birthday paradox or pigeon-hole principle

The Pope celebrated his birthday today with an appropriately Bavarian entourage of well-wishers bringing some characteristically German traditions to Rome. He was treated to quite a few performances from this delegation. The Pope, the first German to hold the office in over a thousand years, shares his birth date with another, though perhaps less famous, German citizen, hailing from Erfurt, the city where Martin Luther was ordained and the Pope visited last September: Germany’s first test-tube baby (sogennante Retortenbabies, which sounds especially cruel, although test-tube is bad enough, as if they were sea-monkeys or kangaroo-joeys).

No details were disclosed on that young adult born in 1982 spent his birthday. I wonder what these two Aries would think of one another. The star or the conditions that one is born under of course is not everything, and the birthday problem refers to the very human propensity to make something out of a not so unlikely coincidence, whereas it would be more statistically remarkable if a randomly assembled and relatively small group did not have a few individuals that shared the same birthday. Still, I wonder what these two might have in common and what they might learn from one another.

776.012

tribute or bread and circuses

I think that the Olympic Games have officially become more commercialized than Christmas or guilt. Since the Australian games of 2000, as the Guardian reports, the International Olympic Committee has been making exponentially greater demands of its host cities for enforcing the market capitalization of official sponsors.
For the upcoming event, authorities have been given an onerous charge of making sure no opportunist, ambusher (I suspect that such draconian measures created ambush-marketing in the first place) or bystander have the potential for profit by association with a date, place or Zeitgeist of what is supposed to be a celebration of culture, sportsmanship and human achievement. Not only are pubs not permitted to invite customers to watch the broadcasts on their premises or even dare suggest that they are in fact physically located near a venue (or cohabitate in the same dimension), players and spectators are not allowed to share footage or photographs over social networks under threat of criminal punishment. Given also the marked increase in surveillance, security theatre and hassle (a rise for a place already one nation under CC-TV) and the mysterious prohibition against athletes shaking-hands, a prophylactic for some unnamed social disease, being picked as the setting for this and other large-scale, officially sanctioned happenings does not seem such a great trade-off.

inútil

Retronaut curated a series of funny comic book panels depicting rubbish superpowers (but does include this image of this Legion-hopeful being summarily rejected). What would your highly specific and apparently of limited utility superpower be? There are unfortunately more and more situations when Colour Kid's abilities could prove useful.

widget

Hungarian artist Martzi Hegedüs crafted an impossible character-set called Frustro, the font inspired by the Penrose tribar and MC Escher-esque architecture. I think this is brilliant and I wonder if advances in three-dimensional printing could manage to produce tubes for neon signs that appear to twist like this.

When I was little and first posed a question of hypothetical industrialists—i.e., someone running a widget factory, I always wondered (and still do envision it like this) what their product would be. I imagined a widget must have been this other impossible shape—a blivet or the devil's tuning fork, whose tines also produce a frustrating and dizzying optical illusion.  I thought that was as good a hypothetical product as any.

redux or a man, a plan, kofi annan

While I have respect for the former United Nations’ Secretary General and hope that his mission does help stop violence and blood-shed, there is something decidedly unsavoury and inscrutable about the ways in which Western concerns are being manifest presently—along a continuum of interference and strategy—for the future of Syria and the whole region. If reports and accounts by the opposition are accurate, the present regime’s clinging to power is probably serving no one, but a peace negotiated by the US and the UN could be a very suspect treaty indeed, who may well be basing their assessments off of another disgruntled Curveball character (DE/EN). Since Western involvement with Libya, there has been a marked departure from the uprisings and revolutions of the Arab Spring, which took much of the world unawares, and like bankers and speculators trying to profit from the controlled-collapse of distressed and overburdened markets, petroleum-politicians are wanting events to unfold or crumple on their terms.

It all seems a bit opaque—outside concern that’s neither quite spontaneous nor quite a natural consequence of emboldened rebellions or business interests, but yet like déjà vu all over again. Pacifying Syria may also appear a selfish, self-interested and calculated endeavour in the larger framework of the parallel troubles that are occurring in the region, which I believe are bundled together in the view of most of the public and diplomatic corps: tensions are growing over Iran, a fulcrum waiting to tip one way or the other depending on which hostile fires the first volley. Despite the arguments of many authorities who hold that the country maintains only a scientific and benign nuclear programme, the West insisting that Iran recant hostilities that it has not perpetrated and a weapons programme that it probably does not even have. Such swaggering demands sound uncomfortably like the trigger and fuse for another American led crusade, and local yapping it is not helping mattering. It is also not reassuring that the Arab Spring awoke in the lumbering police-states of the US and the UK, leading by example, their penchants for spin, censorship and holding a population in contempt and under complete surveillance—outstanding examples of what they purport to combat in foreign lands. I hope that negotiations can help save lives and preserve livelihoods for the Syrian people but without orchestrating prime conditions for neo-colonialists and the West to battle for and amongst themselves by proxy.

jump-start

I was very happy to see that the woman who works at the bank in the neighbourhood where my office is brought her Bully, the same model as ours, out of hibernation with a fresh paint job and detailed. She calls hers her Lady as well. At the same time, I was a little sad that our Lady did not quite come barnstorming out of the garage from her long Winter's nap, but I am sure we will get in her top form again for further adventures for this Spring and Summer and for many to follow. She just needs a little nudge and will be rewarded with a lot of care and getting all decked out, as well.

penal colony

The European Union court of human rights has issued an ominous ruling, siding with the United Kingdom’s wish to extradite (render) five individuals from British soil to the United States for foregone incarceration. This is a difficult and emotional matter, since unwelcome by the majority of the public and accused of inciting and abetting acts of terrorism—though with an array of different charges against each one, these individuals by their conduct and most would argue by their potential have relinquished their rights to remain in the UK. It still sets a dangerous precedent, however, owing that one can banish its undesirables and incorrigibles to the US for safe-keeping. Proponents argue that the American prison (though not justice) system is better equipped to house these villains, and this sub-contracting of one’s due-process reminds me of that episode of The Outer Limits where those ant-like alien creatures use the Earth as a penal colony for its misfits, knowing that humans will dispose of them. The public verdict of these individuals has already reached its sentencing phase, I think, but it is worrisome how mutable the standards might become within this framework and one could potentially in the future be evicted for any number of anti-social behaviours.