A politician from Germany’s Green Party, whose success in recent state-elections certainly has more to do with such long-standing insults as described and corporate steam-rolling autocracy rather than reactionary fears over atomic energy from just yesterday, presents a marvelous and disturbing expose (auf Englisch) on the dastardly ways that big business has at its disposal for keeping tabs on anyone, and introduces it with the prescient words of Kraftwerk’s Computerwelt.
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
betrรผgerisch or we are unanimous, we are legion
catagories: ๐ถ, ๐ฅธ, networking and blogging
Monday, 28 March 2011
meritocracy or redirected from micro-publishing
Though the temptation was not so easily accessible back in my college days, no one has ever been able to explain to me the academic prejudice against Wikipedia, albeit relaxed somewhat recently. Specialists always have hegemony in their respective domains, and it is as if it were fear for an oligarchy of nerds or fans (there must be a Greco-phone word for government by freaks and geeks)—however benevolent or enlightened—or a turning-away from knowledgeable and vetted sources.

The umbrella-topic structure of Wikipedia articles, strung along in a daisy-chain for reference,

Sunday, 27 March 2011
democritus or up-and-atom
Watching the developments and set-backs in containing the fall-out from the nuclear reactors in Japan, I remembered an article from a thoughtful website turned book from 2006, “This is not a Place of Honor,” about a campaign for the long now, to ensure that future generations ten-thousand years and more from today would know to avoid the nuclear waste dumps of the present—like the site that was being proposed at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Considering human curiosity and the capacity to poke around in dangerous places, how could caretakers of the present communicate risk when all contemporary symbols and speech may fail?
Saturday, 26 March 2011
licht aus
Tonight, anywhere and everywhere, at 20:30 (8:30 p.m.) local time is Earth Hour (EN/DE). Switching what off one can for the hour, and then maybe considering what can stay off before turning it back on, shows support and solidarity for climate-change awareness and conservation. This is another one of those annual observances with a short turn-around time, but the lesson and intent of this symbolic act can be applied far beyond just these sixty minutes. Considering that the environmental catastrophes recently perpetrated, the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the shipwrecked nuclear industry all the thousand daily insults were all about the demand to deliver massive amounts of energy on budget—not to mention the vacillating attitudes on stability in the Middle East, perhaps this small but wide-spread sign and changing practices and habits has even more urgency.
catagories: environment, holidays and observances