eclectic kool-aid acid test or unsolicited financial advice for the United and European Union of the Germans

I think it is interesting how the world's stock markets are given loaded animal symbolism but the verbs and adjectives that usually describe their movements, even on more upbeat days, reduce them to small and timid dogs shivering in the shadows. All this attribution feeds, also, the idea that the markets are something independent and other, like the roulette wheel estranged from the casino. As much as I would like to steer underwriters away from the DAX, Hang-Seng, FTSE and support real commodities whose value is measured more than just by change, like the evanescence rectangles of Newton's Calculus, it is a good thing for Merkel to lead the charge against blatant short-selling but one should not throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.

The European economy is fundamentally strong, reinforced by prognosticators who wish to diminish the importance of the Eurozone in the overall hopes for economic recovery or sustainability, but states should not behave jump to curtail the social cushions that make European society what it is. Germany, for instance, could, rather than threatening to raise the retirement age or do away with Kindergeld, pattern a successful campaign from the French, where all workers had a two- or three-year holiday for certain holidays, giving up Whit-Monday as non-paid work day to replenish the coffers of public-funds. Putting people on a voluntary furlough can save a lot of money. Tuition for higher education could be increased, but just by a notch, and experimentally, to see what kind of profits are reaped. There German system of wire-transfers is very sophisticated and makes a lot of sense, but if there were just a slight increase to the tempo of remittances--perhaps disbursing dividends more than once a year, would be a boost to a marketplace that seems to float a lot of payments on trust and energia. The EU may not have had the requisite agility to deflect this first glancing blow, but EU members do not face the peril of internal solvencies. There's no quantitative easing, by definition, for countries using the euro, which is a dangerous and deceptive temptation where inflation and deflation are controlled by printing more money. Making the environment impoverished, warring Koreas, peak oil, or Big Brother are much bigger threats to livelihood, and the dollar and the pound should not be pull along the euro in the wake of tinkering with the monetary supplies.

brave new world (with so many goodly creatures)

It looks like claims regarding the creation of a fully synthetic single-celled organism were a bit exaggerated--such lines of genetic information had been transfigured in this way before. That watermarks (think Getty Images) of this life-form's creators were inserted in the DNA, whereas other DNA considered to be there just along for the ride was culled out by the laboratory. I would have thought that that was Google's latest non-malevolent project--tags and trending for heredity. It's not nice to pwn Mother Nature. I wonder if mankind is coming to a sort of technological rift, that's made a common fate for advancing societies, when man will choose to pursue better living through such Frankenstein methods, tinkering with nature, rather than pursuing research in the other scientific disciplines, like physics. Though I am happy for it, it is a wonder to me that physics in the form of CERN or other big projects garners any support or interest. Physics, at least thus far, does not seem to have much of a profit-motive. Now the space shuttle has been replaced by a robotic spy space plane, and there is bio-engineered food crops, botox injections, microbes to sop up oil spills, and stem cells that can be coaxed and differentiated into bone marrow, cartilage or a fully formed family-friendly franchise restaurant. What opportunities does progress lose out on by investing in ones sort of alchemy rather than the other?

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz

Learning German for me still is presenting a few barriers--there is a lot of sophistication and nuance and double meanings all spun out of a language that employees, for the majority of words at least, only a combination of about twelve prefixes and suffixes: um, an, so, zu, aus, auf, ein, ung, ei, ug.  Though quite the opposite is true, I always thought that German sounded impercise when it came to technical and scientific words or as if one had forgotten the right word: instead of hydrogen, one says, um, you know--das Wasserstoff.  Stoff, I particularly like--as in Kunststoff, art stuff, which is something artifical, a plastic table as opposed to a table made of Massivholz.  A colleague gave me a wonderful little book that is filled with these examples.  I'm a bit proud of myself when I know what an amalgam, a junior jumble really means, aside from the literal dissection--English has a lot of examples too, and it never occurred to me before that Beispiellos could be a near-game-ticket as well as something incomparable.

save ferris!

There's a whole medley of headlines.  I suppose it is like part of the wages of taking vacation is finding things in disarray at the office and also, not watching the news, leaves one without the daily, hourly contact-high.  North and South Korea seem to be up-pinning the spectre of war and warlike tensions; star-gazers have found what may account for normal matter's predomenance and stability in the universe; Bangkok is still smouldering; oil is lapping on-shore in the US Gulf coast; priceless paintings were heisted from a Parisian museum; a laborartory in the UK has created the first artificial cell, clept Synthia--I think it is quite responsible journalism on the part of the Daily Mail that it rushes to address ethical issues and alerts the public to immediate and paralell cinematic perils.  These reporters remind me, admirably, of that intelligence agency that Robert Redford worked for in 3 Days of the Condor--augering the future and possible counter-espionage tactics from the plots of pulp fiction.  There is enough else going on without mentioning the European financial crisis.  Other augerers might disagree, but I think that the euro will make a quick recovery and these next few days will be a definitive portent that the EU and the euro are more than just the passing fancy and plaything of aristocracy and toy-kingdoms.  The euro does not succede only on the failure of the US market, but I think it is especially good-timing that this drama and trial happen on the lead up to long, holiday weekend and that European markets will be mostly closed on Monday while the rest of the world panics.