Tragically a lot of people along the flood plains of the Danube, Elbe, Rhine and the Main are being made to contemplate the unimaginable—starting over and with nothing salvageable. Not comparable to over concurrent outrages, still it seems we were all unwitting accomplices, lulled into thinking that rivers would be contained with concrete and dams, shored up in response to a disaster in 2002, and policies that enabled sloppy, muddy footprints from everyone of us, as contributors.
Wednesday 12 June 2013
old head waters run dry or cry me a river
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ช️, environment, food and drink
Tuesday 11 June 2013
through the looking-glass
Though there is no other side of the coin, no deflecting of blame that makes trawling the internet in the name of security any more dolphin-friendly or excusable behaviour, but perhaps early-adopters of new technologies might exercise more caution and general-users might want to give less weight to convenience, banking on-line or ordering from shops on the internet or over-sharing.
After all, it seems that a Handy is a tracking-device, a transponder (and not a black-box) that happens to include something called a “Calling - App,” and so forth. Smart phones can summarily out fox us. Although corporations have tried to quash freedom and utility on the world wide web, no monopoly or cartel—or legal codex, has been able to keep in stride with innovation and re-invention. Should the newest gadget or platform, however, be regarded with the healthy suspicion that they are merely casings for bugs and spy cameras, maybe America will realise that its policies and diplomacy have consequences, inward and outward.
catagories: ๐ฅธ, networking and blogging
Monday 10 June 2013
duomo di como
Among all the interesting sights we saw was the City of Como on the south western leg of the lake.
From the harbour, we were greeted by a monument to science.
We overheard a tourist declare to her husband tha was in fact the “Temple of Como,” flatly, as if some pagan god dwelt there, battery-powered.
Rather it was a memorial for native son Alessadro Volta and held the first engineered and practical energy sink and cell in the world. Campers, among many others, tip their hats to Volta, I'm sure. Next after exploring the piers, we came to the ancient cathedral among the ensemble of the oldest part of the city and other sacred architecture.
We were joined in admiring the series of altars and niches by a contingency of Buddhist monks clad in orange robes. I wondered if they were fellow-tourists or if initiates were sent out into the world to document their experience on tablet devices. They seemed genuinely engaged as we were, in any case—treated to an organ concert. The performer was seated at the keyboard beneath an unusual nave with a crucifix figure coiffed with genuine human hair.
catagories: ๐ฎ๐น, ๐️, religion, technology and innovation, travel
roy g. biv or the dark side of the moon
It's not as if out of the blue, the US intelligence agencies now can see us as God and the Angels or Santa Claus—not quite or that the congress of private individuals, businesses and the negotiations of statesmanship was heretofore above snooping and observation, but still to be confronted with the brute and raw data, the scope and depth, is chilling. Already, America has demanded the flight-manifests of passengers world-wide and has become a clearing-house of financial transactions, bullying those reluctant to play along into submission. The herding instinct, strength in numbers kept us safe individually. Underscoring the tribunal of fellow-sieve Bradley Manning, a contractor with the nebulous National Security Agency could no longer face the sinister realities, of course assumed but danced around and it turns out veiled with a spindly cover of lies and false-modesty.
Thank goodness that there are individuals with the strength of convictions to speak out and force the erosion of privacy—long beat up but rarely addressed in earnest, since these quantified revelations, billions, trillions of data elements per month profiling citizens all around the world, drag-net style, like cases of industrial espionage, political baiting and spy-rings tend to create an overall confessional mood. Perhaps the owning up will be more than the fessing up that all intelligence agencies spy on one another but might inspire some more whistle-blowing. How could the German Chancellor greet the American President next time, from a background where the private-sphere is enshrined and protected and discussed and debated and shake hands with an equal who has basically appointed himself as her parole-officer, knowing more intimate details (at least anything with an electronic finger-print) than the Stasis without a blush of anger and feeling violated on behalf of the people she represents—not that Germany was more or less of a target than any other nation, the USA included.
smugglers' roost
We ended our vacation with a detour to the isolated village of Samnaun, which was like a little Las Vegas nestled in the Alps or a giant duty-free shop. Due to its remoteness, until 1905 only accessible by road from Austria, it was granted a tax-free status, which it still enjoys though there is a direct route up a steep mountain route with a series of tight and intimidating tunnels that can only be passed one vehicle at a time.
Tankers haul petrol, luxury goods and booze up to the top of the mountains and people flock there to save some fifty Rappen per liter on fuel and realize steep discounts once the VAT is taken away. There are arguments that this sort of break is no longer necessary, since the villagers are not quite so inaccessible and see immense profits from all their visitors but it certainly does create for unique environment, a sort of a land that the law forgot. I did not realize it at the time but when we were lounging about the shores of Lake Lugano, a similar Italian enclave (enjoying the same tax exclusions but for reasons of historical intrigues and not just owing to its isolation) was just to our south—Campione d'Italia, cut off from the rest of Italy only by a few hundred impassable meters and with access exclusively through the Confederation.
catagories: ๐จ๐ญ, ๐ฎ๐น, foreign policy, travel
books - check 'em out (at your library)
I enjoy noticing the reinterpretation of logographs in different countries and the ways that the intuitive comes across to the eyes of outsiders, like the subtle differences in traffic signs, the way pedestrians and children scampering across the streets are rendered or the symbols for cars—in Switzerland there were quite compact models with prominent mufflers (for quiet) and smiling faces when coming from the opposite direction and in Italy, the cars look a bit like mobster roadships, especially on the slippery-when-wet warning—it looks like someone's been rubbed out. Maybe there is some meaning in that I am glad that there is not over-standardization in the name of conformity.
I really like the Italian sign for a public library, too. I suppose the columns are upright books on a shelf but the way they're arranged made me think of Karate Kid and breaking boards of wood with one's fists. That is one way to keep readership engaged and excited about learning.
tune-on, turn-in
Last week, the local security apparatchik—well, echo-chamber, redoubled with the various turfs that are the realms of this petty kingdom, the Consulate and the hulking bureau called the Department of Homeland Security did its best to fend off the curious under its protection from the Blockupy rallies being held.
The warning, the issuance read, however, like an open-invitation listing venues and times with a high degree of specificity, even tipping almost towards sympathy for the movement—but still, stay away, move along, nothing to see here. I suppose I was one of those curious ones that the stern warning was intended for—and could rationalize that seeing the spectacle up close was probably another instance of seeking out trouble, since it was not exactly condemned and made Verboten out of hand. The Polizei and the European Central Bank in Frankfurt am Main also in being competently prepared and indulgent of the action that managed to defuse it a bit.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐, ๐, ๐ง , economic policy, labour, revolution