributed to this.  Technicians are being deployed to fix the problem and replacement ATM cards being issued, but it makes me wonder what else might not be Y2KX compliant--I don't think I've turned on TomTom since New Years, and who can say what other surprises might be in store when one finally gets around to one project or another after the holidays.

Wednesday 6 January 2010

i'm a little flake-y


So far this season there have not been any snow days yet.  Snow days are always more objective that calling it in because one is sick, although there is more potential for getting myself in trouble on snow days, when one is excused on account of the weather and not for feeling generally lousy, which is a subjective matter.  Today is Ephiphany, Drei Koenigs Tag, and I wish I felt better to enjoy the day off with H but I suppose that had I felt better, I would have gone to work.  I still get a little stir-crazy when confined to bed, and I guess that same potential for mischief is there, as on snow days.  I have been monitoring the weather, expectant of the front that has got the rest of the northern hemisphere in its grips--surely Mother Nature's retribution for Nopenhagen and is turning the UK into a panic-state and spoiled my boss's Florida vacation, to roll in any time now.

Monday 4 January 2010

finery






This holiday season has been very dear to me with good friends and family, hectic but in a fun way and with time for reflection and gratitude.  Plus, I got a lot of really fine gifts and I hope that I was able to give in kind.  I really liked everything that I got--so often Christmases, even for all the fretful planning and talk of meaning, still sometimes are not as memorable.  Regular readers will understand why I was so jazzed to get this bath/door mat, and the virtually safe skateboard is really cool and the Bailey's and the great horned-lamp and the art deco milk pitcher, etc., which I should showcase later.  I received in the post a New Year's greeting card from my online graduate school, which was a nice greeting--though I very much enjoyed having the Winter Break from the Kant Generator.  Not to spoil the sentiment, since it is a nice card, but I noticed that in the side text that expresses "peace" in the languages of the world easily rendered in Western alphabet, there was a wish for "eace-pay."  Now I have to wonder about the academic standards of an institution of higher learning that uses pig-Latin.  I suspected that Fandriampahalemana was Malagasy but I had to make sure it was in fact a real word.

Saturday 2 January 2010

MMX

Remember how feisty John McLaughlin would get with his guests, especially for the predictions segments?  "Elinor Gee-I-think-You're-Swelinor Cliff, political forecast for next year?" "..."  "Wrong!"  Let's see how well my prognostication fares.
The Virus who Cried Wolf and Related Matters:

Individuals and governments, weary of pandemic projections, will not take kindly to the latest walrus and meerkat strains, but they will still prove profitable and grist for the blogging mill.  Airport security, just aching to be proven right, that one should err always on the side of outrageous caution, will institute even more draconian measures that will extend to domestic flights and public transportation until we are all nude and baggage-less.  This will create a new sort of locker-culture and backpack cult. 
Just when amateurs felt it was safe to loiter in the stock-markets, the world wide economy will take another culling swipe, though this time, fuel and commodity costs will be artifically buoyed up.  Some markets will implode because there's no cheapness in manufacturing to offset unemployment and other financial strains.  This second blow may lead to calls for cesession and repartitioning and reorganization of tax revenues in America.
Astronomers and researchers will be free to provide hard evidence of extra-terrestial life.  Interestingly enough, the discovery will be made and PR handled through the Specola Vaticana (the pope's observatory in Castle Gandolfo).  The resulting shift in people's priorities will almost be overwhelming--though people are very resilient when it comes to pursuing petty hang-ups.
Politically, the past decade was hardly predictable, at least from an American point-of-view, but I think those manouevers, even a resulting Republican renaissance, will appear less and less relevant, on the global and universal scale, as India begins to determine world policy.
Developments in the scientific arena, especially with the infusion of alien technology, will present some risky, ethically challenges, as it always does, but humanity's gentle introduction and prep-work through sci-fi and escapism turns out to serve us well.