fortune cookie

Recently, when faced with the disclosure that monitoring of its users did not cease after they logged out, a popular social networking utility demurred to give an honest answer. To some degree, the computing public has only just been reintroduced to the concept of a cookie--a prion that is a token of one's visit history and whereabouts that helps the internet function more smoothly.

What some services do is indeed dastardly and one ought to be able to expect some way of turning off their status updates and autobiography of things they're keen on. It was scant months ago that a popular cellular telephone manufacturer (EN/DE) attributed its persistent spying (even when disabled) to an overzealous programmer and said it was not intentional. Given adequate resources and interests, anyone could monitor anyone else's activity online, regardless of membership, of course, but no one wanted their outside interests mingled with the persona that he or she shows to the world.

Social networking sites, however, have made the potential for monitoring less a question of committing resources and more of an untapped given. Untangled, facial recognition software routines even transpose internet and real-world tracking abilities. What, I believe, is the most interesting aspect to this outrage, which--if not apathy disguised--sort of flags when one really faces the prospect of boycotting the service or simply disconnecting, is that members would be convinced otherwise. Skepticism and self-censorship are healthy approaches, because users are not customers. The services are "free" and users volunteer marketing and marketable information that enriches these sites. They may promise cohesion and accountability, but what's exacted for free seems quite the opposite sometimes.

save the date

Though it's probably a little too grim for actual use as a wedding invitation, this print from artist Max Dalton, inspired by Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill volume I, is absolutely brilliant. Surplus prints may be made available at the artist's blog and this work is part of an exhibition touring the US of re-imagined Tarantino and Coen Brothers cinema icons.

appellation d'origine controlee and prussian blue

 Unlike Roquefort cheese, Champagne from Champagne, Dijon mustard, and dozens of other regional delicacies and specialties, Bavarian Obazda (also known as Obatzter, Angebatzter, Gerupfter in Franconia or as Gmanschter in Switzerland) was not awarded the proprietary protections of a geographical viticulture designation by the German courts. This spicy cheese spread is certainly unique and a signature Brotzeit dish--however, I like the fact that it was also ruled that it cannot be copyrighted. Too many things are overly-litigious as it is, without affording food and drink a court-appointed attorney and though imitators will be opportunists, distinction and quality are usually self-regulating.

Tradition, like the Reinheitsgebot (legally enforceable) and secrecy, as with the German chemists and dye-makers or Venetian mirror-makers or authentic charter house Chartreuse, whose blend of herbs is only known to two monks, forms a process with checks and balances, rather than monopolization--renown is not exclusivity, and a better model than relying on trolling and cartels. Family recipes, handed down, though there is a shift to jealously guard collections once shared under a gettization scheme, creation and experimentation should not be hindered by the letter of the law when it usual fails to keep the plaintiff undiluted in the first place.

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.