imperium or neap tide

Speaking from the Pentagon, the US administration announced (DE) some vaguely but patriotically worded plans to transform America's military forces into an agency more compact and agile and with costs commiserate with desired results. Although the reduction is promised to be significant (it remains to be seen what they will be able to deliver, considering the soldiers of fortune, mercenaries and defense contractors probably have other plans) and few details were specified other than what goals are to be sustained--all of them and more with less--the speech was symbolic, not for the cuts to military support which is the only form of social welfare and support that the US has executed well and millions of soldiers and families rely on for careers, education and health care since the number of soldiers can be cut but because I doubt the budget will go down, and they will be replaced with drones and kill-bots and service contracts, but rather symbolic for America abandoning its self-appointed role as world-police.

Though the US was oblivious or otherwise in denial to its decline, this nebulous but surgical extraction from that leadership position does bring into contrast those differences between a vested and a vetted leader. For many decades, the US has not been fighting the world’s wars but rather its own battles, drawing the rest of the world into it, and the other major powers have avoided direct confrontation and fought wars by proxy: the US funding the Taliban in Afghanistan to send the Soviet Union over the tipping point, USSR vs US vs China in Vietnam and Korea, the US vs the British Empire in the Suez Gulf through currency manipulation that devalued the Pound Sterling. I wonder if there’s the potential even for a power-vacuum to be created. Recent military adventures have created more miseries all around than good and it would be a welcome change in attitude and posture if the priorities of the US erred on the side of restraint and partnership, but I think America, pensive and excitable over its faded glory, will try to maintain the same hulking footprint in the world with video games, and with the same costly profligacy and with fewer (soldiers--who put their lives at risk but are valued and cared for) whom stand to profit by it but with just as much to lose.

something in the water or it's the plumber, i've come to fix your sink

I am continuing to use plain soap when I brusha-brusha and I am pleased with the results, although I think rehabilitating my teeth, bad habits notwithstanding, have hit a plateau.

Reviewing the literature, I guess the second most important practice for unconventional tooth care is avoidance of fluorinated, treated water. Being outside the States and Russia, the two major areas that manage their plumbing as such, I thought I was safe. A few weeks ago, however, I noticed a curious installation at the Family Housing Area, the American Army Ghetto, called "Chlor-Station," which incidentally was heavily fortified against tampering. I wondered about this feature and the water towers but never was bold enough to ask, for fear of looking like a kook. Just recently, the Public Affairs Office, to assuage the tremolo-fears of American families newly arrived in country, put out a press-release that detailed how, ja, German tap-water is safe to drink (especially delicate goldfish, like Schrödinger's goldfish, test the waters at purification facilities around the country) and how the Army's engineers strive to make the water taste better, according to American standards, by adding chlorine and fluoride. This is done for the entire military community and not just for those apartment buildings where the soldiers live. Taste better?

I was a bit horrified with what was on-tap, thinking about the office coffee being made with conspiratorial water or all the regular trips to the water-fountain for a sip. Now I have resolved to bring in bottles of tap water from home for everything, including the plants. I do not know if I ascribe to all the supposed plots behind why drinking water is treated, but the claims that it makes for stronger and healthier smiles have been proven untrue. Maybe they put fluoride in the water to gird their population against the effects of radiation poisoning, with an on-going nod to the Cold War--or maybe fluoride has keep dentists in business all these years, but it is just as likely these additives are an opiate for an obedient workforce.

honeycomb hideout or zombee

A professor in the American state of North Carolina may have accidentally discovered the pathogen behind the mysterious and wide-spread die off of bee colonies.

Though all sorts of plausible theories have been put forward, ranging from genetically-modified crops to pesticides to global warming and electromagnetic smog from cellular telephone masts and it is probably a combination of these environmental factors, the chance observation of a bee playing host to an insidious parasitic phorid fly could explain the honey bees' erratic and zombified (like ignoring the brood, sitting out the bee-dance that communicates the whereabouts of flowers and foraging at night) behaviour that results in them neglecting their hives. Such a parasite could also account for the pattern of the occurrence and contagion, which is not helped by the practice in some areas of renting hives and trucking bees to fields in bloom. The health and well-being of bees is vitally important for the food-supply, since there would be no new crops, despite the smugness of G-M plants adapted to harsh conditions and tweaked to produce their own pesticides and even as pharmaceutical factories for human medicines--all these plant-hacks to a degree, of course, have been happening without geneticists since the beginning of agriculture and selective-breeding. Trees, grasses and plants that only bloom once in a blue moon would also be gravely affected. It is good that researchers have perhaps isolated one cause and can move forward, but I suspect that human intervention was behind this latest plague too: a related species of phorid fly was used in Texas and Alabama to quell the invasion of fire-ants, with similar ghoulish results for the ants and their colonies. Maybe the same thing was tried in the early 1990s to stop the killer bees, Africanized and aggressive honey bee hybrids, and slowly control over this infectious agent was lost. I hope the bees can be saved, and without creating even bigger problems and imbalance. Maybe the cautionary message of all those zombie movies has stuck.

field and fountain, moor and mountain

Epiphany (or Drei Königs Tag for the Three Wise Men, the Magi, Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar) is celebrated this week all over the German Sprachraum. Children of the community dress as Sternsinger and troop from house to house, collecting donations for good causes and in return blessing the home for the year in gratitude. It is, however, not a holiday in most places, including ironically the state of Nord Rhein Westphalia where the city of Köln is located.

The magnificent showcase of the Kölner Dom is the reliquary of the holy remains of the Magi remembered on this day. Here is a picture of it against the city skyline, rather dreary and pixilated and taken years ago.  We need to visit the city together to see the relics and re-capture some of the amazing scenes.  Not only did this purpose-built cathedral draw many pilgrims, it represented progress and innovation in architecture.

Drei Königs Tag also marks some other Christmas traditions, like jettisoning the tree, with ceremony, over one's balcony and ensuring all remaining Christmas treats are dispatched of, and begins Carnival season, which Köln is also famous for, in earnest--plus some folk-wisdow to prognosticate the weather: if Winter hasn't come by now (which for us it has not) then Winter won't be coming.