A correspondent from the local's Swiss edition gives an intriguing and inspiring review of a fusion activity taking place on the slopes that tower above the Engadine.
Friday 14 March 2014
tadasana or yoga-on-ice
Wednesday 12 March 2014
cifrรฃo or surreal times
In response and in anticipation to a marked upswing in the trend, a group in Brazil has minted a form of alternative protest currency, called the Surreal—opposed to the real (reais), the fiat tender of the country, Der Spiegel reports (auf Deutsch).
catagories: lifestyle, revolution, travel
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.
catagories: ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, networking and blogging
Tuesday 11 March 2014
i-spy or chivalric code
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
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.
catagories: ๐ฒ๐ฉ, ๐ท๐บ, ๐บ๐ฆ, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, ๐ฑ, foreign policy, revolution