sea of green or silent run

Recently we were watching the Wolfgang Petersen classic film Das Boot (The Boat) about a crew of submariners patrolling the Atlantic Wall during World War II. I had forgotten that their berth was in the harbor of La Rochelle, where we traveled over the summer. In fact, I didn't recall much of the movie from when I saw it originally and was dumbstruck to realize that it was made thirty years ago this year. Then a decade after its release--and this soundtrack does strike a chord, in 1991, a group of pioneering German techno artists, U96 (eponymously), remixed the glorious and marauding theme from Das Boot and reintroduced it as one of the first commercially successful works of electronic music.

significant digits

With all the talk and nerves, one would reasonably conclude that Europe and the euro are being assaulted on all fronts not by a debt-burden or over-wrought speculation but rather by a crisis in the currency and partnership itself. European manufacturing and innovation has not been overtaken, and there is no talk of war-mongering--there has been quite a bit of thinking out loud and gloomy scenarios that have been other than helpful and have stoked panic, so I think every possibility on one's mind has already been voiced, inflation is not galloping in the marketplace (other than through shortages caused by environmental changes, like the wildfires in Russia, etc), and the euro, relative to other currencies) has only lost fractional value and is certainly one of the more stable ones.  A tenth of a cent in the exchange rate does make a difference to traders and those with dollar denominated loans--or try to out-smart the next moves, like me--being paid in US dollars. The bailout, relief programs of the States are echoed in the plans for a euro rescue fund, having wealthy member countries contribute to a pool credit that will be made available to poorer members on contingency.

What this rescue fund is, however, is not a rainy day account but rather an instrument to facilitate some countries to make more loans to others in distress without violating the founding principles of economic health for joining the EU in the first place. And it is no solution to throw more money at a problem that was precipitated in the first place in part by being overextended on easy-credit. There might be a less damaging and indentured way beyond this slump and worry--interestingly, it is the banks and investors that revealed the sovereign debt problem by refusing to extend more credit, though it took them decades to admit to themselves that this too was unsustainable, but those same financiers do not want to entertain the following alternative either: allowing some economies the option of bankruptcy (not messy and predatory and sudden) in a controlled environment, with support on hand and at the ready, provides economies with the hope of a definite end and a scheduled rebuilding.

pontifex and bauhaus

This past weekend was a busy and a bittersweet one for H and I. First, very early on Saturday, we joined some thirty-thousand pilgrims, winding our ways through dark and circuitous alleys policed by a huge security force to the Cathedral Square of the old city of Erfurt, where incidentally Martin Luther reformer and architect of the Protestant schism was educated in the priesthood and was first ordained, to celebrate the Eucharist with the Pope.

It was a very moving experience to share with all those thousands, focused on one individual. Having recovered from that adventure, we crossed to the antipode of Germany to the city of Darmstadt--beautiful and enjoyable but sad as we bid my parents farewell as they were getting ready to return to the States. We met them at their temporary vacation cottage, nearer the airport, and went into town to first see the apartment complex, the Waldspirale, designed by the Austrian artist Hundertwasser, with onion-topped domes and a strange non-Euclidean geometry that was like something out of the blended imaginations of the Flintstones and Dr. Seuss.

Darmstadt is replete, as well with, examples from many styles and movements and we passed through blocks of Jungstil (Art Nouveau) townhouses on our approach to the artist colony and architectural workshop and laboratory in the Mathildenhöhe neighborhood. The park is a cascading ensemble of early 1900s design.

The Hochzeitsturm (Wedding Tower) is a quintessential Jungstil skyscraper though draped for renovation in the background (here's a little version made for blind visitors) in the background, behind the Russian Orthodox Chapel and water elements.  Spending an afternoon at a café on the grounds was a very nice way of saying to my Mom and Dad that we will see them real soon and wishing them best of luck for their continued adventures.

antitelephone

There's quite a bit of discussion about the rather rigourous and consistently unexpected measurements that physicists at the CERN laboratories have chanced upon and disclosed as an invitation for peer-review. Neutrinos from Switzerland are arriving in a partner research facility in Italy a bit earlier than expected, just a bit faster than the speed of light, which is a cherished constant and supposed impossibility. I think no one is suggesting that Albert Einstein's century old theories of special relativity and derived equations are wrong, but such discoveries are exciting and disabusing, even when debunked and remediated. I do wonder how the neutrinos' arrival was clocked in the first place, though I am certain that the scientists are desperate themselves to be proven wrong. CERN is a particle accelerator and when one is coaxing particles within fractions of the speed of light, the energy required approaches infinity and mass, inertia that resists going faster builds and builds. Nothing in Einstein's work, however, precludes the existence of particles that always move at the speed of light or even faster, just so longer as they were not accelerated and cannot convey energy or information. Rather than strictly quantifying an exact relationship between matter and energy, Einstein's work is a framework that reveals logical profundities that are reflected and confirmed in our understanding of the fabric of the universe. That physical objects, as predicted by Einstein and others, undergo a time-dilation as they increase speed has already been proven: subatomic particles boosted to near light speed, in a sense, survive much longer and travel further than their limited half-life at rest proffers. By extension, anything traveling faster than light, would appear to a stationary observer to be moving backwards in time. The neutrinos could arrive in Italy before they were dispatched from Switzerland, but such a result seems to violate common-sense, causality and everything else. If, as in the contemporary thought experiment, one's future self could call and influence the decisions of one's past self, everything seems to come apart and go all out of sequence--unless that is what already is happening and we cannot see it for our own logical blinders.

marching orders

This is not the timeliest reporting, but after being in effect for eighteen years, it is nice to actually see the repeal (DE) in print and on official stationary. Of course, what comes after all the talk, debate and vitriol is important and mending, but this final formality seemed already in place and triumphant for quite a while. The memo was just now disseminated to our level, and though that's a rather typical internal pace, news does find other avenues and outlets.

up periscope or objects in the rear-view mirror may appear closer than they are

Generally, I am never in so much of a hurry that I would chance passing trucks bumbling down the county roads, although the line of cars behind me sometimes don't appreciate the leisurely pace (the time to rush is before one leaves home and not on the road). I do get stuck, quite often, idling and studying the rear of a cargo transporter and I was thinking, as the line of cars behind my lead grew more and more impatient, that having a view-screen to see around the truck and the next bend in the road, would be a neat thing--although I am sure there would be worries about liability issues. I am sure marketers, like those who plaster buses and trams in advertising like race cars, would install the monitors and cameras for the chance at having another mobile billboard that might also make over-taking traffic a slightly safer maneuver.

casting stones or papst blue-ribbon

The staff at Der Spiegel is presenting a preview of the Pope's potentially difficult visit to his homeland, which H and I will be attending this weekend--beginning with biographies of the prominent-players Benedikt will encounter on his State visit, replete with skeletons in the closet. Berlin's lord mayor has said that the Pontiff is welcome in his city, but so are the protesters. Through the lens of Catholicism, Germany's statesmen are revealed as a quite a lot of reprobates.

"Luckily for the pope, he won't have any problems with two other prominent people he will meet in Berlin. Chancellor Angela Merkel (remarried) and German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle (gay) are both Protestants."

I suppose, by the rules, we all do. There are serious social schisms that need to be healed and some shadowy deportments that have gone too long without saying. Once, in seminar in college, I proclaimed--rather obtusely, that Jesus says: "The rules are for bad people." While I don't believe that's necessarily rubric or Church doctrine, there is ample latitude for tolerance and learning from one another and loving one another, despite any differences in upbringing and inculcation.

basta and geldpolitik

I am not sure what to make of this Fire Sale that the United States has announced with its apparent intent to offer unlimited US dollar-denominated loans to try to hold interest rates down for European countries coming against their debt thresholds. This emergency relief seems like a mechanism to undo the gossipy damage done by downgrades from the credit rating agencies, since credit-worthiness determines the upward usury on loans--in other words, to allow everyone to keep playing. Though ostensibly Germany's Federal Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (Bundes-ministerium für Ernährung, Landwirtschaft und Verbraucher-schutz) may be an exception, it seems like most of the work of governments, bullied by supranational finance institutions, is devoted to protecting the lender organizations and promoting good PR for their schemes and trustworthiness, with little regard or recourse for the debtors. Holding players to another round, without rigid or fair rules to play by, instead of allowing a pass or fold yields diminishing returns and impoverishes everyone, no matter what the window-dressing. These insubstantial lifelines tossed to the EU allows the dollar to dodder a bit longer at favourable lows and generates nominal revenue off of phantom loans, and a fixed margin of appreciation (how much the dollar-euro exchange rate varies) keeps the borrowers from speculating over-much against the lenders. If the euro value tumbles, the dollars become the functional currency, but if the euro gains in value against the dollar (as it should do because the European market are inherently stronger and more stable), such debt becomes cheap to pay off. The euro is not in distress and it does not need this kind of American chivalry and chauvinism (and maybe the munificence of others too), and it looks as if the creditors' champions have succeeded in expanding (diluting) their money supply without immediately and clearly sacrificing the security of their players for their very next round.