turn-around or partial-swing

Civilization tends to congregate around sources of energy, and the freer and less effort required the better, from hunting grounds to floodplains and navigable rivers. Maybe civilization’s problems and deficit of power arose once communities established at those naturally landscaped headlands began to dig for more, and boom towns sounded out untapped reserves. Industrial colonies grew up around mines and wells and sought out these resources in exploitable lands.

Now Germany, not alone in its aspirations, certainly, but possibly exposed to more criticism and dissection, is struggling with its commitment to wean itself away from disinterred sources of energy. This sort of business is forever dirty and not without compromise, and though not the sole source of engineering through subsidies and regulation, the government’s diagram does play an important role in achieving those ends—especially short on sacrifice and innovation.

It seems, however, that the paths to these ends are anything but well marked: progressively higher rates are imposed on consumers and put businesses in an awkward situation either to lobby politicians for tax-breaks or to quit the country over the expense of power, but these premiums are not really being held in trust, as a price maybe more reflective of the true costs. Rather than shoring up extra funds for infrastructure improvements including turning kinetic energy, surplus electricity into potential energy and finding places and means to store it all, it is mostly feuding that emerges unscathed and only contentions are fully mapped out. Each political division has paved and developed its own corridors of power, returning to those original resources of geography and geology, and have their own notions how to best approach the situation—which has the potential to over- and out-do the best intentions of their neighbours, particularly when the central government is reluctant to manage the politics of inefficiency, protectionism and patriotism. Bavaria would rather promote its own solar, bio-mass, or hydro-power than support a circuit from the windmill powerhouse of the North Sea to the voracious south.  Multinational energy companies, with different allegiances, have their own ideas, too, which all make for a weird inversion of the not-in-my-backyard mentality that for many years kept nuclear policy off of people’s minds.

jobbing or come-uppance

Following the template of job security safety nets already in place in Austria and Norway, the European Union social services commission will put forward, within an obligatory framework, a mechanism to hold the problems of high unemployment among young people to account.

Just as there are para- chutes to try to slow the other concussions and pancaking of the fall-out of currency crisis, the EU is recognizing the debilitating and demoralizing urgency of the lack of prospects and direction, especially among the youth, which besides over-taxing government welfare and lends less to pension funds, leaves young people with some difficult and disheartening choices about career, family and home. Governments would like to be able to guarantee all people under twenty-five years old either a new position or at the very least, an apprenticeship, within no longer than four months after losing a job through redundancy or upon completion of their education and poised to enter the workforce. The details, associated costs and trade-offs are still being ironed out (in most EU countries, there are weighted social criteria, years to retirement, number of dependents, that are statutory considerations when it comes to letting people go, and whether such guarantees over warranties bias the scale and hurt established workers) and the promise may prove too ambitious, but it is a positive signal for governments to commit to their well-being of their up-and-comers and much as for their own reputation and safekeeping.

oranges and lemons say the bells of saint clement’s

Here is a nice Christmas punch to keep you toasty on a cold evening. I call it the St. Clement’s because its ingredients include lemons and Curaçao Triple Sec, orange liqueur, and this recipe yields enough for four cups:

• 250 ml (1 cup) orange juice 250 ml (1 cup) of Triple Sec 250 ml (1 cup) of dry white, wine—if available in your area, another thing to try would be Thüringer Holunder Punsch, a fortified holiday beverage, a white wassail seasoned already with some of the other spices 
• The juice of one lemon (Zitrone)
• One stick of cinnamon (Zimt), whole cloves (Nelken), and some ground cinnamon and whipped crème for garnish

Place all the liquid ingredients into a sauce pan to warm on low heat. Add the cinnamon stick and six cloves and cover. Monitor to make sure the mixture doesn’t scald or boil, and after about fifteen minutes, when the cinnamon stick starts to break up and the mixture takes on a buttery complexion, it should be ready. Pour through a strainer to avoid getting pieces of cinnamon and cloves in your glass. Top with whipped crème and ground cinnamon and enjoy with gingerbread (Lebkuchen).

good saint nick

There are quite a few superstar saints but I think it is a challenge to find one with a more universal following and elaborate traditions than Saint Nicholas. Santa Claus or Father Christmas is a distinct and perhaps a bit of a derivative character, and while not just some corporate stooge, brainchild of Charles Dickens and Coca-Cola, nor ambassador of globalism as he’s sometimes unfairly made out to be, should not be confused or unused interchangeably with the original. The rituals that commemorate his approaching feast day (6. December) have intricate and escapingly elaborate basis in episodes of the saint’s life and enduring influence, and though abstractions and in some cases misunderstandings, I think that this level of detail and heritage keep the holiday and what goes with it inviolate and not usurped by commercial interests or whittled away. The weirdness and confusion of the holidays keep them intact and alive. Nicholas, whose name means “victory of the people,” was a bishop in Myra, Lycia (now Derme, Turkey) and was known for his great charity and playing secret-Santa for the needy, especially for finding creative ways to help those too proud to take hand-outs.

One story tells of a poor peasant who could not afford the dowry to marry off his three daughters, so decided to sell them into prostitution. Nicholas tried to get the father to reconsider but the man saw no other future for them if they went unwed, but reused the church’s overtures for assistance. Instead, under the cover of darkness, Nichols smuggled three purses of gold, one for each of the daughters—according to some sources, by dropping the coins one by one down the chimney and into their stockings drying over the embers in the fireplace. The iconography that generally accompanies portrayals of the saint is an allegory meant to recall these events, and over the centuries, the purses of money or coins came to be represented as three golden balls. People in the Netherlands seeing this depiction thought they were exotic oranges, which explains why one often gets these fruit for stocking-stuffers, and assumed Nicholas was from Spain, which also accounts for the indeterminate number of Moorish helpers who accompany him on his visits, although some say that they are not dark-skinned but rather sooty, owing to the whole connection with chimneys, that are there to judge the naughty and the nice and steal bad children away. The Bavarian counterpart, the anti-Saint Nick, is a monster called Krampus who is likewise along to expose awful kids. In France, the bad cop to the good cop following Nicholas on his rounds, is a reformed by formerly cannibalistic, mad butcher called Père Fouettard, referencing another wonder attributed to the saint: during a famine, a butcher lured three young boys (or in some versions, students) into his home, promising shelter but he slaughtered them and put their dismembered bodies in a barrel to cure and to later sell as hams. Nicholas joined the search party for these lost youths and confronted the butcher and saw through his deception, probably on account of the unexplained hams. And like Circe in reverse, Nicholas restored the youths. The butcher repented and followed Nicholas since. Patron of many occupations besides, from sailors, traders (hence the Dutch knowing about Spanish oranges) and thieves to students, pawnbrokers and children and for many places from Liverpool to Palestine and from Aberdeen to Malta, Nicholas does more than give good gifts.

paper chase or then ‘tis like the breath of an unfee’d lawyer

In Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part II, one of the henchmen of the pretender to the throne and usurper, Dick the Butcher, famously proposes, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
While maybe this seems in a modern context like an avenue to restore balance in an overly litigious society, it was meant rather as the most expedient route to counter counter-insurrectionists: regarded as the possibly the last and best defense against disorder and oppression, lawyers were regarded as unbiased keepers of justice and independent thought and a nuisance to revolutionaries.

Dick the Butcher, however, never met the courtly ranks of a secretive group of lobbying legal professionals called arbitrators. European Corporate Observatory presents an interesting and revealing treatment on the law firms and their retainers who pose exclusively to profit from injustice and pilot public policy in favour of private interests and enterprises. Though not precisely a new or isolated phenomena, the concerted efforts of these new ambulance-chasers are behind all the big headlines and points of contention, from energy companies’ prosecution of Germany for abandoning nuclear energy, the push for allowing G-M crops in Europe, aggravating independent research on the topic and science in general (at least in matters that might confound profits), labour equity and pensions—and all at the tax-payers’ expense since the unobliging defendant is the government. It seems that the interpretation of the butcher’s plan has become a backward-construction.  Be sure to check out more revealing stories at this watch-dog’s website.

deadline or santa’s little helpers

Every gift is a carefully crafted choice but it is especially so when presents require the consideration and advanced-planning and hidden logistical of the postal imperium required to shuttle them along with the spirit of the season around the world. Advent (meaning coming or anticipation) is beginning just now and is reduplicated with ceremony over a thousand different venues and with ritual calendars everywhere, and it makes me wonder about sending cheer away and the atmosphere that can’t quite be distilled and dispatched.

Sending a gift is something that is instantly given form and one can and does imagine its safe passage, arrival, which is hopefully in enough time to relax under the tree and inspire some curiosity, and ultimate reception, even if one cannot be there to see all these stages in person. The packing and preparation ahead of time, depending on the length of the journey, does not take the wind out of the season’s sails, so to speak, but the earliness does abstract a bit the whole rite and intent to some degree, wrapping then swaddling a gift before setting it off on some grand and far-reaching conveyor-belt.

It would be a much better alternative to the posting presents, I think,  if one could be like Santa Claus or gently float an entire palette of Christmas high enough into the stratosphere that the earth would rotate below it and the drop-point would come into range at a day’s pace, which sounds indutibably faster than guaranteed next-day-delivery under any circumstances. Still, the means readily available are a pretty good way to extend one’s presence and have good representation.

an der nadel or designer-drugs

Earlier on the radio there was a refreshing discussion regarding the ethics and unseen efficacy of personalized medicines, which promise not just a tailored dosage and a better prescription but rather pharmaceuticals coded by the patient’s own genetics and potentially adaptive to all one’s ills. The hopes and claims of a particularized-panacea are probably as exaggerated or as under-appreciated as generic cure-alls, and furthermore enhancing an individual’s would likely be at the expense of the health of the community with preventative measures and personal awareness of one’s natural (and acquired) defense and offense becoming obsolete.

Of course there are breakthroughs in treatment and maybe science could really come to augment chemistries and dispositions that rebel but it seems unlikely to make an industry out of the practice without trade-offs. The caveats reminded me of the strange case of Doctor Theodore Morell, tinkerer, patron of the ailments of the elite, snake-oil salesman and personal physician (Leibartz) to Adolf Hitler. After studying at a few illustrious medical universities, serving as a cruise ship doctor, and a brief stint as a medical officer during WWI, Morell settled down in Berlin, catering to high-society and fawning over vaguely drawn diseases. Initially, with his reputation established, he resisted invitations to be the private doctors for royalty, comfortable with his position and wanting to remain near the pharmaceutical concerns that he was heavily invested in. Morrell, however, did answer Hitler’s call. Most of Hitler’s intimates regarded Morell as a quack too eager to indulge Der Fuhrer’s moods and grievances but did not dare object when they saw their leader taking a regiment of dozens of pills a day, which included vitamins and other accelerators, like preparations of amphetamines, hormones and cocaine, which the doctor also tested on soldiers to increase stamina. I am sure that these extra measures became more taxing than the original, undefined ailments. While ultimately, such liberal treatment probably contributed to Hitler’s sense of paranoia and impulsiveness, exacerbating an already terrible situation, the bad doctoring may have also (inadvertently) led to paralysis in decision-making and inability to think strategically. In some cases it may be more advisable to take the suffering as the language of coping rather than silencing or out-shouting it.

velocipede or internet for robots

It’s a daily ritual to check on visitor statistics and always interesting to see “traffic” from exotic places or unusual inquiries that still managed to be filled—sometimes in creative and unexpected ways.

Sometimes, however, one is baited by spammy websites, that are just dragnet operations to get reciprocal attention. I am not quite certain how this recursive architecture, which is a pretty common thing and I suppose a large fraction of the gearbox of gauges, demographics and yields underlying what human pick, choose and settle on. These pings and soundings, I guess, are very different and I wonder if it’s a functional aspect of the system for such undercurrents to mimic the behaviours of authentic guests and hosts. What kind of evil-genius or impersonal routine marshals these gremlins and how is efficiency rated when it comes to counterfeiting interest and popularity? Usually such activity is obvious and I have learned to ignore it—not returning the visit. Over the past few weeks, however, I have received a barrage of highly specific calling-cards. First there was spike in visitors from Kazakhstan followed by various former-Soviet republics, but then the funny thing was all the websites were for their respective cycling associations and clubs. The sites themselves were all highly specific, organized and above-board and not at all spammy. It was like they were all just real proud of their websites, which were all different in terms of design, language and navigation and with genuine substance. While I don’t know what exactly redirected traffic, it was a strange coming together (flash mob) of company.