einschätzung or fine-print

In response to the intersecting frustrations over EU labeling requirements (industry resistance to larger, legible type and the mandate to list ingredients on many products in all the languages of Europe) and the slowness of reform and the slow creep of chemical short-cuts to the business of processed foods (like aromas as understudies for real and natural content and various concoctions which sound more harmless and anodyne in German as opposed to Latinate and sciency English equivalents—i.e., Farbstoß rather than naphthalenesulfonic acid hydroxy disodium salt, otherwise Red Dye Number 40), one German grocery franchise has responded since a few months back by providing customers with magnifying glasses to better scrutinize the contents of what they are buying. While I have never actually seen these installations being utilized, I do applaud the company and think by putting them on every single aisle (and this chain does not exactly have the reputation of providing the most healthful, organic—Bio selection), cues shoppers to be more cognizant of what’s going into their food and in turn what’s going into their bodies.

enthüllen

When we last left our hero, he was holed-up at the Ecuadorian foreign mission in London, protesting extradition to Sweden to face charges, since the Swedes might be pressured to render him to the US for summary judgment.

Still clinging to sanctuary, however, the Wikileaks team has managed to release its latest cache of some two-and-a-half million electronic corres-pondences between Syrian government officials and industrialists and Western ministries. I would not suggest that this enterprise is a motivated plea for leniency from America’s vindictive prosecution and the court of public opinion, since to disentangle the interests and actions of all parties, some probably very embarrassing revelations will come to light—for the American government and business interests too, showing once the consortium of journalists digest the connections and the raw details, that what diplomacy professes is something quite different from what’s hiding behind sanctions, truces and rebellion.

speciments

instructions to applicant

What an obscure thing to commit to paper, and what a bizarre punishment for those born under the sign of 87. I wonder what old legacy programming subroutine is triggered with this magic number. It’s like the legal fictions, which vary greatly by jurisdiction, for people born on a 29 February, which I imagine could get people in quite a bind and might only be remedied by a telefax addressed to somewhere on some other time continuum. These systems, which justify more than a few jobs by continuing to refuse to communicate with one another and require a translator and arbitrator, are not the most navigable and produce as much red-tape as the bureaus and agencies that the sustain. I wonder, though, if anyone has bothered to compile the surprising snatches of poetry in unappreciated bureaucratic boilerplate. Some passages are untouchable and have survived updates and revisions to regulations, like one of my favourite sections that includes “notorious misconduct off-duty—with regard to off-duty conduct, all employees have an obligation to conduct themselves so that no disgrace or disrepute will be visited on the Department of the Army” as a primary cause for dismissal—very non-committal and open-ended and probably a guildline that would defy being stated any other way.