the other shoe or mit schmähungen

Though obscured by wiry, frantic reports of a pandering and vacuous variety of that in no certain terms a terror-plot, kicking it Bombay style, may happen some where in Europe or America, or not--it sounds as if the Grand Poobahs at the Department of Homeland Security have been honing their vagaries by reading their Nostradamus, the Associate Press, via the Huffington Post, had an important dispatch.  A special court has been invoked in order to seek to prosecute Iceland's ex-prime minister for dereliction of duty when it came to minding the country's treasure.  The former government certainly had a role in the financial collapse and resulting ripples and though it could be agreed that the people's greed was on par with any duping or unscrupulous conduct and had their come-uppance by being summarily voted out, or that the charges will never stick or make up for squandered funds.  It is important, however, symbolically that a responsible individual does not escape punishment or is even rewarded for bad behaviour, because the perception and reality is that current and former leaders are immune from justice and summonses, whether from a kook wanting to sue the Queen or legitimately from the International War Crimes Tribunal, are toothless and too timid.  It is too bad the breaking news palette was too full to follow these develops--besides, the old terror bug-a-boo would be overcome, in Europe at least, by all the threats of transportation strikes.

ahoj-hoj

My parents are treating their house guests with a road trip to the Czech Republic with a posh stay in Prague. They took off this morning, and in a pretty nifty coincidence, it is the country's national holiday, St. Wenceslaus Day. I am excited for their travels and hope they're having a lot of fun, and it's definitely time for us too to re-visit that area.

doubleplusungood

Salon contributor Glenn Greenwald has a very important analysis of the US government's petition for internet omnipresence, drawing dangerous and uncomfortable parallels to totalitarian regimes in the Mid-East and China. Of course, this has repercussions that mean spillage far beyond US borders and for US citizens of interest. Internet utilities, the load-bearing beams of the architecture, like bookFace and voice-over-IP services, which have been conveniently embraced by the American government and military to enhance recursive meetings about meetings, will put the activities and opinions of people world-wide squarely in the hands of American benevolence. If one is not careful, nothing will be private or temporary any longer with archives made enduring, and neither will the flavor of the month, popularity be without a heavy yoke.

bartleby the scrivener

I wonder if the State of Texas has levied a cease-and-desist order against the Republic of Chile for flag besmirchment. It is surely causing public confusion, what with all the attention to those trapped miners and that girl who fell down a well near Odessa, Texas back in the eighties that launched this breed of car-chase, tragically unfolding journalism. Maybe like the virtual office assistants or automated, frequently-asked-question regurgitators, there should be a pop-up solicitor, like the Great Gazoo, that gives warning that an image may be subject to copyright,

this video is no longer available in your country due to an agreement with some big recording label, litigation is in process or ownership is pending, or whether one's latest offering stands up to the rigours of ethical business practices. Maybe by making legal advice, whether asked for or not, into a hovering, cartoon attorney would make people less ligitious overall, since it would become something ignored or batted away like aggressive advertisements or End-User License Agreements (EULA).

fundgrube oder jurassic auto park

Because of the lapse in the rainy weather, H and I venture out and took a long drive to a truck-stop fleamarket.  We found a heavy, old bronze plaque of a fish.  Right away, it made me think of the archaeopteryx or that fish everyone thought was extinct since millions of years until one turned up in a fishing net.

This bronze is an impression of a rather famous fossil, too, however, a kind of catfish that existed during the jurassic era.  Afterwards, we toured the nearby town of Werneck, known for its baroque castle. 

The sprawling complex hosts a hospital and psychiatric clinic, and I had always guessed that grounds were off limits to the casual visitor, but this was not the case.  This imposing and functional monument is another homage in the area to Balthasar Neumann whose grand embellishments and engineering innovations defined baroque architecture are found in building elements throughout Franconia.

viral

A relatively novel and sophisticated, complex enough to suggest the monetary backing and support of a state-financier, computer virus some suggest (auch auf deutsch) may be the first volley of a new cyber war. While I believe that this may be local retribution for the death sentence of an Iranian blogger in absentia whose punishment may be transferred to his father, because the bulk of infections have been visited on industrial control systems, vulnerable to infiltration, in Iran, many think it may be a collaborative effort between the Mossad of Israel and the United States to either gather intelligence or outright sabotage Iranian nuclear facilities. This is a dangerous move, especially since it could propagate out of control and invite reprisals.

Rather than dampen Iran’s efforts--maybe experimenting in this sandbox is just a distraction for something else, however, I believe a bigger target of opportunity for these or any nation, because of the nature of the Stuxnet virus which can obscure the safety parameters of an industry system and fool operators into thinking that the system is running normally when in reality its overheated or running on empty, would be the antique and clunky relays of the New York stock exchange to clandestinely inflate trading and sustain confidence or else plunge it into panicked selling. World stock markets are probably the single most influential and easily accessible industrial control systems out there and much of the swings in trading are adjudicated by the reflexes of machines.

wayback machine: einheit und ostalgia

The reunification process of East- and West-Germany happened in several phases and was highly formalized, from the Mauerfall, treaties, to economic desegregation to the ultimate political and sovereign reunion, whose twentieth anniversary is commemorated on next Sunday, 3. October. Der Spiegel (auch auf englisch) has aggregated perspectives on this theme and offers personal memories and reminiscence. From the point-of-view from all these years forward, it has been fascinating to watch the stampede of documentaries touching on all aspects and sharing H's personal experiences and memories of the way things were and the transition.

Living near the former border and cold-war frontier, we have explored the monuments to the period in depth and visit storied sites in the east quite often, whose part in the DDR are not to be discounted and dismissed but still do barely seem an instance in the far-reaching histories of these places. Germany and Europe is a continual reinvention and now a peaceable conglomerate, but I do wonder what measure of the present condition will be recalled and honored twenty years on with the luxury and comfort of change and reform.

white fright

Huffington Post contributor, John Ridley, offered a funny, provocative piece the other day, "The unbearable whiteness of anti-intellectualism."  Despite the economic down-turn, the honey-pot for exploiting the fears of white people is bottomless and apparently no limits either to the credibility of distractions.  Stoking such irrational fears sells fall-out shelters, pharmaceuticals and newspapers, as well as financing wars and political campaigns.  The spate of shock-and-awe US headlines are endless: political indiscretions of a teen-age witch, mad-hatter's tea party, chimera influenza, rubbish-bins that snitch if one does not recycle, and don't forget the bed-bugs, roving terror threats and vague warnings never to be off-guard.   I am sure it is not a phenomena peculiar to Americans but I do believe that they have elevated the art form. 

Meanwhile, more pressing, tangible and less phobic concerns are ignored, like the American government trying to hide the true scope of its indebtedness like a guest on a day-time talk show that's appealing to this same fear base, or sacrificing one's privacy in the name of someone else's estimation of security, and abusing the natural environment.  Scare-mongering is not a helpful tactic, and rather a race to the bottom that appeals to and enhances those latent feelings of panic that exacerbates small differences.