just u.n. me or who is john galt?

In the tradition of On the Beach, Reds and other poignant but socially ambitious and uncomfortable cinematic works, my mother referred us to a long buried film made for television to which much talent was again given freely under the scripting of Rod Serling, of Twilight Zone fame, called A Carol for Another Christmas.

The story is an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and champions the work of the United Nations over the contemporary stance of American foreign policy of selective isolation and demonization, retelling the consequences of hum-bug through an embittered industrialist who lost a son, killed in action, and has abandoned all hope for international cooperation or reconciliation. The Ghost of Christmas Future shows the father how prevailing attitudes will lead to a nuclear apocalypse not too far from the present. Written during the Vietnam War and Bay-of-Pigs invasion, it was hardly a time for inspiring optimism and going against the grain or scare and accommodating optimism, like those other forgotten but timely examples did, it was never aired again until this last Christmas. In times of sabre-rattling, I wonder if it was some sense of national pride or aversion to the sombreness that made these movies go away without honours and what statements rallied behind say about a civilisation.

mixed metaphor

A brilliant and succinct commentary from Harvard Business Review is a sober reminder that a country and a corporation are not one in the same, just like with people. Bankruptcy is not something without precedence on a national level, as for businesses and households, but stretching, spindling the analogy, this neologism serves no good purpose. Instead the work of civics and the advocacy of the state becomes a nuisance to the metrics of recovery. Debts can be sovereign and governments are stewards of their people’s money and futures and not without exemption, but arrears do not accrue for a whole populace under the same model.

geselle, gestalt

Walking around the gorgeous neighbourhoods, I notice certain placards and think Notar, a notary-public, might be a good career-path for me since they always live in really posh places, it seems.

It made me think of a tale I heard once about a multi-lingual town in the former Sudetenland, explaining that a notary in Czech is called a notář and an emergency surgeon (ein Notarzt) was rendered the same way—pronounced like “note-arsch,” something essential but possibly not the wisest of job choices. Of course, a lot of other professionals have impressive, high-rent haunts. A new, maybe a trendy example that I came across was a practice specializing in oranisational—corporate psychology. It was a prime location to hang one’s sign and I really liked the symbolism. I wonder if this icon is a standard sign-post for such a collective and whom this practice consults for.

hypnos

While I fully believe that there are many abiding mysteries, I don’t often heed my own dreams. Forgettable brilliance is just that—I reason, and probably indicative of the dose of self-therapy, the stepping back that one needs or doesn’t need at the time and conducted in a nebulous way, behind the scenes. I indulged a strange succession of dreams, however, recently, relaxed and running some onerous administrative tasks on my computer, including defragmenting the hard-drive.

Though I was not exactly upset to let the process run its course, I recall a complicated heap of dreams, trying to sort out priorities and reassignments and quickly worked out what was really important. Maybe I was in danger of losing sight of the bigger picture. The next evening, I also retired early, but was surprised to experience a continuation, after a fashion. The affinity and epiphany, of course, fades, but it did seem the very antithesis of the prior night’s frenetic categorization, including former landlords, alternate routes hither and thither (with a strange déjà vu that only occurs in dream-time—best recalling dreams within dreams) and the realization that I do sometimes dream in German—not my native language, as evinced by a talking dog, who spoke in English and wanted to monopolize the conservation or at least make it worth the effort. I wonder if practicing self-hypnosis (though it is more like just being aware that it exists), however imperfectly and lazily, has anything to do with the vividness and memory. I want this unusually intrusive unconsciousness to carry on as more than just an administrative task.

charter

Although influence-peddling and lobbying is no stranger to modern-day political syndicates, it is interesting how this sometimes shadowy and sometimes blatant phenomenon has not had a direct line of succession and has historically enjoyed many different levels of tolerance.

Existing within quite another framework than contemporary industry pressures, perhaps the most comprehension template was an entity known as the Dutch East India Company (Vereenige Oost-Indische Compagnie). The mission was established at the beginning of the seventeenth century, in the midst of the Golden Age of Exploration and the colonial movement, with the charge to manage trade between the Netherlands and the Far East. The company, granted the powers of a sovereign nation, acted as an ombudsman, held a monopoly on commerce, though facing the competition of other equally constituted mercenaries, for nearly two centuries, through negotiating treaties, minting money, raising and razing cities and establish justice systems.
While the company’s most famous exploits concerned the spice-trade, they were also responsible for introducing tulips from Turkey to Europe, which lead to the creation of the world’s first stock-market and first economic bubble and subsequent crash. Many battles ensued among these competing companies, whom all European powers were eager to proxy, and the exploits of colonialism propagated much suffering for the colonialized. Business further diversified to coffee, textiles and china, and late in its career, the Dutch East India Company took on the role of creating and regulating a network among Asian countries, which did not exist beforehand. Businesses are not given such de facto powers any longer, but I wonder if the environment is not so different, and whether sanctioned or permitted, encouraged, if industry has the largess to proceed unchallenged. Do you think it’s better to suffer liberal but defined powers or face a technocracy that respects none?

fascinating rhythm or third eye blind

I regret that I don’t always make more time to explore the missives that I subscribed to from the AlterNet media group. There’s grey area that forms when one is more pressed for time that blurs spam with an interest that’s been backlogged. These headlines are anything but, and when I do take the time to really read beyond them, I always find something interesting, presented in a way that’s not preachy or esoteric—not that there is anything wrong with preachy or esoteric and I am sure that both adherents and detractors would take exception with those terms.

One recent engrossing example was an article on the not fully understood organ that sits in our brain, the pineal gland. Its always-on function seems to be regulating our sleep- and wake-cycles, maintaining a physical connection with that other always-on organ, the brain—or more philosophically, the mind. The pineal gland, accorded much more scientific and spiritual notice by the Ancients up through the Renaissance and was really regarded as a third-eye, however, also ekes out a complex chemical cocktail for the body, which no one really fully appreciates. Whatever this vestigial eye might see, conscientious modern-day thinkers believe that maybe obscuring its vision is possibly responsible for a whole host of contemporary and near-sighted ills.

life in the biq house or cold water flat

The ex-patriot daily, the local (original story not there but visit the German daily), brings coverage of an interesting experiment in Passivhausing from the City of Hamburg. The two sides of the structure, called the Bio Intelligence Quotient (BIQ) Haus, with the greatest exposure to the sun have a facade comprised of algae encased in a thin transparent tank of flowing water. The bio-reactive facade will allow energy produced through photosynthesis to be harvested, in the form of biomass, to produce more than enough natural gas to heat the building’s fifteen units.

The BIQ experiment represents only one of several innovative designs set to debut in the Hamburg neighbourhood Wilhelmsburg along the wharves. It’s pretty neat that this new concept of reducing one’s ecological footprint premieres together with a calendar of holidays celebrating sustainability and the environment, and reminding us how each of us can help, in big and in modest ways.