ancient chinese secret, huh?

This is still the year of the Tiger, and I wonder if some of what's happening around the world would have been predicted according to the trends expected in the lunar year.  Hindsight is delightfully useful in these sorts of things.  Soothsayers forewarned that it would be turbent for global economies and the Tiger is the steward of things chthonic, elemental and buried.  The same soothsayers urged investment in gold and other metals, which was not really going out on a limb with that one.

I wonder, however, given that there's all this news that lingers--and it seems no one has the tolerance or the attention span for protracted, drawn-out hearings or middling suspense any more, if Tiger can be blamed for that too.  The network news cycle does not even have the stamina for economic collapse day in and day out and soon turns its gaze on other things--but it seems like the disruptions of air traffic from the volcano in Iceland, a series of earthquakes, and now the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are not flagging. 

Of course, few stories end really once their notoriety runs out, and most people tend to forget about the recovery process, missed opportunities for revenue-generating, or environmental impact right away, despite hearteninged attempts to the contrary.  I wonder what else the year of the Tiger has in store, Golems that awake and slither from the underground.  Maybe the big lesson of the times, is not to be complacent about one's surroundings

bookface

Still winded from its mad-dash to embrace the so-called "Web 2.0," the US military is starting to aggressively push its networking and collaborative working capabilities in the workplace.  Although this change of attitude may seem like a big departure from the internet-breaking, ham-fisted security software and accountability systems or breaking of thumb(-drives) that the government usually adopts right away, this--I think--only represents more business as usual.

Reality Sandwich is running a great article about how the interwebs, especially with the support, tacit or otherwise, of the defense-industrial complex, is the new battle field for the struggle of hearts and minds.  The army, for instance, is promoting professional profiles, linked to private profiles, in order to work efficiently on team projects, as a successor strategy to SharePoint.  Having a more dynamic, less threatening interface will encourage soldiers and civilian workers to use it, and deliver tabs on all in a tidy package.  Radicals and hate-groups are tolerated there based on the same principle.  I made a profile months ago but finding it too awkward to pare down, abandoned it, and now I feel especially unwilling to return since droves in Germany have left the site over privacy concerns.
We call it "bookface" at work because it sounds like clever code, especially when it was Verboten in the office, but now that it is here, fully entrenched, no one seems that interested or willing and trusting enough to commit any work to it.  I am sure it could be used to rate your efficiency, compliance, time dottering about on government time, and I especially would not entrust any thing sensitive or classified to the timeless annals of bookface.

how do you keep a wave upon the sand? oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria?

As efforts to staunch the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico have been met with a series of failures, and oily water is lapping at Florida and Alabama beaches and making a toxic brew of the marsh lands, I think more and more conspiracy theories are likely to be concocted: US President Obama allowing this disaster to percolate according to the wishes of an extreme environmental protection cabal and their agenda to place RDIF (radar data interchange format, sounds scarier than the abbreviation) tags on American trash bins to make certain that the Jones are sorting and recycling and not producing more than their allotment of waste, control movement, enforce rationing and basically curtail all Autobot freedom.  I think such repair to conspiracy, like any other case, suggests that the public is beginning to realize what a horrible, long-term catastrophe and embarrassment that this will turn into: consider what will happen as the hurricane season picks up pace and slathers neighborhoods with oil.  Aside from making the Everglades and the swamps sick unto death, it will destroy what little tourist, industrial and homesteader virtue the region has left.  Such a black typhoon will knock the wind out of any economic recovery, cutting a broad swath through the real estate market.  Residents will panic as property becomes unsellable and those that choose to stay behind will be left squatters in an abandoned oil slick.

quilting bee

Pursuing my determined if not belated and unending quest to better my German language skills, I have come across a good internet resource called Linguee that uses the hive-mind of the web and far outstrips most other translator services.  Using the principle that rarely a totally unique query is put forward, it finds translations on a word or a phrase based on tranlated and bilingual texts it scans from a patchwork of all sources, travel sites, Wikipedia in other languages, governmental and scientific journals.  It deconstructs verb forms and tenses and even uses the word or phrase in several example sentences and puts legalese and technical jargon in context and is a good back-translator to check if one's own interpretation makes grammatical sense.

a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse

Yesterday, my parents gave us a volume of Aubrey Beardsley's collected illustrations, which when I was younger and ostensibly more prudish was rather an embarrassing thing to have around the house.  I knew the artist's short career found him as a contemporary of Oscar Wilde and James Whistler of Whistler's Mother and that he did erotic drawings, however, I did not know the context, especially in his later revivals.  In his song, You're in my Heart (You're in my Soul), Rod Stewart makes a sweet reference to the artist and his rediscovered popularity of the late sixties.  I, however, always thought the lyrics were critical of her fashion sense for paisley prints.  It always nice to be disabused of misheard words to songs, epecially when I realize that I have been humming nonsense for all these years.

squawk box

We don't spend much time watching television, but every once and a while, we're engrossed by a documentary or history program that really piques my interest.  I intend to research the matter later on, like a daisy-chain of Wikipedia articles, topics and stubs, though I usually don't remember until much later or have managed to forget any helpful cues.  Although I am thinking that a writing instrument and something to write on would work just as well (as is usually the case when sloath and laziness and inertia are the mothers of invention), I think it would be nifty if remote controls came equipped with a button, "Remind," that would just dispatch an email with the bare details of the show one is watching, to remember what it was and to remember that one wanted to look into maybe the director's other works, the cast, the location, the symbolism or just more on the subject.

backwards compatible

Our new horseless carriage is really a great hobby.  Today H undertook the challenge of installing a snazzy new car stereo, complete with windscreen antenna, IPod dock, CD and SD card slot.  The original radio was not included, which was probably a good thing since we'd have settled for that one, but negotiating the hydra tangle of coloured cables and wires, H made it work.  The job looked intimidating and I imagine that only members of the bomb-squad (or the mod-squad) would have the patience or endurance to even try replacing a radio without professional help.  A few weeks ago, I changed the battery (which was not meant to be replaced outside of the factory) and felt SWAT-like pressure in doing so.  I am just enamoured with this old car, its unelaborated dash board with three essential dials, and accessible, no-nonsense innards.  I am sure\that we can keep it running and fancy for a very long time.