greenwashing

The first Earth Day (EN/DE) was held in 1970 in response to significant relaxing and deregulation of environmental safe-guards on the part of the US government and a series of resultant oil spills, when one Senator called for an ecological “teach-in” to educate people on the consequences of consumerism and poor custody of the land and water. The annual observance does seem to rather nowadays compete with rather than compliment other green movements and summits, like Earth Hour and apolitical and pleasant Arbour Day (Tag des Baumes).

Good ideas and motivation is put out but more with the cachet of a televangelist telethon. Soliciting for a billion green ideas and pledges is certainly a positive thing that could make some real impact, but it is sadly a little gimmicky and there ought not to be credit given for what one should be doing away. According to the original vision of Earth Day, simply learning about eco-systems, where trash goes when its spirited away and the logistics of where products come from, is an important focus. Being mindful of the results of one’s actions, not discouraging creative acts to undo those effects, is a necessary first step.

the secret-sharer or johnny apple-seed

The developing news that certain telecommunications giants have implanted a simple and vulnerable routine in their mobile devices that records a user's whereabouts, tagged like some nomadic animal for naturalists to study and present with targeted advertisements, struck me at first as significant and dishonest but maybe also a bit naïve.

After all, besides Big Brother and the Snitch Mob and warrantless wiretaps, internet companies kowtowing to repressive regimes, phone companies hoarding one's foot-print, as well as what's freely given out, indelibly over social network sites, but it is nonetheless eye-opening. The technology and information is there in the aether, and there are no unambiguous laws for the deportment of such data, only ethics and the tolerance of people to have their private lives exploited for marketing-purposes or worse.  This are very tenuous measures of protection, especially if users do not understand what kind of traces they leave behind and how it is collected.  Vice-squads may be a thing of the past since many of us are carrying around our own chastity belts that keep no secrets. Electronic privacy is no longer confined to the internet, though where one goes in subspace can be incriminating too, and not something intended for public display.

dim bulb or mad as a hatter

A consumer advocacy lab in Berlin, completely outfitted a simulated living space with energy saving light bulbs, to study their ambient effects, compared to older, filament style incandescent ones. Researchers noticed a rotten smell in the enclosed space and found it was from the toxic gasses, like phenol and mercury, leeching from the bulbs, if left on for extended periods of time. Foremost, consumers do not derive any benefit if they switch on and off these energy saving bulbs like normal people since they burn out fast and one cannot recuperate the significant extra cost, and second that with the fact that they are potentially and frighteningly hazardous to one's health and are nearly impossible to recycle, this makes for a really prime example of industry hijacking environmentalism and forcing it on the public through the governments who've been paid-off or duped into thinking they are backing the responsible horse.

It is very similar to the unpalatable choice that the failing campaign of E10 petrol raises: is it more ecological to dilute one's tank with ethanol, grown from corn that is diverted from the food supply and cultivated by highly energy intensive means (maybe only made profitable because it is subsidized by the government), or to simply perhaps drive ten percent less?

a moveable feast

 We were a little late in decking out the Easter trappings this year, so there has not been some much time to enjoy them, but of course the holiday hadn't passed us by. Easter itself is a very strange fusion of Christian, secular and pagan traditions and certainly makes for an awkward alibi and accounting, should humans ever be called for testimony in an alien court of law.

Peeps--sorry, can't begin to explain what that one has do with Easter Sunday. What makes it even more extraordinary, and impenetrable like with the non sequitur and surreal rituals, is that the date of Easter can vary so widely, so as the holiday escapes one sometimes, and is figured using a complex, alchemy of maths called the Computus. This method not only previsions computer science, algorithms, matrices, all these correcting factors that make modern Western calendars fit to a lunar one are very much like the cosmology of Ptolemy, who, while acknowledging a sun-centered universe would be more straightforward, sought to preserve the appearances of a geocentric model with all sorts of celestial wheels, gears and cogs.

Getting the liturgical dates right in general, counterbalanced with the cycle of the Moon and the observable equinoxes and the odd Leap Year, helped keep annual occcurances meaningful, coinciding with Spring, Mid-Winter, etc., and guard against slippage and calendar migration that would eventually, glacially led to Easter overlapping or falling before Christmas. That holiday would be a bizarre affair to decorate for.

bardolatry

In recognition of the upcoming anniversary of the birth (extrapolated, guessed, from his documented baptism) and death some fifty-one years later of William Shakespeare, I would like to point readers to the excellent series of postings, recently concluded, from the Big Think, that not only keep the debate of authorship alive, as well as other aspects of the cult of personality, but go further to explore how prodigy and poetry challenge and strengthen one's own mental capacities and how the timing of the playwright came as the English language was still malleable and under development. These two grammars, Elizabethan and complex, grew together and the body of work culturally crystallized English literary tradition more so than king, country and might. No one wants to entertain that those plays and sonnets germinated as some unsourced leavings and improvisation of the age and the focus on the historical identity of William Shakespeare has never taken away from the genius and richness of his drama, no matter if revised and polished over the years--idealized like the author--or were gifted complete like some religious acheiropoieta, but it strikes me as perfect that Shakespeare identity is really only knowable through his works, just like his characters, who no matter how real or contrived, are fleshed out with just a few lines and stage-directions but each one is much more than some playful but scant vocabulary.

nine ladies dancing and five-hundredth post

Research seems to suggest that there is an inverse relationship between that uncomfortable feeling of cognitive dissonance, trying to prop up, support a framework of opposing ideas against itself--which I believe can also manifest itself as stage-fright or writers' block or being generally uncreative and derivative--and psychological distance. Experiments that could be easily repeated clinically and in one's head and at one's own drawing-board that people, just as they can be freer and more imaginative planning a trip that is in the future rather than one just on the horizon over bothersome worries with logistics or when planning a trip for another person, if people are able to abstract the task at hand somehow, it can become more inspired and productive.

It would be an art to right the balance between fantasy and daydreaming and bother that deadlines and contingencies cause. Of course the most common and potentially negative ways of digging oneself out when there is a clash between practice and expected outcomes are blame and rationalization, and hitting an artistic dry-patch is different than the remorse of hypocrisy, but maybe imagining back one's imagination, overcoming performance-pressures, can led to genuine boost in creative spirits and perhaps even change actions and attitude rather than seeking out reasons not to succeed for the here and now.

eeyore or thanks for noticing me

In the parking lot of the supermarket, I saw this unusual trailer, which I thought I had mis- understood: Eselnothilfe or rather Donkey Rescue, though, to my mind, these sort of compound words can be manipulated to mean other things, like Emergency Donkey or Donkeys to the Rescue.  One can make donations to sponsor a service animal for villages in Africa or India, which I am sure is at least as appreciated as a WiFi router or some of the other charity forced on those communities in the past.  It was rather a service for retiring mules and the like that takes beasts of burden to farms where they are not expected to labour and can life out their days in peace.  It made me think of the dear, sweet animals we met in Ireland. 

The international organization advertised on the trailer canvas does not seem to be found under that website any longer, but searching I learned about similiar charities, which is a nice thought.  After we finished shopping, the caravan was ahead of us on the road and started on the same route as we would take home.  For a moment, I was excited that they might bring us an old donkey to care for.

weebles wobble but they don't fall down

 To commemorate the reunification of East and West Germany, Berlin will install this kinetic monument in an open square on the Spreeinsel, just to the south of Museum Island, near the Berliner Dom and the razed Palace of the Republic: a teeter-totter, a giant see-saw.

This massive design was picked as the winner in the competition for a national testament to peace and unity. "We are the people; we are one people--" I think it would be fun to shift the whole installation with the weight of the crowd, and it delivers a clear, symbolic message, public interaction required, that it is the people that move the country--though sometimes events move more like a carnival ride rather than participatory art.