shouts and murmurs or no. 2 pencil

The New Yorker has an excellent little extract regarding the Stanford Achievement Test proctors' effort to make the standardized college entrance exam more relevant to students, to assess the skills they need to develop in this brave new world.
Many questions are tailored to the internet environment. I can recall when the SAT was a bastion of stellar vocabulary and recognised rigour but maybe that demonstrates a certain immaturity.  I am not sure how in earnest the analysis is and suspect it's humourous, one question posed quotes a short passage from Jane Austin (already suspect) and asks how to best entitle a post with this content to draw in the most traffic.

i-spy or chivalric code

The various US government agencies that pose as very magnanimous monarchs, eager to dub subjects—and not just creatures of the court but also mercenaries, with the titles of Sir Top of Secret or Lady Confidential now has an expansive plan to walk back (bad link) their veritable jubilee, as quite a few notorious individuals holding a security clearance have proved to be less than loyal—at least in the estimation of the secret-sharers. I remember once watching an actual knighting ceremony, and as is the wont of tradition the band began playing the tune from Monty Python's Flying Circus (John Philip Sousa's Liberty Bell march, which is also performed on the occasion of US presidential inaugurations).
I suppose the panel of judges for beauty contests and OPM (the Office of Personnel Management, which actually bestows these honours) have about the same mentality. Ambitious or not, the uniformed services and associated civilian counterparts, from whom many careers are built as their networks, platforms and jargon require interpreters, aims to monitor every move of their title-holders—at least, every move on the internet, easily retrieved but also easily faked and only want the computer says. Having seemingly forgot that this sort of surveillance is already not only possible but also carried out, the spooks, trustees and petty tyrants are concerned about their privacy, but more to the point they also have concerns for the integrity of the actual secret business that they are doing, also subject to a continuum of voyeurs.

chicken kyiv oder rollsplitt

While the US and the EU are at odds as to the better means of sanctioning Russia's encouraging the Crimea to assent to annexation, there seems to be precious little traction from outside pressures. Obviously this invitation was well choreographed and premeditated, and whether the aggressions are opportune, taking advantage of an uprising off-set, or merely staged and coinciding with the world's focus on the Winter Games (or a negotiation of both) is unclear.
 A balmy winter in western Europe that could have better weathered the valves being shut off for delivery of natural gas from Russia or America's announcement to scale back the army and military presence in Europe, deemed stable and no longer interbellum and relics of the long, Cold War being cannibalised for adventures further east. It's a bit of a reach but I wonder if this was not some sort of double-bluff, a head-fake, to bolster new Europe's alignment with the West, and legitimize America's missile shield in Poland and mission-creep elsewhere.

This sort of psychological battle for hearts and minds seems like a very real possibility, given Russia's counter-wooing of satellites like Moldova, with an offensive to expose the hollow promises of joining Europe, demonstrating that economic integration is other than rosy, including Russian-influenced embargoes on Moldovan wine exports. In exchange, the nations, which in turn harbour break-away republics with limited recognition like Transnistria or Georgia's South Ossetia in 2008, are portrayed as presented with false taunts and alternative life-styles. Regardless of circumstance or politicking, citizens reserve the rights to secede, devolve or resist, but this sort of partitioning is a bit scary on both sides, interest reserved—whether or not one is just spinning diplomatic wheels.

daytrip: maintauberfranken

Taking advantage of the spring weather, we took a short rumble down a portion of the Romantic Road (die Romantische Straße), the route of fairy tale castles, palaces and fotresses that criss-cross the borders of Bayern and Baden-Württemberg in the western reaches of Franconia to Upper-Bavaria.  Towards the end of our trip, we passed through the village of Creglingen on the Tauber river, nicely rendered in this landscape by the artist Carl Grossberg in 1926. We did not photograph this particular vista because of the afternoon sun, but I was really captured by the artist's modern, cartoonish style.
Afterwards, I researched a bit further, got a lesson in art-history and found more of Grossberg's works and discovered that the collection epitomizes the German New Objectivity movement (Neue Sachlichkeit, new matter-of-factness) that aimed to capture the practicality of form and function associated with civic involvement and political engagement of Germany's inter-war Weimar Republic and an off-shoot of the Bauhaus movement.
As opposed to Futurism or Expressionism, this impartial attitude emulated the perceived values of America's infatuation with work and progress and represented an inward-turning towards institutions and public life, and Grossberg did in fact produce many interesting schematics depicting industry.  I do, however, really enjoy his imaginative way of inserting sloths and monkeys into office-settings for effect and comment.