orient express

This week saw the inaugural train-ride under the waters of the Marmara Sea at the Straits of the Bosporus, linking the European and Asian parts of Istanbul with submerged tube line.
This ambitious project, engineered with the assistance of Norwegian and Japanese planners, has taken a decade to complete and opens several years behind schedule—due almost exclusively, however, to preservation efforts to safely retrieve the trove of artefacts, ancient finds from Roman, Byzantine and earlier eras, including shipwrecks and the sunken ancient harbour of the city. There have been other means of bridging the continents since, including the poor nymph Io, a victim of one of Zeus' many liaisons, who he turned into a cow in order to hide her from his jealous wife. Hera, however, saw through this deception and condemned the shamed nymph to wonder the earth, tormented by a relentless gadfly that prodded her onwards, never resting.
Io came to Asia at these narrows, whose name signifies her crossing, like Oxford (oder Oschenfurt)--that is where a cow could ford the waters, and eventually met another unfortunate, Prometheus, punished for giving mankind the gifts of foresight and fire. The tortured god told Io to travel to Egypt where she regained her human form.  The city, straddling both worlds, continued to represent a limit and a point of transition—more recently, a grand hall of a former railway station on Istanbul's modern harbour stands as the remains of the end-station of the fabled Orient Express, beginning in Paris. To travel further east, passengers would disembark here and take ferries to board trains of the Ottoman railways across the straits.

eagle's nest

The relative silence by the American media regarding its native intelligence agencies and their forays abroad is deafening. There are bits of domestic coverage that are mostly of an apologetic nature—other Anglophone outlets are understandably taciturn as well—but nothing of a hard-hitting or challenging nature from very pedestrian news sources.

There is an element of back-peddling, downplaying who knew what and when, the postulate that all nations conduct themselves in the same way—or would like to, that Europeans ought to be grateful to the US for keeping them safe or that the German chancellor uses in fact more than one mobile device—like many, and continued (justified) criticism that the chancellor, upon the premature advice of her intelligence chief that the scandal was over, was not overly concerned about the spying on regular hoi polloi until it got personal. Der Spiel (DE) with significant contributions from the Reuters service (EN), however unnoticed by US journalists presents a very comprehensive piece on the background and latest developments. Despite whatever graceful exits that might be suggested, the fact that the US Mission to Germany, its embassy in Berlin (built in 2008) just beyond the Brandenburg Gate from the Chancellery and consulates in Frankfurt am Main, Bonn and Leipzig, are outfitted with roof-top signals and reconnaissance stations seems rather indisputable. Even after the revelations of Cable-Gate, I was under the impression that diplomacy was not to be a den of spying, to whatever end, and that there were serious consequences for the violation.

poker-face or encephalisation quotient

Around a century ago in Berlin, local audiences, including scientists and emperors and the international public was coming to terms with what the latest object of fascination, much more than a side-show curiosity meant in terms of not only intelligence but for psychology. Around a decade prior, a school teacher, amateur phrenologist and some what of a charismatic, Wilhelm von Osten, bought a horse to hitch to a carriage he had had his eyes on. The stall available to him in the working-class neighbourhood of Berlin where he lived was too narrow to accommodate both beast and buggy and it turned out it the area was not the best to prance about, and so not discouraged, he undertook to teach his horse arithmetic, after repeated and at first accidental displays of precocity.
The world, still reveling from the recent publication of Charles Darwin's theories, had become engrossed with the idea of animal intelligence, and Mr. von Osten was more and more convinced that he had discovered the genuine article. With outstanding accuracy, the horse, Clever Hans (der Kluge Hans, after the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale), amazed audiences by clopping out answers to unscripted mathematical problems. The duo were a sensation and once learning that the Prussian emperor would have private audience, a scientific commission was called in order to avoid any royal embarrassment. The group, which included a top professor of psychology, a circus director, veterinarians and biologists, could find no explanation to the mysterious prodigy but also were convinced no trickery was involved. Besides, although he gained much fame, Mr. von Osten never charged admission or any other fees for his demonstrations.
The show continued, although, sadly Mr. von Osten died, under a new proctor, a business man who had studied von Osten's stage-presence and was enjoying some success in soliciting correct answers from Clever Hans. Hans' new owner even gathered a menagerie in a sort of equine classroom so Hans could impart his knowledge to others. The professor, however, who participated in the first commission was still mystified and launched a second investigation, this time with his students. Eventually termed the “Clever Hans Effect,” they slowly determined that the animals were quite clever though not in the ways the questioners had hoped, but rather became very good at reading body-language and non-verbal cues too subtle for audiences or skeptics to notice otherwise in order to get praise and rewards. It was a bit of a let down and Hans and his classmates were conscripted as war-horses and their fate is unknown. This effect, of course, affects all sorts of investigations and our ticks and tells give away a lot. It is funny to think also how well pets have their owners trained.

conspicuous consumption oder bishop of bling

Just on the heels of the Pope's overtures to Church leaders that culture must change and priests must rather be engaged with their communities and demonstrate charity, rather than living in Ivory Towers, it was revealed that the price for new residence for the Bishop of Limburg had swelled to some thirty-one million euro and included several architectural vanities. Of this extravagance and complaints of the bishop's autocratic, stand-offish leadership style, the Pope moved to place the bishop on indefinite administrative leave, while this matter could be sorted out. The Church has announced that the building will either be used as a home for refugees (Flüchtlingslager) or a soup-kitchen (Suppenküche) for the poor.

revolving-door

Reading an insightful article from the New York Times, at the recommendation of the watchdog group Corporate Observatory Europe concerning the metastasising lobbying-culture that America has helped introduced to the European Union and while the trend is most disturbing, I paused to wonder in today's environment where hypocrisies are immediately exposed (and though sometimes buried again right away but the truth will out, always) and only muddied by spin and ideologues whose sophistry is only grounded in commissions if such pressures and duplicity actually still meant anything. Bad behaviour and half-truths once uncovered become rather indefensible, like that other American commodity of surveillance, which has rendered secrecy and respect irrelevant. Does it matter that legislation is bullied or lubricated by influence-peddlers when their roles are subject to more and more public displays and outfitted with corporate logos like NASCAR racers and other niche sports before their audiences?

We all know who the puppet-masters are, even if the free-press is not sacrosanct neither. It is rather telling, however, of the troupes of legal-eagles entrenched in Brussels, making a corridor of lobby groups around the halls of power, have introduced recruitment of former politicians, fresh out of office, to ply their know-how, whereas before this was not a common practise, representatives content to retire or harmlessly play the grey-imminence to younger generations. As voters grow wise to these culture-shift that blurs the distinction between corporate and public interests, I hope that relaxing of standards and changing of priorities become harder to hide from view. Democratic processes and due review cannot simply become something of a show, a formality to be overcome, and hopeful the combined lag of bureaucracy on a super-national level, frustrating as it can be sometimes, can work also to uncover and slow the work of lobbyists.

mcjob

Though by no means limited to a single industry, demographic or the exclusive bailiwick of American exports, since there is wage stagnation to be found everywhere, the bight of mobility and want of jobs with career potential, sustainable beyond the ken of economic and class nostalgia, the glut of low-salary, abusive labour mills, the flagships of the US business model are presenting a particular threat, to the workers directly but also to the public made to subsidise the employers' bad behaviour.

A vestige of concern of concern would have been a nice gesture for those workers already faced with indentured servitude, not making ends meet but depressingly just scraping together enough to keep lenders and landlords at bay until next month, but one company's bootstrap services are not even that. Rather, in a calculated move to keep overhead low and profits high, such a life-line is a conduit to push workers (and presumably only those that have demonstrated enough desperate loyalty and competence to keep on since it is not available to all) to having their salaries supplemented by the public weal. Such workers are pushed towards welfare benefits to supplement their negative income, in turn costing tax-payers some billions annually. Combine this tactic with the practise of shaving off a few hours off their weekly schedules in order that they not be counted as full-time employees for health insurance purposes (though the same corporate entities are the most vociferous voices against reforming social programmes), it is no surprise that we are becoming mired in this mess and it is becoming a cycle for too many.

laocoön

Reviewing the new work, Art as Therapy, by Alain de Botton and John Armstrong for the excellent repository and point-of-departure for big thoughts, Brain-Pickings, writer Maria Popova presents a brilliant and scholarly synopsis of the authors' treatment of the psychology of artistic expression in seven acts.
Punctuated by pithy and profound quotations, the functional examination of art as the container of memory, hopefulness, empathy, reconciliation and maturity that is bigger than us, the article reminded me of the treatise on the aesthetic on the statue and story of Laocoön and his Sons (depicting a tragedy from antiquity—punished by the victor-gods for trying to warn their fellow Trojans about Greeks bearing gifts, this priceless and unique piece was dug up from someone's yard not so long ago and then acquired by the Vatican, where it is on display) by classicist Gotthold Lessing. Lessing's argument about the bounds of art with rules of engagement, though engrossing and lucid, however, is rather like looking in the wrong end of a telescope in comparison to the comprehensive healing and therapeutic appreciation of art, accessible and provoking in another sort of way. This essay and excerpts certainly make me want to read the entire the book and think on what shortcomings, universal endowments and limitations that we all have to deal with to one degree or another but are all as apt to enhancement and overcoming through tools and techniques--this subject being a kind of tool as well, that art takes us beyond.

kettling or policeman's ball

The Russian Times is covering an international law enforcement convention in Philadelphia, where one of the distrurbing trends emerging is increase partnership between social-media utilities and police departments with the express and open-ended goal of hindering the right to assembly through the ability to censor content and upstarts deemed to be of a criminal or at least of a (potentially) peace-disrupting nature. While such collaborative efforts could reduce the ability for organised criminal syndicates to use the internet as a platform, like cyber highwaymen whose threat is greatly conflated and peddlers of hate that use these forums, this sort of alliance, already taking place in fits and starts, would do more to quell protests and promote the status quo, ignorance and misinformation. Of course, it does not stop with stopping rallies but I suppose such selectivity would necessarily extend to any unflattering portrayal or revelation regarding the giants of industry, in terms of health, safety and equity. Patently, it would become more and more difficult for organisers to mobilise support for movements and to distribute information that has not received the stamp-of-approval from the competent-authorities.